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Yom HaShoah

I would like to feature some poignant articles marking Yom HaShoah.

What is the difference between Holocaust Memorial Day and Yom Hashoah? While both are days to mourn the loss of those killed in the Holocaust, Yom Hashoah is specifically a day for the Jewish community to reflect on what was done to their people. An important theme is also educating future generations on the millions of people who were murdered by the Nazis, to ensure that today’s children know the magnitude and horror of what happened.

Prince Charles made a remarkably statesman-like speech

Elder of Ziyon posted a thought-provoking and chilling piece:

  

The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland, published December 1942, ignored by the world

The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland was published by the Polish government-in-exile in December 1942 and sent to the foreign ministers of the 26 government signatories of the Declaration by United Nations.

BBC Watch presented a film about Shimon Greenhouse - the resilience of such people completely bowls one over.

(Searched the BBC - "no results")

Dubious statistics

I need to revisit a post I added on Friday. (The one about Jeremy Bowen.)

At the time I was more offended by the BBC’s Middle East editor’s gratuitous reference to Gaza within his ‘uplifting-poem’ slot than by the dubious numbers he quoted.  I joked that the BBC might shove a statistic about “Gaza” on the end every news report.

I knew I’d read contradictory reports elsewhere but in haste, I moved on, keen to highlight Jonathan Marcus’s heavily loaded anti-Israel language and Hamas’s malicious and antisemitic utterances.

BBCWatch clarifies the ventilator situation here. As well as providing some ‘different’ statistics relating to the proportion per population of available ventilators in Gaza, BBC Watch mentions comparable ventilator statistics from closer to home, thereby surely more relevant to UK audiences.  

Why does the BBC let their employees get away with things like that? Oh! I think I might have answered my own question.

Today is your last chance to protect the BBC from attack. Use it https://t.co/ieQmpNa0w8

— Jeremy Bowen (@BowenBBC) April 1, 2020

(Comments could be going better) as they say.

Compendium For The Day

There was an iconic ‘60s TV drama featuring a young Judi Dench, called ‘Talking to a Stranger. 

An early black and white ‘kitchen sink’ production, its USP was that the same event over one weekend was seen, over four episodes,  from each of the four characters’ very different viewpoints. It’s on YouTube, but weirdly, the fourth (rather crucial) episode is missing.

In addition to the novelty of seeing a youthful Judi Dench, the accents (and the smoking) give it a quaint, retro air, but the revival of 60s nostalgia (the Christine Keeler and Jeremy Thorpe docudramas) might inspire someone to resurrect this one, you never know. It seemed ahead of its time in that the writing was perceptive enough to make the viewer identify with (and empathise with) each character, as the narrative evolved.

It reminded me of the BBC’s presentation of anything connected with Israel. We get it from the Palestinian perspective, which we’re encouraged to empathise and identify with, but seventy years on, we’re still waiting for another perspective. 

********

The BBC’s anti-Israel bias isn’t necessarily at the top of every bias-watchers’ priorities.  In the hierarchy of biases, although many people are aware of the anti-Israel one, they see other biases  as more relevant to them personally.  For example, default left-wingery, disproportionate obsession with diversity, LGBT issues, youth and the mindless pursuit of ‘controversy’ for the sake of it. Gotchas. Islamophillia.

I’m not going to cite ‘First they came for the Jews’ here, but I will say that biased (fake) news is ultimately a threat to everyone. As for the BBC’s bias against Israel, it ‘gets away with it’ because they have a habit of shrouding it in a passive-aggressive smokescreen designed to make you believe it’s your own paranoia that makes you ‘take it that way’. Gaslighting, it’s called.

Seek and you will find. The bias is there, ‘hiding in plain sight’, but as with the Easter-egg hunt, you have to assume something exists before making the effort to unearth it. Why else would you bother to go scrabbling about in the undergrowth?

Anyway, the BBC pays just enough lip service to ‘the other side’ to provide the complaints department with a few wisps of straw to clutch at.

*************

The other day virusgate shared the headlines on Radio 4’s early morning news bulletin with a story about another outbreak; hostilities involving the IDF. The bulletin included a brief Beebsplanation of what had happened. “That led to this, and this led to that and then this occurred”.

According to the BBC, 'it all started when a Palestinian militant was shot dead by the IDF - and, to add insult to injury, the Israelis recovered the corpse by means of a mechanical shovel.  This infuriated the Palestinians who set off a barrage of rockets from Gaza after which the IDF retaliated with attacks against Islamic Jihad and targets in Syria.'

More information appeared in the online report where the affectionate term “Palestinian militant” had been clarified to read: “Islamic Jihad member”.  BBCWatch adds more information.

“The hostilities began on Sunday morning, when Israel said it killed an Islamic Jihad member along its border fence with the Gaza Strip.

The inbuilt cynicism within the “Israel said” formulation is covertly passive-aggressive (or is that what we now call microaggression?)  It sows doubts. They only said it; we don’t have to treat it as gospel. 

