My enemy's enemy. Updated

An intra-familial spat between two cheeks of the same (pro-Zionist) arse is going on right now. (Isn’t there always?)

You can read about it below the line on Harry’s Place, and naturally, it’s also in the Twittersphere.

Roughly, it boils down to slightly differing takes on the riveting topic of antisemitism - Islamophobia.

(Don’t go away!)

How much equivalence is there between the two? Melanie Phillips has written an article titled:

“Don’t fall for bogus claims of ‘Islamophobia” in the Jewish Chronicle. 'The taunt of Islamophobia is used to silence any criticism of the Islamic world, including Islamic extremism.’

“The Palestinians constantly spew out medieval and Nazi-themed hatred of Jews, presenting them as the source of all evil in the world. They claim that the Jews were behind 9/11, that they are current-day Nazis and that they control US foreign policy and the world’s finances and media.

However, she adds, later:


Shockingly, some Jewish leaders have gone along with [this travesty,] even equating “Islamophobia” with antisemitism. 

This displays a quite stunning ignorance and naivety. Of course, true prejudice against Muslims should be condemned, just like prejudice against Hindus, Sikhs or anyone else.

The row surrounding this subject references a piece by David Toube (once-upon-a-time of Harry’s Place / now of Quilliam) which also appears in the Jewish Chronicle. It’s headed: ”Melanie Phillips is wrong to dismiss the concept of Islamophobia”

“It is impossible, practically speaking, to disentangle conspiracism directed at Jews, and that which has Muslims as its target. Call it Islamophobia, call it anti-Muslim bigotry: we should all be concerned at the rise of deadly conspiracy theories. 

Yes, antisemitism is rife within the Arab world and within Muslim communities. No sensible person doubts that. Yes, the term “Islamophobia” is used by Islamists in order to dodge criticism of their theocratic and totalitarian politics, and by others in order to advance the case for a quasi-blasphemy law. For this reason, some argue for a better term than “Islamophobia”: me included.  

But such marginal arguments over terminology must not distract from the concern over a genuine, and deeply worrying phenomenon. If we pretend that, because the term Islamophobia is sometimes misused by rotters, it doesn’t exist at all - as Melanie Phillips appears to have done -  we are indistinguishable from the likes of the Labour Against the Witch-hunt mob, who devote themselves to denying clear cases of antisemitism, and defending obvious antisemites. 

It seems you can criticise Islam, yes, you can mention that antisemitism is rife in the Arab World and within Muslim communities, AND you are allowed to say that the term Islamophobia can be a polite wedge in the door for your dreaded blasphemy law. But you mustn’t pretend that Islamophobia doesn’t exist.

In my humble opinion, Melanie Phillips hasn’t said any such thing - (that Islamophobia doesn’t exist) which almost renders the somewhat peevish accusation aimed at Stephen Pollard, which is that he shouldn’t have published her article, irrelevant. The spat seems like an overblown fuss about nothing.

Nevertheless, the Board of Deputies has weighed in, as well as another voice from Quilliam, Maajid Nawaz. I haven’t studied this piece, but I hear it’s more of a  nuanced affair than an overtly negative critique of Melanie Phillips or the JC.

Another article (again by someone associated with Quilliam) might, in time, put these unnecessary intra-familial spats into perspective. This is in the Christmas edition of the Spectator (£) and it is by Ed Husain.

Islam’s reformation: an Arab-Israeli alliance is taking shape in the Middle East
New maps of the Muslim mind are being drawn and old hatreds are on the run.

Briefly, it seems that the malevolence of Iran’s Mullahs has galvanised its enemies. It may be a case of ‘my enemy’s enemy’, but never mind. If the Arab world drags itself into the of the real world and brings about enlightenment and reform to radical antisemitic Islam, Islamophobia and the left-wing/Islamic antisemitism axis may not figure so consequentially, frighteningly and crucially in the lives of future generations. Our children, grandchildren and so on. (Bar human extinction) 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Baroness Warsi has been speaking to Nick Robinson on the 

Today Programme 2:39 

Nick Robinson introduces an item about the Conservative Party’s long-awaited review into Islamophobia. Now Boris has widened the remit to include ‘all forms of bigotry and prejudice INCLUDING Islamophobia. 

