Today the BBC finds itself in the most unusual situation it has ever been catapulted into. It has been propelled onstage, in front of an expectant audience, but doesn’t know what for. Rabbit in headlights.
If there was one occasion for popcorn, this is it. It’s an explosion in slow motion.
Well, it started rumbling quietly last night when “Two Jewish Peers” were dragged on to Newsnight to discuss Naz Shah and antisemitism in the Labour party, and to ensure that ‘legitimate criticism of Israel’ continues to be ‘nothing to do with antisemitism’.
Lord Levy is already tainted by association (with Tony Blair) so anything he says will be filed under Mandy Rice Davies. Rabbi Julia Neuburger was assertive, but Evan helped the item to come and go with little impact.
This morning the Today programme continued the theme, carefully separating “opposition to Israel’s policies” from “antisemitism”.
Two other Left-leaning Jews, David Baddiel and Rabbi Laura Janner- Klausner were interviewed on the topic.
David Baddiel is too much of a luvvie to queer his pitch by saying anything pro Israel, so his variation on the theme: “It’s not antisemitic to criticise the policies of Israeli’s current government” went even further. He has decided that you can even be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic. How silly is that? (Very)
Laura J-K is a friend of Naz Shah (an actual friend, not one of your Corby-style “friends”) and she gave her the benefit of the doubt, accepted her apology and welcomed her promise to ‘learn more.‘
By the Daily Politics things had started to hot up. Ken Livingstone appeared, and so did John Mann.
We were starting to see footage of a confrontation. A heated confrontation. Ken Livingstone with a small a rucksack on his back and a large mobile at his ear, hurrying up a flight of stairs, hotly pursued by John Mann and someone from the media wielding a bloody great camera.
John Mann was calling Ken a Nazi apologist, and telling him to read Mein Kampf. Ken has never seen any sign of antisemitism in the Labour party, but he said that Hitler was a Zionist before he went a bit mad and decided to slaughter six million Jews. (As you do when you go a bit mad) (He should know)
As the day wore on there were more interviews with Ken and Anita McVeigh, Jonathan Sacerdoti and a rather irritable Ben Brown, and an impassioned Owen Jones, who said Ken should be chucked out of the party. He reiterated that we must be careful not to confuse hatred of Jews with opposition to Israel.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought being anti-Zionist was pretty antisemitic, since Zionism only means that Jews should have their own state much like every other group/race/culture/ethnicity. If you think not, you’re very likely a racist.
It always baffles me that no sooner had we, as a society all but rejected religiosity - at least the crippling, repressive inhuman manifestation of it - than we indulgently accepted the one religion that most embodies all the negative aspects of what we’ve just divested ourselves from. Then we not only overlooked its blatantly obvious shortcomings, but accepted its religiously-based claims to holy lands and holy places, whilst rejecting and condemning similar claims made by religious Jews. And the irony of that is compounded by the fact that historical evidence bears out the claims of the latter rather than the former.
There’s something bigger than an elephant in this room. It’s the antisemitism within Islam, which is at the heart of the Israel Palestine conflict, and in the hearts of Muslim MPs like Naz Shah and Muslim sycophants like GG.
The BBC has never seen any sign of it, clearly.
I am quite keen on the idea that Naz Shah takes up John Mann’s suggestion, that she goes to Israel and learns something about the ‘other side.’
It would be a good idea if every single one of those CAABU-funded propaganda tours that have seduced so many of our MPs were compulsorily matched with an educational tour organised by their political counterparts in Israel, particularly if it included a compulsory presentation by PMW.
As the story rumbles on, this will be stale. We’ll just have to wait and see how it pans out.
One feels the BBC's pain.
ReplyDeleteMany a meeting in Frankie Howerd one suspects how best to spin valiant Jez against the forces of ev... er... his own party.
Given the factions within the BBC mirroring Labour, such a meeting may be... 'interesting'.
I hope there is massive inner turmoil over this at the BBC. I want the anti-Zionist Beeboids and those who think the Jewish Lobby influences BBC editorial policy (like Paul Mason) to let it all hang out, no more keeping quiet.
DeleteThis is so awesome. Hitler was a quasi-Zionist, absolutely. Of course, this means if he had gotten his way, Hitler would be responsible for stealing Palestinian land! Square that circle, kids.
ReplyDeleteI know some people feel that this anti-Semitism is a boil in the Labour Party that needs lancing. I am more cautious - I fear that down the line the Jews will get the blame for causing trouble. Listened to the BBC Radio 4 at lunch time - Martha Carney asking Livingstone several times about 'the Jews rallying' to which she got no reply. But she briefly asked Livingstone about whether what Hitler did was 'legal' and did not pursue it, i.e.legal to kill 6 million people (2 million of them children)? Tonight's 6pm news on BBC1 explained in its headlines that Livingstone was suspended for supporting one of his Labour colleagues who was accused of making some anti-Semitic remarks. Talk about trying to whitewash both the whole affair and Ken's role. For those who only listen to the headlines (as I mainly do these days as my blood pressure can stand only so much BBC news)one could easily think that those pesky Jews are stirring it again.
