They never will

The BBC is still dutifully addressing the Labour Party’s antisemitism problem. Not exactly addressing. It seems more accurate to say they’re paying lip service to addressing it. They’d like to get to the bottom of it, or they’d like you to think they’d like to get to the bottom of it. They never will though. Not while they’re still broadcasting such biased reporting about Israel from the likes of Jon Donnison and Paul Adams.

I think Jon Donnison’s addiction to ‘the people of Gaza’ is unhealthy. Kind of obsessive-compulsive. At first, I thought he had been banished by the BBC because his bias was getting too obvious; on the verge of bringing the BBC into disrepute. (joke). One could easily assume he’d been sent down under for a spot of rehab and was now deemed well enough to return to the Middle East.

But no. He hasn’t been sent back to Gaza. He’s bringing those heavily slanted reports about his favourite topic from here and he’s somehow wangled Nazi Ghazi Hamas Hamad past the Beeb’s quality control to vouchsafe that there wasn’t a single drop of violence during the peaceful protests along Gaza’s border with Israel (apart from a few packs of lone wolves.)

Paul Adams had already resurrected the story about Gaza’s mental health problems, which has been spun, with a cunning combination of innuendo and omission, to place the blame on Israel.  

On Sunday’s Newshour this story appeared yet again. Fathi Harb’s self-immolation was pitched as the desperate response of a man driven mad by Israel’s blockade.

Adams didn’t recount the words Fathi allegedly cried as he burned, but mumbled something about the “struggle to make a living”. Bizarrely, the pronunciation of the deceased’s name, “fatty”, made the whole thing sound all the more surreal.

Ynet News:

A 20-year-old Palestinian father of two from Gaza set himself on fire Saturday night in the city's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, all while cursing the strip's Hamas rulers who he apparently blamed for his family's poverty and the dismal economic situation in Gaza. 

Eye witnesses saw the man dousing himself in flammable liquid shouting "damn the government" before lighting himself up. Video footage of the incident shows the young man burning alive and screaming in agony with passersby rushing to put out the flames. 

Fathi's family and associates emphasized that he does not suffer from mental illness, but noting he was distraught over his brother's injury in one of the "March of Return" demonstrations at the border with Israel, which are organized and promoted by Hamas.

If the BBC are genuinely puzzled about surging antisemitism they are playing a ridiculous game of “innocent Face” 

We heard Yvette Cooper speaking to Martha Kearney this morning. She thinks the whole thing would go away if they merely “adopted the full definition,” with all its examples.

“Because it does still, rightly, allow people to criticise Israel for the deeply damaging things it is doing.”

What are these deeply damaging things, I wonder? Are they fag-ends and tidbits overheard from the kind of reporting we’ve just been discussing mixed together with ‘facts’ and statistics regurgitated straight from “the Palestinian Ministry of  Health”. (Hamas)

There was an amusing rant from a former member of Trump’s team this lunchtime. She had a good old go at Mark Mardell.

“Dr. Betsy McCoy was an economic advisor to President Trump when he was President Elect and she joins me now from New York. Hello there!”

“Hello I must say I’ve been listening to this previous interview and the bias is so evident, so appalling, that your narrator used the word  ‘treason’, which even the ‘witch-hunter himself, Robert Mueller has not used. It’s quite shocking, I hope your listeners know what an incredibly biased presentation that was.”

Yikes! Joan Rivers lives!

Talking of Yvette Cooper, did you see Ed Balls strutting his stuff last night? At least his enjoyable film gave these deplorable the space to show that they were not quite so deplorable after all. 

Ed, on the other hand, was positively Gallawayesque in his lycra costumes. (Wow, he’s got hefty since Strictly) He said he was there to listen and learn, but my impression was that he failed to do both. He’s turning into a positive Anne Widdecombe; the Yin to Widders’s Yang. 

I suppose people do change when they leave politics but I can’t help thinking of Yvette’s face, all fired up with indignant righteousness, condemning hatred of the Jews while insisting on retaining the freedom to condemn Israel for “what it is doing” to the Palestinians.