Am I right?

The weather man was right. Sorry, I mean the weather man was correct.  I am sitting under a veil of cloud this morning while the rest of you are out frolicking in the sunshine.

Never mind, all the better to stay in and obsess about the usual stuff.

First, via a trail of links and clicks I alighted upon Adam Wishart’s Twitter.  Topmost Tweet was about Melanie Phillips’s article in the Jpost, more of which later, but first I must say Adam Wishart is starting to sound petulant. 

I know it must be tough getting bombarded with criticism, but that’s what you get when you make films about sensitive subjects, particularly if you decide to structure them in the way Adam did in his infamous film about the Jerusalem Light Rail for BBC1 Panorama.

Passive aggressive responses such as  “Did you speak to them?” “Have you been there?” “So I shouldn’t have reported it?” are emerging, and a lot less of the “I’m all ears” as per his initial responses to critical Tweets.  Of course if you hold debriefing sessions through the manacled medium of 140 characters you would get fed up.

The BBC said the Panorama had been watched by over a million and a half viewers.

“In its response (to Mr de Mesquita,) the BBC said it believed “the film was balanced and fair” and was “careful to represent the views of both Israelis and Palestinians living in Jerusalem”. 

It added: “The film was largely observational in style with Adam spending time with two main contributors, Rivka Shimon and Baha Nabata” — one Jewish, the other an Arab. 

It also noted that Mr Wishart was an experienced filmmaker and that the programme took care to explain his background as a British Jew and how his grandparents had campaigned for the establishment of Israel.”

So that’s okay then. It's not really though, eh?

A while ago someone complained about the photo Adam uses for Twitter, asking why he was looking so pleased with himself. He said it was taken at a wedding. At the time I thought that was a bit uncalled for. Now I must admit, the nastier it gets, the more incongruous gets Adam’s grinning avatar.

Now to the important stuff. Melanie’s piece in the JPost. 

Contrary to what you might have thought, it’s not all about Adam Wishart, though he does get a substantial mention.

It’s so pithy, punchy and concise that I’d like to reproduce it all, but you’re not supposed to do that so I’ll just take the bit that’s particularly relevant to this blog:

In Britain, there has been a total absence of any discussion of the Iran deal. Instead, there has been scandalized coverage of the terrible events in Israel last week, the murderous firebombing of the Arab Dawabsha family and the Jewish terror attack on the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade. 

There has been no coverage whatever of the dozens of terrorist attacks on Israeli Jews which have been going on now for months. Instead there was a BBC TV Panorama show devoted to the Jerusalem Light Rail system. 

This was an absolute travesty, composed of historical illiteracy, present-day distortions and wholly unrepresentative and selective interviewing. The light rail is a force for integration since it brings Israeli Arabs into central Jerusalem. Yet presenter Adam Wishart – himself a Jew – only looked in the opposite direction and portrayed it, entirely falsely, as a weapon of Israeli colonization of Arab land. 

The BBC dismissed complaints about the show.
But it is no use whatsoever complaining to the BBC about its anti-Israel animus. The most frightening aspect of this anti-Israel ideology is the way it takes over the mind so that those in its grip are intrinsically unable to recognize their own irrationality. 

Accordingly, the BBC really does think that its anti-Israel position and wider knee-jerk leftism represent the political center-ground. So those who actually occupy the center-ground and who uphold truth against lies are dismissed as extreme or “rightwing” – and so cannot ever have truth on their side. 

Since this mind-bending left-wing prism is the default position amongst the intelligentsia in Britain and the Democratic Party in the US, Israel and its supporters are in the nightmarish situation of being the only people telling the truth about what is happening – and yet being disbelieved or smeared simply because it is they who are saying it.”

“Israel and its supporters are in the nightmarish situation of being the only people telling the truth about what is happening – and yet being disbelieved or smeared simply because it is they who are saying it.”