The alleged provocation (planting a bomb) wasn’t included at all in the original radio bulletin, but it does appear in the online report, along with another “said”,

“Israel’s military said the the [sic] man was attempting to plant an explosive device.”

where the absence (in the bulletin) of even that mealy-mouthed (incompetent “man” didn’t even manage to plant a bomb) hint at the fact that the shooting was provoked, left the impression that Israel shoots innocent Palestinians for nothing. (In Israel they murder people a great deal as the Guardian's Michael White once said)

“A video shared widely on social media showed an Israeli bulldozer scooping up the body of the man, provoking anger among Palestinians.”

The grisly detail was bound to ignite revulsion, so no wonder it was widely shared on the internet; less popular was the video of the men (more than one) actually trying to plant their bomb. (Why did the Israelis want to recover the body? I understand as part of a quid pro quo ‘corpse exchange’. The bodies of two deceased Israelis are being held by Hamas.)

 **********

That example of ‘bias hidden in plain sight’ was nothing out of the ordinary. Just routine for the  BBC. The third iteration of the house-in-a-cage story that Tom Bateman has made a meal (banquet) out of provides another example. BBC Watch also revisited the story.

This story relies on the viewer’s ignorance of relevant local history; of previous court rulings, of the questionable legality of Jordan’s pre-1967 situation, and utter dependence on the edifice built on sand commonly known as ‘international law”. (BBC Watch provides links to the missing information.)

It’s not only the viewer who’s ignorant of the relevant facts. Tom Bateman and the BBC Middle East contingent seem to be equally ignorant and quite content to remain so. 

Tom Bateman’s report in all its incarnations is an example of serious bias, and ‘because it can’, the BBC calls the shots by supplying or withholding facts to suit their brand of pro-Palestinian partisanship. The BBC is wilfully as blind to the religiously-rooted antisemitism, notoriously imbibed ‘from cradle-to-grave’ / with the ‘mother’s milk’ as it is to its own, left-wing anti-Israel bias.   

  

Palestinians who subconsciously realise that they’d really and truly benefit from peace with Israel are obliged to continue their eternal Jihad. Encouraged and egged on by activists in the west, including the BBC who kindle the flames with false hope and unachievable aspirations.

**********

A novel is being serialised on Radio 4. Apeirogon by Colum McCann. Actually, it’s not a novel, but a novelised true story based on the friendship between two bereaved fathers, an Israeli and a Palestinian, both of whose young daughters were  killed by ‘the other side.’ 

I only stumbled upon this broadcast belatedly, at episode 3. In order to get a perspective on it, I scoured the internet to see what various critics had made of the book. The Guardian thought it was terrific, but my doubts about the reviewer’s objectivity were sealed when I spotted the words: “Trigger-happy soldier”. The Times reviewer was less keen on the novel, but the negativity was based on the writing style itself, rather than the thrust of the message.

A synopsis indicated that neither man could claim to be truly representative of their ‘tribe’, although the Palestinian’s uniqueness (he found the Holocaust rather moving) seemed more of a one-off than his friend’s (an Israeli who is ‘against the occupation’ ) i.e., not very unique at all. 

I must emphasise that I have not read the book and have only listened to a small part of the serialisation; I’m not tempted to listen to any more. In this case I’m simply reminded that compassion for victims of the Holocaust isn’t an effective smokescreen.  It can’t hide prejudice and it doesn't prove anything.

Just as I was about to post this compendium-for-the-day, I realised that BBC Watch has tackled this book with more authority than I am able to muster. The reference to the political activist Raja Shehadeh I can help with, though.

I know this is another ‘long read’. Please don’t dismiss it as tl;dr until you’ve given it a chance. I allowed myself to lump together what could have been several separate posts, (hence the *******s) but I chose not to. 

Absence makes the heart grow hostile

“From Our Own Correspondent is a weekly BBC radio programme in which a number of BBC foreign correspondents deliver a sequence of short talks reflecting on current events and topical themes in the countries outside the UK in which they are based.[1] The programme offers the BBC's correspondents around the world a chance to give a personal account of events from the epoch-making to the inconsequential.” (Wikipedia.) 

"Insight, wit and analysis from BBC correspondents, journalists and writers from around the world. (FOOC website.)

"Agenda-driven propaganda laced with ill-informed, prejudiced and unoriginal platitudes.
(Is the BBC Biased?)

D’you think the BBC can claim that this series is protected by the FOI exclusion clause “for the purpose of journalism, art and stuff like that”? If so, we can never accuse it of bias because they’ll insist it’s just someone’s personal opinion. One man’s feelings are another man’s facts; something like that.

"President Trump’s plan for peace in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories would allow Israel to apply its sovereignty to all the Jewish settlements as well as swathes of strategic land in the West Bank. The Palestinian leadership has rejected the plan outright saying it would create a "Swiss cheese state". Our Middle East Correspondent Tom Bateman spent time on two sides of a fence that separates an Israeli settlement from a Palestinian family with its own checkpoint. (FOOC website)

 Kate Adie’s intro was roughly the same as the above blurb: A Family Fenced in.

Tom Bateman’s insight, wit and analysis were absent from his contribution to today’s FOOC.  We’ve seen it all before and here it is again. The BBC can’t get enough of Bateman’s personal account of Israel’s malevolence and the Palestinians’ 'love-heart-strewn’ daily suffering. It has already been featured on the BBC, and BBC Watch covered it earlier, supplying the historical information that would have put the whole thing into its proper perspective. The BBC’s deliberate failure to include in Bateman's story essential facts surrounding this unusual situation effectively amounts to gross misinformation.