Oh, dear! This sounds ominous. Are they equating it with Corbyn’s tedious and sneaky ‘All forms of racism” addendum? The BBC reports:

“The party said Prof Swaran Singh would look at how it handles complaints and tries to clamp down on discrimination.

Baroness Warsi criticises Professor Singh’s remit and questions his suitability for the role. Oh, dear! Is Prof Singh going to be another Shami? 

“It’s been a long time coming” opines the Baroness, and it must have appropriate scope to cover ‘everything that has happened’. The person who chairs the enquiry must have the confidence of the Muslim community with which Professor Singh’s views are not compatible, she opines. She is unhappy with his background and his views. 

The Runnymede Trust complains that “he’s someone who believes racism itself is a contested term” 

“The man himself doesn’t believe that racism exists.”

Baroness Warsi says she has no problem with the widened scope of the inquiry; her issue is that Professor Singh won’t look at what is actually going on or how it’s been dealt with.

Nick Robinson 

There is a controversy around whether there’s a clear meaning to the word Islamophobia - some say hatred of Muslim people “for who they are and their beliefs”, others are worried that the term can be abused by Islamic extremists to say ‘you may not criticise our practices even if it’s the wearing of the burka or the use of Sharia law to repress women, and they are nervous that it can be ‘over-interpreted’ Do you think that that criticism, that concern has no foundation?

Baroness Warsi counters with the (effectively) equivalent argument in relation to antisemitism and criticism of “the State of Israel”.  

“The term (Islamophobia) has been around for decades - “the Runnymede Trust coined the phrase 20 years ago, and it’s been an accepted part of the ‘racial justice’ phrase” [..] it clearly shows that it does not stop the criticism of Islam; it is in no way directed at theology and practice - it’s about ‘the radicalisation of a community’ irrespective of whether they believe in a religion or not”.

I hate to pour cold water on the veracity or the sincerity of that argument, but I’m pretty sure the recommended working definition of Islamophobia included “perceived Muslimness” and the dictionary definition has: “dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force”. So it kind of undermines the Baroness’s assurance that it is “in no way directed at theology and practice.

If you have been, thanks for listening.

Update:
Brendan O'Neill. The Shaming of Swaran Singh

"Sayeeda Warsi has reached a new low. This former Conservative cabinet minister and self-styled spokesperson for Britain’s Muslim community has instigated a pile-on against Swaran Singh, the professor who has been chosen by the Conservatives to head their inquiry into their internal handling of complaints about discrimination, including Islamophobia. Professor Singh’s crime? He once wrote a nuanced, moving essay for spiked about his own family history in Kashmir which goes against Ms Warsi’s view of the Kashmir conflict. How dare he."

Resignation matter

After a short spell out of the office, I’ve just watched Politics Live. Today’s episode was chaired by Andrew Neil. (supposed to be the BBC’s most effective and impartial 'grandee') The absence of a Conservative spokesperson was noted in the usual way: “we asked, but no-one was available”

“Is this very surprising?” one might ask? “Not really,” one might answer, in the light of the BBC’s well documented political leanings. I haven’t time to link to the numerous examples of ambushes and disproportionate Tory-hostile weighting we've highlighted over the years.

I did wonder, though, whether this unofficial Conservative BBC boycott put Neil in an awkward position. Normally, the BBC might feel obliged to act as devil’s advocate, if only occasionally, to adjust the imbalance. But any sign of ‘defence of a Tory’ from the BBC coming from the likes of Neil would not go down well. Maybe this was the reason that Andrew Neil seemed (to me) to be somewhat ‘present but not involved’. 

Eyebrow

Laura Pidcock, wearing on-trend woolly caterpillar eyebrows, persistently sidestepped questions on Labour’s position on immigration, whereupon Andrew Neil gave a sigh of resignation and changed the subject. 

