So bad it's (almost) good

“The UK government is completely controlled by Israel” 

asserts Palestinian poster girl Ahed Tamimi. 

“The UK is completely controlled and occupied by Israel and is supporting Israel to kill innocent people who are demonstrating for their rights.” 

she continues.

“They [Zionists] want nothing but to kill all Palestinians so they can take all their land. They believe that all Palestinians should also be killed which shows that they're racist.”

What is it about those people who unintentionally reveal their own thoughts and wishes through this uniquely infantile type of projection? This example is such a blatant ‘reversal of the actualité’ that it’s quite comical. It’s so bad it’s (almost) good. I wonder if the oleaginous Afshin Rattansi from R T agrees with Ahed. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.

The BBC is undeterred by the negativity surrounding this foolish little liar. (Foolish to tell such obvious lies, but smart enough to manipulate others.)  No wonder Ahed Tamimi is dazed and confused. She has been indoctrinated from birth by professional agitators, the Tamimi clan, but she’s wise enough to tailor her message to suit the audience.

The BBC is promoting Ahed and two other ‘minors’ in a nasty little propaganda film. The producer, Megha Mohan, the BBC's "gender and identity correspondent", has an openly anti-Israel agenda, and with this, the BBC is openly encouraging inflammatory propaganda and violating its remit. It’s quite appalling that it was ever approved.

Tamimi didn’t seem to have had much to complain about in prison, but Krishnan Guru-Murthy manages to prise something detrimental to Israel out of her in this interview. She’s wearing her silver pendant in the shape of ‘One State’ 

Guru-Murthy believes Israel has treated her too harshly for the crime of ‘just a slap’. Who knows whether or not he’s aware of her and her family’s record. Not that she’s responsible for her terrorist Auntie  Ahlam who’s being protected by Jordan,  but she certainly sees her as a role model.

Honest Reporting

“While the BBC shows footage of Tamimi attacking an IDF soldier, for which she spent eight months in an Israeli prison, it fails to give any real background on the Palestinian poster girl for terror. For the real tragedy is not Tamimi’s experience with the Israeli military court system (what the BBC terms a “childhood”). 

Ahed Tamimi’s entire childhood has been spent in an environment permeated with Palestinian terrorism: terror  in which her family has long played an active and prominent role.  For example,  Ahed’s aunt helped plan the horrific Sbarros Pizza restaurant bombing, and her mother posted anatomically precise tutorials on how to most effectively stab Israelis. 

Ironically, this very terrorism is the reason Israel has security measures in the first place.
Since childhood Ahed has learned from her family that all of Israel is occupied Palestinian land, including Tel Aviv, and that she must fight to gain all of it. Hardly a path to peace. And Ahed’s family have placed her personally in danger over and over, for the benefit of cameras. 

Her appearance for the BBC is just the latest in a global propaganda tour, milking her iconic status.

“The rights of children are undoubtedly extremely important. If the BBC were so concerned for the rights of Palestinian children, it would be focusing on the incitement that drives Palestinian minors to confront Israeli soldiers, carry out terror attacks or promote violent extremism. 

Instead the BBC in typical fashion attempts to portray Israel as a militaristic child abuser backed up by the claims of an iconic professional propagandist, a terrorist-affiliated NGO and its own efforts to muddy the legal waters of international law. 

UPDATE
Former IDF military prosecutor Maurice Hirsch, who featured in the BBC film has responded directly on Twitter to the BBC’s Megha Mohan, the journalist responsible. The thread of multiple tweets is a devastating take down from an expert whose insights were clearly edited out of the film in order to favor the Palestinian narrative.

Yes, if you can bear to look at the Twitter timeline of the producer of this programme you can see the agenda. There is no attempt whatsoever to conceal it. No pretence of impartiality or genuine fact-finding. She willfully misunderstands why Palestinian ‘children’ go through military rather than civilian courts.

“Israel says that this is due to an article in the Geneva Convention saying that they are an occupying force” she tweets. I understand that putting Palestinian citizens through Israel's civil courts would necessitate annexation of the West Bank. So that's why. (She probably knows that.)

Another of the children featured claims that she was made to sign a confession in Hebrew. But this is untrue. Maurice Hirsch responds:

But this is something Col Maurice Hirsch refutes. As the Israeli military's chief prosecutor in the West Bank prepared indictments against thousands of Palestinians - including hundreds of children. pic.twitter.com/b7TIPLp3Nu

— Megha Mohan (@meghamohan) August 28, 201

Sadly, you piece is just another example of biased BBC coverage. While we spoke extensively about teenage Palestinian murderers like the murderers of Daphna Meir, the Fogel Family, Ari Fuld and others, you shamefully omitted any reference to them. 1/12

— Maurice Hirsch (@MauriceHirsch4) August 29, 2019

What is a 'gender and identity correspondent' for? How does this role relate to pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activism? Does the BBC intend to redress the balance at any point?

