Free Gaza Propaganda

[Did I hear a certain someone talk about "the BBC’s habit of allowing a litany of embellished falsehoods to be repeated on air, unchallenged", recently? Hmm, yes I did, and talking of which....]

Radio 4's The Listening Project is an attempt by the BBC and the British Library "to build a unique picture of our lives today" by "asking people up and down the country to share an intimate conversation with a close friend or relative". 

Biased BBC's Alan had the misfortune to hear one of last Friday's editions of the ongoing series, Adie and Ruth - Adventure in the Blood, in which a mother and son discussed their shared wanderlust and reminisced about how the son was forcibly prevented from sailing into Gaza by those Israeli meanies. (He thought he'd share the pain with the rest of us. Cheers Alan!)

'Intimate' anti-Israel propaganda - that's what we heard.

The Adie in question wasn't the BBC's Kate but an anti-Israel activist called Adie Mormech, and the idea that it was merely wanderlust that led him to Gaza is something of a stretch given that he seems to have devoted the entirety of his adult life to such anti-Israel activism. 

He was part of the Free Gaza Movement and has since been involved in the International Solidarity Movement, working in Gaza as a "human rights advocate" (whilst seeming to be strangely unconcerned about the human right's record of the present government of Gaza - Hamas). 

He's also taken part in anti-Israel protests in Gaza, campaigned for a boycott of Israel and written for Israeli-hating websites such as Mondoweiss. 

Adie seems to have got into the habit of embroidering his story over the years, as a spot of Googling reveals. 

On Radio 4 last week he told us that there were "around eight Israeli gunships surrounding us", and that they were "imprisoned for a week". At the time he said there were "six Israeli warships" and told the BBC that he spent "five nights in an Israel jail". (Given that his original version of events doubtless considerably embroidered the truth, what's a little extra embroidering between anti-Israel activists, eh?)

Adie Mormech's story is not a new one to the BBC, as the link above shows, and they surely knew what an episode of The Listening Project would result in. And yet out went the invite to Adie and Ruth, and out went this edition of the programme, along with its anti-Israel propaganda.