I was wrong

 If you’ve been paying attention you’ll know I hardly ever watch the BBC these days. I keep mentioning that to account for my prolonged silences interspersed with off-topic observations.. 

However I have to comment on the reappearance of Abdel Bari Atwan, whose services I thought had been quietly  dispensed with by the BBC.  I was wrong. He was on Dateline again on 19th August, following the attack on Salman Rushdie.

Melanie Phillips has written about this topic as has the Jewish Chronicle both citing the most outrageous of his remarks. 

The BBC, of course, has no intention of reprimanding or silencing Atwan as they think he represents legitimate views, and letting him air them is an expression of the BBC’s even-handedness. 

The problem is, however, that along with the rest of the left the BBC genuinely thinks it is indeed upholding balance, fairness and objectivity. It believes that it represents the political centre ground. That’s why it views its critics axiomatically as extremists who can safely be disregarded.

To be fair to Bari, as we like to call him on ITBB, he did imply that carrying out the actual fatwa  in it’s original form (death to Rushdie the blasphemer) was a tad beyond its sell-by date, but he defended the principle that such blasphemy as Rushdie’s was “very, very cruel when he talked about the Prophet Mohammed and his wives” which was also “very, very dangerous”. He added: “About 90 per cent of the people of the Muslim world believe that freedom of expression [is] practised only to insult Muslims”.

I’m not sure if Dateline itself isn’t about to be axed. I read it somewhere. Maybe they’ve realised that it’s a tiny bit politically biased.

Melanie Phillips doesn’t stop there. In her criticisms of the BBC, as well as Atwan’s other offensive remarks, she mentions the infamous Balen report about the BBC’s bias against Israel.  It has never seen the light of day, and its ongoing secrecy has been defended to the tune of  around £300,000 (of licence fee-payers dosh) in legal fees.   She refers to her own appearances as the token right-winger who is

“almost never given the opportunity to address the lies told about Israel.”

Where's Timmy?

Q; Is Tim Davie still there? I understood that the remit - the principal raison d’être for installing a fresh DG  was to address, (and rectify) the BBC’s bias. Or the public’s perception of the BBC’s bias.

Oh, I think I’ve answered my own question.

A; The public doesn’t have much of a perception of the BBC’s bias because where certain topics are concerned (e.g., Middle East politics) the ‘perception’ in question is largely gleaned via (Through the lens of) the BBC. A self-fulfilling, circular chicken-and-egg scenario.

(Sorry for all the parentheses.) (It’s because of  the heat)

Now, let’s begin with our old friend (Well, the BBC’s old friend) Abdel Bari Atwan. (On Dateline they like to call him ‘Barry’ - a sign of affection.  (For some reason) 

He was temporarily cancelled (allegedly) for saying some pretty nasty things while accidentally using English rather than Arabic, the language in which he expresses his real feelings about the Jews. 

As Craig mentioned, I’ve speculated about this temporary absence already. 

“Oh yes, and has anyone noted the recent absence of the BBC’s most ubiquitous guest on Dateline London recently?   One of his rants has apparently been removed from YouTube but does anyone know if his recent (semi) withdrawal from our BBC screens is a coincidence or part of Tim Davie’s nascent decontamination project? Yes, I’m talking about “Barry Atwan or ‘arry Batwan.

 

 Haven’t seen Mr Atwan lately. Did he creep away quietly, or was there a showdown? (Asking for a few million friends.)"

This is getting just like that post all over again. I seem to have just regurgitated (from the same post) the following:

This is almost unbelievable when you consider that Tim Davie was supposed to be addressing the bias. I understood that the BBC’s entire raison d’être for co-opting Tim Davie to the maelstrom  — bringing him aboard - was to iron out the bias once and for all!  But when? This year, next year, sometime never?  

Never mind. We are as repetitive as needs be. And it seems my speculation was nowt but wishful thinking. Barry hasn’t been cancelled.

Neither has our old friend (Well, the BBC’s old friend) Jeremy Bowen. One might also call him ‘friend of this blog’ in the sense that typing Jezza’s name into our search box brings up pages and pages of content. 

Nothing changes. Nothing is ever properly “addressed”. 

Jeremy Bowen is widely known for his pro-Palestinian take on everything connected with the topic. His well-documented grudge against Israel after the killing of his Palestinian driver, which came about largely because of Bowen’s recklessness. (Are there echoes of a similar recklessness in Shireen Abu Ackleh’s “wrong place at the wrong time” shooting?)