Here’s the Youtube version.  As BBC Watch writes, the comments below this video illustrate the effect this kind of thing has on public opinion. No wonder antisemitism is on the up and up.

The BBC’s motive for repeatedly airing this kind of thing? You tell me.

Pink shirt alert

I wrote about Jeremy Bowen’s embryonic “I didn’t develop the full condition” PTSD.  “Things in life leave a mark”, he ruminated.  Things certainly left their mark on Jeremy Bowen. And the BBC still saw fit to appoint him as their chief Middle East editor.

Over on BBC Watch Hadar Sela clarifies the situation further.  Anyone who believes Jeremy Bowen is a suitable character to represent the contractually impartial BBC where Israel is concerned should consider the context of the situation that caused his ‘symptomless’ condition and led him to interpret it as ‘Israelis trying to kill him’.

“At no point during that four minute and 22 second-long item were listeners provided with any explanation of the context to that event and Bowen referred to “the Israelis” as a group as having “tried to kill me” without clarifying the actual situation.  

As we have documented here in the past, early on the morning of Tuesday May 23rd 2000 – the day before the completion of the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon – a tank crew stationed on the border fence near Kibbutz Menara received an intelligence alert concerning the likelihood of terrorists firing anti-tank missiles at IDF tanks and armoured vehicles. Later in the day, the crew spotted a Lebanese vehicle transporting men in civilian clothing and suspected that these were Hizballah terrorists carrying equipment for firing an anti-tank missile. The tank crew was given permission to fire at the suspected terrorists.  

Later it emerged that the men were actually a BBC film crew headed by Jeremy Bowen and that driver Abed Takkoush had been killed. The IDF investigated the incident and issued an apology. Understandably, that tragic incident appears to be still very much at the forefront of Bowen’s mind, although he does not appear to accept that it was possible to mistake three men travelling in a war zone in a car with Lebanese plates, and carrying camera equipment, for Hizballah terrorists dressed – as was very often the case – in civilian clothing. 

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.

Any ideas?

BBCWatch has deconstructed this BBC report on incidents in Syria and Lebanon, but I spotted this picture after trawling through the IDF Twitter timeline,

Israel Launched Failed Overnight Drone Attack On Hezbollah In South Beirut

and I did wonder why the BBC illustrated the same scene (a "Hezbollah media office") with the inclusion of a child.

One Israeli drone crashed into a Beirut building that houses a Hezbollah media office

Any ideas?

Update:

Drone that attacked Hezbollah in Beirut does not seem to be Israeli - but whose was it?

Only a factual Tweet

I know, I know. Some topics (and people) are a real turn-off. For example, I saw Barry Gardiner on the Sophy Ridge programme for a nano-second and had to turn the TV off. 

Actually, I was grateful for the impetus, as I usually waste too much time on a Sunday morning watching politics when I should be out in the open air (as my mother used to say) enjoying nature and stuff. 

My reaction to Barry Gardener is a lot nearer to an actual phobia than most of the other so-called phobias bandied about these days. So, doctor, I’m pretty sure I have Barry Gardinerophobia, and please don’t suggest the therapy that acclimatises you to your irrational fear because I. Ain’t. Doing it.

The thing about turn-offs, though, is that there is a difference between heartfelt, near physical revulsion and the plain and simple “Oh, no, not another one’, Brenda-from-Bristol type aversion, a mixture of boredom, tedium and ennui. So I hope it’s the latter that is about to affect you now as I’m about to revert to type and re-mount my one-trick pony. Look away now if you’re experiencing Brenda-like feelings of exasperation.

Yep, we all know the BBC is institutionally pro EU and it’s having a hard time trying to look impartial in accord with its charter and its editorial standards.  I think that battle has been lost. 

However, the other institutional ‘pro’ that the BBC is having better luck in hiding or concealing is the pro-Palestinian prism through which all its Middle East reporting is filtered, with the possible exception of some of its more obscure science-related items. But they’re rare. The BBC has been able to get away with it by relying on the audience’s lack of historical literacy; in fact, it helpfully supplies us with some historical inaccuracies itself, because it can.

Why though? What is it about the BBC that compels it, as an institution, to embrace the profoundly unChristian basics within Islam while rejecting Christian principles themselves? Love thy neighbour? Do as you would be done by? 

BBC Watch and Jewish News both address the reporting of the recent death of the 17-year-old Israeli girl Rina Shnerb who was killed by a bomb. Her brother Dvir and father Eitan were seriously injured as well. 

The BBC reported it in such a way that the reader would be reminded that there was some ‘justification’ for this bomb. Simple as that.

"Israeli teenage girl killed in bomb attack near Jewish settlement in the occupied West bank” Yet when Jewish News reported: 

“The Board of Deputies has demanded an apology over a BBC World tweet about the death of an Israeli teenager killed in a bomb blast.”

  A spokesperson for the BBC said

 “this is a factual tweet which includes the location of the girl’s killing”.

