Sunday 4 August 2019

The case against the BBC

A head of steam is building up and critics of the BBC are on the warpath. The Conservative Woman’s David Keighley, an ex-BBC man, has raised enough money to fund a legal challenge. The idea is to sue the BBC for breach of the crucial impartiality obligations within its charter. Lawyers have been hired to build the case. 
  

Robin Aitken, another ex BBC man, has been pursuing a similar agenda for decades. 
Aitken believes the left-wing consensus is so ingrained in the confirmation-bias-prone media bubble that the inhabitants of such an insular environment just don’t see it.
 O wad some Power the giftie gie us /To see oursels as ithers see us!


This video was made in January 2019.  In conversation with Peter Whittle, Robin Aitken articulates the collective mindset within the Beeb. He alludes to a deliberate strategy of social engineering which entails sanitising and normalising ‘Muslimness’, (a condition with a bespoke word of its own).
 “Our view of the world is this. Muslims are always victims, they are victimised and Islamophobia is rife in the country and that’s the story we want to tell. Do we want to tell a story about Muslims behaving badly? Attacking Jews, or attacking women? No, we don’t want to really. We don’t want to tell those stories. That’s why, for instance, it took so long, and it took some brave journalism by The Times newspaper to bring that whole thing about the Pakistani rape-gangs into the open.”
If the aim is to aid social cohesion, it’s a big fail. You can’t hide things from the public forever, and once people realise they’re being manipulated they’ll resist. Only the BBC itself supports its own ham-fisted attempts at social engineering.

If you listened to today’s Sunday Programme you will have heard that the findings of a ‘com res poll’  show that nearly half of the UK believe that Islam is incompatible with British values
(if the specific time-link doesn’t work for you, scroll to 10:20)

The MCB’s Miqdaad Versi thinks that (presumably because Jews argue that they should be allowed to define antisemitism) Muslims should equally be allowed to define Islamophobia. The existing definition, which has been accepted by several organisations but not the Conservative Party, includes the invented terminology ‘expressions of Muslimness’ which, in practice amounts to the introduction of blasphemy law by stealth. So no wonder the Conservative Party is reluctant to accept it. 

Sadly, portentous attempts to equate everything ‘Muslim’ with everything ‘Jewish’ have succeeded in toxifying specific Jewish religious practices that had been rubbing along quite peacefully in British society for years, and with one fell swoop has driven an expedient Israel-bound mini-exodus of British Jews.(£)
 “With the rapid rise in size and political importance of the Muslim community in the UK, there is also a feeling that Israel is being singled out for opprobrium and that the balance has swung decisively against the Zionist cause. For those whose biggest fear is Corbyn, many are waiting to see if Labour wins a general election before deciding whether or not to make aliyah.”

“I think the air has already changed, regardless of Corbyn. Some 730 years since King Edward I expelled the small mercantile Jewish community from England, the Jews are leaving again. This time not through the decree of an absolute tyrant, but as the consequence of a subtler, stealthier tyranny. There seems to be nobody left, over here or in continental Europe, who will fight the Jews’ corner, so electorally insignificant have their numbers become. That it is primarily the left that is driving them out is something they surely could not have foreseen or imagined. But here it is.”

David Keighley’s current criticisms of the BBC principally concern the BBC’s demonstrable anti-Brexit bias, the long-term effect of which, he believes, will prove disastrous for the country. 

However, I think the long-term consequences of the BBC’s pernicious, interminable hostility to Israel and Jews will have equally serious and perhaps even longer-lasting ramifications.

A decades-long history of ‘half-a-story' reporting, a Middle East editor with a built-in grudge, and contrary to the allegations of Miqdaad Versi and others, the BBC’s institutionally pro-Muslim outlook including the ever-presence of anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian talking heads on panels and political broadcasts has produced an ill-informed consensus. Public opinion appears to be perfectly content to exchange 250,000  loyal British Jewish citizens for over 4million incompatible or not necessarily loyal British / Pakistani / Middle Eastern/ African Muslims.

The antisemitism in the Labour Party is just the beginning. The leadership’s inability to deal with it is a great shame, but the BBC’s biased reporting makes rectifying the situation impossible.

BBC Watch constantly researches, writes and posts several articles per day in an effort to keep abreast of endless unreported examples of Muslims behaving badly. Shamefully, the BBC still refuses to report almost all of it; at least, not until Israel retaliates. Day after day aggression against Israel is ignored. “The BBC is only interested when Israel fights back” is a saying that is becoming more tired and worn every time it’s uttered. Repetition might make that saying ineffectual, but that doesn’t make it wrong. 