More representative of the BBC’s wilful and misconceived conflation of antisemitism and Islamophobia was the item about the Conservative councillor who has resigned over Islamophobia. Kyle Pedley happens to be one of those head-upside-down types (bald with bushy beard) the type of appearance which cries out for one particular taboo and apparently 'unaskable' question whose explicit articulation is a matter of resignation.

Baroness Warsi was wheeled in to express her ‘outrage but not surprise’ that councillors interviewing a prospective colleague, a Muslim,  had the temerity and tactlessness to inquire about the extent of his religiosity. Baroness Warsi’s outrage at this intrusive questioning was further triggered at the notion that anyone with doubts about Islam’s compatibility with western democracy is irredeemably racist. Admittedly, the way the questioning in the interview was framed did sound clumsy and crass, but surely under normal circumstances not a resigning matter. 

Mice will play

Craig’s away / mice will play; (you picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille) Oh well; I’m in the driving seat; hang on tight.

The best piece I’ve read so far or at least the piece that most represents my own feelings about the Christchurch atrocity (which it undoubtedly was) is by Laura Perrins.

However, expressions of revulsion at the violence, or sympathy for the victims have been received with extraordinary bitterness if they happen to come from individuals or groups who’ve criticised Islam. That sours things even further. When criticism of Islam is maliciously assumed to equate to actual advocacy of terrorism and slaughter, it starts to look like projection. 

Some of the stuff I’ve read and seen online is utterly appalling, especially on Twitter. I could single out the video of Chelsea Clinton being confronted with the accusation: “Forty-nine people died because of the rhetoric you put out there”. And what was the ‘rhetoric’  that Clinton ‘put out there”? Ilhan Omar’s antisemitism, is all; and this finger-jabbing assault occurred at a vigil for the victims of the Christchurch shootings. (I see they've copyrighted the clip I've linked to. I don't know if one is allowed to just link to it.) The matter is fleshed out further in this BuzzFeed piece, where the perpetrators attempt to rationalise their bullying behaviour. 

Or, I could also mention David Liddington stating (to Nick Robinson on the Today programme) that “Islamophobia is evil” which is an ominous and sinister type of a thing for a politician to say. Violence, murder and terrorism are generally considered 'evil', but “Islamophobia?” 

And one can’t forget being  directed to the nasty, nasty, nasty spat between   Nesrine Malek of the Guardian and Julia Hartley-Brewer and even worse, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi’s spiteful response to Melanie Phillips 

Please Melanie not today
Spare us the faux sympathy
Today I have no patience 4your bull💩

You are part of the problem
You hav fed this hatred & consistently demonised Muslims

Stop tweeting
Go sit in a dark room
Reflect
Ask yourself why u r so consumed with hate
Get help 💕 https://t.co/b9Qk9HwEEs

— Sayeeda Warsi (@SayeedaWarsi) March 15, 2019

and this.

I am a critic of Islam, primarily because of something that most Islamophiles rarely acknowledge, namely the antisemitism that runs through that particular religion, and in particular the religiously-inspired desire to erase Israel from the map. (After all, by rejecting peace with Israel Arabs deny themselves economic and cultural benefits in a way that is entirely self-destructive)

However, I oppose all violence and terrorism unless it’s in self-defence or as a last resort in the face of constant provocation. And just to be clear I unequivocally condemn the atrocity in Christchurch.

Blasphemy Law for Britain

UK blasphemy law proposed by Baroness Warsi. The Baroness is miffed. All the hooha about antisemitism in the Labour Party has left the Muslims feeling sidelined.

In a cunning bid for supremacy in the ongoing struggle for the top slot in the victimhood Olympics, Warsi and her allies have deemed it Islamophobic to express a negative view of Islam.

Last week, on the Today Programme, Mohammed Amin, chair of the Conservative Party’s Muslim forum, spoke to Martha Kearney about institutional Islamophobia in the Conservative Party.

“There are MPs that have made hurtful anti-Muslim comments, the most notorious example recently was Boris Johnson’s article in the Daily Telegraph in August of last year where he called Muslim women who wear the burka - he compared them to letterboxes.”