I know Melanie Phillips is the ultimate sufferer from that Kafka-esque scenario, but I wholly concur. 

So there you have it. I always wondered why I was deemed right wing when I’m nothing of the kind. At least not in the stereotypical bowler hat and handlebar mustache, bring back hanging, unprogressive way. 

It amused me to see this definition of Left-wing beliefs which was probably written by a lefty (yes, she admits that ) and it will be interesting to see if her definition holds when (if) 70s throwback Jeremy Corbyn gets to be dear leader.

Left wing beliefs are usually progressive in nature, they look to the future, aim to support those who cannot support themselves, are idealist and believe in equality.

Image from here: 

Train wreck

Let’s just get that Panorama out of our system, and hope that’s it, once and for all.

When I critiqued “The Train that Divides Jerusalem” on the morning following transmission I hadn’t read any other reviews. There weren’t any. I was the first, and at the time the only one. Even Adam Wishart’s Twitter timeline had relatively few Tweets on the topic, and many seemed positive and congratulatory. He responded to his critics positively, “I’m all ears” was one reply. But that didn’t last. Soon everything went pear shaped. He got rattled, and so did his critics. 

My response to the film was genuine, if my quest for topicality made it somewhat reflexive. 

Next day I spotted the NPR item. 

Now, it is conceivable that these two pieces were completely coincidental. It could be that Adam hadn’t seen the March 16th feature entitled “A Rail Line That Crosses Jerusalem’s Divide, But Can’t Unite It” even though the ideas within both titles seem remarkably similar.

It doesn’t really matter whether it was a coincidence or whether Adam used the earlier piece as a framework for his own film. If so, it might have been helpful to his critics if he’d mentioned it as certain parallels throw Adam’s spin into sharp focus.

Steve Inskeep was not at all uncritical of Israel. He was not writing pro-Israel propaganda.

 “This is not the image Jerusalem transit officials would have liked to promote. A transit spokesman told us the train brings people together. He called light rail passengers a "mosaic" of Jews and Arabs, men and women, tourists and more.But the rail line was also divisive from the start of construction. Israel was building a train into occupied territory, serving Jewish settlements that the United Nations had called illegal.”

Both filmmakers used individuals to illustrate their points. NPR’s Steve Inskeep used David Felber to represent ‘an Israeli’. 

“The 53-year-old was on his way to work at the Ministry of Education in West Jerusalem”

They took a ride on the train, as did the Israelis Adam chose to illustrate his film. 

Inskeep’s token Israeli said he had originally opposed the train, but now uses it regularly. He said he would have preferred it if the route had avoided Palestinian areas because of the violence. 

However, David Felber was a third-generation Israeli whose “grandparents came here before there was an Israel.”  Inskeep’s ‘Israeli’ was patriotic, but not an extremist or a political activist. 

In contrast, the individuals Wishart chose to represent Israel were -  a prominent activist for a fringe nationalist organisation the ‘Women’s Forum for the Temple’, and an avaricious, nationalistic property developer who was fired by the mayor after opposing plans to build housing for Palestinian residents of eastern Jerusalem. 

Inskeep did not downplay or attempt to justify the violent attacks on the train or judge the morality of the station being attacked (and all but destroyed) after the murder of Mohammed Abu Khadir; nor did he attempt to minimise the criminality of Mohammed’s murder itself.  He simply put the incidents in chronological order, like this:

“ Three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed by Palestinians, and in apparent retaliation, a Palestinian teenager sitting very near this stop was kidnapped by Jewish extremists and burned alive.” 

In response to accusations that he was misleading viewers by not explaining that the gruesome murder of  the Palestinian was retaliatory, or clarifying that it was wholeheartedly condemned by the Israeli public, Adam Wishart later Tweeted that he had put the two incidents ‘at the same time’.  

That is no defence. Rather, it further belies the claim of objectivity.

