Conversations about Gaza [2]

 

SUE - Col Richard Kemp’s authoritative views on military matters - notably other than I/P - are occasionally sought by the BBC. He is a staunch supporter of Israel and a huge admirer of the moral integrity of the Israeli Defence Force. His military expertise and intimate knowledge of the IDF is unique.

As well as through Twitter - it wouldn’t surprise me if he is Twitter-cancelled anytime soon - his insights appear regularly on Gatestone Institute: 

During an operation in Gaza last week, the Israel Defence Forces attacked a Hamas tunnel complex with 12 squadrons of 160 combat planes striking over 150 targets with hundreds of bunker-busting JDAMs [Joint Direct Attack Munitions] in less than an hour. Although the battle damage assessment is still underway, the raid destroyed perhaps the most critical element of Hamas infrastructure, wiping out vast stocks of munitions and likely killing dozens if not hundreds of fighters. This was a hammer blow to Hamas and may prove to be a turning point in the conflict. It also sent a powerful message to Iran and Hizballah, foretelling the consequences of an assault on Israel with their arsenal of tens of thousands of missiles in southern Lebanon.

The IDF operation was a carefully coordinated combination of intelligence, surveillance, knowledge of enemy tactics, deception, surprise, and precisely targeted, overwhelming force. Of all these, deception and surprise were key. Surprise is a principle of war in the American, British and many other forces, defined in the US Army Field Manual as "striking the enemy at a time or place or in a manner for which he is unprepared." The manual goes on to say: "Deception can aid the probability of achieving surprise". Throughout the history of warfare, surprise achieved through deception has led to many stunning military victories — often against the odds.

The usual crowd is up in arms about this, proclaiming “Assault on press freedom! “ and “No evidence of Hamas’s presence in the media centre’s tower block!”

If one can access viral videos from heaven above, Fred Dibnah must be looking down at the surgical precision of the demolition with awe.

To be honest, I couldn’t care less whether Hamas personnel were there or not.

Propaganda is known to be as dangerous a weapon of war as Mishal Husain’s infamous arsenal of ‘homemade contraptions’. The left-leaning mainstream media also known as The Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda is terrified of angering the ‘already angry’ Muslim community and collectively furious that the IDF exploited their very own left-wing journalistic anti-Israel zeal, knowing that they would be eager to disseminate one particular piece of fake news - namely that the IDF were on stand-by to invade Gaza. This they duly did so effectively that the brave warriors of Hamas scuttled underground to take shelter and hopefully eliminated in one fell swoop. (Echoes of a certain Iranian strategy for ridding the world of Jews).

As Nasrallah famously boasted “if they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”

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More notable areas of one-sided reporting include the media’s tedious parroting of Hamas’s special death-toll figures, which conflate casualties from their own ‘shortfall’ accidents with the unfortunate ‘collateral damage’ that occurs as a result of Hamas’s ‘human shield ‘practices, which they know they can get away with due to the Western media’s ideological hostility to Israel.

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Why the UK’s media is so mealy-mouthed in their condemnation of Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, Islamism is understandable, but will be viewed - retrospectively - as a betrayal. Short-term gain, maybe, considering ‘demographics’ (the rise in antisemitism, civil unrest, BLM, the Labour Party etc etc) but long-term pain. Looking back, will future generations regret the West’s capitulation to Islam?

When I see an Israel-related article in the “non-left-wing press’ such as the Times or the Spectator, I am usually appalled by the politically correct editorial reins and restraints that abound. Nowadays I feel I have to skip straight to below the line for remedial reassurance that not everyone is taken in by it. Some of the ‘tell it like it is’ contributions are spot on. It still chills one to see the overtly antisemitic contributions from certain regulars amongst it all.

One exception is the Australian version of Sky. They have some Fox News-like pundits on their staff. Although subtlety doesn’t seem to be their strong point, it’s comforting to know that not everyone on this planet is out to crush you. Mind you, in view of America’s terrifying political about-turn, the UN’s and the ICC’s staggeringly unhinged anti-Israel animus, it looks like a gathering storm, all too reminiscent of the 1930s.

CRAIG - Col Kemp is a rare voice of informed reason these days. 

Mishal Husain's infamous conflated, comparative body count is back. 

Inevitably. 

Jeremy Bowen used it on From Our Own Correspondent yesterday while lecturing about 'proportionality'. 

His whole piece was geared towards making one main point: that Israel is acting disproportionately (as if he'd ever come to any other conclusion).

Well, that's his view. 

In the past you might have expected that prominent BBC journalists would have either (a) kept their opinions to themselves or (b) expressed an opinion that sided with democracy against terrorists and their supporters, but not now. It's op-eds all the way from the BBC's Middle East Editor.