Update:
BBCWatch has more on this.  Do read. The fact that this film is proving so popular is very disturbing.

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.

Medley

A short medley of observations about BBC bias, Jeremy Corbyn, and related matters.

I am not a Beeb-basher, not least since so many of the people who bang on relentlessly about the BBC’s supposed biases are stupid or horrible or both.

So says James Kirkup on the Spectator (£)  His area of expertise appears to be transgenderism. And he has spotted a bias related to this issue within the BBC. Personally, I can’t seem to get interested in transgenderism no matter how hard I try (not very) but I have to admit that when I see a six foot five-inch ‘woman’ in high heels and mini skirt mincing along, the mind does automatically boggle.

I didn’t get very far with Kirkup’s article. As someone said below the line, tl;dr, but I did ask myself if I was truly stupid and horrible -  wot, moi?  - but then I realised he wasn’t talking about us (Craig and I.) surely he had to be talking about the semi-literate Momentum type keyboard warriors that accuse the BBC of being the mouthpiece of the far right. Like the tweeters on the Victoria Derbyshire thread. You know, the Judophobes who get cross when they’re accused of antisemitism.

 H/T Anonymous (Open Thread.) In a post, circa 2006, Peter Hitches presents a curate’s egg type précis of pre-Nazi era antisemitism, from which I have plucked the following excerpt:

 “But of course most people don't form their opinions in this way. They pick them up, as they pick up other fashions, from what they hear around them, from the prejudices of the media, which become their prejudices by a subtle process. These, by the way, don't take the form of the BBC correspondent saying "Israel wickedly bombed civilian targets last night". You only catch it on the edge of a remark. The reporters themselves often don't know they are doing it. It is their unconscious choice of verbs and nouns, their tone of voice, the selection of pictures and the attitudes to spokesmen that you have to watch. 

For instance, Palestinian and Arab spokesmen tend to be interviewed respectfully and courteously, whereas Israelis are often interrogated fiercely and aggressively (Watch out for this. I'm interested to see if any readers noticed a flagrant example of this on a well-known news programme recently). 

Well, if this bias is based on racial prejudice, which I rather suspect it is, then it should stop right now. And if it is designed to appease Muslim hostility to Jews (which I am afraid to say exists, encouraged by some passages in Muslim scripture, and which - unlike Christian Judophobia - is not adequately disowned and denounced by the leaders of the religion) then that is just as bad.

 SOHRAB AHMARI / AUG. 14, 2018 Commentary magazine “As a right-wing American:”

“There is a great danger looming inside Labour. Its shadow extends from the British Isles across the West, including the United States. That danger has a name, Jeremy Corbyn, and there is a duty to prevent his ever coming to lead Her Majesty’s Government.

Then, of course, there’s our own Rod Liddle. (£) (He's not literally 'our own') We used to write “Is the BBC’s bias due to ignorance or malevolence?” we never settled that question, but of course the answer is ‘a bit of both’.

Same goes for Corby. 

But what Corbyn has never done is meet with the other side. He will not meet with the Israeli government, ever. He has not done so. The last Labour party trip to Israel commended itself for not meeting a single figure within the Israeli government. Corbyn himself declined even to meet Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited Britain. So the dialogue for peace stuff is a downright, absolute lie. He is an anti-Semite who, furthermore, is happy to suck up to whatever foul ideology is opposed to this country’s interests or the interests of western democracy. Cuba, Venezuela, Soviet Russia, Black September, Hamas, Hezbollah, the IRA. You name a crock of purulent, murderous, anti-democratic, racist shit — and he’ll be for it. 

Oh — and the BBC. Nice of you, auntie, to cover the story of the wreath-laying two days later than everyone else did. I have a screen shot of BBC News online on the day the papers were carrying the Corbyn story. As both Guido Fawkes and later the Daily Mail pointed out, there were no fewer than six stories about Boris Johnson making a joke about letterboxes and none at all about Jezza. Get rid of the licence fee, now. The level of bias has become absurd.

And now for something completely different.

Poor little Ahed. How ever did she endure her eight-month incarceration?

Shrugging off critics Trump-style, Corbyn withstands outrage, rises in polls https://t.co/94yYTtnq9m pic.twitter.com/F727LOk9BD

— The Times of Israel (@TimesofIsrael) August 16, 2018

Update (2)
Brendan O’Neill  The shameful double standards of the Corbyn crew

“Yet far from denouncing Corbyn, his supporters are turning a blind eye to the photo, or are even denouncing its publication as yet another smear on their Dear Leader. And that’s because the man Corbyn was snapped alongside wasn’t linked to the slaughter of imams in a mosque but to the slaughter of rabbis in a synagogue. And as we now know, almost beyond reasonable doubt, Jews matter less to Corbynistas than every other social group. 