Nor has the antisemitism from the right gone away. For once Yasmin Alibhai Brown had a point when she mentioned that on Sky recently.

That too is tacitly reinforced by the BBC’s failure to fill in crucial gaps in what ought to be general historical knowledge. Right-wing antisemites often cite the infamous bombing of the King David Hotel to reinforce their theory that Israel was founded on terrorism, a stance that conveniently ignores the fact that at the time the King David Hotel was more of an army HQ than a tourist destination and more importantly, it disregards the fact that Britain’s post-war government’s hostile, antisemitic, pro-Arab political policies denied sanctuary to many desperate Holocaust survivors, an important factor in understanding why certain (arguably renegade) Jews fought against the British at that time. You have to seek that information out, and who nowadays can be bothered.

So I think the BBC’s bias against Israel and Zionism will inevitably lead to a major Jewish exodus and a predominantly Muslim Britain.  A great loss to this country. 

If it’s indeed true that this important aspect of the BBC’s bias has taken a back seat in this particular crowd-funded and well-intentioned litigation project, then I’m sorry and disappointed.

23 comments:

  1. Good post Sue.

    I think Jews are facing something of an approaching crisis. Will their children feel welcome in our universities and schools in the future? Will they feel safe in their neighbourhoods?

    Thank God the Conservatives have not yet accepted the Islamophobia definition being pushed by Warsi and other baleful actors on the pubic stage. (Well done Dave Cameron! Another brilliant decision there - promoting her into the heart of our politics!!).

    The BBC present Islam's compatibility with British values as a matter of subjective opinion. But of course it is an objective matter.

    You can go through the compatibility check list between our values reflected in our laws and those of Sharia:

    - Legal equality for women? No.
    - Legal equality for all citizens, regardless of
    religion? No.
    - Legal equality for gays and lesbians? No.
    - Freedom of opinion and expression? No.
    - Democratic decision making? No.
    - High legal protection for children? No.
    - Protection of animals from cruelty. No.
    - Academic freedom. No.

    I realise of course that a lot of our values are being eroded, but at least in theory, they remain valid.

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    1. M.B.,
      Thank you for your kind words.

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    2. Looks Emily has just noticed the problem...

      https://twitter.com/maitlis?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

      Still supports no borders mass migration to the UK, like every other BBC reporter though, I guess.

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    3. Whoops - I did the classic pubic-public thing in my first post! lol

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    4. No, MB, not such a good post at all and sorry, Sue, but I find one of the statements you make here quite outrageous: "...the BBC's failure to fill in crucial gaps in what ought to be general historical knowledge. Right-wing anti-semites often cite the infamous bombing of the King David hotel to reinforce their theory that Israel was founded on terrorism, a stance that conveniently ignores the fact that at the time the King David hotel was more of an army HQ than a tourist destination..." Are you really saying, Sue, that attacks on the British Army - the same army that liberated Bergen-Belsen only the the year before - did not count as terrorism because the soldiers
      were not tourists? Try telling that to the families of the dead and maimed, not just in Palestine, but more recently in N.Ireland, too.

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    5. Well I would say the BBC betrays a double standard here. In all other British colonies they condone, play down or ignore any amount of violence - including such horrors as the massacre of civilians brought down in an aeroplane crash in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), horrific attacks in Kenya by the Mau-Mau, the Indian Mutiny, the IRA's savage violence and so on...but they are much more ambivalent regarding the King David Hotel I think it's fair to say. That said, I would agree the attack was a terrorist attack designed to demoralise.

      I think the Zionists were pretty clear-eyed about the UK. We didn't go into WW2 to save the Jews of Europe, we didn't do much during the war to disrupt the Holocaust and after the war we did our best to prevent Jews getting to Palestine. They saw us as the enemy stopping them creating a Jewish state in the area.

      Personally I think they were naive and daft to set up a tiny state surrounded by a few hundred million sworn enemies. But history is full of naive and daft things done by people.

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    6. Sisyphus,
      First fill in your own ‘crucial gaps’ then if you like, come back and make bizarre non sequiturs about what “counts as terrorism” and “the British Army that liberated Bergen Belsen”.

      Are you “really saying” that the British fought WWll on behalf of the Jews?

      “The British were no friends of the Jews” as I was bluntly informed by an Israeli historian when I was even more naive and ill-informed than you are.

      The British sided with the Arabs. Upper-class Foreign Office types were (and still are) largely Arabists. And of course there’s the oil.