Let’s just remind ourselves; in that infamous article, was Boris Johnson proposing to ban Muslim women wearing the wretched thing or defending their right to do so?  Yep, the latter; unlike in France, where it’s illegal. 

In the course of the article Boris made a flippant comparison between the burka’s rectangular peep-hole and that of the letterbox - but now that our moral compass lies in the hands of the Twitterati, flippancy is a reckless game. But for goodness sake, what else are rectangular slit-like peep-holes supposed to look like? Think of something rectangular and peep-holey and write in on a postcard.

For this amusing and unarguably reasonable comparison, a full investigation appears to have taken place. By whom? The Tory Party flippancy police?  

Amin went on:

“The party has never published the investigation report. All I’ve seen is what the Telegraph published because Boris Johnson was obviously given a personal copy of the final findings and he chose to selectively have part of those printed in the Telegraph but the party has never published its own full enquiry.”

On Tuesday’s Politics Live James Cleverly made a grovelling apology for a remark made by expelled Tory council candidate Peter Lamb, and assured us that the offending blasphemer has been defenestrated and stripped of all his privileges. Here’s the remark, made, allegedly, on Twitter in 2015. 

“Islam like alcoholism [sic]. The first step to recovery is admit you have a problem.”

The offending comment was about Islam itself. It’s not clear whether the actual offence was caused by likening Islam to alcoholism, or by the implication that there was “a problem” within the religion.

Baroness Warsi herself has accused Theresa May of something very similar about  “acknowledging a problem”, so would not complaining about that be rather hypocritical on her part?

"Criticising the party's handling of Islamophobia claims, the peer said Theresa May "doesn't listen" and she had failed to "acknowledge when there is a problem".

Shouldn’t Warsi apologise, grovelingly, for implying that the Conservative Party should ‘admit’ its problem?

Some bright spark on Twitter complained:

"More BBC coverage about anti-Semitism & Labour. OK but still no coverage of Islamophobia in the Cons Party"

That's Twitter for you. Either way, the antisemitic remarks that have become commonplace amongst Corbyn’s followers are about Jews as a people. Islamophobia and antisemitism can hardly be considered equally deserving of grovelling apologies. Not that Corbyn’s apologies were grovelling. Or even apologies.

Islam is a religious and political ideology, which should not be immune from criticism in a non-Islamic country like Britain, nor should criticism of Islam be classified as racist. 

Douglas Murray The false equivalence between Islamophobia and anti-Semitism (Spectator (£) )

“If I had a pound for every time I have had to make the point I am about to make I could well become as rich as Jeremy Corbyn. But here we go again: anti-Semitism is hatred or suspicion of Jews because they are Jews. It is an irrational prejudice built on centuries of stereotypes and hatreds which culminated in the worst crime in human history, on our continent, in the last century. 

‘Islamophobia’, by contrast, is a term which can claim almost anything that the wielder claims it to mean.  So in many peoples’ eyes, it is ‘Islamophobic’ to ever say anything negative about any aspect of Islam or any action carried out by any Muslim in the name of their faith.  Among much else, those who wield the term seem to hope that they can present the situation of Muslims in modern Europe as so dire that they have pretty much already suffered an equal amount to the Jews of Europe in the twentieth century.  Islamists, their sympathisers and useful idiots appear to be hoping that if they can point to some mean things said on social media then in time they can present this as indistinguishable from the organised murder, in living memory, of six million Jews.”

If it’s forbidden to criticise Islam, that is a de facto blasphemy law is it not? 

False equivalence

"Well, have a sort of almost parallel controversy in the Tory Party as we do in the Labour Party". 

"Fascinating to look at the parallels, but clearly, both parties now facing very, very  significant difficulties and criticism, Labour obviously over antisemitism, but it would now appear an emerging controversy and problem for the Conservative Party too over Islamophobia".

So said the BBC's deputy political editor Norman Smith on the BBC News Channel this lunchtime. 