Both films included the testimony of Walid Khadir.  Unlike Steve Inskeep, Adam didn’t mention that Walid Khadir was poor Mohammed Abu Khadir’s cousin. This man is most likely a go-to guy when films are being made about the plight of the Palestinians, but featuring him in both these particular films seems decidedly unimaginative even if it was purely coincidental. 

Some of Adam’s Twitter critics suggested he should have paid a visit to an Israeli hospital where he could have shown many Palestinians being treated. Indeed, Inskeep did feature something like that. On the train that is allegedly so divisive, he met a Palestinian couple who run a store near the grand Al-Aqsa Mosque.

“Emad and Nahla Abu Khadije told us they ride the train from East to West Jerusalem twice a week. They go to an Israeli hospital for Emad's cancer treatment and told us they feel safe riding the train. But they find Jerusalem rather tense. As the couple reached their stop, Emad and Nahla told us they feel they're often looked upon as terrorists."We born here, we hope to die here. It's our land," Emad said. Before 1948, before the creation of Israel, Jews and Arabs lived together he tells us.”

Of course the NPR piece didn’t go to the Palestinian refugee camp, interview the mayor of Jerusalem or take us to witness the pantomime at the Al-Aqsa Temple Mount area as Adam did. 

Those are relevant and interesting subjects, worthy of exploring in depth. 

“Travelling through the old city, he comes face to face with the battle over one of the world’s holiest sites and asks, could it be the flashpoint for the start of another war?”  

........it says in the Panorama programme’s publicity 

Sensitive topics need background, context and impartiality to do them justice. Adam’s comparatively trite treatment, complete with innuendo-laden voice-overs indicate that he  was out of his depth. Panorama, in its present incarnation is not the most appropriate vehicle for such an exploration, because it’s too short, too superficial, too lightweight, too BBC.

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs sets out the present situation on the ‘holy sites’ in full. 

‘Dipping in’ and adopting in toto the Palestinians’ stance on Al-Aqsa was a questionable choice, and perpetuating the inaccurate theory that ‘the world’s holiest site’ is under threat from Jews when, as Honest Reporting puts it ”the real issue that has been discussed in recent times is not the rebuilding of the Temple but Jewish access and prayer rights on the Temple Mount” was clearly misleading and biased.

In addition to the cinematographic points I made in my original piece and the facts and inaccuracies set out by Honest Reporting and BBC Watch, this amounts to a pretty comprehensive case of  you know what.

The medium of Twitter seems to turn everyone into an inarticulate bunch of angry souls frustrated by only being allowed to express complicated concepts in pidgin english.

Unfortunately, Twitter seems to be the only mode of engaging with the film’s creator.

Critics of my review of that programme, or anything else, at least have the opportunity to express themselves in normal language in the comments section of this blog. Even better, you don’t even have to go to the trouble of creating a moniker. You can just choose to remain anonymous, as many of you do. Craig and I would prefer it if you signed off with some kind of distinguishing mark, such as ‘anonymous 5’ but we haven’t withdrawn the simple anon option.

This is a niche blog, for niche people; a Royston Vasey backwater of a blog. An acquired taste type of blog if you will.  We don’t boast about the viewing stats, but they’re not bad for  a blog that hasn’t advertised, promoted itself or link-dumped. Many readers lurk quietly. 

Now, here’s the thing. Media-monitoring websites like Honest Reporting, BBC Watch, UK Media Watch, News-Watch and Biased-BBC reach a lot of people - perhaps mainly the already converted. The commentariat inevitably includes some opposition, and it’s annoying that this rarely produces constructive debate. It nearly always degenerates into abusive language, ad hominem attacks and ‘drive-by’ one-liners which insinuate without setting out an argument.

Any fule kno that when you blog, you set yourself up as a target. People wish cancer upon you, sometimes specifying which particular kind of cancer they’d prefer you to get. 

I’d say the evidence above amounts to clear case of bias, or if you like, incompetence. You choose. Please feel free to disagree nicely or remain silent.