A few “innocent face” comments below the line illustrate the difficulty of divining bias without a rod.

“Where is the tweet factually incorrect? asks someone.

'The occupied West Bank' explains where it is.” says another.

Hmm, but there are other ways of describing the location of this incident. For example: 

“Dolev, which is about 15km (9 miles) north of Jerusalem and near the Palestinian village of Deir Ibzi” 

(From within the body of the BBC’s own report.)

Describing the location as “near Jewish settlement in the occupied West bank” might well serve to quickly identify it in the mind of an average reader unfamiliar with the geography, but it also sends a signal which all but diffuses the outrage with which most people would react to the willful killing of any 17-year-old girl. It emotes: The ‘militant’ Palestinians who placed this bomb were ‘driven to it’.

The BBC’s report included

”the leader of the militant Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas praised the attack but did not say that it was behind it. 

without specifically mentioning that:

Haniyeh called the murder of a seventeen-year-old girl “a heroic attack”.

or that Hamas in a statement said the bomb attack was “proof of the vitality and bravery of the Palestinian people, and of the fact that it will not surrender to the crimes and terrorism of the occupation.

I can see that identifying a location in a politicised manner might be defended with the claim that  this bomb, too, could be interpreted as a ‘political act’, but once you go down that path you’re halfway to confusing terrorism (the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims) with political militancy (the use of confrontational or violent methods in support of a political or social cause)  Oh wait, you’re already there. 

With rare exceptions, the BBC will only use the term ‘terrorism’ in reported speech if and when it occurs, but something they will include each and every time they have to report another act of ‘militancy’ is their ever-present ‘mantra’ on ‘settlements’ and ‘International law'. See BBC Watch for more on that. 

However, when the BBC begrudgingly states, as it’s obliged to do, that “Israel disputes this” it rarely (never) sets out the legal argument behind Israel’s ‘dispute’. Hiding the complex legalities behind a trite, subjective mantra deliberately shelters ‘the case for Israel’  from objective scrutiny, which reveals the BBC’s not so hidden agenda.

If you have been, thanks for listening.


Update

You might assume that the BBC sources its news from the Palestinian Authority. See PMW (Palestinian Media Watch )


 Official PA TV News, Aug. 23, 2019

"The occupation forces closed the main roads to the villages west of Ramallah and increased their military presence at the entrances to the Ramallah and El-Bireh district. This took place on the pretext of the killing of a female Israeli soldier and the wounding of others near the settlement named Dolev, which is located on the [Arab] residents' lands of west of Ramallah.”

Palestinian Media Watch:

"Needless to say, 17-year-old Rina was not a soldier and no Israeli authority ever claimed she was a soldier.

WAFA, English edition, Official PA news agency, Aug. 24, 2019

"The explosion near Ramallah that killed an Israeli settler and injured two others as well as revenge acts by the settlers against the civilian Palestinian population in the occupied territory were highlighted on the front page of the three Palestinian Arabic dailies today.”

Palestinian Media Watch Aug 25th 2019

"If the terrorist/s who murdered Rina are caught alive, the PA will pay them a salary in prison and even after their release. If they are killed during an attempt to arrest them, the PA will pay their families a monthly allowance for the rest of their lives. The PA will pay these salaries/allowances simply because the terrorist/s carried out a terrorist attack, and regardless of whether the terrorists belong to Fatah, Hamas, or acted alone. 

The giant rusty key and other stories

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. I haven’t written about it for two main reasons.

One, it would have made me look meaner and even more of a fanatical polemicist that I already do, and two, the subject is more nuanced, subjective and infused with a good deal more shades of grey than the traditional fifty. It’s also firmly embedded in emotional and a-historical folk-weavery than I can ever presume to tackle alone.

This is not the first time that we’ve featured this author here. The ITBB search engine reveals that he is no stranger to a particular brand of sentimental Palestinian folklore; saccharine, emotional heartstring-tugging - the Disneyfied narrative of the Palestinian Nakba and the complete absence within that narrative of accountability for their own ‘plight’.

Realistically I have to accept that something of this is entrenched in the national psyche, but what I find incomprehensible is the way that swathes of intelligent people have swallowed it whole - hook, line and giant rusty key.

‘It’s not just me saying it’ as every political advocate currently says to bolster whatever case they’re advocating. BBC Watch addresses the matter with the gusto and rigour that I cannot adequately muster. Shehadeh’s memoir popped up on Radio 4’s Sunday Morning with…(Scottish edition)

“Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson live in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. They’re both writers and campaign for Palestinian civil and political rights. They talk to Sally about their writing and their life together.” 

 Shehadeh’s allegations of ‘land grabs’ and “building more and more settlements” – along with a subsequent claim that Israel makes “attempts at making [Palestinian] people leave” – are patently false. 

Magnusson however again failed to make any effort whatsoever to challenge those blatant falsehoods and closed the item shortly afterwards with yet another misleading reference to “fifty years of occupation”. 

In short, BBC Radio Scotland audiences heard twelve minutes of entirely predictable yet totally unquestioned political propaganda which not only failed to “help people understand” the subject matter but actively hindered that BBC obligation.

It may be the Scottish version, but it’s still the BBC. So what else can we expect?

