Chinese whispers

Some people - pacifists I guess - simply detest the military. When the daughter of some (former) friends learned that her husband-to-be had decided to join the army, she immediately broke off the engagement. Her parents recounted this sorry tale with pride, assuming we’d agree that this was the right, noble and only thing to do. Equally alarming was their assumption that the horror of being associated with the armed services was mutual. 

Ban the bomb!

Just as Bruce Kent and the CND movement still have their followers (perhaps not quite as out of touch as those poor chaps) others admire wise and wonderful military folk like Col Richard Kemp.  

I had toyed with the idea of writing about the BBC’s relationship with China - did you realise there was one?  - however, the subject seemed too complex and too much of a challenge. So now I can simply recommend the piece by Col Kemp, written for the Gatestone Institute. 

Colonel Richard Kemp CBE 

Do read it all, but the following extract should give you the flavour.  

“Chinese investment penetrates every corner of the United Kingdom, giving unparalleled influence here as in so many countries. Plans to allow Chinese investment and technology into our nuclear power programme and 5G network will build vulnerability into our critical national infrastructure of an order not seen in any other Western nation. Even the BBC, which receives funding from China, has produced and promoted a propaganda video supporting Huawei, to the alarm of some of its own journalists. All this despite MI5's repeated warnings that Chinese intelligence continues to work against British interests at home and abroad.”

"So why misrepresent?"

Col. Kemp again:

Only yesterday morning BBC & other UK media were salivating over fiction that Soleimani’s killing had brought national unity in Iran. Along with many others I told them the reality in this article. Their journalists are not stupid so why misrepresent?

To which can be added Suzanne Evans's reply:

Will never forget most broadcast journalists salivating over the Arab Spring too, thinking it was positive. Watched with utter disbelief. Nothing changes.

Col Richard Kemp and Lyse Doucet

At least Lyse replies (and does so politely):

Lyse Doucet (on Today): It is true that this major international crisis is not just of Iran's making.
Col. Richard Kemp (on Twitter): Speaking this morning of Iran shooting down Ukrainian plane BBC correspondent Lyse Doucet asserts as fact: “this international crisis is not of Iran’s making alone”. Actually it is. Who else is to blame for Iran’s aggression?
Lyse Doucet (on Twitter): Morning Richard...meant in the sense of many actors involved in this global crisis..but ultimate responsibility in this disaster lies with Iran.

Two things

A couple of things amused me watching the 'journalists' questions' part of the Theresa May/Donald Trump press conference yesterday.

The first was Emily Maitlis getting was passed over in favour of Beth Rigby from Sky. She tried to look happy for Beth, but not very successfully!

Emily gets trumped (thanks to Theresa May)

The second was when The Donald dropped Jezza in it by casually mentioning that he'd turned down the Labour leader's request for a private chat. When journalists then began eagerly tweeting about it the first response of hardcore Twitter Corbynistas was to accuse the President of making it up and the hacks of 'fake new' - until a Labour spokesman said, yes, Jezza had indeed asked for an interview with Donald Trump.

Col. Richard Kemp was characteristically forthright in his reaction to the latter piece of news, commenting of Jeremy Corbyn: "You screamed against Trump, rejected an invitation to meet him yet secretly tried to meet him. How can anyone believe a word you say or take your seriously?"

In fairness, the Labour leader had always said that he would like to have a chat with Mr. Trump. 

Another atrocity

I've been vaguely aware for a while, especially after reading about various atrocities in Pakistan and the hyperactive assault on ancient Sufi shrines in Mali, that Sufi Muslims (the mystical ones) have become yet another of the seemingly endless prime targets for vicious fundamentalist Muslims. 

Watching tonight's Newsnight on the horrific slaughter of Sufi worshippers in Sinai, apparently by Islamic State groupies, only confirms to me that this is yet another murderous problem provoked by the apparently inexorable spread of Islamic fundamentalism.

We'll doubtless be seeing it in the UK soon, following attacks on the Ahmadiyya and the Shia here.