The photo published in the Times comes from the now infamous 2014 ceremony in Tunisia; it shows Corbyn mixing with Maher al-Taher, leader of the proscribed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. This was an often ruthless terror group. Just a few weeks after Corbyn hung out with its leader, the group claimed responsibility for an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue in which four rabbis, including a British one, were massacred with guns, knives and axes. The photos of the synagogue’s floor and books coated in blood are among the most disturbing to come out of the Middle East in recent years.
[…]
As I say, double standards. Jews and Jewish issues are always treated differently by Corbynistas. And there’s a word for that: prejudice. If you attack people for making mild gags about burqas but shrug your shoulders over people who mix with men whose associates murdered Jews in a synagogue, if you say freedom of speech is unimportant except when it comes to the freedom to call into question the legitimacy of the Jewish State, then you are sending a quite extraordinary message into the public sphere: ‘Jews are different. They’re fair game. Screw them.’

Best of frenz

Ha! By pure coincidence, Rod Liddle has produced a perfect analysis of Ahed Tamimi’s conversation with Krishnan Guru-Murthy on yesterday’s Channel 4 news.

“The present crisis within the Labour party reminds me of the time when I was filming a television documentary in Palestine a few years back. One after another the interviewees lined up in that flyblown, arid landscape. Grizzled old thugs from Al-Fatah. Sinister bespectacled little Hamas factotums. Peasant farmers, middle-class teachers, landowners and scruffy teenagers in Barcelona shirts. In front of the camera they all said the same thing: ‘Jews are our frenz. We have no quarrel with Jews. Only the Israeli state!’ And then, when the camera was turned off, they all said the same thing. ‘There is a reason nobody likes them, isn’t there?’ And ‘Nobody will tell the truth because they control the media.’ And ‘The United States and Britain are run by Jews.’

This happened not once but every time, with every interview, once the camera was turned off. A deep, immutable and deranged hatred drawn directly from a sacred text.”

I don’t know which is worse P.R. for prisoner welfare. Ahed’s weight gain or Tommy Robinson’s weight loss. Yes, I do. I think it’s marginally worse to be afraid of being poisoned by your enemies than being fattened up by them.

Of course, the MSM’s take on the Tamimi family enterprise is grossly one-sided. Palestinian demands are treated as if they’re perfectly reasonable. What exactly does justice for the Palestinians mean?  “Palestine” must be a multi-cultural one-state-for-all, as it was before 1947. Jews are our frenz.

Hair-raising matters (again)

Contrasting hairstyles

Whilst catching up with Mark Mardell's Twitter fan mail from the Corbynista Left and anti-Brexit hardliners, I spotted another fan (albeit a more qualified one) - this time an anti-Israeli obsessive called Richard Sunningdale. 

Richard was tweeting, via Mark Mardell, to the BBC's James Reynolds about a news bulletin report broadcast on the 13th February edition of The World at One. 

Richard began his tweet by saying:

@jreybbc Good report.

But anti-Israel Richard (as ever) wanted more: 

 - but you did not mention that Israeli troops had shot #AhedTamimi s brother in the head beforehand. Which rather contextualises Israel's acusation (sic) that Ahed was inciting violence. 

Richard, as is the way of people who live their lives on Twitter, was factually wrong about it being Ahed Tamimi's "brother" who was shot in the head beforehand. It was Ahed's cousin.

Now, what was it about James Reynolds's brief report that so appealed to anti-Israel Richard (despite it not going far enough in its anti-Israel bias for him)?

Well, this is James Reynold's brief report in full:

Ahed Tamimi arrived in court with her hands and feet in cuffs. She's being tried as a minor, so the judge ordered the session to take place behind closed doors. Journalists and diplomats were ordered to leave, to the frustration of the Tamimi family who'd wanted observers in court. Prosecutors argued that the 17 year-old is guilty of assault and incitement. Her family and her defence say that she was simply resisting occupation against a much more powerful enemy. Her trial will continue next month if found guilty and Ahed Tamimi may face more than a year in prison. 

As regular readers will know, Ahed Tamimi is a young female Palestinian activist, groomed by her hardline father since around the age of 12 to take part in high-profile anti-Israel protests. Her extended family contains two murderous terrorists and the family as a whole, including young Ahed, haven't been shy in their support for terrorism against Israelis - hence the incitement part of her trial.

So what to make of James Reynolds's report and anti-Israeli Richard's (qualified) enthusiasm for it?

Well, for starters, pro-Israeli folk could easily reverse-weasel Richard and demand that BBC James provide the context I provided in the last-but-one paragraph of this post - something that James didn't provide. 

