I was wrong

 If you’ve been paying attention you’ll know I hardly ever watch the BBC these days. I keep mentioning that to account for my prolonged silences interspersed with off-topic observations.. 

However I have to comment on the reappearance of Abdel Bari Atwan, whose services I thought had been quietly  dispensed with by the BBC.  I was wrong. He was on Dateline again on 19th August, following the attack on Salman Rushdie.

Melanie Phillips has written about this topic as has the Jewish Chronicle both citing the most outrageous of his remarks. 

The BBC, of course, has no intention of reprimanding or silencing Atwan as they think he represents legitimate views, and letting him air them is an expression of the BBC’s even-handedness. 

The problem is, however, that along with the rest of the left the BBC genuinely thinks it is indeed upholding balance, fairness and objectivity. It believes that it represents the political centre ground. That’s why it views its critics axiomatically as extremists who can safely be disregarded.

To be fair to Bari, as we like to call him on ITBB, he did imply that carrying out the actual fatwa  in it’s original form (death to Rushdie the blasphemer) was a tad beyond its sell-by date, but he defended the principle that such blasphemy as Rushdie’s was “very, very cruel when he talked about the Prophet Mohammed and his wives” which was also “very, very dangerous”. He added: “About 90 per cent of the people of the Muslim world believe that freedom of expression [is] practised only to insult Muslims”.

I’m not sure if Dateline itself isn’t about to be axed. I read it somewhere. Maybe they’ve realised that it’s a tiny bit politically biased.

Melanie Phillips doesn’t stop there. In her criticisms of the BBC, as well as Atwan’s other offensive remarks, she mentions the infamous Balen report about the BBC’s bias against Israel.  It has never seen the light of day, and its ongoing secrecy has been defended to the tune of  around £300,000 (of licence fee-payers dosh) in legal fees.   She refers to her own appearances as the token right-winger who is

“almost never given the opportunity to address the lies told about Israel.”

Dancing in the square

“By Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight if the Iranian missile hits Israel.”

So bragged Abdel Bari Atwan, the most frequently invited panellist on BBC Dateline London.

This video of a conversation about the media’s bias against Israel between “Elder” (from EoZ) and Adam Levick (from UK Media Watch) reminded me of Atwan’s infamous statement - which should surely be regarded by any genuinely anti-racist organisation as a damning, career-undermining boast - yet there he often is on our Saturday morning BBC TV screens chatting away animatedly with his trademark flailing arms and bulging eyes while Carrie Gracie or Shaun Lay look on benevolently.

I suppose we must make allowances for the fact that the Trafalgar Square pledge dates back to 2010 and his dancing days may be over.

Another topic that came up in the EoZ video was a fanciful headline in a recent edition of the Mail online. Prince Harry Faces Backlash ….

It seems that Prince Harry invited injured IDF soldiers to participate in the Invictus Games, and when ‘Bari’, as the BBC affectionately calls him, raised an objection on the basis of his deeply antisemitic sensibilities, the Mail online chose to upgrade this solitary, one-man ‘objection’ to the status of ‘backlash’.  

This is uncharacteristic of the Mail, but I’m not sure if it’s primarily motivated by Harry-bashing or Israel-bashing.

I found the technically challenged EoZ video in question worth watching because both speakers are equally ‘well aware of’ and ‘baffled by’ the inexplicable blindspot that persists in much of the western media; a tacit refusal to acknowledge the antisemitic pandemic that is rife in the Arab world, particularly within Palestinian culture. No matter how many studies reveal staggeringly high percentages of unadulterated, religiously rooted Jew-hate (not Zionist-hate) - shocking figures are consistently found in survey after survey - the largely atheist western media will obstinately insist that their much venerated Palestinians are ‘just like us’.

It was odd hearing two Americans pontificating over the current state of the British Labour Party, and deciding whether Keir Starmer was a good guy. Better than Corbs, that’s for sure.

A question that still troubles me is who on earth put that shelf up?

Nice one Carrie

For once the inclusion on the Dateline panel of our favourite mad Arab, Abdel Bari Atwan (aka ‘Arry Batwan) was fully justified.  He was as impassioned as ever, waving his arms around frantically as he searched for those elusive words. He’s lived here for 40 years?  

However,  the dramatic elimination of The Big Daddy of Isis did touch upon his area of expertise. Looking more preternatural than ever, he informed the viewers about the new leader of Isis - “more brutal even that BagDaddy”, and at some length, he decried the volatility of the Middle East. Who knew? 

I thought Carrie Gracie was rather good as the host of this programme. In fact, she has risen in my estimation and she seems to be growing into her role on the Beeb - she did seem shaky when she first returned from China, embroiled in all that equal pay malarky. Now she looks like a pair of safe hands.

I wonder what Craig thought of that episode. Dateline is usually his territory. He knows all the contributors by name and can even tell the difference between them.  