It was probably wishful thinking on my part that gave Bowen’s transfer to Ukraine a benefit-of-the doubt-like passing fancy, namely that he’s been whisked away from one (metaphorical) potential danger zone (sullying the BBC’s reputation with his dreadful bias against Israel) to another (physical) one. A fresh start with a comparatively clean slate. 

But no. He’s back, yet again in the same old danger zone, stirring up antisemitism for all he’s worth.  Tim Davie, what are you thinking?

David Collier and Hadar Sela have gone into detail about this particular report of Bowen’s. 

Ostensibly covering Joe Biden’s visit to the region, Bowen’s communiqué shamelessly manipulates language while sidestepping the actual news (The Jerusalem U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Joint Declaration) to reiterate what -  in his own words- “has all been said before”.

Here we are. Blatantly biased images, highly selective and misleading film clips, and the same old distortions - they’re all back - with a vengeance!

Tim Davie, are you there? Wake up! 

Of course, writing this is a complete waste of time. Take the killing of Shireen Abu Ackleh, who is fast turning into the new Mohammad al-Dura. Even the Guardian’s forced retraction, following the same breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice (importance of distinguishing between fact and opinion), couldn’t deter Bowen from boldly repeating the same violation. 

He’s becoming increasingly audacious because he knows he can get away with it. The public (new generation) 'doesn’t know any better, and it’s not hard to see the BBC’s cavalier 'free pass' to disinformation as a contributing factor to the news that antisemitism is on the rise.

I wanted to make a nod to Harry’s Place. I don’t think many (any) of the regulars over there are aware of this blog, but we’re aware of theirs. (Nods) 

Glad to be back?

It goes to show that you can't keep a not-so-good man down...

Back in April, Sue wondered whatever happened to Dateline London favourite Abdel Bari Atwan, the Palestinian journalist with a very, very deep hatred of Israel?

We dared to hope but, alas, he was back on Dateline London today, being invited to talk about Israel.

He's back in the BBC fold then.

He was on his best  behaviour though. No praising terrorism, or wild ranting, and laughs and sweetness and light with Shaun and 'Abdel Bari'.

His comeback tour won't last long though as the show's being cancelled by the BBC.

Riots will erupt

We haven’t done any ‘housekeeping’ posts for a good while. Or any posts whatsoever for that matter. We’re in blogging doldrums.  That cries out for a calypso; missing Lance Percival now.

Now that the BBC’s leftwing bias is generally accepted, why don’t you and I - the listening public - just stop moaning and carry on regardless, autocorrecting as we go? We’ve got our own antennae, haven’t we? We can edit as we see fit, in realtime.

That is what we do when we hear Mishal Husain introduce an item about riots at Al Aksa, you know, the third holiest site for the Muslims. We know she’ll parrot the Palestinian version of events. It’s expected and we make allowances. Do listen. It’s a bit of a shocker, bias-wise.

     Today Prog; scroll to 2:23:01

As Adam Levick points out, the Guardian sets the tone with its 'erupting clashes':

“…..clashes that erupted when Israeli riot police entered Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound ….”

Clashes erupt! Riots occur!  Vehicles run people down! 

Life’s far too short to peel this kind of onion. It’s a multi-layered vegetable. 

(Mishal, I do wonder who you think “started the riots”? The Jews in 1948, maybe? Or should we go back a few millennia to the origin of the oldest hatred)

Mishal Husain may not be interested, but BBC guidelines state: 

The BBC is committed to achieving due impartiality in all its output. This commitment is fundamental to our reputation, our values, and the trust of audiences. The term ‘due’ means that the impartiality must be adequate and appropriate to the output, taking account of the subject and nature of the content, the likely audience expectation, and any signposting that may influence that expectation.

Mishal, this morning's report on the Today Programme cried out for a balanced picture of the incident, but you talked over and obstructed the Israeli spokeswoman you were supposed to be interviewing and you did so with such cloth-eared belligerence that you virtually drowned her out. You mustn’t do that, Mishal. It’s very biased.  Here's the gist of the part you drowned out. To quote JPost:

The Muslims who stockpiled stones, rocks, logs, and firecrackers in al-Aqsa did not do so for religious purposes. They prepared for a riot – to attack police and Jewish worshipers – not for prayers. Police did not storm al-Aqsa Mosque to “conquer” it. They broke in to arrest the rock throwers who had barricaded themselves inside after Friday prayers. Some of the masked Palestinians waved Hamas flags and praised arch-terrorist Muhammed Deif as they tried to bombard the Jewish worshipers who had come to pray at the Western Wall at the start of the Passover holiday.