But as for why anti-Israel Richard otherwise approved of this BBC report, well, I don't think that's hard to guess. The language of the piece gives it away. 

It starts with the image of girl being taken into court "with her hands and feet in cuffs". And then we're told that she's "a minor", and that the judge has "ordered the session to take place behind closed doors". "Journalists and diplomats" are "ordered to leave" (a loaded play on the multi-faceted word 'ordered'). The family feel "frustration" as a result. One side says that a 17 year-old girl is guilty; the other - two groups of people - say that she's "simply resisting occupation against a much more powerful enemy". And if found guilty she could "face" more than a year in prison. 

So here's the idea of a "simply-resisting-occupation" girl who slaps and kicks a soldier and who is then taken into court "with her hands and feet in cuffs" and who is subsequently prosecuted "behind closed doors", beyond the sight of "journalists and diplomats", and to the "frustration" of her family and her defence team. It really doesn't sound good at all - especially IF PUT THAT WAY. And now she "faces" prison.  

The language reporters choose and they way they frame their reports remains key and I don't believe any of it simply on trust anymore. 

That said, no wonder anti-Israeli obsessive Richard found that such a "good report". It surely raises doubts in the minds of people who might otherwise be neutral or sympathetic towards Israel about Israel's actions here. 

Omissions there certainly are, but are there any factual errors? Not that I can see. The bias is all in the framing, the loaded language and those telling omissions.

I think this James Reynolds piece pleased anti-Israel Richard for obvious reasons - i.e that it was biased against Israel - but I would appreciate your take on this.

Getting your story across

What is wrong with Jeremy Bowen’s reporting of the Israeli Palestinian conflict? 

I listened to the whole 28 minutes of Jeremy Bowen’s interview with communications guru Mike Sergeant, but for now I’m sticking to Craig’s transcription of excerpts from it. 

‘I’ve got a very thick skin now. It doesn't really bother me’ […]“if I'm going through a particularly troll-like period”

On a personal level Jeremy Bowen refuses to listen to criticism, which he dismisses as ‘trolling’, and he consistently claims to be impartial and unbiased. It’s conceivable that he sincerely believes this himself,  but has he ever asked himself why supporters of Israel are the ones that dispute his impartiality, while pro-Palestinian audiences are generally satisfied with his reports?  

It’s difficult to articulate what the BBC’s pro-Israel audience expects from its Middle East reporting without being accused of demanding a pro-Israel slant to every report. That’s not the case; what pro-Israel audiences actually want and deserve is fairness. The problem is that a consensus on what constitutes fairness and balance is unreachable if the interested parties are equipped with nothing but a long record of incomplete and one-sided reporting. You need to start from a level playing field.

“Both sides want to be seen as victims” 

he says, elaborating on the difficulties of finding himself in the midst of “the rough and tumble” of the situation, almost as if he’s defending fairness in the refereeing of a rugby game. 

No, if he really believes both sides are competing over victimhood like the ‘hardship’ sketch from Monty Python, that is clumsy and  inaccurate. Only one side ‘wants’ to be seen as helpless victims, and they make sure they promote this delusion, with the help of Jeremy Bowen and co., as far and wide as they can. 

Even if the Israelis did want to be seen as victims, they are never portrayed as such by the media, and apart from the obvious vilification Israel endures from the outside world, Israelis neither see themselves as victims nor want to be seen as such, as far as I know.

Most listeners to the BBC are reliant on the knowledge and intelligence of the reporting team. For the BBC, the history of the Israeli Palestinian conflict starts after or immediately before the 1967 six-day war. This predates Jeremy Bowen’s editorship, but the absence on the BBC of reliable pre ’67 information on Middle East history remains to this day. 

It’s widely understood that Bowen was appointed by the BBC to rescue its damaged reputation at the time of the Balen report, as this piece by  Keith Dovkants in the Evening Standard, written  way back in 2009, attests. Effusive in its praise for Jeremy Bowen’s skill and integrity, the piece contains some unpleasant insinuations about the Israel lobby and alleges that the BBC is terrified of antagonising the Israelis. 

“The BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen is considered one of the corporation's treasures, a highly-talented reporter and presenter who has covered stories in 70 countries. His reports on the Gaza incursion, and the terrible loss of civilian lives, have been models of fairness while never losing the humanity for which he is known.”

Keith Dovkants is entitled to his opinion, but one cannot be sure how he came to reach it. Perhaps he has much greater knowledge than most of us on the topic; or perhaps much less.

Jeremy Bowen has always come across as an intellectual lightweight, out of his depth in the role as BBC Middle East editor for two reasons. One, he lacks an overall, ‘long-view’ grasp of the Israel Palestinian conflict, and two, he holds a personal grudge against the Israelis. Both are drawbacks that seriously affect his approach to the incidents and analyses he brings to our screens. 