      Facts.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Exodus
      SS Exodus
      “After World War II, some 250,000 European Jews were living in Displaced Persons camps within Germany and Austria, often under harsh conditions. Zionist organizations then began organizing an underground network known as the Brichah ("flight," in Hebrew), which moved thousands of Jews from the camps to ports on the Mediterranean Sea, so they could then be sent to Palestine by ship. This was part of what was known as Aliyah Bet or the "second immigration," which were a series of attempts by European Jews to immigrate illegally to Palestine before and after World War II.[…][
      The British, who were then responsible for administering Palestine, vehemently opposed this kind of large-scale immigration. Displaced person camps run by American, French and Italian officials often turned a blind eye to the situation, with only British officials restricting movement in and out of their camps. In 1945, the British reaffirmed the pre-war policy restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine which had been put in place following the influx of a quarter of a million Jews fleeing the rise of Nazism in the 1930s and had been a major cause of the Arab revolt of 1936–1939.

      The British then prepared a massive naval and military force to turn back the refugees. Over half of 142 voyages were stopped by British patrols, and most intercepted immigrants were sent to internment camps in Cyprus, the Atlit detention camp in Palestine, and to Mauritius. About 50,000 people ended up in camps, more than 1,600 drowned at sea, and only a few thousand actually entered Palestine.[…]

      Go on, read all about it.

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    7. Sue,
      I have been travelling all day, and shall be all day tomorrow. I'll reply to you when I get back.

      Delete
    8. I need to correct that.
      “The British were no friends of the Jews” should be "...no friends of Israel"
      Slightly different.

      Please don't worry., and sorry for being rude and abrupt but I thought you were wrong. If you like we can just agree to disagree and leave it there.

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  2. Sorry Sue, but I fail to see why the British should care about either muslims or jews. Unless they adapt to the native culture, neither should be particularly celebrated.

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    Replies
    1. In what sense have British Jews not adapted to to British culture? Their contribution not just just to British culture, whatever that is, but to Western civilisation in general is out of all proportion to their numbers. In fact I find it hard to imagine Western civilisation without Jews.

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    2. (Not) sorry Anonymous, but in the full spirit of the native culture I suggest you go away and celebrate your own ignorance.

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    3. ah ok, so you are clearly a zionist and a Jew - to be fair, it was coming across from most posts on the blog but this has been the most explicit. I've got little against zionism, I just don't see why it should be much of a talking point in the UK. To answer Terry, British Jews are not adapted to the culture to the extent they prioritise zionism, as a British Muslim would not be adapted to the culture to the extent they prioritise wahhabism.

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    4. Firstly I value the fact that Sue draws attention to the blatant anti-Israel bias of the BBC and I hope she continues to do so.

      You last paragraph which was addressed to me makes no sense whatsoever. Whether British Jews prioritise Zionism, which in itself is a questionable statement, is neither here nor there. It has no bearing on whether British Jews “have adapted to the culture”. They are part of the culture.

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    5. As far as I’m concerned, most of the ‘Zionist’ and / or Jewish talking points we raise here are in response to some utter nonsense spouted by the left-wing media.

      Why not ask all those concerned Labour MPs why they prioritise ‘Palestine’ over and above domestic issues? That’s a bit of a mystery don’t you think?

      No doubt Terry will agree that “British Jews’ are a disparate bunch. As if you didn’t know that.

      It’s ‘racist’ to lump all Jews together and as you well know many of them are not Zionists - although with too many people like you around they might be wise to revise that sometime soon.

      Jews should never be equated with Muslims in the way you’re doing. You are halfway to convincing me that I’m wasting my time. Celebrate that.

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    6. The pair of you are not actually addressing anything I have written but are instead projecting all manner of insecurities about what you think I have said.

      Did I lump all Jews together, Sue? Or did I refer to the extent to which they prioritise Zionism. Things like referring to Jewish terrorists who bombed British soldiers as 'arguably renegade' is not what I'd define as being particularly adapted. Do you see the problem with this point of view, which for the sake of your willful lack of understanding, I categorically state is not shared by all Jews (as if you didn't know that).

      Nor is there any need for any 'whataboutery' regarding Labour MPs and Palestine - my OP should make it pretty clear I am not in favour of that. I could equally say that you are halfway to convincing me your defensiveness shows you have something to hide. Let's just stick to what is being said.

      Terry, pretty much the same thing appies to you - only the two of you are lumping all Jews together. There is nothing at all to stop a Jew or a Muslim being part of the culture, except perhaps another culture with antithetical or competing interests, but you already know that.

