Anyone waiting for an apology from Jon Donnison will have a long wait. When the UN released the findings that proved him, if not wrong, then presumptuous and premature in his unequivocal condemnation of Israel over the death of baby Omar Mashrawi, Donnison resorted to the default BBC defence: “I am still right. It’s all the fault of the shifting centre of gravity type of thing.”
So, instead of the straightforward mea culpa of the kind that the wise people of the media agreed would have saved Chris Huhne, Donny cited the “It’s not me, it’s you” defence, which, for several reasons sounded remarkably familiar.
He has decided to cast doubt on the UN’s findings. The investigations were too little, too late, i.e. unreliable, he says. ( Where have I heard this defence before? Oh yes, after the Goldstone report, but in that case it was employed in Israel’s defence. Then, despite being initially pooh-pooed by the anti-Israel brigade and the likes of the BBC the doubts eventually proved valid)
So perhaps this time too there is something in that. Maybe the UN was slipshod, and came to the wrong conclusion. It’s not the most scrupulous, reliable, impartial body in the whole wide world. But why would it err in that particular way? The UN is hardly Israel friendly.
Again, in the scheme of things that’s neither here nor there.
The bigger picture is that as Donny himself says, “A photo of BBC video editor Jehad Mashhrawi cradling the corpse of his baby son Omar became one of the iconic images of November's short war.”
How did that come about, pray tell? Something to do with Donny and the BBC?
So using it as another weapon in the BBC’s Operation Besmirch Israel campaign is still
a-okay with Donny, UN findings or not.
No regrets. Je ne regrette rien. Not even a ‘sorry my latest Israel-busting bombshell went viral on the offchance’ And just to make sure no-one is in any doubt that Israel is guilty, even of things it hasn’t actually done, Donnison reinforces the message with a cluster of familiar, gratuitous little aftershocks.
“The UN report concluded that at least 169 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks during the offensive.
It said more than 100 were civilians, including 33 children and 13 women. The report said six Israelis were killed by Palestinians attacks, including four civilians.”
He might just as well have come clean, and admitted that in his opinion it doesn’t matter who has done what, because we know Israel is evil and anyway it does that sort of thing all the time. That’s what they said about al-Dura
I don’t know about authentic, but it is certainly a symbol. That’s why it’s important to keep the symbolism authentic, and not cavalierly inflammatory.
In the Spectator Owen Jones has defended his outburst on Question Time. His strategy was to blame the media. I was only going by their info, he claims. Well, not just ‘going by.’
It was his starting point, indeed. It was the inspiration from which fired off one of his ill-informed pernicious flights of fancy. My findings are that that one fell short.