Did anyone say "They would say that, wouldn’t they?"  I bloody well hope so, too. Someone’s got to say it, and it certainly won’t be the BBC.  

Maybe Mishal Husain let her utter contempt for the Israeli spokesperson shine through because she knows that listener numbers are shrinking and assumes that those remaining wouldn’t care. 

Continually speaking over her guest in one of her rudest, most schoolmarmish, and sneeriest tones, she outdid even her usual self this morning. The self-righteous, prissy, and sneery timbre to her voice on such occasions is as irritating as the saccharine tones that accompany her heartwarming stories. Perhaps she ‘smiles’ while speaking. I hear that's a technique to make the audience like you.  I'm thinking of trying that.  

I implore everybody to listen (link here again and at the top of the page, scroll to 2:23:00) to Husain indulging that malevolent fanatic Husam Zomlot, no stranger to this site, allowing him acres of air time in which to express his opinions.  But wow! Was he allowed to rant and ramble on, barely interrupted - even though he strayed off-topic, wildly, fancifully, and at great length - and fawned over to the point of servility. Did nobody else notice?

This is almost unbelievable when you consider that Tim Davie was supposed to be addressing the bias. I understood that the BBC’s entire raison d’être for co-opting Tim Davie to the maelstrom  — bringing him aboard - was to iron out the bias once and for all!  But when? This year, next year, sometime never?

Not only with regard to the Martin Bashir and Jimmy Savile scandals, but something more fundamental, namely the BBC’s unspoken mission to normalise and acclimatise the British to creeping Islamification.  Does the public want this? Do people want to pay for it?  

I can’t quite follow my own advice here. I can’t just autocorrect everything as I go along and leave it at that. Someone has to say something. I’m afraid this particular issue is bigger than both of us. 

Oh yes, and has anyone noted the recent absence of the BBC’s most ubiquitous guest on Dateline London recently?   One of his rants has apparently been removed from YouTube but does anyone know if his recent (semi) withdrawal from our BBC screens is a coincidence or part of Tim Davie’s nascent decontamination project? Yes, I’m talking about “Barry Atwan or ‘arry Batwan.

Haven’t seen Mr Atwan lately. Did he creep away quietly, or was there a showdown? (Asking for a few million friends.)

Is Bari at the BBC no more?

 

Israel today is in a state of confusion, in a state of panic. They know very well that what happened in Kabul Airport will repeat itself at Ben Gurion Airport. But Ben Gurion Airport will be closed, there will be no planes in it…. Israelis should listen to the advice of [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah and start learning how to swim, because their only option will be Cyprus, their only option will be the Mediterranean Sea.

Abdel Bari Atwan, Lebanese television station Mayadeen TV, 18/8

Sue and I have spent many years writing, on and off, about Abdel Bari Atwan.

'Who's that?', recent newcomers might ask.

Well, he's a Palestinian leftist journalist based in the UK who sports a fulsome Saddam moustache and loathes Israel and is/was a favoured BBC go-to voice.

My main encounter with him was via watching the BBC's foreign flagship Dateline London and counting the number of appearances of each and every panellist on every episode over several years, and regularly posting an ongoing tally and analysis.

Every single year, without fail, Abdel Bari Atwan - came top of the tree as the most-invited panellist on the Dateline London panellist charts. 

He was the programme's most regular guest, frequently ranting away like an ill-informed maniac on most subjects yet being treated, on matters Middle Eastern, as if he were the expert's expert. 

It was weird.

The main Dateline presenter throughout most of that time, Gavin Esler, called him 'Bari' and even hosted Bari's book launch. He wanted his friend on the programme, he said, because he was ''subversive''.

And Bari was always a highly controversial figure, having made statements openly rejoicing in terrorist attacks against Israel and fantasising about dancing ''with delight'' in Trafalgar Square if the Iranians attacked Israel - something Gavin Esler and the BBC knew, yet evidently let pass.

Has he been finally dropped? I've searched via various methods and not found him on Dateline London recently.

