Missing links

I am aware that the BBC’s attitude towards Israel is a bit of a niche topic, even amongst ‘BBC bias’ specialists and spotters, many of whom find the subject tedious and irrelevant.

Nevertheless, it interests me, and as this is partly my blog I’ll cry if I want to.

Most bloggers and keyboard warriors get material from the media, other blogs and elsewhere online, and all we do, in our own sweet way, is add value. 

Ultimately it’s a matter of trawling, selecting and recycling. We do it for you (so you don’t have to)

One of the resources I have discovered, a rich seam of interesting information in my opinion, is Yiftah Curiel’s Twitter feed.  Curiel is ‘spokesperson of the Embassy of Israel in London.” 

We hear about the  rockets from Gaza that we don’t hear about from the BBC. 

We hear about the Palestinians arming themselves with rocks and missiles inside the Al-Aqsa mosque, and find that someone has put a video of it on YouTube.

We  do hear about this on the BBC but only in the BBC’s customary ‘half-a-story’ manner.

We see an informative video of Dore Gold explaining the background of the current flare-up, but all we get from the BBC is Yolande Knell’s misleading copy.

We see that the BBC used an antisemitic illustration in their Proms Programme, and we also see that they apologised for it. 

WE discover that the woman at the PSC parade who made several extremely offensive antisemitic comments is being investigated by the police. (nothing much is likely to be done about it, but still.) 

From journeys through links, and links to other links, we can find a cornucopia of material. Here’s something that I found very upsetting, which I might as well share with you, since it’s (partly) my party and I’ll jolly well cry if I want  to. 

A woman phones into some US radio Jock’s phone-in. He’s a million times more obnoxious than the bitter essence of James O’Brien and Stephen Nolan rolled into one. She starts to talk about rocket attacks into Israel. She’s asking how many rocket attacks must Israel endure before retaliation is deemed legitimate. Her name is Mimi.

Radio Jock decides he is now going to deliver his opinion on Israel. He has invented an analogy so that his listeners can identify more easily with the Palestinians and fully absorb the insult  - the effrontery - of Jews thinking they have the right to defend themselves and the audacity of the very existence of Israel.

“Imagine”, he says, “you are a family in Saint Paul Minnesota. Your family has lived there for hundreds of years....”

You can tell straight away where this is going. I’ve heard this analogy before, thoughtfully adapted to fit a place near you.

“Imagine”, they say,”that you are driven out of your home, at gunpoint, by a mob who say ‘this is now our home because God has given it to me’. “

As this person builds up steam it is apparent that his vile opinions are set in stone. Nothing could ever budge them. The caller tries to intervene, but the neanderthal-browed individual in the headphones is so convinced of the righteousness of his cause, so puffed up with misguided certainty, that he cuts her off and continues with his ugly diatribe in a spittle-flecked frenzy. He’s nasty, with it. He keeps saying the woman’s name “Mimi” with exaggerated sarcasm and a sickening kind of venom that could never be mistaken for friendliness.

He must have been proud of this performance, as there it is on Youtube for all to admire.

Wrong on so many counts; completely unaware of it.

The reason I’m mentioning this is because I’ve heard exactly the same kind of thing, albeit more delicately put, before. From friends!! Guardian readers and so on. Somehow they have got their facts so very very wrong, and I’m wondering if everyone at the BBC is similarly ill-informed. Surely not. Not to that extent. 

If so, is it any wonder that we get the kind of reporting we have to complain about in our blogs?  

It does seem that the collective message one gets from the BBC’s output indicates that this level of ignorance is widespread amongst some of those prolific tweeters and adolescent BBC staffers.