I try shutting up for a change.

I began a new post about al-Aqsa the other day, beginning with “I really didn’t want to flood the blog with Israel-related posts.”  Then I wondered why I was apologising. Did I need a disclaimer? I imagined people saying “What?  Another piece about the al-Aqsa riots?” Anyway, it didn’t get written (but not because of 'not' flooding the blog.)

Later, and splish splash I was in the bath and idly reading the label on my flannel. (I often read labels) “100% cotton. Keep away from Fire”  I mean as if!  How likely is it that a small face-flannel would get too close to a fire, and how dangerous would it be if it did get so close that it caught alight (!) and burst into huge flames? It seemed absurd and reminded me of the legendary notice on a post in the in the middle of nowhere marked: “Do not throw stones at this notice” Not only absurd - but instigating a compelling desire you hadn’t thought of till you were forbidden to do so. (Quick! Get stones!)

That brought to mind those Palestinian juvenile delinquents desecrating their ‘third holiest place’, al-Aqsa, by breaking up significant archeological relics into stones and rocks to hurl at Jews who dared to place their filthy feet on the Muslims’ ‘holy’ ground. 

Yolande Knell must have missed that bit of the story. Perhaps she came in half way through the first act and spent the rest of the performance baffled about what was going on. All she could see was Israeli police having another go at Palestinian worshippers. The BBC’s context-lite reporting of that and similar incidents differed from the Jewish press’s accounts of the same thing. 

That’s so weird. I understood that the BBC was the most reliable news organisation in the world. I’ve written about violence at al-Aqsa at least once before. Years ago I think. It’s almost a ritual. No doubt the Beeb sees the annual desecration by Palestinian delinquents of their holiest spaces as old hat and low priority news-wise. Not really worthwhile going into it again and again.

Fresh trouble was reported briefly by Rebecca Jones during a BBC news bulletin earlier this week, but little or nothing else was to be found on the BBC website. The institutionally-hostile-to-Israel  Guardian mentioned it once but I think they got away with it. 

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I stumbled upon a Zoom conversation on Jewish News Syndicate (new to me.) The panel included Melanie Phillips, who made an interesting observation. She said that while her occasional appearances on the BBC (and her column in The Times of London) afford her a tremendous platform she feels that her ‘mainstream acceptability’ comes at a price - the tacit understanding that her Israel-related contributions keep to a minimum. 

That’s how I’m feeling right now about flooding this blog. In other words, Israel-related articles can only be smuggled in up to and until you reach an indeterminate saturation point, and if you want to put ‘the case for the "other side"’ you may; a) bury your observations on sympathetic fora like Jewish News Syndicate, or; b) risk alienating the - let’s call them the righteous misinformed - by fighting un-winnable battles on the MSM. 

Of course, you could always just write on your own relatively niche blog and hope for the best.

Should I wade in on matters I know I’m relatively ill-informed about? With my vacillating opinions and known unknowns? I don’t know a huge amount about Ukraine and I suspect I’m guided by my own flimsy, fleeting emotions rather than objectivity. If anything, flag-waving curbs my enthusiasm.

 

Who, apart from Rod Liddle, admires Angela Rayner’s feisty political acuity? Do I? Not sure, but don’t think so.

 Do I know much about cake and wine in the work environment? No. The collapsing economy and/or imminent nuclear annihilation?  Not much. Can I opine with any credibility whatsoever? I think not. My advice to myself is: stick to what you know, and STFU about the stirred-up personal feelings that hang precariously on the shoogly peg of biased, one-sided reporting. I, for one,  should really shut up. 

Maybe I could embroider that onto a label.

Lie on Sky

Yesterday, Sky News was sending periodic reports from Jerusalem. They interviewed a female journalist from JPost to discuss the recent escalating violence and the outbreak of stabbings and shootings in the Old City.

My understanding of the bizarre status quo with regard to Temple Mount / al-Aqsa is that Jews are allowed to visit the compound but are prohibited from praying there. (They do not wish to go into the mosque)  

Rabbi Yehuda Glick is part of a movement that campaigns for the ‘no-pray’ restriction to be lifted; last year he was shot and seriously injured.  The Israeli government stated categorically that there are no plans to alter the status quo. Nevertheless the Palestinians claim there’s a plot afoot - to let Jews pray there, and to DESTROY AL AQSA. 

Meanwhile, female Muslims are employed by the PA to harass Jews and tourists by screaming, ululating and and shouting the usual Islamic chant. Palestinian youths gather rocks and other ammunition and pelt Israeli soldiers from inside the mosque, their ‘third holiest site’. Violence has spread to the surrounding area.  Israelis have been stabbed by Palestinians; the stabbers subsequently shot by the IDF.

