Friday 18 May 2018

Did you see that atrocious Question Time



Well, they’re not boasting now. As Bob Monkhouse famously nearly said. 

Without suggesting that there should be a basic IQ test before the public is granted admission, is it too much to expect some sort of crowd control to defuse what Andrew Neil might call expressions of social unrest? Dimbles seems unconcerned. I think he’s lost the will to chair. Would it be proportionate to suggest riot police and live fire but only as a very last resort?

I mean the sheer stupidity of some of the participants on both sides of the border desk beggars belief. I don’t blame Hamas Momentum - I blame Israel the BBC. 
“Will the Israeli government be held accountable for their crimes against Palestine?”
What sort of question is that? What is this “crimes against Palestine”? I was told this edition of Q.T. took place in Kensington, London. But I see a last-minute change of venue meant it was actually from Royston Vasey and - was the questioner, by any chance …Tubbs? It was surely authored by Tubbs. 

“What we saw this week was a massacre!” 
announced the Guardian’s Aditya Chakrabortty. “Britain should review its position on selling arms to the Israelis” he continued, muttering something about internal repression. (Where and by whom he did not specify.) In fact, the contributions from the anti-Israel contingent seem to have everything vaguely accurate; but in reverse.

Dimbles wondered, 'how could the Israelis be held accountable?' and I’d estimate that a disproportionate percentage of the audience would settle for Hamas getting its wish.


The questioner then stated that Israel "keeps kicking out Palestinian families who have lived there for over fifty years". I assume Yolande Knell would be willing to verify that fact.

“Horrific,” said Bernard Hagan-Howe. “The Israeli government should accept an investigation by an impartial body such as the UN,” he quipped with deadpan wit.  

“The border is illegal, first of all” began an assertive lady, “and, um, um, nobody is saying Hamas have the right to kill people. Secondly, the Palestinian people have their... 
(reads from a pre-prepared list) 
“…their poultry, their olive trees, their cattle, their children - there are fourteen-year-old boys that wet themselves at night time, in nappies because they’re frightened that the IDF are going to come in and take them in the middle of the night”.    
“That land is illegal!’” she ended, with a flourish

Odd that. I may be wrong, but understood that Hamas is digging tunnels to facilitate that very thing, And wasn’t kidnapping Israelis one of Hamas’s prescribed ambitions? (Presumably, the ones that hadn’t already had their hearts ripped out.)  We never got to hear what had happened to the poultry, cattle etc.

‘The man at the back there.’ What is he like? Very animated, you can tell, as he barely pauses for breath as he delivers his 'opposite of the truth' rant. 
People say that Israel has a right to defend itself it does but the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves, right? And you talk about selling arms. […] Stop the arms sales to Israel, make sure the aid is going to the children that are being shot and I’m not being funny, there are people being kicked out of their houses, they got no bread and water!! They have to defend themselves, they need bread and water and they keep saying it’s Hamas, it’s this and that.  It’s all Israel, and the first thing Netanyahu tweeted as soon as Trump was in charge - ‘that is it. No two state solution’ - Israel never wanted a two-state solution they want an actual greater Israel project and they want nothing to do with Palestinians they want to clear them all and it’s people like you, that’s a disgrace to the two-state solution. 

But where on God’s dear earth has he and most of the audience (and panel)  got hold of these post-truth facts?

I wonder.

4 comments:

  1. The QT producers 'rigorous background checks' on their audience seem to have come unstuck, especially on the issue of age-group balance. This has been solved by selecting everyone OF average age. This has thrown up a group that is ideally suited to the Momentum membership.

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  2. "I think he’s lost the will to chair" ... David Dimbleby will be 80 this year.

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  3. Is 1984 still on the school curriculum, or has it been removed by the people it describes? This is Orwell’s “two minutes of hate”. Mindless. Why bother learning the history or understanding the background when the object of hate is provided on a plate by the MSM. The BBC should be ashamed of themselves.

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  4. Watched it on YouTube yesterday. I noticed the happy, smiling faces in the audience and the applause at 36 minutes in when Dimbleby put this question to the police guy: "But you've been in the Met, you've dealt with angry crowds and mobs, do you need live ammunition to do that?"

    I gleaned two thing from that: Dimbleby puts his lefty ideological BBC bias before the facts by making the absurd comparison between unruly mobs in city streets and a concerted attack by a throng of tens of thousands led by terrorists breaking through a border fence (under cover of a huge black cloud of smoke from burning tyres) to infiltrate a country with the purpose of slaughtering its citizens.

    And the smiling faces of the anti-Israel crew in the audience demonstrate both their glee at Dimbleby's uneducated Israel bashing and the fact that they don't really give a damn about the Palestinians.

    Still, there were a few points of light in this savage group attack on Israel from the audience and the panel: the reasonable points made by the Met guy despite Dimbleby's bias and an audience member who strongly defended his right to support Israel by pointing out, at 37 minutes in, that, "This is not a Momentum meeting here; everyone can think about other things, OK" when some idiot tried to interrupt him.

    OK, indeed! Then there was a defence from an audience member of Britain's right to sell arms to Israel and then a strong defence from another at 40 minutes in of Israel's actions in the face of the terrorist onslaught.
    I particularly appreciated his challenge to the Guardian 'journalist.'

    So it wasn't all doom and gloom. But it is a tad disturbing that the defenders of Israel had to try so hard to break through the implacable anti-Israel bias of so many at the event.



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