Tonight's Newsnight also saw Mark Urban - one of the BBC's finest - firmly applying the brakes to one of Kirsty Wark's half-baked assertions. Kirsty boldly asserted that today's attack was unprecedented. Mark, evidently somewhat taken aback, replied that that's too sweeping a statement. 

In fact Kirsty's performance during that entire section felt disappointingly under-researched and knee-jerk (in a "London liberal outlook" kind of way). 

She seemed particularly keen to suggest that military aggression shown by the Egyptian authorities might have been (somehow) ultimately responsible for today's attack. 

In that light I wasn't at all surprised when Colonel Richard Kemp tweeted the following tonight about this particular Newsnight segment:

BBC churning out all these so-called experts to blame Egyptian security forces for ISIS attacks in Sinai. Trotting out many platitudes but no alternative to military solution.

Credit where credit's due

As noted elsewhere, this is a fine piece of BBC reporting from Newsnight's Richard Watson (featuring Col. Richard Kemp):

It may be twenty years too late but it's a wake-up call nonetheless. 

An instrument of Israel’s enemies

Further to my previous piece about the depressingly ill-informed attitudes of some of our MPs, including Justine Greening, Col Richard Kemp has written a piece on the subject in the Jewish Chronicle. If you’ve read the HLMG report, you might like this, as Amazon would say.

We put our reputations on the line. This is why.

1.) UNHRC and human rights groups who have been commissioned to evaluate the  Israel Palestine conflict lack credible military expertise. 

2.) Bodies who have taken it upon themselves to pass judgment on “Gaza wars” need to understand that human rights law is not applicable to armed conflict. (War) 

“Human rights law is fine if you are dealing with a police arrest on the streets of London, but not when you're looking at large-scale violent armed exchanges between warring factions - that is what the Geneva conventions are intended to regulate.”

3.) Israel’s enemies have managed to manipulate the media into promoting an ignorant, distorted, malign and misjudged overview of the situation and those who are taken in by that are effectively an instrument of Israel’s enemies.

“There was not a single Jew in the HLMG. Not one had any allegiance to Israel, except the recognition that Israel is an ally and an outpost of the West.” 

and the need to point out the above says quite a lot more than meets the eye. 

Buck the trend

You’ve probably heard of those well-known experiments that show we’re all psychologically programmed to go with the flow.     Conformity R Us.

Even when confronted with overwhelming evidence - logic, past performance, common sense and all manner of things that stare us in the face, the well-meaning and the ill-willed alike still believe what they believed in the first place if that’s what they want to believe, and of course, if everyone else they know believes it too. 

Colleagues, relations, your best friend, people whom you’re fond of and who seem fond of you come over all funny when the conversation turns to Israel and the Palestinians; or even just to Israel. Despite never having been there, (or, in the case of a renowned craftsman who attended a course but ‘disliked seeing a lot of people wearing army uniforms’) they know quite a lot about Israel. It’s ‘aggressive’, and they feel ‘things would be a lot easier’ if it weren’t there.

It’s the one topic about which people suddenly don’t want to listen to you, even though they know you’ve been there done that got the T shirt, whereas they only know what they’ve seen on the TV and read in the Guardian. That is because you’ve been brainwashed, obvs. It can’t be them, because because because.

Worse, if you’re a respected or high profile figure and you stick your head above that particular parapet you risk marginalising yourself and ruining your credibility.

Look at Col. Richard Kemp. He presents detailed evidence in support of the IDF’s integrity informed by his own specialised military expertise, and what does he get in return? He’s told he’s Israel’s paid lackey.

Even a relatively obscure website like the one you’re reading now is dismissed as hasbara, the Zionist lobby, Israel right or wrong-ist.

You can see from past events how it works. You can cry ‘injustice!’ for years and years, and still no-one will take you seriously, until the zeitgeist shifts or that mysterious thing called a sea change occurs.

The Dreyfus affair is a prime example. Currently, Asian grooming, various medical scandals, Jimmy Savile and all sorts of ‘no-one would believe me’ stories of gross injustice keep on coming. The ignored whistle-blower, the discredited victim, the intransigence of those who didn’t want to know. 

Remember the way the Arab Spring was misrepresented by the BBC?