Jerusalem’s Light Rail. “I did it my way”

I hesitate to post more verbiage about the previous item, but I’m going to mention something else. 

Having read Adam Wishart’s  responses to his critics on Twitter, in particular his insistence that the film, including the editing, was “his take” on the subject, I was surprised to see this item, which was published on March 16 on NPR.

It’s called “A Rail Line That Crosses Jerusalem’s Divide, But Can’t Unite It.”

I hadn’t noticed it before (we can all be a bit slapdash sometimes) but I came across it on Google while looking (again) to see if any other blogger or indeed any bona fide writer had critiqued Adam Wishart’s Panorama film.  

To say that his film was closely modelled on the NPR article would be an understatement. Furthermore, comparing the two, line by line so to speak, brings Adam’s negative spin into sharp focus. There’s a sound clip too, which I urge you to listen to. 

Not only does the narrator (Steve Inskeep I believe) provide some of the background and context absent from Adam’s film, but he includes some different characters and unlike Adam, hasn’t sought out the opinions of any extreme ‘fringe activist’ Israelis.  Adam's omissions are as relevant as his selections. 

I know it's a big pain to click on links, and on a better day I would summarise the NPR story to save you the bother. But this time, especially if you're an ITBBCB sceptic, I do recommend you make the effort.

Supporters of Adam and the BBC might say - no doubt will say- that the NPR broadcast is biased.  I didn't think so; but of course they'd surely ay the same thing of me.

Incidentally, Honest Reporting provides some of the political background that I avoided tackling. I leave that to those with the specialised knowledge. I saw what I’m more familiar with, let’s call it cinematic jiggery-pokery or psychological manipulation. 

Talking of BBC Watch, Hadar makes a pertinent point here in her piece about the (non) Mystery of the Death of Arafat, which I think applies to much of what we write about here as well:

“There are few, if any, publicly funded bodies as influential and far-reaching as the BBC. Its content reaches nearly every British household and hundreds of millions more around the world. The information it produces is used by policy-shapers, decision-makers, academics and educators and passed on to the next generation because it is considered to come from a respectable, reliable source.So when the BBC repeatedly and knowingly amplifies baseless conspiracy theories, they are legitimized and mainstreamed into public consciousness and – to borrow a phrase from Mr Cameron – the BBC too becomes part of the problem which British society is so urgently trying to address.”

You can replace ‘amplifies baseless conspiracy theories’ in the above with a more general term, say, ‘disseminates misleading, one-sided  reporting’ and you have it. 

Panorama. The Train that Divides Jerusalem

Does anyone still  make a point of tuning in to Panorama as we used to in the past? I don’t think so. Last night, for want of anything better to do I switched on the telly just in time to catch someone, in their most doleful Will Self accent, regretfully decrying their sadness that  their grandparents’ dream of a utopian Israel was now kaput. 

As the closing credits rolled up the screen, with heavy heart I turned to iPlayer to see what I’d just missed. While I waited for it to be uploaded (or whatever was causing the delay) I turned to Twitter, as one does these days, to check out the craic.

Adam Wishart “I am a proud Jew” was magnanimously engaging with his critics. Seriously, he appeared genuinely willing to listen to their criticisms. Listen, but not hear, if you know what I mean.

The criticisms fell into several camps  - if that’s not too emotive a word. There were, of course one or two of the usual Israel-hating trolls who can’t bear to come across anything marginally less antisemitic than Electronic Intifada, but the messages that had substance cited some specific examples of Wishart’s ‘default BBC’ agenda.

One particular issue that kept cropping up was the portrayal of Mohammed Abu Khedir, the Palestinian youth who was brutally murdered by Israelis. The Palestinian Khedir family was portrayed sympathetically and at length, whereas there was but a fleeting reference to the three Israeli boys who were kidnapped and murdered, and seemingly no attempt to include their distressed families in the film, or to emphasise that the latter atrocity took place before the former. 