This has something to do with the way the BBC has started to use ‘inclusive’ language to make  Islamic culture as cosy and familiar as our own. The throw-away term “Friday Prayers’ is now used as fondly as “Sunday Lunch” and the term ‘Eid’ has become Eid al-Adha’ and we are confronted by BBC anchors like Jane Hill using the full-on Arabic pronunciation. Mona Siddiqui’s TFTD hammered the nail home firmly on this morning's Today Programme. (1:46:53)

But worse. Perhaps in the same spirit in which the Spectator brought in Julie Bindel to counteract Melanie McDonagh’s critique of Lauren Laverne’s approach to Desert Island Discs  - presumably “for balance” - our last remaining refuge from creeping left-wing journalism has published a glowing review of Shehadeh’s latest work of fiction.

Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation

Raja Shehadeh
Claire Kohda Hazelton

On a rainy day in 1955, four-year-old Raja Shehadeh left school without putting his coat on. ‘I will soon be home, I thought, trailing the coat as it became heavy with rain.’ The walk was longer than he expected, or the rain heavier. He arrived back soaked through and fell ill with pneumonia. The journey home, without protection from the weather, could have killed him.

Should have put his coat on then?

Throughout his life in Palestine, Shehadeh has been buffeted by events that have seemed as uncontrollable as the weather. He was a very young child when his family were forced out of Jaffa by Israeli soldiers and moved to Ramallah, and 16 during the Israeli invasion of the city. 

For nearly 30 years, Shehadeh — a lawyer, activist and writer — has taken a walk every year on the anniversary of the 1967 war and occupation of Palestine by Israel. The year of this book is 2017 —the 50th anniversary — and Shehadeh is 66, plagued by a recurring dream in which he is lost and can’t find his home.

Has he forgotten who started the ’67 war “and occupation of Palestine”? which by the way, was an intended war of annihilation.

Thankfully the below the line comments restore a modicum of common sense.

avi15 • 4 days ago • edited
This article is the usual drivel. It gives the same misleading impression as the eastern European lady in my local high street, who sits on the pavement looking all pathetic and begging; and then, when she thinks no-one is looking she nips into the post office to send all her winnings back to eastern Europe and at the end of the day, she jumps into a not that old Toyota Auris parked round the corner. 

Do we really have to fall for all of this guff? There are a million reasons why houses are demolished: normally, it has to do with not bothering with things like planning permission. If the Palestinian leaders wanted to make a deal and sort out their dispute with Israel, they easily could - they just don't want to. They're clearly making far too much money begging, looking all pathetic and hoping that one day the world will let them grab all of Israel and kill or expel all of its Jewish inhabitants. 

Don't fall for this rubbish - which only serves to perpetuate the rule of fascist, anti-Semitic criminals - which is what both Palestinian regimes currently amount to. 

And by the way, no-one "stole the Palestinians' land'. That's another lie they repeat to anyone gullible enough to listen, but which is used to justify any and every crime of violence, however heinous, that they commit. 

This whole topic is one big confidence trick. A scam, really. It’s like that ad for equity release that features the most annoying elderly couple in the whole wide world saying “this nice young man has offered us twopence ha’penny for our house, so we took it straight away.”

Or, the most mind-boggling example of human gullibility on the planet in which the police took the testimony of that palpably raving psychopath and transparently delusional man Beech and used it to vilify and destroy people who found themselves defenceless and broken in the most Kafkaesque way imaginable.

Antisemitism on campus

Antisemitism on campus is rife. It turns out that student unions are charities so the Charity Commission is looking into the matter. 

A report about this only went out on the Victoria Derbyshire programme this morning and BBCWatch has covered it already. (!)

I came in halfway through Jon Ironmonger’s report. I missed the intro as well as the footage from the incident at King’s College London earlier this year. But I’ve caught up with it since.

As BBC Watch points out, Jon Ironmonger’s narration includes:

“The Jewish state of Israel is deeply controversial; accused of wide-ranging human rights abuses against the Palestinian people and provoking anger around the world.”

That’s all very well, apart from the fact that the ‘controversy’ and the ‘accusations’ come from the anti-Israel lobby. It’s a bit like me citing one of my own articles to prove that something I said has also been said by ….’me’.

His explanation of the “global BDS movement” contained this little gem:

“BDS pressures Israel to end the occupation of Arab lands by calling for the boycott of Israeli companies and institutions.”

That is so loaded a statement that it’s a wonder it was able to float.  It both reveals and conceals the aim of the BDS movement all in one go. 

Palestinian activists take care to disguise their wish to dismantle Israel and to replace it with yet another Islamic state. But the 5 emboldened words accidentally reveal the truth; they want to end “the occupation”  but as they consider Israel itself to be ‘occupying Arab lands’ (What are Arab lands?) their true aim is more than clear. 

The problem with superficial reports like this is that they take place against a background of disinformation. BDSers justify their anger at “what Israel is doing to the Palestinians” by citing myths and memes based on falsehoods, anti-Israel propaganda and sheer ignorance of history. I doubt that Jon Ironmonger is any better informed than the anti-Israel activists he’s talking to.