On the positive side, he’s willing to put himself into risky situations - reviewers of his war book quote him as being addicted to them - which makes him an ideal war correspondent, but if meaningful analysis or editorial control is what you need, he’s the wrong guy.

Feeding the audience with  isolated, cherry-picked glimpses of an incident, like that extremely biased report on Ahed Tamimi’s ‘slap’,  leads the unwary into a trap. Crucial information he omits from this report amounts to ’non-disclosure.’ In other words, withheld information can turn any situation on its head, as in the recent rape trial where the case collapsed as soon as previously undisclosed phone texts came to light. If non-disclosure is intentional and designed to hamper the defence, this is a moral rather than a procedural issue.

Israel-supporters will be contradicted  and shouted down by Israel-haters no matter what. Lazy language has moved in, settled down and become part of the furniture. The pro-Palestine movement, mingled with left-wing ideology and student politics is huge, aggressive and pro-active. Debates are always on their terms, and  the pro-Israel argument is invariably forced into a defensive position. 

“You can't just say, as if you're in the pub or something, 'Well, you know, what this is all about is...'. You have to explain your reasoning.”  

I do recall comparing Bowen’s analyses to those of a pub philosopher - superficial, gossipy and inflammatory, and there was nothing in this interview to disabuse me of that view.

“Ahed Tamimi, who slapped an Israeli soldier. And the story was not all that it seemed.” 

Despite the thick skin and ‘ain’t bothered’ attitude, Bowen is obviously wounded by the criticism he received for this report,  and is using tricksy language to defend himself. 

“Quite a lot of people want her to be kept in jail for quite a long time for doing what she did” 

he said. Doing what she did?  If all Ahed Tamimi  had actually done was ‘slap an Israeli soldier” he might have had a point. As he said, ‘the story was not all it seemed,’ but he wasn’t referring to the content he omitted from his film; just the opposite. He was talking about the content he gratuitously included in his report, which was  angled to justify her actions. “50 years of occupation” and so on.

  “But, you know, he was a great big bloke, armed to the teeth, and I think he knew that a small 16 year old was not going to be a real threat to him.”  

No indeed, ‘the slap’ itself wasn’t the threat. What was much more of a potential threat, not to those two soldiers, but to Israel’s image, was the intended entrapment, provocation, filming, the fact that she was technically a child (at the time) and the propaganda the Tamimis hoped to gain from the stunt, had their ‘child’ succeeded in provoking the response they’d hoped for, namely one violent enough to put Israel in the wrong, but not violent enough to jeopardise the health of the useful little heroine. Even if that particular propaganda stunt didn’t go to plan, the subsequent arrests were enough to work with, and Jeremy Bowen took full advantage.

Mike Sergeant the interviewer, gushing with admiration, stepped in. “and the boy” he reminded his guest. 

“And the boy. There's a boy too” […] “a cousin who was shot in the face and in his brain by an Israeli soldier with a rubber-coated metal bullet,” 

said Jeremy, though not quite clarifying whether or not this incident was the catalyst for the slap, it served the purpose of rationalising it.   The interviewee exposed his unshakeable self belief. The theme - ‘communicating’ seemed more suited to a  college lecturer advising a media studies class how to find work in film or advertising. “How to get your story across on film.”  

Bowen was quite frank about one thing. He knows how to get his story across, but is much less interested in getting the story across.

No microcosm

Did you see the fiendishly constructed episode of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s “Inside No. 9”? The plot of ‘Once Removed’ is a souped-up version of the classic theme ‘things are not as they at first appear.’ 

The events preceding the ghastly finale (which we see in the opening minutes) are unveiled bit by bit, in a series of ten-minute re-winds. Each new ten minute vignette shows what had occurred in the previous ten minutes and sheds a different light on the situation; likewise, each subsequent ten minutes sheds light on the previous ten - till at last the bigger picture reveals all. It’s a dark comedy, and I may not have explained it perfectly, so you’d better go and watch it yourself.

This is leading up to a Jeremy Bowen analogy. With Jeremy Bowen, we get the metaphorical opening ten minutes, representing the here and now. That’s it.  We don’t get the previous ten, nor the ten before that. No backstory. We don’t even know what we don’t know, and the opinions  we are laying down along the way are based purely on misinformation.

Given the appetite, one could look elsewhere for the metaphorical previous ten minutes, or the ten, twenty, hundred years before that. And if you’re waiting to hear the backstory from Jeremy Bowen, tough. Tough cheese. The moon will turn blue first.

Jeremy Bowen calls his snapshot “a microcosm of the Israeli Palestine conflict”.

It’s not. A microcosm “encapsulates in miniature the characteristics of something much larger.” Jeremy Bowen does the opposite. He shows us something in miniature, completely misrepresenting the characteristics of the bigger picture.