Other issues came up too. Selective use of Israeli voices - all those featured expressed stereotypical right-wing views of the kind that fuel a specific type of Israel-bashing that’s rife these days.

Lack of context, insufficient emphasis on the security reasons for the barrier - a mistranslation of ‘Yahud’ to ‘soldier’ - misleading allusions to a racist element that allegedly surrounds the the train’s existence.

Anyhow, by this time the iPlayer was fully functioning so with girded loins and gritted teeth I pressed play. 

The Train that Divides Jerusalem.

The first thing I saw, (I would, wouldn’t I?) was Adam polishing his as-a-Jew credentials. That’s a bad sign. 

Actually, it wasn’t the very first thing. What struck me in the first instant was the way the narrator’s voice stretched the vowels. “and the train itself has become a ta-a-a-rget for vi-i-i-i-lence”  

“I’m Adam Wishart, a British Jew” he announced, just in case we thought the voice we were hearing belonged to Will Self. “And I’m going to ri-i-i-ide Jerusalem’s new train to the heart of a city which feels more divi-i-i-ded than ever.”

Accompanying - or immediately after - the Mayor’s assurance that the light railway was ‘open to all,’ there was a brief shot of passengers disembarking, and nary an Arab to be seen.

It’s the kind of thing that’s done in the editing suite; done to convey a quasi-subliminal message, while the filmmakers indignantly protest the opposite with their Sally Bercow-style innocent faces. 

The Temple Mount issue was clumsily handled. It was over-simplified to the extent that it was made to appear to be yet another dastardly Jewish plot to trample all over Arab holy places. 

When Yahuda Glick was shot I looked into the situation a little bit, and I’d say that Adam’s portrayal of the situation was very unfair. Obviously “it’s complicated”. 

“Rivka Shimon is part of the new Temple movement” droned ‘Will’. That is why we’ve decided to feature her in this unbiased documentary. Look at all those Jews stampeding into Arab holy places as if they hadn’t a care in the world! 

“Rivka says they’ve a ‘right’ to be here!”

At least Rivka has a sense of humour. She looked suitably amused at the ludicrous appearance of a heavily veiled Arab ‘Muslima’ violently using a plastic garden chair as a drum in protest at the impudent Jewish invasion.   “What are they like? her half smile quite rightly implied. 

“Within minutes of Rivka’s group arriving” narrated Mr. ‘Self’, "there are protests'. There certainly are. Great burly veiled figures in long black burkas (men, surely?) striding along shreiking “AllahuAckbar” and banging chairs on the ground.

“They do pray, in silence, which they shouldn’t be doin’ in there” asserts a devout Muslim woman indignantly. “Gosh. How awful” I’m thinkin’,  Islamophobically.

One of the problems with Rivka, apart from the fact that she probably represents a minority, albeit a vocal minority, of religious Israeli activists, is that her use of the English language lacks nuance. When she says: 

”And when we are sure what we are doing is right, no-one can be against us, and God will ‘elp us, and it will come, and it will be good for the Muslim world not to be against us - because if they will be against us - they will suffer” 

it sounds a bit sinister, but it is open to interpretation in so many ways. It could sound like a threat. It could indicate exactly the opposite, but because of her lack of vocabulary and her demeanour, it had an unfortunate effect. Just what doctor BBC ordered. 

‘’...........then in 1967 Israel occupied the eastern areas” Adam was suddenly saying, as if that had happened by supernatural means. Well, Rivka did say Israel winning that war was a miracle.

“Every day the train passes, they are butchering me” worded the subtitles, to the spoken Arabic from an aggrieved Palestinian man. “every day they are killing me” repeated Adam “this is what the train means to us” he continued.

“Waled Abu Khedir is showing me what used to be his land until it was taken to build this train station”

Where have I heard that name before - hmm. 