We are told that the NUS did not want to comment, and there was no mention of Malia “Zio” Bouattia’s recent defeat in a new election for the NUS presidency. 

At the same time as the enquiry into antisemitism on campus is taking place, a letter signed by a huge number of anti-Israel activists is doing the rounds. The signatories are ‘artists, musicians and people in the arts’, all of whom want to stop Radiohead performing in Israel.

Some of the signatories are prominent figures and well known Israel-haters such as Roger Waters and Ken Loach; others are more obscure.  The most interesting name on the list is is that of Peter Kosminsky, the Bafta winning director of Wolf Hall. 

 In 2011, when “The Promise”, Kosminsky’s Channel 4 drama series was aired Channel 4 gave it the full treatment. 

The publicity surrounding the production promoted it as a drama-cum-history lesson. Channel 4’s International Editor Lindsay Hilsum's Middle East ‘expertise’ was brought in to enlighten viewers who wanted to know what it was all about and there was a ‘livechat’ in the form of a Q & A session, where curious viewers were ‘educated’ by Kosminsky himself. He claimed to be both an impartial observer and a great authority on the conflict.

After a respectable period of silence the mask slipped and Kosminsky started appearing on the panels of virulent anti-Israel /  pro-Palestinian events alongside several other well-known haters.

It’s hard to see how this state of affairs can ever change while antisemitic / anti-Israel myths and memes continue to thrive and the BBC and Channel 4 does nothing to counteract them.

Interviewing as an art form

I’m not sure if the BBC deliberately assigns anything to do with the Middle East to Mishal Husain, and if so, whether it’s despite or because of her infamous “Homemade contraptions / How many Israelis” interview. 

(I know Sarah Montague sometimes tackles this topic too.) 

How many Israelis have died?

It’s obvious that very few people in the mainstream media are experts on the Israeli / Palestinian situation, but it’s quite clear that they take a view on it nevertheless. 

“I don’t know much about art but I know what I like” is a much mocked sentiment made about the naive by the intelligentsia, but it sums up the media’s approach to the Israeli /Palestinian conflict

The folks in the BBC’s complaints department aren’t the sharpest tools, but if they have one thing going for them, it’s self-confidence and the benefit of standard customer-services training. That’s two things, sorry. 

They’ve undoubtedly learned to express concern for the complainant’s feelings and regret for any offence caused before launching off on a painstaking explanation as to why the complaint was misguided. 

We wrote about the interview in question here, but I hid it in one of my ‘multiple topic’ contributions, perhaps to the detriment of its due exposure.

Let’s remind ourselves.

“Although the BBC mentioned it on their website, (in the above running order) Mishal Husain didn’t make much of the fact that Zoabi is an Israeli Arab and an MP in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. She certainly didn’t tell listeners that Zoabi is opposed to the ‘two state solution’ (she wants a one-state (Arab) solution) and that she opposes Israel being recognised as a Jewish state. Despite the fact that as an MP she is hugely benefiting from its democratic system, she is ideologically opposed to Israel’s existence. How mad is that?[…]Haneen Zoabi was given plenty of space to express herself without let or hindrance. “What will happen if Trump moves the embassy to Jerusalem? Mishal asked hopefully. “Will it be a red line?” 

Mishal did interrupt a particularly long rant to ask Zoabi what she thought about settlements being “not the only issue”,  and citied other issues, which (she said)  ‘Israel sees’ as additional ‘obstacles to peace’, namely: The status of Jerusalem, refugees, Israel’s security.  

Issues effortlessly glossed over by Mishal, but hugely complex, contentious and nearly always misrepresented. 

“650 units is ‘a crime against humanity’ “ said Zoabi, “It’s a war crime”.
"If you want peace, you want justice, and you must make Israel accountable to its crime” she opined. Another lengthy rant unchallenged, including the customary Palestinian rewriting of history and imaginative interpretations of various wrongdoings of the state that so generously provides her with the opportunity to spread anti-Israel propaganda to those that hunger for such a thing, Palestinian intransigence, rejectionism, incitement, violence and visceral hatred of Jews didn't get a look-in.

BBCWatch also wrote about it here 

“In short, Haneen Zoabi was given a completely unfettered platform from which to spout her predictably one-sided propaganda (in which Palestinians are exclusively portrayed as victims and Arab belligerence and Palestinian terrorism are erased) in an obviously more sympathetic environment than was evident in the previous day’s interview. 

The fact that Mishal Husain failed to challenge even one of Zoabi’s many falsehoods means that the BBC cannot possibly claim that this interview was intended to meet its public purpose remit of enhancing “UK audiences’ awareness and understanding of international issues”.”

BBCWatch submitted a complaint about the interview, specifically stating that a number of Zoabi’s falsehoods remained unchallenged.

The BBC’s reply is reproduced here.

After the obligatory apology for the delay in ‘coming back’ and ‘understanding’ your hurt feelings, they proceed with the business of dismissing the complaint. 

• First, a reminder of the aim of the interview. It was primarily about Donald Trump (thus sidelining any inaccuracies and falsehoods to a position of secondary importance, or as incidental.)
• “The interviewee spoke quickly and passionately”  “In a fast-flowing interview situation, it may not always be possible for an interviewer to cross-check every statement and claim that is made by a guest….”  Interrupting passionate and fast-speaking Israeli spokespersons never seems to present much of a problem though.
• “A contrasting view,” should the listeners be in need of one, was provided the previous day, so “Listeners can judge for the different arguments for themselves.”