Here's a comment at 'the other place' about the very same BBC moment. I think it sums it up very, very well:

AsISeeIt

March 5, 2019 at 12:54 pm

“A peculiar kind of parallel”

So says BBC man Norman Smith of the current problems Labour have with Anti-Jewish sentiment among its members and Baroness Warsi’s claims of institutional Islamophobia in the Tory Party.

Of course such apparent mirror images are absolute grist to the mill of supposed balance in BBC reporting. They are therefore quickly and unthinkingly made by the chap passed over by Ms Kuenssberg for the top Corporation political journo job.

Smith, who makes a name for himself popping up outside Westminster with pink ties, extravagant cartoonish reporting and his catchphrase “..but Labour say…”, is delighted to dish it out to the Tories and cover his own rear end from the Lefty Twitter mob who idealise Corbyn and will hear nothing against the Dear Leader.

Despite the BBC’s delighted newfound equivalence the two notions of actual Anti-Semitism and supposed Islamophobia are very very different beasts.

Antisemitism still going strong

With an agenda to promote diversity and social cohesion, the BBC necessarily turns a blind eye to the antisemitism within the Muslim community. 

It would be ridiculous to deny that hatred of Jews is the default position of Muslims, as even Mehdi Hasan, one of the most prominent offenders, has freely, (and rashly) admitted. 

The irony is that many of the high profile Muslims who mask their visceral antisemitism with the societally acceptable ‘intellectual’  anti-Zionism, are also claiming that Muslims are the new Jews. These are the people who complain of Islamophobia and carefully tag “antisemitism and other forms of racism” onto the complaint.

Let me say this. There’s no need to look for the ‘new’ Jews because the antisemites haven’t finished with the ‘old’ Jews yet.

The BBC constantly features Muslim politicians and personalities without seeing any need to challenge their racism or question their default hostility to Israel. The Muslim perspective, with its intrinsic, Koran-rooted Jew-hate, is a given; and it is understood that these are the terms upon which their contribution, whatever it may be, must be taken and accepted.

Look at Andrew Marr’s recent fawning interview with Sayeeda Warsi. 

Perhaps flushed with success due to the positive reception the media is giving to her then 'soon-to-be released' book, she decided it was a good time to  announce that she believes British citizens who fight in the Israeli army should be prosecuted 

Oddly enough, even though the piece is in the Israel-hostile Independent, she gets a drubbing in the below-the-line comments. 

Initially attracted by the headline “The BBC plunges into a period of National mourning” I read this piece by Iain Dale on the Conservative Home website, a site I rarely visit, and spotted an enthusiastic paragraph about Warsi’s book. 

“There were two new books out this week which may be of interest to ConservativeHome readers. Sayeeda Warsi has written a book called The Enemy Within, which is allegedly how some people described her when she was a minister in the Cameron government.

It’s certainly not a kiss-and-tell account of her time in government.  Instead, it’s a thoughtful tome about the place of Muslims in Britain today. It’s incredibly well-researched (and heavily footnoted), and I hope it gets a much wider readership than simply Muslims who are interested to read about the views of Britain’s first Muslim cabinet minister. It deserves to.”

That prompted me to ‘Look inside” on the Amazon page promoting the book. 

I can understand why people were intrigued by its autobiographical beginning. It’s as readable as any other bit of ‘me’ journalism.

However, what stood out for me, in the light of Warsi’s comments about British citizens fighting for the IDF was her own self-confessed ‘dual loyalty’. She and her family feel a strong affinity with Pakistan, and are loath to sever their links with that country.

Openly stating such a thing with pride, almost as a plea for understanding and empathy, seems hypocritical at the least, as it throws her antipathy towards Jews who identify with Israel into sharp focus.

Warsi’s Twitter feed indicates that amongst the most enthusiastic supporters of her book are well known anti-Israel lobbyists. Peter Oborne, Shami Chakrabarti and Sir Alan Duncan as well as assorted Muslims and folk from the Labour Party.