Chickens can come home to roost. A friend has just succeeded in bringing a fraudster to justice after a 9 year battle, primarily with police who didn’t want to know, amongst other obstacles. Tenacity, perseverance and determination rule okay.

Even Thomas Wictor, who looks, at first, like a flamboyant conspiracy theorist, needs proper scrutiny. As he himself might ask: “what if I’m right?” 

Col. Richard Kemp has written a response to  the  UN Human Rights Report of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict -­ A/HRC/29/52

In doing so, he risks yet again being vilified for going against the flow. He is such a good communicator. I can’t understand why his arguments are not universally taken with the utmost seriousness and treated with the greatest possible respect.  

“ Judge Davis accuses the Israel Defense Forces of “serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.” Yet no evidence is put forward to substantiate these accusations. It is as though the drafters of the report believe that any civilian death in war must be illegal.”

They do! They do! Not only the drafters of the report! Everyone under the sun believes this - but only when Israel is involved. There’s absolutely no logic in it, but they do sincerely think it.

“The report is characterized by a lack of understanding of warfare. That is hardly surprising. Judge Davis admitted, when I testified before her in February, that the commission, though investigating a war, had no military expertise. Perhaps that is why no attempt has been made to judge Israeli military operations against the practices of other armies. Without such international benchmarks, the report’s findings are meaningless.
The commission could have listened to Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said last November that the I.D.F. had taken extraordinary measures to try to limit civilian casualties. Or to a group of 11 senior military officers from seven nations, including the United States, Germany, Spain and Australia, who also investigated the Gaza conflict recently. I was a member of that group, and our report, made available to Judge Davis, said: “None of us is aware of any army that takes such extensive measures as did the I.D.F. last summer to protect the lives of the civilian population.”

[,,,]

The reason so many civilians died in Gaza last summer was not Israeli tactics or policy. It was Hamas’s strategy. Hamas deliberately positioned its fighters and munitions in civilian areas, knowing that Israel would have no choice but to attack them and that civilian casualties would result. Unable to inflict existential harm on Israel by military means, Hamas sought to cause large numbers of casualties among its own people in order to bring international condemnation and unbearable diplomatic pressure against Israel.

Let’s wait and see how many more terrorist atrocities have to happen before crowd-psychology turns the entire tanker around till it faces the right direction. I hope it’s soon for all our sakes. 

First the BBC must stop leaving out half the news and stop turning a blind eye to naked prejudice against Israel whether it’s from the Middle East or right in front of its face. 

Time for the truth

Colonel Richard Kemp has knowingly taken a big risk. He’s probably already surrendered a good deal of credibility by speaking out in the way he does. He might also be sacrificing much of the well-earned respect and veneration normally afforded, by general consensus, to those in a similarly distinguished position as he is. 

(30-year career in the British Army commanding front-line troops in fighting terrorism and insurgency in hotspots including Iraq, the Balkans, South Asia and Northern Ireland, Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan in 2003. From 2002 - 2006 and headed the international terrorism team at the Joint Intelligence Committee of the British Prime Minister's Office)

Col Kemp is jeopardising all that acclaim simply because he has chosen to align himself  with the most reviled rogues ever to have disgraced the planet with their execrable existence. Who? The Israelis of course. 

Why did he do that? Because he’s a heartless, soulless Nazi? 

No, because he’s a realist, as well as a vastly experienced expert on warfare rather than an emotionally incontinent CofE priest or an uncomprehending BBC journalist.

In an article for the Gatestone Institute he sets out the truth about Gaza’s Cilvilian Casualties and decries the disrespect shown to Israel’s Colonel Peter Lerner, by a TV interviewer whose line of questioning encourages listeners to believe the absurd notion that the “IDF is commanded and manned from top to bottom by psychopathic baby-killing thugs.”

“Although rarely allowed to complete so much as a single sentence, Israeli attempts to explain IDF targeting policies are inevitably dismissed as laughable fabrication.”