ReplyDeleteI know this is a site for BBC bias, but as someone who refuses to pay to go behind the paywall and unhappy with the BBC, I spend more time than is good for me reading the Daily Mail website. The piece yesterday about Philip Green's wife was as vitriolic as a piece could be - i.e. how Lady Green was living the high life, her husband having stolen the pensions of the BHS workers. This was before I knew about Naz Shah and Ken's latest outbursts. Now I don't know what is true about the Green's and BHS but the whole tone of the article was just plain nasty. It also included the amount that the Green's spent on their son's Bar Mitzvah - making sure that all who read it would know about their religion. The Daily Mail's most recent comments posted on one article about Ken and Naz were 4 hours ago - many of them supporting both Labour and Ken.
I am as I said, most uneasy about how this will affect the Jewish community of the UK.
Unfortunately, there is something to what you say.
DeleteI agree that this might not end well.
DeleteThe real problem here is that we have introduced a huge population of people - now numbering about 3 million - who are taught from infancy to despise Jews. The recent East European migration is not helping either as old fashioned European racial and Christian anti-semitism is rife there and people from that area are also importing their prejudices. Tinkering with expressions of hatred of Jews within the Labour Party will not really address these demographic-driven factors - though it might drive it further underground (i.e. people who don't like Jews and want to see Israel wiped off the map will just become more savvy in their use of social media and "anti-zionist" memes).
As for the Greens, well you can't live that sort of Monaco lifestyle, buying your third super-yacht and all that, while pensioners see their pensioners reduce and not expect the press to ask questions and the idea that no one should refer to to Bar Mitzvahs seems bizarre. In my recollection, Green has had loads of good publicity from Mail Online.
I recognise the concerns, and they are legitimate. However, looking back in history hunkering down and turning the other cheek to avoid profile or reaction often buys only a little more time.
DeleteThe Greens' excesses are no more egregious than many other super rich isolated and divorced from reality, tall-poppied by fickle media (the BBC had a bizarre piece on why flush rappers buy mega-$ trainers. D'uh), but raising their religion with impunity when doing so with any other faith would see the plod create a new squad is a worry.
Off now to get my £200 Dyson hairdryer thanks to the wall to wall PR the BBC gave them. And that's when my hair now can be dried usually with two pulls of a towel. Amazing what four billion pounds in media muscle can swing.
What I find interesting about the wall-to-wall coverage about anti-semitism on the BBC is the failure to ask why it has suddenly raised its' ugly head in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party.Is it because they are chasing after the Islamic vote or would it be Islamaphobic to suggest that?
ReplyDeleteIt is weird that they all started coming out of the woodwork after the Jewish leader stepped down and Corbyn came in. No, wait, not weird, what's the word I'm looking for? Ah, yes: revealing. The fact that the BBC is, as you say, dancing around this fact is telling as well.
DeleteThe BBC has quite the conundrum here, though. On the one hand, the editors and producers who drive the agenda know that there's a serious problem, but on the other hand they know that they can't go too far in pointing it out because that would appear to be taking sides in the Labour schism. They're already getting loads of grief from the Corbynistas as it is. Taking it further than that and focusing on the Muslim factor would bring even more complaints, possibly from some people loading their AK-47s (as Mark Thompson once said) as they wrote. That would make the BBC appear to be taking Israel's side, which is just about the worst possible thing a Beeboid can be seen doing, even worse than saying Thatcher wasn't all that bad.
The Beeboids are tied up in knots over this, and it's pretty obvious that their intellectual failure over these two issues has severely hampered their ability to deal with it fairly.
I would like my own state too, but apparently I have to share it with anyone who can get further than 100 metres from the Libyan coast. It also seems to be part of a merger deal which I was lied about. The African and Asian nations don't seem to share this cultural death wish.
ReplyDeleteYes it's one of those weird things - the people most in favour of open borders in the UK are also the people who think only Arabs can live in Palestine.
DeleteMy biggest fear is that the left and to large extent the BBC will continue to pursue the line that being anti-Zionist is acceptable and exonerates them from the charge of anti-Semitism and this becomes a mainstream position. Maybe it is already.
ReplyDeleteIsrael is a tiny country proportionally. It is impossible to believe that the hostility of it’s very much larger neighbours has anything at all to do with Palestinian rights. It is the existence of Jews in what they perceive to be Islamic land. In other words anti-Semitism. Gaza under Hamas is merely the front line in the war against Israel.
To be anti-Zionist in simple terms is to call for the destruction of a free and successful country with a population of 8 million. How do these anti-Zionists think that will play out in the real world? Is that an acceptable position? Baddiel is indeed a fool.
I agree that these problems have been exacerbated by recent immigration, but how utterly shameful of the left and the BBC to pander to these murderous prejudices in the name of political correctness or delusions of multiculturalism.