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    7. Anonymous,
      “Did I lump all Jews together, Sue? Or did I refer to the extent to which they prioritise Zionism.”
      In case you can’t see the oxymoron within that remark, let’s just ask what you mean by “they”/
      If that’s not downright ‘lumping together’ I don’t know what is.

      Oh, you meant ‘some of them’ did you?

      Since the Labour Party’s obsession with ‘Palestine’ drives much of the BBC’s offensive anti-Jewish reporting, mentioning Labour is not whataboutery at all.

      For the benefit of anyone else who happens to be reading these comments, this is a blog about the BBC’s bias, and I concentrate on aspects of it that I find the most destructive.

      FYI I’m British born and bred, of pure Jewish heritage and secular. *Am Yisrael Chai* I support Israel and I’d love to know what you think I might have to hide.

      My best advice to you is: once you pass the point of absurdity … bale out.

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  3. Sue,
    I’m glad you put “British Jews” in inverted commas. I felt rather uncomfortable typing that phrase. Of course they are a disparate group of people - as are we all.

    Please don’t feel you are wasting your time. Voices speaking out against anti-Israel bias in the MSM are much needed.

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  4. Everybody else seems to have an opinion on this subject, so I might as well give mine. The attack on the King David hotel may well have been a pivotal point in the struggle to found the State of Israel, but in was a very small part in a much larger picture. Personally I think it was wrong. But in the same way as I believe the allies almost certainly carried out actions that were not morally justifiable in WW2. That does not mean I don’t believe that the creation of Israel was both necessary and right, nor, heaven forbid that WW2 was not a moral war. The argument that the King David attack was terrible, but the consequence of an extreme time in history, is not something I agree with, but I accept that it is a valid position. But more importantly, it has nothing to do with false equivalencies between Zionism and Wahhabism or silly arguments about whether people have adapted to “our culture”.

    Anti-Israel and the general left wing bias of the BBC is something I feel very strongly about. If that is interpreted as defensive, I couldn’t care less. I might add that I would be equally concerned if I believed the BBC was biased towards the right. My own definitions of left and right, of course.

    The other two issues that seem to generate the most interest on this blog are Brexit and climate change. The former I have very conflicted feelings about and the latter I am clearly in disagreement with everybody here. But this is Craig and Sue’s blog and they can make absolutely anything they want a “talking point”.

    That’s my last word.

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    Replies
    1. Terry,

      Thank you for your appreciative comments earlier in this thread. Our original comments must have crossed - I was interrupted in the middle of mine so it took a while to appear.

      I sometimes feel that the consensus here could come across as intimidating. This is the last thing Craig and I set out to achieve and we both hope nothing like that should ever deter anyone -ANYONE! from commenting.
      Some of us thrive on argument and debate, but the opposition has to make sense before it starts to get worthwhile and I think our time with Anonymous has probably reached a cul de sac.

      Best wishes.

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    2. I agree that this has reached a cul de sac. You are too emotionally invested in this topic to either satisfactorily defend your bias or refute mine.

      I will still enjoy reading your blogs as they are normally of a far higher standard, keep up the good work.

      Delete
  5. "Public opinion appears to be perfectly content to exchange 250,000 loyal British Jewish citizens for over 4million incompatible or not necessarily loyal British / Pakistani / Middle Eastern/ African Muslims."

    Really?

    I think for the vast majority of people in Britain they aren't even aware of Jews, good or bad. The only place in Britain that I ever heard anyone speak against them was in North London where there must be enough to be noticeable/distinct.

    Muslims on the other hand are a real, modern, politician created problem. Fifty years ago most people here wouldn't know anything about Islam or give it a moments thought. Now we have cities where Muslims are the dominant population, schools that are 100% Muslim, places where people could be born, live and die and never interact with a single non-Muslim, from neighbour through to government official.
    Were we asked if we wanted to be in this state? No!
    Dare we object? Not unless we would like a stay in prison.
    Why has it happened? Saudi money? George Soros? Who knows. But the silenced majority certainly isn't happy. (will there be room in Israel for us too?)

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  6. "Public opinion appears to be perfectly content to exchange 250,000 loyal British Jewish citizens for over 4million incompatible or not necessarily loyal British / Pakistani / Middle Eastern/ African Muslims."

    'Exchange' is a poor choice of word here Sue. 'Countenance' would be better. On the wider point, all evidence points to a much greater contribution to the cultural life of this country by Jews and their organisations, especially in patronage of the arts, than from their Muslim equivalents. If there are 16 times as many Muslims than Jews in the UK, then the Muslim contribution should be much greater - clearly it isn't. Islamic iconoclastic traditions run counter to figurative art.

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