Here, as so often, he does the 'moral equivalence' thing first, then blames Israel. 

I've posted a transcript of it below our previous post.

SUE - For the integrity of this blog we’ve been focussing on the media’s bias rather than opining on the actual issues.

After all, what do I know? All I can do is digest as much available information and analysis as I can stomach and inject a little empirical evidence into it.

An HoL speech from 2009 by Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (Labour) sticks in my mind. Perhaps because this baroness was a Labour Peer (not a ghastly Tory) it seemed extra significant and worth bearing in mind.

I first visited Gaza in August 1967, when Israel had taken control only a few weeks before. As I have said before in this House, I found Gaza an absolute hellhole. It is not easy to understand, and it is even more difficult to forgive, how prosperous Arab countries allowed their Palestinian brethren to live in such wretched conditions from 1948 to 1967.

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale Labour 10:51 am, 6th February 2009].

The implications here are profound. I probably don’t need to spell it out. Suffice it to say that when Israel did occupy Gaza after the six-day war (1967) the inhabitants’ conditions improved dramatically, most notably average life expectancy. However, Israel decided to make a disastrous but well-intentioned concession “for peace’! They evicted the Jewish residents and pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and You Know The Rest. As the well-worn Israel-bashing innuendo goes, “lessons should have been learned.” But they never seem to be.

The ease with which lazy and inaccurate memes are parroted is another pincer-prong with which the anti-Israel movement encircles its enemy. Naz Shah has taken full advantage of it, as Craig set out in part 1.

For Naz and her fan base, Tweeting about Palestinians ‘being kicked out of their homes’ was enough. And adding: Jews ‘celebrating the burning of a place of worship’ as if that needed no further examination. We await a sincere apology for the error and the humble pledge not to do it again. With bated breath.

One of the most egregious and ongoing omissions from Western media as a whole is the non-reporting of the vicious incitement that pours from the Islamic world. No story, no analysis, no curiosity. It has to be more than simple respect for other religions that’s preventing our renowned investigative journalists from ‘investigating’ this phenomenon. For example, the PA’s so-called Pay-For-Slay. This policy must be a drain on the PA’s GDP, and the monies would obviously be far better spent on bomb shelters or health care; surely that issue is worth exploring in one of the BBC’s hard-hitting documentaries (!). Mahmoud Abbas must be so confident of the media’s silence on the matter that he doesn’t even make an effort to keep it secret.

What about the unadulterated par-for-the-course anti-Jew racism entrenched in Palestinian culture? Racism is the most taboo of all ‘isms’ these days, yet there’s a collective silence over the racism that is part and parcel of the Arab psyche. I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but this looks like a conspiracy of silence.

Some of the excuses dredged up to justify Palestinian aggression crumble under cursory scrutiny. The ‘evictions’ of those Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah is one such. The inflammatory story has been debunked - in purely legal terms by law-orientated websites and in more nuanced non-professional terms by Uri Pilichowski who uses the handle ‘rational settler’. Yet it’s still used as a blunt weapon by the haters.

The UN Security Council is having an emergency meeting at the time of writing, I watched some of it on Sky. The Palestinian rep has appropriated all the arguments for the defence from Israel. He has regurgitated a litany of upside-down facts that are almost laughable. How anyone could be taken in by this nonsense I do not know. But no doubt they’ll swallow it.

This is going on in the UK.

UNBELIEVABLE!

"F**k the Jews" "F**k their daughters" "F**k their mothers" "Rape their daughters"

"Free Palestine"

Finchley Road, London, this afternoon!@CST_UK pic.twitter.com/AYZmuCG0x5

— SussexFriendsofIsrael (@SussexFriends) May 16, 2021

There’s one glimmer at the end of the tunnel - at least Aussie Sky stands with Israel. 

Losing control?

While I’m at it, (posting yet another slightly off-topic minority-interest screed) I might as well flag up this fascinating article by Con Coughlin. 

While still trying to digest Col Richard Kemp’s comprehensive observations on the global implications of China’s relations with the rest of the world, Gatestone Institute has thrown another politically seismic situation at us that needs to be pondered over.

It’s Iran. The oil price has collapsed, coronavirus has hit hard, Iran is running out of cash and the Ayatollahs are losing control.

“The scale of Iran's deepening economic crisis is reflected in the regime's recent decision to seek $5 billion in emergency funding from the IMF, its first request for outside help since the 1979 revolution. 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has tried to put a brave face on the latest setback to hit the regime, claiming that Iran is unlikely to suffer as much as other countries from the oil price drop because it is less reliant than others on crude exports. 

