First they came for the mother. Then they came for the daughter.

Meanwhile, over in the Corbynistasphere this week's biggest row about BBC bias has concerned Dame Margaret Hodge MP's daughter Lizzi Watson. 

The Corbynistas suddenly found out something I've known for years: that Lizzi works for the BBC. She used to work on Newsnight but is now Deputy Editor of BBC News at Six and Ten. So they moved on from attacking (Jewish) Margaret Hodge to attacking her (Jewish) daughter, mobbing her with tweets. Their 'reasoning' for such behaviour? Well, as one tweeted, "The daughter of a key player in the whole smear can’t report impartially."

Can't she? 

Isn't that a bit North Korean, you might also ask (punishment of the whole family for the 'crimes' of an individual)? No, apparently, because it shows "nepotism" and "a conflict of interest", replied the Corbynistas (whilst continuing to bombard BBC Lizzi with demands):

Lizzi Watson, given your role at BBC News, concerned citizens would like to know if you are the daughter of Margaret Hodge. If this is indeed the case, the coverage of the Hodge-Corbyn debacle potentially raises serious conflict of interest issues that you must be aware of.

Nonsense, others countered, pointing out that Ms. Watson doesn't work for her mum and, in fact, has a completely separate career at a completely different institution and there's no direct proof whatsoever that Lizzi Watson has in any way influenced the programmes she works on to be biased in her mother's favour against Jeremy Corbyn. 

Ah but, replied the Corbynistas, there is proof because "Margaret Hodge has had such a wide platform to smear Jeremy Corbyn" and that must be partly down to the influence of her daughter....

....which, of course, is mere smoke-without-fire stuff. Accusing someone of being biased and unprofessional without providing the slightest bit of concrete proof is itself a smear. (Also correlation does not imply causation).

Lots of BBC people and non-BBC people meanwhile have rushed to defend Ms. Watson, saying that she's one of the nicest people they know and is scrupulously impartial.

Like the Corbynistas, I've no evidence one way or the other about whether she's impartial or biased but unless the Corbynistas can tie her personally to a piece of provably biased, provably bad reporting about Mr Corbyn (preferably involving her mother) then the BBC's Lizzi Watson remains simply the victim of a smear campaign here, and one with rather sinister undertones.

Was it something I said?

You can’t open your mouth these days without being misrepresented by crazed media people with an agenda. If you are foolish enough to be interviewed by Sky, for example, be prepared to have your words taken down, rearranged and used as evidence against you. 

(Sky)

Margaret Hodge: Labour investigation made me think about treatment of Jews in 1930s Germany

See how the media aids and abets Chris Williamson here. The Sky reporter introduces her interview with fanatical MP Chris Williamson and opens with a leading question, which goes something  like this: 

“I would like to know your reaction to Margaret Hodge’s comments likening her treatment from the Labour Party to that of Nazi Germany”

See how Williamson grabs the baton and runs with it. He’s talking as if she’s actually compared her treatment at the hands of the Labour Party with Hitler’s policy of exterminating the entire Jewish race. Effecting indignation, he even accuses her of trivialising “the terrible horrors of the Holocaust”.

Did she do that? Biggest mistake - she spoke to the media.  Given their ability to twist one’s words out of all recognition, speaking to the media is reckless in the current volatile climate. You won’t get any sympathy from anyone. Best plan - keep a dignified silence. 

Nevertheless, she did speak. Here’s the gist of what she said:

“On the day I heard that they were to discipline me it made me think what did it feel like to be a Jew in Germany in the 30s.  

Cos it felt almost as if they were ‘coming for me’[… ] 

It’s that fear; it always reminds me of what my dad used to say to me as a child “You’ve got to keep a packed suitcase at the door, Margaret.”[…] 

“my emotional response resonated with that feeling of fear” 

Stephen Bush wrote something daring in the New Statesman. Risky! No-one will listen.

Everyone is getting very excited about something Margaret Hodge didn’t actually say.
It’s a shame, because what she actually said is worth understanding.  

But there’s a problem: what is driving people’s anger on Twitter came not from the word of Hodge –  but a tweet from Sky News, which ran the interview.

Sky, Channel 4, BBC. They’re in the driving seat, sad to say.

Nothin like a dame

Is the BBC’s bias against Israel a niche subject? I only ask because I do worry that I’m getting boring. Harping on about it morning noon and night; I even bore myself.

It’s only when someone like Margaret Hodge who happens to be a dame (there is nothin’ like a dame) gets up and utters a naughty word that everyone sits up and goes “eh, what?”

What if I self-identify as a dame? I might try that later.

Anyhow, it seems that a combination of Labour’s machinations over creating a bespoke definition of antisemitism, and the incongruity of that effing word from the mouth of an effing dame has caused enough of a stir to startle even the BBC. 