 

Book launch

As for Iain Dale’s comment:  “It’s incredibly well-researched (and heavily footnoted) I refer you to Douglas Murray: (£)

“Perhaps it was after seeing drafts of these pages (the autobiographical section) that the publisher had the idea of persuading its author to broaden her authorial viewpoint. Although this has allowed the book to gain in length, it has not gained in depth. Much of the resulting text reads like poor cut-and-pastes from Wikipedia. […] 

“On to this historical and personal structure are welded some reflections on life as a Muslim in Britain. These portions are the book’s principal points of interest. Most interesting is her account of the Salman Rushdie affair. Like many an observer before her, she sees the Satanic Verses controversy as the turning point for Britain’s Muslim communities. However, Warsi appears to believe that the government was wrong to defend Rushdie and that a prosecution for blasphemy in 1989 could have gone some way to avoiding our present troubles. 

A final joist contrived to hold all this up consists of some policy-wonkery. Three chunks of this have had to be lifted from the main text and dumped as separate appendices at the end. However, the residue lingers within the main body like snail-trails of bureaucratese. It is here that we read of “current failures in policy making”, and while Warsi is careful not to tell any interesting stories it is in these sections that we get the most sideways score-settling and rewriting of events”

For those of you without access to the Times, at the time of writing there are only 5 comments below this review, including a reference to this “Much friendlier review” in the Telegraph, but as I am not a subscriber, I can’t read past the first paragraph, which is about anti-Muslim sentiment. 

Read this open letter from Emanuel Miller on Harry’s Place (Warsi certainly won’t) - and catch the below-the-line comments before they disappear. Miller’s affinity with Israel almost mirrors Warsi’s with Pakistan. Here he eloquently sets out the reasons that inspired him to join a scheme that enables British volunteers to fight with the IDF. 

This is one case which deserves the label “you of all people.”  

Baroness Warsi, that you, of all people should wish to criminalise “foreign ties,” which racists disparagingly term “dual loyalty” is hypocrisy of the purest kind. 

Baroness Warsi on the 'Marr Show'

Andrew Marr's interview with Baroness Warsi this morning found the Conservative peer vigorously batting for British Muslims again. 

She accentuated the positive and eliminated the negative as best she could (which, being Baroness Warsi, wasn't that well to be honest). 

Thus (according to her): the polling evidence shows that British Muslims are more patriotic than the rest of us Brits; let's not forget the far-right; the nutcases are a tiny "isolated" minority, and you'll find them in all communities anyway; there's not much support for ISIS among British Muslims; Muslims are victims of conspiracy theories too; Muslims have been "disengaged with" by the government, etc.

Many of those points could be contested, and Andrew Marr didn't do much in the way of contesting any of them; but, credit where credit's due, his two long questions posed precisely the kind of questions the BBC ought to be asking more often:

Alright, but it seems to me that the real difference is what is extremism inside the Muslim community? I mean we see polls saying a third of young Muslims want to live under sharia law. We see very large numbers of young Muslims regard Jews as legitimate targets and so forth. There are some very … views that a lot of people would regard as extreme and worrying inside the mainstream Muslim community and the question is does British Islam have to respond to the fact that Muslims are living inside a Western liberal state in a more dramatic way? 

But there is a view inside the Muslim community, some quite prominent clerics and so forth who believe that eventually Islam should convert the rest of the UK and Britain should become an Islamic society living under sharia law. Would you regard that as an extremist and worrying view yourself?

and tomorrow

Sarah Montague acts out the news headlines with colourful vocal intonation. It reminds me of a 12 year-old of my acquaintance practicing for a speech and drama recital. ‘You have to put expression in’ she said as she grappled with the challenge of injecting emotion into a poem about an owl.

The way Sarah Montague says ‘Gaza’ is a typical example. She enunciates it as one trying to evoke a little kitten. ‘Aww,  Gaaahza’. On the other hand,  the word ‘Israel’ is expelled with audible spittle-fleck. She must be visualising a rattlesnake.

We’ve already had an avalanche of emoting about Gaza. Now that televised DEC appeals are being prepared, things are set to become more intense. With Hamas very much in charge, how will the aid agencies be able to channel the funds to the intended recipients? That is the question the media should be asking.   

Instead they’re merely asking “Why is this any different from last time, when the BBC’s decision not to show it on the grounds of impartiality caused all that fuss?” 