If that were truly the case, then Tehran would not be asking the IMF for a bailout, and Mr Rouhani, together with Javad Zarif, Iran's Foreign Minister, would not be begging Washington to remove sanctions. 

The truth of the matter is, for all the regime's attempts to claim it has everything under control, that the country is teetering on the brink of collapse, and the ayatollahs are fast running out of options to save themselves.”

Meanwhile, they’ve been demonstrating their technical prowess with the flamboyant launch of a military satellite, which has "successfully" gone into orbit. 

If anyone is interested in ITBB’s extensive back catalogue of Rouhani-related contributions from Craig and me, click here.    What could possibly happen next?

What persecution?

At around the same time as my previous, (I’d switched to the Parliament channel to get away from the Brexit related  hysteria on the BBC/Sky) I also saw the HoC debate on the persecution of Christians overseas - apparently Christians are the most persecuted religion of all  - that debate took place quite a while ago (11th July in response to the Bishop of Truro’s report) but, apart from broadcasting the debate itself on the Parliament channel, have we heard a great deal about it on the Beeb? 

I don’t think we have. There was something on the Asian Channel, but it’s ‘not currently available’. 

You have to rely on the internet for such information. 

The BBC is useless in that regard.

John Bolton's moustache

It's not every day that a piece of facial hair gets a whole BBC Radio 4 Profile to itself, but the subject of this week's Profile was US National Security Advisor John Bolton's moustache. 

I'm joking of course, but only just. That moustache got plenty of mentions! 

Fans of BBC hatchet jobs will need to give this a listen, as it's fine example of the form. I'll just quote its opening passage: 

US news reporter: Is John Bolton the most dangerous man in the world? 

Mark Coles: Hmm. Good question! John Bolton,  Donald Trump's National Security Advisor, has been upping the ante with Iran of late, threatening military action - a tactic some fear could lead the two countries to war. "The new Dr. Strangelove", the Washington Post branded him this week. But to others he's an American patriot - a tough-talking hero, albeit one with a slightly silly moustache.

My ears pricked up at this passage from John Peel-impersonator Mark: 

[John Bolton] developed ties with a number of controversial groups, like the right-wing Gatestone Institute, which some have accused of anti-Muslim bias.

You'll see the Gatestone Institute on our side-bar. For the BBC though, it seems, it's "controversial" and "right-wing" and, oh no!, "some" have accused it of "anti-Muslim bias". We'll have to remove it then. (Not).

Media round-up

On the whole, we source material from other blogs, press and media. I suppose it’s essentially churnalism, in that we regurgitate all sorts of news and views, but with a twist, as they say on The Great British Menu. Deconstructed fish ’n’ chips always goes down well. 

If it weren’t for our sidebar and various other online content, we’d be stuffed. If it weren’t for other blogs I certainly wouldn’t have a lot to say. To stave off dementia I might have to compose entertaining stories about our cat. Craig could seamlessly revert to blogging his favourite music and poetry and illustrate it with amusing videos of cats trying to squeeze themselves into tiny cardboard boxes. 

In the meantime, let’s persevere with the stolen goods. 

The Evening Standard has found yet another piece of the jigsaw that depicts Jeremy’s Corbyn’s antisemitism.   and yesterday Guido ‘had a little list’ of similar findings.

Melanie Phillips sums up recent ‘unsurprising’ examples of the media DOING WHAT COMES NATURALLY 

“A number of British media outlets led their reports with the false accusation that a pregnant Gazan woman and her 14-month-old baby had been killed by the Israeli strikes. In fact, as PIJ eventually admitted, they were killed by a malfunctioning rocket fired from Gaza. 

Some outlets corrected this error; others did not. None, though, pointed out that these particular casualties furnished graphic evidence that the Gazan warmongers weren’t only targeting Israeli innocents but using their own Gazan people as human shields by putting missiles in and around civilian homes – thus committing war crimes twice over. 

On Harry’s Place, we are treated to some nasty tweets by Mohammed T Akunjee whom the BBC apparently see as a credible guest. Here’s a nice one.

The Gatestone Institute has been featuring articles about Iran. Here, the author Majid Rafizadeh writes that Trump’s sanctions seem to be working.

“Feeling the pressure of sanctions on Iran, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran's proxy, Hezbollah, has also called on his group's fundraising arm "to provide the opportunity for jihad with money and also to help with this ongoing battle.”

Another piece addresses Iran’s persecution of Christians. Iran's 'Terror Factory' Targeting Christians by Uzay Bulut, and yet another tackles Iran’s expansionist aspirations.

“One of the primary revolutionary ideals to which the ruling clerics of the Islamic Republic of Iran are dedicated to upholding is not to limit the implementation of its version of Islamic laws to just Iran. The ruling clerics are also committed to exporting Iran's revolutionary principle and expanding the fundamentalist mission to other nations. 