He's evidently not been quiet though. As ever, he's been ranting away, away from UK television, recently expressing his hope that what happened at Kabul Airport will repeat itself at Ben Gurion Airport, and that Israelis should learn to swim like “rats fleeing a sinking ship".

https://twitter.com/MEMRIReports/status/1429762087950163973

To sum up: The man who the BBC made their MOST-frequent guest on their flagship foreign affairs panel programme over the course of several years - and treated with love and kid gloves - was an Israel-hating zealot, and the BBC knew this and kept him on, continually inviting him on more than anyone else.

So have they finally dropped him though? 

Sea Change

 Obviously, someone had to flag this up so it might as well be me. At last, the Conservatives are showing some fight in the culture war

A beautiful noise rang out last week in the wake of the news that the government is considering Charles Moore to become the new chairman of the BBC and Paul Dacre to be the head of the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom. The noise was the sound of the British left wailing that toys they thought were theirs alone might now (under a Conservative government) finally go to identifiable conservatives.

The former editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger shrieked that ‘this is what an oligarchy looks like’. This and similar tweets were presumably sent from the lodgings of the Oxford college that Rusbridger was made principal of five years ago. Others who screamed themselves sick included BBC employees who briefed that Moore’s appointment ‘would shatter morale. People will leave.’ For there can be no greater way to refute accusations of institutional leftism in the BBC than for the corporation’s employees to threaten to resign en masse in response to a conservative appointment. Elsewhere, Have I Got News For You tweeted that this would be the end for the   BBC. Which is as funny a joke as that show has mustered in the present century.

*****

In case you missed it, Abdel Bari Atwan, the BBC’s favourite political pundit and popular guest on Dateline London offers the Arab world some wise advice on the best strategy for ’victory’: “Terrorism”.

Senior Palestinian-British Journalist: The Taliban Showed That Terror Attacks Are The Way To Defeat The West; The Israel-Bahrain-UAE Agreements May Turn The Palestinians Back To This Path

****

On the bright side, I have noticed a sea change within the centre-right media/blogosphere or whatever you like to call it.

Not so long ago any Israel-related opinion piece would attract a heavy proportion of negative comments - anti-Israel bordering on antisemitic. But in recent times - probably only a few months, there has been a swing. Now I sense a supportive majority. At last, people have started to get it.

Political choices

Antisemitism is just a political choice. Remember that! (One has to wonder, though, if the same can be said of Islamophobia and all other forms of racism)

When Ms Unsworth did her best to justify the BBC’s commissioning of a known antisemite to appear on the “Tory Takedown” episode of Panorama, various BBC scrutineers took up the case. Guido Fawkes  had:

Back in 2012 when Ashton was campaigning against health reforms, CCHQ got sick of the BBC, issuing the statement “The BBC has a responsibility to report news objectively. They should always inform their viewers if the person they are interviewing has political motives”. Eight years on and the BBC are still refusing to adhere to their own guidelines…

And the Campaign Against Antisemitism had

CAA INVESTIGATION REVEALS EVEN MORE RACIST TWEETS BY PROF. JOHN ASHTON AS WELL AS HIS TROLLING OF THE BBC TO INCLUDE GAZA IN A HOLOCAUST COMMEMORATION, WHILE HUNDREDS SIGN OUR PETITION TO TAKE HIM OFF AIR
After antisemitic comments made by Prof. Ashton were revealed in the Jewish Chronicle last week, Campaign Against Antisemitism launched a petition to urge the BBC, ITV and Sky News to stop inviting him to appear as a regular commentator on their news programmes. 

As well as his comments revealed last week (in tweets he has since deleted), which included phrases such as “time for Jews to reflect” and “Zionists behave like Nazis”, we have now uncovered further comments which show the extent and venomousness of his obsession. 

In light of these revelations, and the BBC’s and Sky News’ dismissal of Prof. Ashton’s antisemitism as mere “political views”, we call upon others to join the hundreds who have already signed the petition to get him off our television screens. 

Although this seemed to me to be an obvious breach of the BBC’s obligation to identify their guest speakers’ political affiliations and advocacies, it set me athinkin’.

In what turned out to be a never-ending exercise of whataboutery, I was able to list dozens of known antisemites, Jew-haters and Israel-bashers who appear fairly regularly on our screens without even having to wrack my brain cell.