Rather than asking how we can be sure that aid will not go to bolster Hamas’s arsenal of rockets, they’re much more interested in picking away, retrospectively, at what they see as an injustice, with all the attendant  implications of that. 

Unconditionally supplying aid without requiring any concessions whatsoever from Hamas already smacks of rewarding terror, but definitely give aid. Make sure it goes to the people, not to Hamas. 

Even Israel, we’re told, has admitted it’s a humanitarian crisis. Also, ‘the people at the BBC are different’, which translates as “since last time, cowardly Mark Thompson has slunk off, leaving brave Tony Hall to restore righteous humanitarianism to the BBC.”

What has really prompted this change of heart?   Why, it’s public opinion!

Emboldened by a tacit relaxation of the embargo against antisemitism, which was brought about by the force of public opinion, which in turn was brought about by an intense anti-Israel media campaign, all that half-suppressed antisemitism is unleashed. People now know they can get away with it. 

Twitter has always been a beacon of transparency. But the ”Tweets my own” clause exonerates the BBC from responsibility for the antisemitism therein. Jonathan Dimbleby, one of Jeremy Bowen’s staunchest defenders when he was admonished by the BBC  for bias, has tweeted:

“A fact: Hamas was elected. Two questions: are its ‘militants‘ more aggressive that those they’ve been fighting? If not why use that term?  

Brilliant. First of all as every bloody fule kno, Hamas was not simply elected. It did receive 44.45% of the votes in 2006  after which it threw its political opponents from tall buildings with their hands tied together, imposed strict Islamic laws, started amassing  stocks of armaments from other Islamist regimes, diverted cement and millions of $s of aid money, built a network of underground passages, and never held another election.  Furthermore it refuses to amend its core charter, ever,  which is dedicated to the elimination of Israel. So yes, ‘militants’ is not the best term for them, but the BBC has embargoed the use of the word that fits.

Nick Clegg and the chorus of MPs calling for an arms embargo on Israel ought to think twice.

First: Their reasoning implies that they think Israel attacks Palestinians for sport. 

Second. If they are calling for a boycott, they (we) might have to do without quite a lot of things we didn’t bargain for, not least of which is intelligence, something our security services probably rely on. Starting with Bradford, apparently.

If I were Israel I wouldn’t want to share, would you?

An arms embargo is motivated by pure antisemitism. It’s implying motives and intentions to the Israelis for which there is no evidence. Their reasoning is simply that Israel killed a lot of civilians, “end of”.

Never mind that Hamas could have put an immediate stop to that at any time, but chose not to.

   

It is also immensely hypocritical. During the time Nick Clegg and Baroness Warsi were in government, (you can get this WSJ article via Google) arms sales were approved (a variety of armaments and weapons to Moscow and ‘dual use chemicals’ to Bashir Al Assad’s Syria) without so much as a murmur from the Lib Dems or the good Baroness. 

The public has been manipulated by the BBC almost as much as the BBC has been manipulated by Hamas. It’s mutually assured deception.

A Tweet exposed the on Biased BBC by contributor and Twitter specialist DB, from a BBC foreign correspondent named Matthew Price recommended:

"Israel, as a colony, cannot continue to exist" - interesting article -"

The article he linked to was a piece in the Huffington Post, which virtually calls for Israel to be disbanded. Jews back to where they came from (presumably including those that fled from the Arab countries that threw them out in 1948)  and the right of return granted to the Palestinians and their millions of descendants.

Another tweet from Price links to a bizarre hatefest from Brian Eno, a musician.

“Late tweet of this. Brian Eno on Gaza. Just read it while watching WW1 commemoration from Mons. Poignant.” 

Take a quick look at Matthew Price's Twitter feed.  You can easily tell what sort of impartiality Mr. Price brings to the table.

Who cares? Did I hear you ask? We should.

  

Another  Tweet by Matthew Price on July 31st states:

"End of my era - after 12 years as a BBC Foreign Correspondent I'm off to @BBCr4today to be their Chief Correspondent. Exciting times!"

Yes. very exciting.