“He refused compensation because the seizure of land fits into a wider picture”. Hmm. A good reason to refuse compensation? Or not.

  

Arieh King is an evil Jewish property developer, buying up Palestinian land for Jews. He’ll go down well in my documentary, thinks Adam. Arieh King is a one-man, Arab-hating Israeli expansionist explosion. 

The Palestinian refugee camp is grim. It’s a slum. “In my teenage Zionist education course” intones Adam “They didn’t introduce us to any Palestinians”. Oh dear. That’s Jewish brainwashing for you.

“Israel says the barrier that surrounds this part of the city was built to protect Israelis from attack” he says. “But it seems to me that it serves another purpose as well. To cordon off the squalor and deprivation.”

Nir Barkat, Mayor of Jerusalem has a lot to answer for. Adam confronts him: “In the Shuafat refugee camp, it’s part of the municipality, there’s rubbish all over the street, sporadic water.”

Barkat attempts to make a profound point.:

“There are no Jewish refugees. Not one. We take them home and help them. It’s very unfortunate that there are Arab refugees. That with all the wealth of the Arab world, they haven’t found the time and the capital to help the refugees out.”

The point is lost on Adam as well as the film’s editors, who have superimposed footage of the aforementioned deprivation over the Mayor’s voice. 

“They may be refugees” says Adam, “but they’re residents of Jerusalem, aren’t they?” 

He puts that to the Mayor. 

“I agree, and I do everything I can, however its a problem that the municipality cannot solve on its own”

Adam voices the rest of the interview with Nir Barkat on the his behalf:

 “The municipality spends a lot, but would like to provide more services, he says, but its staff are subjected to physical and verbal abuse.” 

he recounts, adding:

” I can’t help feeling that the state of this place and the lawlessness  and the barrier make this part of Jerusalem a tinderbox waiting to ignite.”

Back to the tubby Palestinian man who says:

 “it’s difficult to be a child born into an environment of occupation and racism. Nobody’s born a violent person, but the segregation and disparities lead to war and violence.” 

He spoke in Arabic, so this was a translation. There are so many holes in that statement that I feel would have been countered if Adam had been treating both sides equally. He might have started “I can’t help feeling...” and continued to point out that the racism is far more prevalent on the Arab side, that children are born into a culture of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and that these are the prime factors that ‘lead to’ occupation, segregation, disparities and violence. 

But Adam didn’t say that, or probably even think that.

Then the little boy whose words were mistranslated. Yahud to ‘soldiers’. “God bless them” he said of the stone-throwers.

“Most of the firing was from fireworks” says Adam “The ammunition of the powerless.” 

A brief shot - ‘that shot’ - of a Palestinian car driving along the platform, ploughing into waiting passengers. 

“Palestinians have targeted the rail line, driving ca-a-a-ars into waiting passengers, killing three adults and a baby” 

narrated Adam. A statement that took as long to state as it took to read that sentence. 

This was the content that Adam was Tweeting in answer to Tweeted accusations that he didn’t focus on Palestinian-on-Israeli violence. Three nameless adults and a nameless baby.  

Immediately the subject is changed:

“16 year old Mohammed Abu Khedir was also waiting by the train line a year ago when he was kidnapped by a group of Israelis” 

A close up photo of a pensive looking Mohammad filled the screen. 

“As tension grew in the run-up to last summer’s Ga-a-aza war” continued Adam, sounding particularly Selfish “three Israeli teenagers had also been abducted and murdered.” That’s all. Nameless boys, abducted and murdered by persons unnamed.

 “Hussain is Mohammed’s father.”

 “They tied him to a tree, they poured petrol on him and burned him alive.” says Hussain. Hmm. Is that exactly what happened? I’m not so sure, but in any case it was bad enough without embellishing it. Embellishing it makes it worse in its own special way. “it was the ugliest crime in history” he said then. 