With few exceptions, reporters, commentators and analysts unquestioningly accept the casualty statistics given by Gaza's Hamas-controlled medical authorities, who ascribe all deaths to the IDF. Is anyone in Gaza dying of natural causes? Mass executions of "collaborators," and civilians killed by malfunctioning Hamas rockets, are all attributed to IDF fire.

Are the "overwhelming majority" of the dead really civilians? It would seem so. We see a great deal of grotesque and heart-rending footage of dead and bleeding women and children but never so much as a glimpse of killed or wounded fighters. Nor do reporters question or comment on the complete absence of Gazan military casualties, an extraordinary phenomenon unique to this conflict. The reality of course is that Hamas make great efforts to segregate their military casualties to preserve the fiction that Israel is killing civilians only. There are also increasing indications that Hamas, through direct force or threat, are preventing journalists from filming their fighters, whether dead or alive.

Please read it all.

Across the pond, Bret Stephens writes in the WSJ “Palestine Makes You Dumb’ You can access this without (£) by cunning Googling. (If I can do it anyone can.) 

He mentions a statement made on CNN by Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. It echoes the views we’re currently hearing from the UK government:  “Israel has a right to defend itself but needs to do more to avoid civilian casualties.”

Stephens addresses the media’s obsession with the body count as well as the questionable accuracy of the reporting thereof.

“How does the Times keep such an accurate count of Palestinian deaths? 

"Palestinian death tallies are provided by the Palestinian Health Ministry and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs."

Hamas runs the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza! The U.N. gets its data mainly from the ‘agitprop’ Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which currently offers exactly the same percentage of civilian deaths as it offered during the 2008-09 Gaza war, 82%.

“When minutely exact statistics are provided in chaotic circumstances, it suggests the statistics are garbage. When a news organization relies—without clarification—on data provided by a bureaucratic organ of a terrorist organization, there's something wrong there, too.”

“The real utility of the body count is that it offers reporters and commentators who cite it the chance to ascribe implicit blame to Israel while evading questions about ultimate responsibility for the killing. Questions such as: Why is Hamas hiding rockets in U.N.-run schools, as acknowledged by the U.N. itself? What does it mean that Hamas has turned Gaza's central hospital into "a de facto headquarters," as reported by the Washington Post? And why does Hamas keep rejecting, or violating, cease-fires agreed to by Israel?”

Let’s at least hear some of these questions aired on the BBC, even if no-one is willing to give an honest answer.

Blaming Israel  “Because  (a) it won't accept a Palestinian government that includes a terrorist organization sworn to the Jewish state's destruction; (b) won't help that organization out of its financial jam; and (c) won't ease a quasi-blockade—jointly imposed with Egypt—on a territory whose central economic activity appears to be building rocket factories and pouring imported concrete into terrorist tunnels.”

...is either bald moral idiocy or thinly veiled bigotry.”

“To argue the Palestinian side, in this war, is to make the case for barbarism. It is to erase, in the name of humanitarianism, the moral distinctions from which the concept of humanity arises.”

Recommended reading

BBC Watch has posted a series of articles forensically deconstructing Jeremy Bowen’s recent series of reports about the expiration of the Middle East ‘peace deadline’, Mahmoud Abbas’s joint venture with Hamas and John Kerry’s clumsy remarks about Israel and apartheid.

The latest post reveals some relevant background (which Bowen’s reporting conceals) surrounding the ‘man-in-a-cave’ broadcast, in which a Palestinian man is presented to us as a helpless victim of Israeli racism, when in fact Khaled al-Zeer is a known agitator with a criminal record. There’s a pattern here, the BBC taking at face value tales of faux victimhood and relaying them to all and sundry on air. 

There have been several erudite articles online explaining why PM Netanyahu could never have accepted the alliance between the PA and Hamas, but the BBC doesn’t appear to have read them.

This is by Khaled Abu Toameh, who is a regular writer for the Gatesone Institute. His summary is a more credible insider’s view than anything the BBC is ready willing or able to come up with. 

But the most powerful summary of the current situation is written by Colonel Richard Kemp  which I commend to the house. Okay I’m not an MP, so here’s some excerpts. No, actually, I won’t chop it up. It’s so good you have to read it all.