The Biggest Bombshell since Clarkson quit Top Gear

Now that the dust is beginning to settle, a bit more on the story that Craig posted earlier. 

It’s very sad that the UK media has pounced on this story - some would call it a non-story  - about Al Jazeera’s undercover ‘revelations’ which they are presenting as evidence that Israel is controlling the UK government. 

Apparently this ‘scoop’ forms part of a four-episode propaganda documentary by Qatari-based TV channel Al Jazeera. Why hasn’t anyone shown any interest in that? If you’re interested in lobbying, surely you’ll be interested in that?

The fact that the BBC and Sky (the only two channels I’ve watched so far) have taken at face value the histrionic spin that Al Jazeera has put on it is dispiriting. Are there no intelligent journalists in this country?

Andrew Marr, for one, has swallowed it lock stock and barrel. When he brought it up on this morning’s paper review he said it it was a sensational story that “will run and run” . If he’s got anything to do with it, it probably will.

I know the Daily Mail has really gone to town on it, unintentionally making it into a parody by calling it “bombshell footage”. Haven’t they seen Alan Partridge? Or Jeremy Clarkson? I thought the term ‘Bombshell’ had been culturally appropriated by satirists.

They even scaremonger with a Bond-like phrase - ‘take down’.  “Israel plot to ‘take down’ Tory minister.” 

“To talk of “taking down” a British Minister is very (very very very very very) sinister” 

rhymed former Tory minister Sir Desmond Swayne in Gilbert and Sullivan mode. Imagine Alan Duncan being ‘taken down’. Titter.

Sir Alan Duncan is one of a strange band of seemingly self-hating homosexual men who spend a lot of time trying to delegitimise Israel while vociferously batting for the other side. (See what I did there) It’s like turkeys voting for Christmas, only with wider implications.

Craig has already mentioned Alan’s post over on Biased-BBC, where you can glimpse Alan Duncan’s anti-Israel machinations in a one-sided and legally unsound speech he gave at RUSI in 2014. 

Alan has also posted a fuller excerpt from the Al Jazeera film. The MSM has cherry-picked only the covertly recorded ‘restaurant revelations’ section of the film, but in this unedited excerpt we have Peter Oborne too. 

Oborne has made the Israel/Jewish Lobby into some sort of bogey-man. It’s his personal hobby horse, and “Dispatches” let him make a hysterical documentary about it in 2009. 

I’d wager a bet that this everyday story of political folk is fairly typical of the minor political shenanigans that go on day in, day out in the Westminster bubble. But it’s low-hanging fodder for those constantly circling Israel-bashing vultures, so representatives of Israel must  be on their best behaviour at all times. Once again they are being held to higher standards than everyone else, but for the time being that’s what they need to bear in mind.

Even so, one has to question why the media is making such a mountain out of it, and wonder why no-one has followed up the bizarre allegation that Sir Alan Duncan threatened Robert Halfon. 

“As it happens, there is a jewel buried in the footage.

Unless Ms Strizzolo is simply making it up, it seems Sir Alan “threatened to destroy” Mr Halfon because he was too ready to stick up for Israel.

Funnily enough, that’s not the story they’ve chosen to run with.”

At the end of their over-egged article the Daily Mail has gratuitously published some spiteful remarks which are full of typical antisemitic tropes and insinuations, an anonymous contribution by a “Minister who served in David cameron’s government.” 

Whoever it is excuses his anonymity by saying: 

“Even now, if I were to reveal who I am, I would be subjected to a relentless barrage of abuse and character assassination.”

Unless he’s a vampire he should be able to see the perpetrator of a relentless barrage of abuse when he looks in the mirror.

The Daily Mail is a disgrace, but we knew that. Bearing in mind that the government has accepted the ambassador’s apology and said that was the end of the matter, the rest of the media should grow up and find something more worthy of their attention.