For one example, take emotional-meltdown-prone, exBBC staffer Chris Gunness. Formerly Gaza-based head of UNRWA, the discredited Palestinian aid agency, Hamas affiliate and recipient of $squillions of international aid, having had his Twitter account suspended for tweeting an obnoxious poem, Gunness has reinvented himself as a music critic. The biggest mystery of all is how he got away with both being gay and collaborating with Hamas. 

Perhaps, for Hamas, the perceived benefit of his anti-Israel advocacy outweighed their inherent homophobia. At any rate, he escaped being dragged behind a motorbike or thrown off a building or whatever they like to do to gay men in Gaza.

Then, of course, there’s QT panellist Richard Horton of the Lancet. He’s well known for his ‘political choice’.

We mustn’t forget Dateline London’s most frequent guest, Abdul Bari Atwan  Usually introduced simply as the editor of Al Quds magazine, our ‘Bari’ is famous for his Jew-hate and for saying he’d ‘dance with delight’ in Trafalgar Square if Iran attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon.

That’s quite strong for a political choice, wouldn’t you say, and worth a mention in the introduction to any platform the BBC might be offering him.

Ken Loach, Miriam Margolyes a multiplicity of pop stars and thesps, they’re all at it - they’ve been spoon-fed the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian fiction for so long that no kind of enlightenment whatsoever is likely to dawn on any of them 'anytime soon'. 

So without boring myself rigid with further lists and links, I’ll say what I originally set out to say. With the pro-Palestinian narrative firmly embedded as the default ‘political choice’ of the many (not the few), I keep asking myself how did we get to this? 

Most antisemites, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian advocates must know there’s ‘another side’ to the story. (surely?) Aware of it or not, they choose to dismiss it. Let’s call that a political ‘choice’.

What baffles me is why anyone in the post-Christian, liberal/libertarian largely secular democratic Western world would align ideologically with radical Islam? Why would they simply believe the infantile lies, the more absurd the better it seems, of the fanatics and religious bigots who simply loath Jews?

And the anti-Israel narrative is so embedded in Britain, sad to say, that anyone trying to explain the case for Israel is asking to be ridiculed and scorned. The most recent example I can give is Israel’s strategic decision to annex settlements in the West Bank. 

The legal argument for this is set out by Michael Calvo here,:

“According to international law, the Jews are the indigenous people of the lands referred to as Judea, Samaria, Palestine, Israel and the Holy Land, and therefore fulfill the criteria required by international law. The Jews are the ethnic group that was the original settler of Judea and Samaria 3,500 years ago, when the land was bestowed upon the Jews by the Almighty. Leaders of this world, who chose to make abstraction of history, misleadingly refer to Judea and Samaria as the "West Bank" of the Jordan River (which includes Israel) or the "Occupied Palestinian Territories”.

but who’s going to bother with trying to get to grips with that?

“With the Mandate for Palestine, accorded to Great Britain in August 1922, the League of Nations recognized "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country". The Jewish people's right to settle in the Land of Palestine, their historic homeland and to establish their state there, is thus a legal right anchored in international law. 

UNDRIP reaffirms the right of the Jewish people as the indigenous people, and "especially their rights to their lands, territories and resources."

That’s not going to be very popular, is it? So the Israel-bashers in the UNGA  get round it by making hundreds of non-binding declarations and treating them as though they’re legally valid.

“Recent UN General Assembly Resolutions stating that the settlement of Jews in Judea Samaria is contrary to international law are no more than recommendations and have never led to amendments of existing binding treaties. 

“UN Security Council Resolutions, stating that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are illegal, are not binding. Only resolutions taken under Chapter VII of the UN Charter are binding on all UN member states. For example, Security Council Resolution 2334 was adopted on December 23, 2016 by a 14–0 vote. Four permanent members of the Security Council -- China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom -- voted in favor; the US abstained. This resolution was not adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter. It is not binding. That resolution states that Israel's settlement activity constitutes a "flagrant violation" of international law. It has "no legal validity". 

We’re in there, look! The UK voted in favour of another ‘non-binding’ resolution crafted to undermine Israel’s legitimacy in favour of the Palestinians and their fairy-tale fantasy!

“This position is political, not legal. Despite UN resolutions to the contrary, the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not inconsistent with international law.