Unless you’re in the habit of reading comments below older posts, you’ll have missed a couple of belated arrivals below Craig’s post  “Jeremy Bowen is biased.” 

They appear to be from a Palestinian residing in Britain and they illustrate a metaphorical ten minutes before the present day. This person sees things this way, and sadly, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know because the people who equipped him with only a truncated version of the bigger picture are far worse than Jeremy Bowen.  

The last sentence is very true though. 

“Far more reports, investigations and people would agree with me on this than the picture that you are trying to portray about Israel, so not convincing”

The anti-Zionist British press and MPs who may sincerely think they’re supporting a righteous cause are actually cementing the Palestinians’ intransigence and moving the Middle East further away from a peaceful solution. 

BBC Watch wrote again about the offending Jeremy Bowen report yesterday. The BBC World Service has replayed it on Newshour, complete with factual inaccuracies and omissions.

I don’t see how anyone could claim that the emotive language in Razia Iqbal’s introduction was impartial.

Bowen is so secure in his position that he doesn’t feel the need to comply with the BBC’s editorial guidelines and he dispenses altogether with the prescribed  “Though Israel disputes this”, which should have followed his categorical: “illegal under international law.”

The story he presents seems to be that ‘heavily armed soldiers’ were prowling round the Tamimi house and garden for no other reason than to intimidate and humiliate the family. They’re simply swaggering around, demonstrating their occupation. No backstory. Nothing about the provocation that the family treats as a profession. Not a hint about what brought about the occupation. Nothing about Auntie Ahlam. 

Picking the most unrepresentative Israeli spokesperson possible as a representative of Israel, and calling him a “Leading right-wing MP  is what?  Balanced? Fair?  I think not. You claim your report is fair and balanced; but Jeremy Bowen, your report is no microcosm.

Jeremy Bowen is biased

Ahed Tamimi and her wholly admirable gigantic hair

Let's look again at that Jeremy Bowen report on last night's News at Ten. 

Jeremy Bowen himself, whilst being hurrahed to the rooftops by many pro-Palestinians on Twitter today, is standing firm against his pro-Israeli critics, insisting that he's being "fair and balanced".

It's certainly safe to say that he isn't being criticised from both sides.

Here's a review of his report that quotes, in passing, his entire report:

*******

His report begins with images of waste ground juxtaposed against Israel's bleak-looking security barrier (hint, hint) accompanied by the following words:

Any peace in Nabi Saleh on a cold winter day is an illusion. 

JB continues:

It's a small Palestinian village on the West Bank - a sharp thorn in the side of its occupier, Israel. 

The language here projects the almost Biblical image of a "small" person acting as "a sharp thorn" against a giant. Is it maybe David v Goliath, with the Palestinian village being the good guy David and Israel being the bad guy Goliath? The phrase "its occupier, Israel", certainly places Israel in the role of the bad guy.

JB continues: 

The people here refuse to give in to Israel's overwhelming power. 

Ah, yes, the people here are David to Israel's Goliath, implies Jeremy pretty clearly. They "refuse to give in" - brave souls! (hurrah!) - to Israel's "overwhelming power" (boo!!).

And the image accompanying this is of an old, limping Palestinian man with a stick who then waves his stick angrily at the Israelis while a young man run alongside him with a Palestinian flag. 

Pro-Israeli sites often talk about 'Pallywood' - the staging of propaganda events by Palestinian activists - and I have to say that this looked like classic 'Pallywood' to me. The old man's limp reminded me of Martin in Frasier. And then he turned into Andy from Little Britain. 

It would be funny if only Jeremy Bowen didn't treat it as 'real news' rather than 'fake news'.

Next: 

For some Israelis that makes them terrorists. 

Well, we've seen the limping old man waving his fist and the Israelis firing tear gas (the next image), so what is a typical BBC viewer to make of that statement from the BBC's Middle East editor?...especially when Jeremy then moves straight on to say:

An Israeli soldier shot Mohammed Tamimi, 15 years old, in the face with a rubber-coated metal bullet. Surgeons took the bullet out of Mohammed's brain along with part of his skull. 

The accompanying images were startling: an emotive close-up image of Mohammed's eyes looking distressed (before fading to grey):

That felt too much like propaganda for my tastes.

Jeremy phrased the above very pointedly. My punctuation reflects that. Jeremy continued:

The Tamimi family lead the protests in the village. Many of them have been imprisoned by Israel for security offences. 

It really is quite egregious here that Jeremy Bowen, reflecting on the Tamimi family, and presenting them as victims, failed to point out that two members of the family have been responsible for 16 Israeli deaths (15 at a pizzeria) in terrorist acts. 

Seriously, why didn't Jeremy Bowen mention that?