It wasn’t a case of different arguments though, was it? It was a stream of falsehoods, which the BBC did not challenge or rectify.  
“Interviewing is an art form rather than a simple science,” is a patronising defence for the artists of the BBC complaints department to bring in, when surely facts are considerably more of a science than an art form. 

More on Orla

There's a complementary post to Sue's Tired of waiting over at BBC Watch:

Orla Guerin tells BBC audiences Al Aqsa Mosque ‘sacred to Jews’

Orla's style of reporting is described as "overly dramatic and exaggerated" - a succinct way of putting it. 

Indeed Hadar's style couldn't be more different to Orla's. In this piece, for example, she patiently points out a number of inaccuracies (whether intended or otherwise) in Orla Guerin's latest reporting, specifically her 9th October TV report. 

Here's one passage from Orla's piece:

Israeli security officials are playing that down but the police are on alert, especially in Jerusalem’s Old City. It’s home to the Al Aqsa Mosque; sacred to Muslims and Jews. Tensions over the shrine have fuelled the latest unrest and unleashed a new danger for Israelis: stabbing attacks.” [emphasis added]

...Hadar notes two errors on the BBC reporter's part here: Firstly, the Al Aqsa Mosque is not sacred to Jews. That's the Temple Mount (which isn't the same thing at all); and, secondly, stabbing attacks are far from new (there were sixteen in the first eight months of 2015 alone). 

BBC Watch goes on to list a number of important omissions too, compounding such inaccuracies. 

It's well worth a read - and, no doubt, complaints will be going in on the strength of it.

The one small crumb of consolation - so far - is that Fergal Keane hasn't flown in yet.

A few of their favourite things

In view of the recent cluster of reports from Gaza commemorating the six-month ‘anniversary’ of the end of the last “Gaza war”,  it’s “surprising” that the BBC hasn’t shown any interest in a piece in Ha’aretz (their favourite Israeli news source) about another favourite of theirs, the EU. 

It’s significant in that it’s almost unique, therefore, one would assume, newsworthy.

Envoys from the five largest European Union members - Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain have praised Israel and criticised the Palestinian authority.

Yes. Praised Israel and criticized the Palestinian Authority.

I saw this yesterday on Elder of Ziyon  but I couldn’t blog.  I see it’s on BBC Watch now, so go there now and read it. I don’t think you’ll find it on the BBC. 

Funny. You’d think the BBC would be interested in reporting an article in their favourite news source (Ha’aretz) concerning their favourite union (European) about their favourite topic (Gaza.) 

Getting it wrong

“We get complaints from both sides. Ergo we must be getting it about right.” says the BBC.

Well. It looks as though they certainly do get complaints from both sides, but that’s not quite the same as getting it about right.

This pdf sets out decisions made by the BBC Editorial Standards Committee. A complaint from Hilary Aked about Jonathan Sacerdoti being “misleadingly introduced” as  “director of the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy,” “in a way that “gave no clue as to his orientation”  was partially upheld because it “may indeed have contributed to an impression of impartiality”  The appeal upheld one out of two points raised.

According to the website 'Electronic Intifada' Hilary Aked is a “London-based freelance writer and researcher, an NCTJ-qualified journalist and a PhD student at the University of Bath researching the pro-Israel lobby in the UK. She has worked in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and also writes for Spinwatch, Ceasefire and Huffington Post.” Does that give a clue as to her orientation? or may it contribute to an impression of impartiality?  Fee fi fo fum; I sense irony. 

Nestling almost side by side with this spurious objection to Jonathan Sacerdoti’s intro (in the light of the countless times fanatical anti-Israel campaigners such as Abdel Bari Atwan are introduced as “Middle East experts”) is a complaint from the other side of the divide. It concerns a report we’ve mentioned here before,   when Claudia Hammond introduced a report on BBC World service about Gaza on a programme Health Check that included several inaccuracies and misleading statements.

The initial adjudication resulted in a mixed bag of “partially uphelds”  “not uphelds” “uphelds”  and a final “upheld with regard to impartiality as a whole”

On appeal - (page  15) it was found that the appropriate amendments to the article had not been made and that the website continues to give a misleading impression.

BBCWatch sets out the situation more fully here.

The anti-Israel lobby’s hair-trigger reaction when anything less than defamatory about Israel slips through the net is beginning to look desperate. I don’t know, but I think things are beginning to stack up against them. Like the behaviour of Hamas, for example. The Times has:(£)

Apollo

“The discovery of an ancient bronze statue of Apollo should be a cause for celebration among archaeologists and represent a windfall for its finder worth millions of pounds, but there is just one snag: the sculpture, one of a handful to survive from antiquity, cannot be sold, inspected or even exhibited, because it was found in the Gaza Strip
Experts who have seen the 6ft statue called it a “major discovery”and believe that it was forged at some point between the 5th century BC and the second century AD. Unusually the feet are intact and it has retained one of its eyes.It could fetch up to £17 million if sold at auction but the political situation is so fraught it may never be allowed to leave Gaza. It is also unlikely to go on display because Hamas, the political authority holding it regards the anatomically correct nude as both obscene and an idol.