Mohammed’s tearful mother is shown. “Even now I think he will be back” that close-up again, and footage of an open coffin being carried aloft, paraded in the street, by a crowd of men. Was that Mohammed? 

The Palestinians destroyed the station. “This was a racist train to keep Jerusalem for the Jews only” attests Hussain.

Cut to ‘the other side of the story’. A terrorist attack on a synagogue. A brutal knife attack on Chaim Rothman, who has been in a coma ever since. His American-sounding wife reads a prayer to his comatose form. As she is filmed on the train home, a fleeting image of what looked like Hussain Khedir standing in front of his son’s headstone flashed onto the screen. Sad music. Lest we forget.

Cut to some joyful Israelis celebrating Jerusalem day. A protest. Violence.

“When I was here 30 years ago even my most fervent Zionist friends weren’t rushing to build a temple on this site” 

says Adam. 

“now this idea is gathering support from within the mainstream. Even a new member of the cabinet supports the idea. I can’t help but think, if some Jews push much further, this would surely be the last stand for the Palestinians.”

Too many “I can’t help but thinks” in this film, is what I can’t help but think. 

“I’m left wondering, what is the purpose of the train. Does its destination hold a clue?” said Adam.

And I’m left wondering, what is the purpose of this film? Does its destination (the BBC ) hold a clue? Says me.

Adam continues:

“It travels north, through the Palestinian neighbourhoods and snakes round the refugee camp. What’s so controversial is that the ultimate destination is an Israeli settlement. 1000 acres, taken by Israel to build a beautiful suburb. Like all settlements in the occupied territories most of the international community considers them to be illegal.” 

The mayor of Jerusalem again.

“In all those places there was never a Palestinian state”, he says. 

“put a shovel in the ground, and you’ll find Jewish roots; so when people talk about occupied land - occupied from whom? It’s all Jewish!”

Back to Adam. 

“This train makes permanent the expansion of Israel. This settlement is like a fortress, perhaps not surprising when so many Israelis feel a constant threat from their Arab neighbours and it’s Rivka Shimon’s home.” 

says Adam. Rivka likes the view. 

“What’s surprising” says Adam “is that you can see the deprivation including the Shuafat refugee camp the other side of the barrier.” 

"Have you ever been over there?” he asks Rivka, meaningfully. “No, of course not” she answers “even the police don’t go there”

“The Israelis and the Palestinians should be neighbours but they’re separated by an ever-widening gulf of distrust.” 

states Adam.

Back to the tubby Palestinian man:

“There will never be peace between us and the Israelis, the Jews of the municipality. How could they be human, they live opposite us and can see with their own eyes the conditions of the camp. It is in no way humane or normal.”

Back to the beginning. I think this is where I came in. Adam alone on a deserted train. “My journey has been heartbreaking” says Will Self.

“When my grandparents campaigned for the state of Israel they hoped for a place of refuge, tolerance and equal rights for all.”

(Obviously they didn’t take into account the religion of Islam and its antisemitism, intolerance, inequality and the Arab world’s determination to make permanent refugees out of the Palestinian Arabs they encouraged to move out of the way whilst they made their failed attempt to destroy the newly formed Jewish state)

“I can’t believe that this could be the place that they dreamed of, all those years ago” he finishes.

Little did they know that their grandson would be working for Panorama, making a selectively edited documentary in the years to come.

Incidentally, I can’t help but wonder what has happened to all the footage that was rejected? The footage that remains on today’s equivalent of the cutting room floor? Were the only Jews that Adam encountered ruthless, entitled, ‘chosen’ and religious?  Were the only Palestinians he spoke to sad, bereft of land, full of hopelessness, despair and anger and decidedly economical with the actualité?  

I don’t think Twitter is the ideal way of communicating on complex matters like this, but someone did raise another question. Is this the time to put out another documentary that’s bound to inflame yet more antisemitic sentiment than is already rife in the hostile, anti-Israel atmosphere that exists in present day Britain?  

Update: More here