Had Dame Margaret not sworn at the dear leader, this might not have attracted very much media interest because this antisemitism malarkey is becoming boring; everyone’s heard it all before and what about the poor Palestinians.

Following a link from a commenter on Harry’s Place, (yes, that’s niche. For niche people) I listened to an LBC phone-in programme, hosted by James O’Brien.  I’m not very familiar with LBC but I have heard the odd snippet from Iain Dale or Nick Ferrari’s programmes, and of course, we all know James O’Brien from his abbreviated stint on Newsnight.  

I have to ask any James O’Brien aficionados out there, do these broadcasts always start off with a protracted rant? Or was this one extra lengthy and extra ranty because the public couldn’t be arsed to phone in? 

Anyway, our host spent what seemed like eternity expounding on a revolutionary theory he’s thought long and hard about, concerning the antisemitism within the hard left; the Corbyn faction.

I’ll summarise:  these people have fought against racism all their lives and sincerely believe they can’t be antisemitic. Their (antisemitic) remarks (about Jews and Israel) are merely The Truth and Anything Different is Fake News.)

James O’Brien obviously thought this theory was very controversial, and he preempted the anticipated Twitter-storm by reminding us that he was by no means a fan of Israel, despite the outrageous fact that he has been accused (by Corbynista types) of being a Zionist shill.

A caller was chastised for alluding to “things we’re not allowed to say” and another, who momentarily referred to media bias was severely reprimanded for straying from the core topic (James O’Brien). Throughout, the Thing we’re Not Allowed to mention was not mentioned.

I have to say that this problem might never have grown so huge, nor become so entrenched, had the media not spent the last fifty years regurgitating Palestinian propaganda. 

Anyway, I’ve seen Luciana Berger and Dame Margaret Hodge on the BBC and Sky, so it seems the F-word is still effective, provided it’s uttered by someone other than Frankie Boyle and the like.

Getting Labour to adopt the full IHRA definition of antisemitism is not the answer.

Brexit aside, I’d quite like to see a job-swap between Theresa May and one of the three main Leave Guys whose appeal lies mainly in the plain their verbal agility. Boris, the Gover and J R-M.

Come on. Think about all the fun and jokes at PMQs. Corbers would be demolished. With luck and a following wind, he might shrivel up and atomise into very fine particles or droplets. Jus’ like that.

On a closely related theme - verbal agility, f**king antisemitism, the prospect of Corbyn as your PM  Melanie Phillips has written a penetrating piece about Corbyn’s Labour junta. "Institutionalising Antisemitism in the British Labour Party"

Melanie’s verbal agility is so hypnotic that one often finds oneself agreeing with everything she writes. But I have one quibble with supporters of Dame Margaret Hodge “whose relatives were murdered in the Holocaust”.  It’s that label. It’s always, always present in the preamble and I find it gratuitous. Labels are often used to delegitimise the subject. This time it’s there for the opposite reason; to give her accusation legitimacy.

The horrific fate of Dame Margaret’s relatives is not a necessary factor in this context.  Or shouldn’t be. It looks as though one needs an extra justification to make accusations of antisemitism. It’s another version of AsaJew. 

I have no record of murdered relatives. In fact, there are no available records at all, probably because they perspicaciously fled from Eastern Europe in the 1800s. Hence me.  My ‘who do you think you are’  would end abruptly two generations back.

But whether or not any of one’s ancestors were unfortunate enough to have been caught up in Hitler’s industrialised genocide, it doesn’t give me, you or the lamppost more ability to recognise an antisemite when we see one.

Apart from that, I wholeheartedly commend Melanie Phillips’s words to this house.

Getting Labour to adopt the full IHRA definition of antisemitism is not the answer.

“It has not prevented the media failing to report the hundreds of rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and weeks of incendiary airborne devices setting fire to acres of Israeli farmland, while misrepresenting Israeli air strikes in response as aggression. It did not prevent an interviewer on BBC Radio’s Today program the other day berating an Israeli spokesman for killing children in Gaza. 

The key point is the refusal to acknowledge that the campaign of irrational, mendacious and obsessive incitement against Israel is the new form of antisemitism. 

Yet although Israel has been attacked in this way for years, virtually no one has called this out. The Anglo-Jewish community leadership ran a mile from it. […] 

“The real agony for them is that the climate in Britain has deteriorated to such a point that Labour feels licensed to treat British Jews – as Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has said – with unprecedented contempt. 

They plan a continuing campaign to get Labour to adopt the full IHRA definition. But that is to continue to avoid confronting the elephant in the room. 

This is the fact that so many on the progressive side of politics have swallowed the Big Lies about Israel. […] 

“ The real task, therefore, is not to adopt the IHRA wording. It is to start telling the British public that virtually everything they hear about Israel from the media and intelligentsia is a lie; that anyone who supports Palestinianism is endorsing the most profound and demonic kind of antisemitism;”