On we go, and back to 15 year old Mohammed:

Mohammed was jailed for three months last year. 

And the accompanying image? An old lady in sharp focus looking troubled against an out-of-focus image of a young man:

Jeremy continued:

He was rushed to hospital after he was shot during a demonstration in Nabi Saleh on the 15th December. The village was protesting against President Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital. 

And now to Ahed:

Ahed Tamimi, his cousin, a seasoned activist at 16 years old, told two Israeli soldiers to get off her family's property. She'd just heard, wrongly, that Mohammed had died. After one soldier swatted her away she slapped him. Once the video had gone viral Ahed was arrested with her mother Nariman, who did the filming. They're charged with security offences and face jail. Ahed's father Bassem Tamimi, an activist who's also served time in prison, has been taking her to demonstrations since she was small. 

Interesting. Jeremy calls her "a seasoned activist" but immediately adds (in sympathetically terms) "at 16 year old". She tells two Israeli soldiers to "get off her family's property". She'd "just heard, wrongly", a distressing rumour.

Pro-Israel sites have generally praised the soldiers for behaving stoically, professionally and gentlemanly. Jeremy's report here misses the angle about the astonishing (but deeply admirable) response of the Israeli soldiers, merely representing the incident as an equivalent case of her slapping him (though she did much more than that) and him swatting her off (just about the only physical thing he did in response to her).

And, worse, the BBC's chosen visuals show the soldier "swatting" and Ahed responding angrily, as if the violence actually came first from the Israeli man towards the Palestinian woman.

On to Bassem...

Bassem Tamimi (Ahed's father) is introduced with a close-up of his sad eyes:

And then Jeremy is shown chatting with him over a video:

Jeremy Bowen: Lots of people would say that if you slap a soldier in any country you'll get into trouble so it's no surprise that the Israelis have put her on trial.
Bassem Tamimi: She can't accept an armed man to come to her field. And this is the occupier law. And we are resisting. That is our duty and our responsibility. We can't give our enemy a rose when he comes to kill us. 

There's Jeremy Bowen of the BBC being all 'impartial'. He's putting a counterpoint in his question and his selected interviewee (very heartfelt-looking) has responded with a pro-Palestinian propaganda point. And Jeremy has countered with what? Well, not a counter point to the propagandist counter point but a pushing instead of further pro-Palestinian grievances: 

So this is where it happened, in the driveway of the Tamimis' house.

The incident says a lot about the conflict: the imbalance of force; the way it's invaded the lives of yet another generation; and the bleakness of a future with no prospect of peace.

Again, we're back to the highly contentious 'David v Goliath' way of looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Pro-Palestinian types present Israel as the Goliath of the region, with its superior military and nuclear weapons; Pro-Israel types present Israel as a tiny David nation surrounded by vastly populated (and growing) Goliath nations of extremely hostile Muslim Arabs. In his language here ("the imbalance of forces", "invaded"), Jeremy Bowen is clearly siding with the former.

And on he went:

Very close to Nabi Saleh is a Jewish settlement, illegal under international law. Last summer a Palestinian from another village killed three members of a family there. This area is always tense and the army's main job is to guard the settlers. 

The BBC is famous/infamous for its language about Jewish settlements. Pro-Israel critics of the BBC fume about the BBC's prescribed-from-on-high phrase about "The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this" yet BBC report after BBC report follows this phraseology word for word. Jeremy Bowen here dispenses with the BBC's tongue-twisting editorial guidelines altogether and simply puts it in the anti-Israel way ("illegal under international law"). Jeremy is obviously too 'big' a BBC man to bother following BBC guidelines here - not that he's very likely to be censured for going fully anti-Israeli in his language here.

As for "Last summer a Palestinian from another village killed three members of a family there", I was at a loss to know what this incident involved. If you want to read about the people behind that killing  (unmentioned here) please read here.

On with the Palestinian grievance stuff:

Like all West Bank Palestinians, Ahed Tamimi is being tried in a military court, which usually convicts. More than 300 Palestinians under 18 are serving time as security prisoners. 

(Has the BBC fact-checked that?)

On for a spot of BBC 'balance':

Some Israelis are horrified by the imprisonment of children...

"The imprisonment of children"? Oh my! How 'balanced' is that?!

...but most feel that she should be punished - and perhaps her family too.

And then came this:

Oren Hazan, MK: If I was there she would finish in the hospital. For sure. Nobody could stop me. I would kick her face. Believe me.
Jeremy Bowen: She's a 16 year old girl!
Oren Hazan: No, I don't look at it like this because today there's a 16 year old girl, she punched a soldier; tomorrow, she will stick a knife in his throat.
Jeremy Bowen: They say they're taking part in peaceful protests.
Oren Hazan: You see me smiling. If this is a peaceful protest I don't want to imagine what is not a peaceful protest.
Jeremy Bowen: A slap isn't terrorism.
Oren Hazan: No, a slap is terrorism. Believe me. A slap is terrorism.