Will the case for Israel ever be heard with a sympathetic ear? Not very likely, is it?  And just as I was thinking all this, and realising how hopeless it would be (for anyone) to try, in the face of such a resistant audience, to persuade the British establishment to be reasonable, this popped into my inbox. Unherd

Anti-Semitism runs deep in BritainThere is a strong native tradition in this country and it cuts across party linesBY MATTHEW SWEET

He starts off with an anecdote. It’s the kind of anecdote that I could easily have recounted myself. This sort of thing has happened to me many times over. I think it’s why I blog. He’s describing the belly-blow one feels when someone who seems perfectly nice and ‘relatable’ turns out to be a raging, antisemitic, ignoramus. His contention is that embedded antisemitism isn’t confined to the left. It’s also a feature deeply ingrained in the right (left and centre.)

“The journal Political Quarterly has just published the first academic study of Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis. Its authors are the sociologists Ben Gidley and Brendan McGeever, and the historian David Feldman — all attached to the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck University of London.
[…]
Their conclusions will comfort few. Conservative voters, the data suggests, are more likely to assent to an anti-Semitic proposition than their Labour equivalents. These numbers are alarmingly large: added together, they work out as about 30% of the population.

I’m not totally convinced by all the reasoning, but 30%! That sounds pretty bad. 

“They suggest that most of the participants in the crisis — from Jeremy Corbyn to Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis — are guilty of the same intellectual error. They have chosen to characterise anti-Jewish racism as a poison, a virus, a disease — a foreign pollutant that has breached the defences of a 120-year-old British institution. “Figures on all sides,” the article concludes, “conceive antisemitism as an exogenous force which contaminates and spoils the political body it inhabits.”

I had to look up exogenous. It means “external force”. I can’t see that it is such a big blunder to mischaracterise a “reservoir: a deep reservoir of stereotypes and narratives, one which is replenished over time and from which people can draw with ease”  as an exogenous force, or to confuse one for the other. 

Whatever it is, exogenous force or deeply embedded reservoir, it’s real, and the examples of cultural (and casual) antisemitism he cites are all too familiar. 

It’s in the literature of John Buchan, Graham Greene and the antisemitic sources upon which many of our favourite black and white movies were based. It seems that these movies were ‘sanitised’ before release by Jews running the big studios of the time.

Interestingly, Matthew Sweet declares:

The deadlines for peer-reviewed academic journals are long. Gidley, McGeever and Feldman were committed to print before the new Labour leader issued his thoughts on the anti-Semitism crisis in his party. Keir Starmer’s language was much the same as that of his predecessor, though he did add a slightly confusing horticultural layer: “Antisemitism has been a stain on our party,” went his victory speech. “I will tear out this poison by its roots.”

and concludes:

“Prejudice does not show up on an X-Ray. It can’t be collected on a swab or in a blood sample. It lives in our actions and utterances and encounters, and in the culture they generate — on pages and screens, in workplaces and social media feeds. We are, however, a metaphor-loving society. The present moment demonstrates that. Covid-19 is a virus that we discuss in terms of war; racism is a form of human conflict that we discuss in terms of virology and toxicology. 

When words fail, sometimes our ideas are at fault. It is an opportunity to find better ones. Better deeds, too. And better friends.

This brings me back to the BBC. (At last)  Can antisemitism be seen in terms of war? Is it something nasty and pervasive to be rooted out? Is it a virus that someday a vaccine to prevent it or a treatment to cure it can be found?  Or is it deeply embedded in our reservoir of memes and tropes, and (unlike any other form of racism) for the BBC simply a matter of political choice? 

Dancing in the square

“By Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight if the Iranian missile hits Israel.”

So bragged Abdel Bari Atwan, the most frequently invited panellist on BBC Dateline London.

This video of a conversation about the media’s bias against Israel between “Elder” (from EoZ) and Adam Levick (from UK Media Watch) reminded me of Atwan’s infamous statement - which should surely be regarded by any genuinely anti-racist organisation as a damning, career-undermining boast - yet there he often is on our Saturday morning BBC TV screens chatting away animatedly with his trademark flailing arms and bulging eyes while Carrie Gracie or Shaun Lay look on benevolently.

I suppose we must make allowances for the fact that the Trafalgar Square pledge dates back to 2010 and his dancing days may be over.

Another topic that came up in the EoZ video was a fanciful headline in a recent edition of the Mail online. Prince Harry Faces Backlash ….

