Royal stitch-up

Due to a recent air of resignation that has come over me, call it despair, fatalism, submission, if you like, I confined the following allusion to last Sunday’s Sunday Morning Live into one solitary passage in a piece concerning that appalling Emily Mailtlis interview.

The BBC’s default position on Israel is even more obvious when you don’t watch too much TV. I keep catching breathless announcements about Prince William’s visit being ‘the first time a ‘Royal’ has  gone to the Palestinian territories.” And then some quip about Israel objecting to the term “Occupied” -  “but that’s what it is,” opined Sunday Morning Live’s whining, metropolitan media-bubble-inhabiting guest and part-time antisemite Christina Patterson. Sorry for the “smear,” but that’s what you are. She’s as ignorant now as she was back in 2010, and just as opinionated with it. But so are most of the BBC’s contributors. 

Of course, I knew it deserved its own platform, and lo and behold, here it is. Not only is there a link to the programme in question, there’s a transcription of the offending dialogue. 

To summarise, the topic was reviewed by two pro-Palestinian pundits, one of whom has a record of publishing false and defamatory comments about Israel. Together they spun Prince William’s Middle East adventure out of all recognition, presenting it as if it were a royal declaration of solidarity with the Palestinian people. This one-sided and ignorant interpretation of the event took place under the auspices of a supposedly ‘thought-provoking’ religiously themed TV programme. 

It was presided over by a couple of lightweight TV anchors who were clearly out of their depth.

This kind of thing is nothing out of the ordinary. It’s mainstream, it’s overwhelming and it accounts for the aforementioned air of resignation.