All the while Mahmoud Abbas has been ramping up the rhetoric, perhaps encouraged by the raising of the Palestinian flag at the UN and the apparent reduction of support for Israel by the US. He has been openly calling for violence against Israelis in that flowery, blood-flecked language they use.

Palestinian youths took Molotov cocktails and rocks into al-Aqsa to pelt religious Jews who they knew would be visiting for a religious holiday. The IDF rarely venture into the Mosque, but are occasionally forced to do so to dampen down extreme violence.

This was roughly what the Jpost journalist explained to the Sky anchor Samantha Simmonds.

When she had gone, along came Ghada Karmi, who is beginning to look madder than a hatter. She was incandescent with rage, and got away with an execrable, preposterous and fanciful diatribe, which she repeatedly insisted was ‘fact’. I think she must have been chatting to Ali Abu-nimah of E.I. who also gets reality and fantasy mixed up.

Kharmi, quivering with fury, said that the violence was caused by armed fanatical religious Jews forcing their way into the al-Aqsa mosque and demanding the right to pray inside. She kept stating that this was fact. She insisted that a mob of religious Jews had stormed, not the compound, the actual Islamic mosque, armed with fireworks and rocks. 

(Why would Jews even want to pray in a mosque?) Oh yes, they’re going to destroy it and supplant it with filthy Jewish stuff. Fact.

What a travesty. The only armed fanatics inside the Islamic ‘holy’ mosque were Palestinian hooligans, whipped up by Mahmoud Abbas’s incitement, after being bolstered by the symbolic flag-raising malarkey at the UN. 

  

Saddest of all was that Samantha Simmonds let it all go unchallenged. 

Intolerable Bias

The BBC’s conduct over the recent outbreak of violence in Israel has been worse than ever. Today a parade of commentators, one after another, have reacted to the synagogue murders 

with a begrudging half-hearted condemnation swiftly followed by the kind of justification that they know the public will swallow, namely that violence is understandable because of Netanyahu, ‘the occupation’ and the settlements. 

We even  had to watch Ben Brown interviewing an individual named Ismail Patel from Leeds ‘Friends of Al Aqsa’ who couldn’t even bring himself to condemn the murders, and Rachel Shabi of the Guardian who attributed all the violence to provocation  by belligerent, far-right Jewish activists who demand the right to pray at ‘Al Aqsa’  and of course the occupation.

Sabri Saidam from Fatah condemned Israel on Al Jazeera and on the BBC, Mustafa Barghouti  was able to make outrageous accusations including blaming Israel for the murder of a Palestinian who was thought to have committed suicide. 

Ever since Rabbi Glick was shot because he had been campaigning for Jews to be allowed to pray at their holiest site, the BBC’s reporting has been wracked with omissions and bias.

The BBC and the British press are not the only ones who use the term ‘right-wing’ pejoratively, and they’re not the only ones who applied it to Rabbi Glick. 

What’s the definition, though? Some use it as shorthand for ‘intolerant racist’.

  

Anyone with the slightest interest in the topic could easily find videos of Rabbi Glick praying, in Arabic, alongside a group of Muslims. 

They appeared to be positively pally with each other. Yes, that was a pun. So he wasn’t a Muslim-hating racist but a friendly, rather gentle, respectful individual who’s ‘right-wingery’ was merely in his religiosity and his desire to pray at the Jews’ holiest site.

Why, one might wonder, should Jews not be allowed to do that? I understand that it was part of a deal by a former Israeli government who handed control of Al Aqsa  back to the PA. It was an   an act of ‘reaching out’, a gesture, which in hindsight looks futile to say the least.

Astonishingly, though the BBC’s initial reporting would describe the Al Aqsa / Temple Mopunt compound as the third holiest in Islam and the holiest in Judaism, no-one batted an eyelid at the obvious imbalance of the situation.   

BBC News has: 

“Mr Abbas's office issued a statement saying: "The presidency condemns the attack on Jewish worshippers in their place of prayer and condemns the killing of civilians no matter who is doing it."

So why didn’t the BBC report the incitement that all the other non-anti-Israel media is full of? Mahmoud Abbas’s blatant incitement, calling for days of rage, asking Palestinians to defend Al Aqsa by whatever means; the handing out of sweets, praising and glorifying Palestinian terrorists who succeeded in murdering Jews and martyred themselves in the process.

At the moment The BBC is appallingly biased. It really is intolerable.