It seems that Prince Harry invited injured IDF soldiers to participate in the Invictus Games, and when ‘Bari’, as the BBC affectionately calls him, raised an objection on the basis of his deeply antisemitic sensibilities, the Mail online chose to upgrade this solitary, one-man ‘objection’ to the status of ‘backlash’.  

This is uncharacteristic of the Mail, but I’m not sure if it’s primarily motivated by Harry-bashing or Israel-bashing.

I found the technically challenged EoZ video in question worth watching because both speakers are equally ‘well aware of’ and ‘baffled by’ the inexplicable blindspot that persists in much of the western media; a tacit refusal to acknowledge the antisemitic pandemic that is rife in the Arab world, particularly within Palestinian culture. No matter how many studies reveal staggeringly high percentages of unadulterated, religiously rooted Jew-hate (not Zionist-hate) - shocking figures are consistently found in survey after survey - the largely atheist western media will obstinately insist that their much venerated Palestinians are ‘just like us’.

It was odd hearing two Americans pontificating over the current state of the British Labour Party, and deciding whether Keir Starmer was a good guy. Better than Corbs, that’s for sure.

A question that still troubles me is who on earth put that shelf up?

In which Craig remounts his hobby-horse

If you've been reading this blog since the start you'll doubtless recall that I used to incessantly count the number of appearances of each guest on the BBC News Channel's Dateline London to show that the programme's panels were massively stacked against people with right-leaning views. 

I did that for years - so much so that one contributor would email me to ask me for the latest stats to see if he was getting more or less invites than other guests. 

And then, finally, I gave up counting.

Apologies to my Dateline friend - though, fear not, our Alex is still doing splendidly, and making the Sky papers scintillate alongside the delightful Polly MacKenzie, and brightening up Twitter, and much, much else besides - but years of proving a programme to have a very heavy inbuilt political bias left me thinking that I'd flogged that particular equine to death. Especially as I had proved it.

(I'm squeamish about The Grand National, so I'm all for not flogging equines to death).

Plus, I'd like to think that when the programme began to balance its panels better that my shaming stats had helped make that so.

*******

Back in the day, Dateline's main presenter was Gavin Esler, a man whose biases I also tracked. 

As could have been predicted from his biased behaviour and comments as presenter - a bias somewhat disguised by his mild-mannered 'nice guy' TV persona - he went off and tried to get elected in the European elections last year, standing for the pro-EU Change UK in London. I'm sure he thought he'd win, but he lost. The tone of his public pronouncements, especially on Twitter, was a million kilometres away from his 'nice guy' TV persona. He turned into a sort of less pleasant version of Alastair Campbell. He even made his former Newsnight colleague Paul Mason sound gentle, kind and reasonable in comparison. He's now Chancellor of the University of Kent.

His replacement, Carrie Gracie, is much better - a consummate professional. (I do hope she's paid more than he was.) I like her.

*******

But, as noted on an earlier thread, it looks as if I might need to start counting again. (It would be no hardship.) 

Today's panel used to be typical. But, maybe since I've stopped chronicling it (a pathetic fallacy on my part?), it's slipped back again because today's panel was a violent throwback to Classic Era Dateline.

Every single member of today's panel - Michael Goldfarb, Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Abdel Bari Atwan and Eunice Goes - comes from the left side of the usual political spectrum. There wasn't a right-leaning guest in sight. A clean sweep.

How can the BBC justify that?

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P.S. Wonder if Bari is still the 'most regular' guest (not necessarily involving prunes)? 

For those not overly familiar with the programme, Palestinian 'journalist' Abdel Bari Atwan was the most regular guest every year, for years, despite being an extreme Saddamite loather of Israel with a record of highly incendiary remarks hoping for the end of Israel and lots of deaths in Israel - a very controversial man.

Gavin Esler was his friend and used to help promote his books. 

Despite Gavin going, the indefatigable Bari is still clearly in with the BBC. Him and that other flame-thrower Yasmin can shout away at each other to their hearts content forever for a licence-fee-funded fee no doubt - unless something is done about it. 

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Recommendations to BBC? 

First, one they'll like: Send in David Dimbleby to play all three monkeys, maybe?

Second, one they ought to like: Think! If you have a panel of four left-wingers people might think you're biased and want to punish you by taking away your public funding or abolishing you. So balance your panels!