President Trump’s childish boasting about dead dogs was indeed regrettable but I’m not sure if it eclipsed the ‘success’ of the actual incident quite as much as the first speaker, John Fisher Burns asserted. Trump managed to “grab defeat from the jaws of victory”, he said. Somewhat of an exaggeration and a relatively petty argument if you ask me. 

The worry that Trump’s withdrawal of troops from the area will do far-reaching damage and cause widespread instability was agreed by all, and the proposal that however many leaders are bumped off, there will be more to take their place. 

Bari was upset that the US has decided to bury its corpses at sea, rather than ‘show us the evidence’. He seemed to think that he needed proof that they were really dead, otherwise they might not be. Adam Raphael said that displaying corpses’ heads on sticks was ‘not our way’, a none-too-subtle put-down, delivered with a slight smirk.

When they had exhausted that topic, having decided that we shouldn’t abdicate responsibility for our own jihadi prisoners, but take them back, Britain and Europe, that is, they turned to the 'generalection'. The worrying conclusion was that Boris has taken a risk too far and that we are very likely facing a Marxist takeover. 

Happy days.

Bombing Syria

On Saturdays there’s Dateline London on the BBC News Channel and Any Questions and the News Quiz on the radio. 

It’s awkward to make time for TV on Saturday mornings, and as for Any Questions, I rarely listen on Fridays and I don’t know how many times I’ve forgotten to tune in on Saturday till Any Answers is well underway. I do like using the term “tune in”. (So retro.)

Dateline was very bad-tempered today, what with Theresa May’s reckless foray into Syria without waiting for Jeremy Corbyn to hold a few conversations and reflect, while Assad  has time to ferry his appalling chemicals out of harm’s way. 

So much contradictory information surrounds the matter that I don’t feel equipped to opine. So I won’t. All I will say is that Dateline’s most frequently invited guest Bari (‘Arry Batwan) was more animated, even, than usual; making chopping movements with his arms and flapping his hands in that excitable way of his, eyes popping with rage. He claims that the Russians effectively disabled 70 of the US’s 100 strikes, but a US spokesperson later categorically denied that any had been disabled. 

The issue is often carelessly described as “bombing Syria”, distorting the stated aim (allegedly to reduce Assad’s ability to manufacture chemical weapons, and to send  the message, “up with this we will not put“) and the conversation is almost as if we / Theresa May had personally bombed the al-Assad family plus all the men, women and children remaining in Syria. I do hope this isn’t what happened.

Alexander Nekrassov was angry, but his anger was not entirely in accord with Bari Atwan’s. “There is no proof that Russia was involved on the Skripal poisoning - if it was a poisoning,” he said.  “Novichok doesn’t even exist.”  A very Russian take on the matter.

Bronwen Maddox was the calm voice. The voice of sanity. She sounded maternal and sensible, but  Jane Hill was beaten into submission and chaos reigned.

Now. Any Questions and an extended version of Any Answers, thankfully not involving Anita Anand. There were just two major questions on Any Questions from Oxford, and the audience was so noisy that Dimbles Jr. had to reiterate the plea that the audience was ‘self-selecting’. I say he protesteth too much.

The main question was about the prospect of Britain, France and America collaborating in a joint military exercise in Syria. Unfortunately events overtook them, and by Saturday the deed had been done. Hence the extension to Any Answers. I have to say that most callers were against any kind of military intervention; so much so that they were, perhaps inadvertently, supporting appeasement for fear of repercussions in the form of terrorism or World War Three. Understandable, but arguably as indecisive, directionless and devoid of strategy or long-term planning as the military intervention they were opposing.  Most of them.

The question that gave the most illuminating picture of the Oxford zeitgeist was “Is criticising Israel always antisemitic?" What a question. A non-question. The very phrasing ridicules itself. It makes a mockery of a very serious situation. Critiscim? Shmiticism. They mean denouncing every single defensive measure Israel is forced to take. 

Caroline Lucas’s voice actually shook with passion as she gave an outrageously ill-informed account of Hamas’s Right of Return fiasco. In her eyes, ‘criticism of Israel’ ultimately gives credence to Hamas’s demand that Israel is subsumed by 4 million Palestinian Muslims. To her, that’s what  justice for the Palestinians means. And ’peace.’

Is she really as ignorant of the hate-filled, genocidal rhetoric, the incitement and the antisemitic nature of the Hamas ‘education system” as she appears to be? Either she is or she isn’t. Either way, that is not the same as ‘criticising’ Israel, and it is antisemitic. When she was asked if she felt as passionate about any other injustice, she had to think hard before coming up with the Rohingyas. You could hear her brain desperately trying to come up with a convincing answer. 

The Syria debacle completely overwhelmed Any Answers, pushing the antisemitism question into the long grass and to rumble on and on in the background in the unresolved manner to which it has become  accustomed.