Key question

Further to my pieces about  the Christmas festival at St. James’s Church, Piccadilly  (Bethlehem Unwrapped) one of the participants has posted an article on Harry’s Place. 

It’s an edited version of the speech he made in an official debate that was held during the festival.

Professor Alan Johnson, editor of Fathom and senior research fellow at BICOM was the lone pro-Israel voice on a panel of four.The debate was chaired by David Loyn BBC correspondent,.

I may have unfairly criticised Professor Johnson for participating in this pantomime. I assumed his participation implied a degree of complicity on his part, especially since the Israeli Embassy ‘felt unable’ to accept the organisers’ invitation. They probably knew full well that they stood little chance of a fair hearing as the dice was so heavily loaded against such a thing. 

See me? Assuming things again. tut tut.

Alan Johnson must have felt the same, and if so, his experience on Ed Stourton’s Sunday programme will have proved it beyond doubt.  As I said in an earlier post, time constraints and  the format of the interview forced him into a corner. It meant he could state the bare statistics of Israeli lives lost/saved before and after the wall, and little else.

It’s not up to me to judge whether his participation in the event was of benefit. Did his presence lend it legitimacy? Or did the contents of his arguments make a difference? 

His speech was very impressive, and I recommend it. Here’s a flavour to whet your appetite

“Isolated, back-covering, throat-clearing, half sentences about security, disconnected from the entire thrust of the festival’s speakers, topics and the exhibit itself, is not good enough. Especially when even those half sentences hint that it’s only a ‘claim’ of the ‘Israelis’ that the barrier is there to meet security needs. A mere ‘government position’. And when you have cleared your throat in that way, and then mount over a week of activities that takes one side – tear this wall down! – you don’t then get to say to the media ‘we are not taking sides’. There really is a good deal of having your cake and eating it going on.”

What was missing was an account of the panel’s and the audience’s response. That is key. At the time of writing some of the btl commenters at H/P are beginning to ask the same question.

Sunday Unwrapped/Interrupted

As predicted, when the Bethlehem Unwrapped item was featured on Ed Stourton’s Sunday, Radio 4, time ran out just as things were (might have been) hotting up. Having been trailed throughout, the discussion was nipped in the bud before anything significant or new had a chance to get its boots on. 

This sort of thing happens so frequently it’s beginning to look like a conspiracy by some mischievous BBC producers ‘aving a larf.

Lucy Winkett reiterated the same claims she has stated many times in the BU publicity and subsequently in the Guardian, with knobs on.  Alan Johnson, putting the case for Israel, hardly got beyond reciting the figures relating to suicide bombings. He did manage to  mention the recently foiled bus-bombing including the pertinent fact that the plot was hatched by terrorists from Bethlehem.You know, the ordinary people of Bethleham who find themselves in the grievous situation which must be acknowledged. Or should I say ‘unwrapped’.

Alan Johnson

It almost seems that by pitching those two contributors against one another (one defending Israel, and the other allegedly ‘not taking sides’,) the BBC at least, was putting the Rev in the very partisan position (taking sides) which she so unconvincingly denies she’s in. 

If she and her project genuinely weren’t taking an anti-Israel stance, why did the BBC not bother to seek a spokesperson who was taking an anti-Israel stance, in order to flesh out their feeble proposition that ‘This wall ENsLaves lives’ and perhaps have a go at substantiating their cynical claim that it’s merely a land-grab?

Otherwise what was the point of even trying to set out Israel’s justification for the separation wall ?  In other words if Alan Johnson or anyone else actually believed the Bethlehem Unwrapped project was merely intended to be an even-handed anti-wall protest and not a straightforward anti-Israel one, they would have argued differently. For example, to explain why it was misguided rather than even-handed he could have cited the nature of the graffiti, the nature of the speakers and the nature of the project’s collaborators and beneficiaries; factors which amount to an overwhelming body of evidence that the project was indeed another Israel-bashing pantomime in a paper-thin disguise. 

The snippet on Sunday wasn’t worth bothering with at all, since anyone who was interested will have gone far beyond the superficial ‘Lucy Winkett denying the bias versus a Zionist justifying the wall”.  

If they were going to have a debate, why not have a real one? Why not allow time to discuss the whole issue and its ramifications, lock, stock and barrel? 

Why not bring up the issue of the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, which was the topic of an item aired earlier in this very episode of Sunday, or better still amalgamate the two items. Alan Johnson has written articles about this matter, yet he didn’t have time to bring it up at all.  

What about the project’s dodgy association with Interpal and War on Want, which have also been extensively written about online.

Why didn’t we get to hear the testimony of the pro-Israel demonstrators who were tuned away or harassed by monitors when they wished to write their messages? 

Useless stuff. Not worthy.