Fetishising Palestinian extremists

I’ve been out of the country, and have missed most of the last couple of week’s domestic news. However, one morning on internet radio I caught a Palestinian speaker decrying the “Israelisation of Palestine”, and perpetuating the falsehood that “The Jews” are interlopers on “our land”.  Unchallenged, of course, by the interviewer. I can’t be bothered to go off in the pointless pursuit of a link, but it reminded of the Tamimi clan’s extensive publicity tour, where they’re busily perpetuating the same “our land”  theme.  

Ignorance of history is so widespread that one is resigned to the fact that the battle for hearts and minds is truly lost. The BBC’s role in the public’s ignorance about Israel was highlighted the other day by Col. Richard Kemp on this BBC related clip.  H/T EoZ

Talking of ‘Ahed Tamimi the icon’, the BBC has fallen for another cynical Pallywood stunt and perpetuated it in a sickeningly partis pris manner. BBC Trending picked it up and featured it, fanboy fashion, online with the headline: Gaza protest image likened to famous Delacroix painting.

Elder of Ziyon had a laugh about it, and BBC Watch dissects it more seriously here, but the most pertinent response to it that I’ve seen is by Stephen Daisley in the Spectator.

“As a live Palestinian, Amro, who was snapped mid-rampage on Monday, will not have the same impact on low-information media consumers. He has, however, stirred that morbid romanticism which draws Western progressives to the Palestinians, ever since Laleh Khalili, a professor at SOAS, tweeted the photograph and the words ‘Holy shit what an image’ on Tuesday. Khalili’s tweet has been retweeted 48,000 times and liked 124,000 times. 

Newsweek gushed of ‘the now-iconic photo’ that ‘some [are] suggesting the image is reminiscent of the Biblical story of David and Goliath’. The New Zealand Herald wrote it up under the headline ‘Palestinian goes viral while leading the people’ and told its readers the image had ‘drawn comparisons with the iconic French Revolution painting, Liberty Leading the People, by Eugene Delacroix’. It topped The Guardian’s best photos of the day gallery and The Atlantic’s photos of the week list. Social media is awash with the picture and there is scarcely an anti-Israel agitator who has not tweeted, Facebooked or Instagrammed it. A student dorm room poster has been born.”

So it’s not only the BBC. But the BBC should have higher standards. Some hopes.