[…] Among the crowd that quickly gathered were members of the al-Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas who took it away. They were obliged to give it up when the Hamas police force arrived, leading to an armed stand-off that only ended when police officers came to negotiate. The statue is being held in an office run by the Hamas interior ministry at a secret location in Gaza.

[…] Thomas Bauzou, a professor of ancient history at the University of Orleans, France believes that the statue is a major discovery but doubts that it was found in the sea. “The story has been fabricated to hide the real place where the statue was found so they can continue digging,” he said.

[…] He [Muhhamad Ismael Khillah] also suggested that it could be displayed in Gaza. “We will have to cover it in certain places” he said.

Ha ha. You’d have to have a heart of stone etc etc.

You’d think stories like this  and this would have a cumulative effect. And that the outrageous death threats over those cartoons would add up to something.  Someone will put two and two together one of these days. Surely?

Unreasonable fruitcakes

Steve Evans in Warnemunde. Misunderstood?

Since writing the blog post ‘Unreasonable fanatics” the comment count on the BBC Watch/ Steve Evans thread has leapt into the stratosphere. Somewhere amongst them, someone wondered if, perhaps,  removing the commas altogether would help to clarify the meaning. See if you think it does.

(I’m sounding like Craig now)

It was a time when Jews who displeased the Nazis risked their lives.

Well, this (non) punctuation looks as though it means the Jews were okay in 1935 Germany, living the life of riley - but if they happened to ‘displease’ the Nazis by doing something.....Jewy - they’d better watch out.

This seems to support BBCWatch’s original point, because we now know that by 1935 Jews displeased the Nazis merely by ‘being’ Jews. There was nothing a Jew could do to ‘please’ the Nazis. Jews had no alternative, but to ‘displease’ Nazis. 

Perhaps at that time they did not yet risk their lives by just being Jews, only by disobeying requests by Nazis. Now, do the commas need to come back again? 

Two little commas sitting on  a wall one named Peter the other named Oborne. 

  

If only BBC Berlin correspondent Steve Evans had omitted the ‘who’ and added an ‘and’. If he’d said:

It was a time when Jews displeased the Nazis, and risked their lives (if they refused to sell their treasures to the Nazis) then he might have avoided all this fuss.

However, and it’s another however. At the beginning of the piece I’ve spotted something else that ‘displeased’ me. Am I imagining that there’s a slightly ominous undercurrent in that reference to ‘four years later’  - so, these Jews only owned the treasures for four years, as opposed to the Duke of Brunswick-Luneberg’s family’s ‘nearly three centuries’.  

Do I detect a sense of - what’s the term for lack of entitlement? Are we to suspect that the Duke of Brunswick-Luneberg was a more deserving owner than the ‘here today gone tomorrow ‘Jews?  I only say this because I’m spotting unfortunate things all over the place now.  

There’s a certain meme amongst antisemites which supposes that Jews are characteristically wealthy, and, in the manner of, say, large conglomerates that might come along and force smaller companies out of business with aggressive takeover bids, ‘wealthy Jews’ swan in and make purchases from poverty-stricken vendors in an exploitative, ruthless and greedy manner. This ‘trope’ is like the Jewish Lobby, which, in reality, is dwarfed by the Lobbying power of the opposition.  Jack Straw carries it further.

That’s my, perhaps over elaborate, explanation of why I found that bit disturbing.

What’s this? “a forced sale say their descendants today.” 

Say their descendants today? Well now, well now. In the words of renowned, strangulatedly posh art critic Brian Sewell, “The greedy Jews”.........would say that wouldn’t they?   Do they really deserve these German treasures?

Reports that include the qualifier “Say” as the BBC notoriously does with its   “Israel says” always cast doubt on what has been said, as if they only say it in the Mandy Rice-Davies kinda way.

So I’m part Tonge in cheek / part serious.

In particular what I take home from this is the difficulty of communicating in print. Clarity in print is the hardest thing to achieve. We all struggle with it.

I don’t think Steve Evans sets out to be a Jew-basher, but in true BBC fashion he feels sorrow for Hitler’s six million victims of the past, but identifies with the “pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel narrative” of the present. Some people reduce it to the following simplification: “The BBC only like dead Jews. Jews who strive to survive, not so much.”

Why might I think this? (Apart from his disdainful attitude towards BBC Watch)

Since Twitter kept coming up in the conversation I had a look at his twitter profile. A link to a glowing review of a Noam Chomsky lecture - remember Jane Bradley ?- augured badly.

And he’s a fan of Peter Oborne. The Peter Oborne with the  pathological fear of the Jewish Lobby, who alleges that Israel is the tail wagging the American dog. 

That’s not enough to make him an antisemite, is it? But, still, the BBC is full of Jane Bradleys, and people who can’t put together a coherent sentence (think complaints department) so goodness only knows what they know of Israel or what they really think about over-sensitive Jews.

Last, and arguably least, Steve Evans used the word ‘fruitcake‘ in one of his comments.  How significant is that?