Yes, there's the "true" 'balance' of the piece: a short interview with a knuckle-headed Israeli MP that makes it look as if "most" Israeli MPs are representing "most" Israelis in wanting to kick a 16 year old Palestinian girl in the face...

...despite the fact that this self-same Israeli MP was the very Israeli MP that the Israeli parliament just yesterday suspended for six months for being offensive towards women and Arabs - i.e. not representative.

Jeremy Bowen was now building towards his grand climax:  

No peace protest exist any more and reviving one looks less and less likely.

At which point it was back to Mohammed Tamimi's distressed eyes in the accompanying visuals:

 And on Jeremy went, piling on the words towards his peroration:

The future of the next generation is going to be difficult. Incidents like this show the level of tension and anger that's just below the surface. Palestinian lives are dominated by the occupation. But keeping a people under military rule for 50 years has also had a profound effect on Israel. Without change for the better the risk is that the West Bank will slide into more serious violence. Jeremy Bowen, BBC News, Nabi Saleh. 

Pro-Israel sites will have an absolute field day with "Palestinian lives are dominated by the occupation" and "keeping a people under military rule for 50 years". They will point to the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority and various areas. And, disputed as their claims may be, they'd be right - regardless!' -  to claim that Jeremy Bowen's talk of "50 years" of "military rule" is heavily loaded language.

So, is this the most partisan piece of BBC reporting who've heard in a long time? Or is it simply a Jeremy Bowen report?

The Girl With The Gigantic Hair

There are other political lionesses with giant hair, but only one female anti-Israel activist bears an uncanny facial resemblance to the late lamented Shrek The Sheep. 

The Tamimis are professional anti-Israel agitators, and members of the extended Tamimi family have developed full-blown careers out of their activities, which range from world-wide public speaking engagements, to creating candid camera set-ups in collaboration with the B’Tselem Camera Project, to blowing up civilians in Israeli Pizzerias.

The most widely publicised film clips of little Ahed date back to the days when she was a mere pipsqueak. Aged about 9, she was filmed while thcreaming and thcreaming and waving her tiny fists at IDF soldiers and earning herself the affectionate nick-name Shirley Temper. The family are extremely passionate about rock-throwing, non-violently.

It’s tragi-comic, unless you’re concerned with the way the BBC has been reporting the aftermath of the Tamimi’s latest stunt, which you will know, began with a small Pallywood production which didn’t seem to go exactly to plan. The idea was for Ahed and her mates to set-upon two IDF soldiers with a flurry of pushes and non-violent slaps and punches in the hope of capturing some juicy propagandistic footage, while Mrs T filmed the action on her phone.

Here, we ought to speculate about a potentially different outcome. What if the soldiers had responded with equally non-violent slaps, punches or heaven forbid, non-violent real bullets? Would that have been considered a more successful outcome?  Of course there wasn’t much risk of that, which, as we all know, is why little Ahed went ahead.  The real triumph for the Tamimis is the arrest and trial of little Ms Temper. 

People who believe that all Palestinian violence is justified because of the occupation will never be satisfied until Israel is disbanded. Others believe that if the Tamimi clan and its ilk gave up their interminable struggle against Zionism, stopped hating Jews and started thinking positively about everyone’s future, there would be a better outcome, if not  actually ‘peace’.

BBC Watch examines some of the BBC’s reporting. On 3rd January 2018 a newly appointed Today Programme presenter cuts her teeth with a shaky interview with MK Dr. Michael Oren and Yael Stein of B’Tselem. Ms. Gracie admonishes Dr. Oren for applying the term “beat up” to Ahed’s assault, which I tentatively attribute to the UK / US language barrier. I think Brits reserve the expression for serious altercations, as in ‘beaten to a pulp’ whereas Yanks mean ‘to hurt’. Anyway, it’s the kind of slip-up that doesn’t do anyone any favours.

Yolande Knell’s approach is all too predictable. On 8th Jan 2018 John Humphrys introduces the item.

Knell pays lip service to impartiality by allowing some air time to the Israeli point of view, but we can tell where her sympathies lie by the way she introduces and speaks to Bassem Tamimi. He’s “making coffee", she tells us, subtly humanising the man whom some regard as a monster.

The video in which Ahed Tamimi advocates ‘martyrdom-seeking operations’ is less well known.  but never mind. There is a plethora of exploitative anti-Israel propaganda on YouTube, some starring Ached Tamimi’s 11 year old cousin “the youngest journalist in the world”. As a journalist and propagandist precocious little Janna Jihad is shaping up nicely.