How do they carry this out? By effectively taking over other countries. Lebanon, through Iran's proxy Hizballah, was the first. Then came Syria, and finally, Iraq -- with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip waiting in the wings. 

With each victory, the ruling mullahs of Iran have grown increasingly lethal and increasingly bold. At present, and for several years, Iran has set its sights on Yemen. 

This is not a random or new philosophy. This mission is part of Iran's constitution. Its preamble states that it "provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the Revolution at home and abroad.”

Why am I mentioning all this Iran stuff on a blog about BBC bias? Well, one reason is the way the BBC seems to carry out its deadpan impartiality to the nth degree. As if its policy is ‘über alles, avoid making value judgements’.

Last night I heard an item about an American-Iranian female football coach (Iranian-American coach Katayoun Khosrowyar) on BBC WS. She sounded jolly enlightened and liberated. 

However, the rules state that even in professional footy, the hijab is compulsory because the female body must be fully covered at all times, including during matches. It was duly acknowledged that this does restrict one’s ‘freedom of movement’, literally, but there wasn’t even a flicker, or a raised eyebrow to indicate doubt, dissent or curiosity about this, either from the lady herself or from the BBC anchor. Does the BBC demand impassive non-judgemental impartiality on all topics at all costs and above all else? 

It’s possible that a general atmosphere of stoic resignation to extreme religious dogma prevails in Iran amongst even the most liberal-minded citizens. But why do we have to ‘go along with it’ as if it’s a perfectly acceptable phenomenon? 


I know that’s a tiny, perhaps insignificant example of the kind of normalisation of Islam that one has come to expect from the BBC, but still, doesn’t the mind boggle at the idea of playing sport covered head-to-toe for ‘modesty’?

Mine does.

Silly Season

Should ITBB have a celebrity sidebar to attract more readers?

When you’re looking at the Daily Mail online to read Peter Hitchens or a bold expose of something disturbing to do with Islam, your eyes slide sideways all by themselves and you absent-mindedly click on something just to see what some scantily dressed celeb has gone and done now. 

Trivia about reality TV personalities you’ve never heard of is of zero interest but stuff about Victoria Beckham or Mariah Carey, 47, who is allegedly starting to look like a whale has a certain pull. 

ITBB’s sidebar would consist of pictures of Theresa May in some of her more ghastly clothes, and instead of saying “Theresa flaunts her eye-popping assets as she sets off on holiday with entourage” we’d say something rude about her knees, not for the first time. 

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If you’re still interested in Kevin Myers, here’s that clip of his Radio 5 interview with the ubiquitous Emma Barnett.

(I note that Alan on Biased-BBC has taken a view on this affair. I hope Alan will forgive me for pointing out that in his quest to denounce the BBC he has lost sight of the fact that Kevin Myers himself, in a somewhat Naz Shah moment,  has admitted that his unwise, thoughtless  innuendo amounted to casual racism. Myers certainly may not be your common or garden antisemite, or any kind of antisemite at all, but he made an offensive remark and apologised. 

That is not to say that the BBC and the Guardian have anything to crow about in that regard.

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Is the BBC’s gay jamboree is beginning to get too “in-yer-face?

Footage with social history content, such as film about the Peter Wildeblood / Lord Montagu of Beaulieu legal case is fascinating, but when blanket coverage of gay issues starts making heterosexuality look uncool it’s a bit  elgy beety queue & I too far.

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This is the silly season, but the subject itself is far from silly. What is silly is the fact that the BBC, as a broadcaster with a massive number of employees who are supposed to be on the lookout for material, missed the story completely. Especially as it concerns a ‘broadcasting’ controversy for once not related to the BBC itself.

This piece by Stefan Frank for Gatestone Institute reminded me again of the story.  (The film about antisemitism that was too sensitive for the Franco-German culture channel, ARTE. )

Frank’s article was originally written in German, and I hope it reminds Germany’s good people what a devious lot broadcasters can be. 

Well, they were eventually pressurised into a one-off showing of the film, but with “health warnings”:

“The way WDR broadcast it, however, was unique: at the beginning of the film and in brief intervals throughout, warning signs were inserted again and again, indirectly urging viewers not to believe what they saw in the film.”

The film is to be shown in US United States for one night only, on August 9. 

“The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles announced that it would screen the film after the German and French networks tried "to bury the documentary, before it could contaminate the viewing public with the truth," according to the Center's Associate Dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, in an interview with Gatestone Institute. "It is a film that needs to be viewed by anyone concerned about anti-Semitism and anyone concerned about the democratic future of Europe. It is a truth-telling, and 'PC'-busting documentary", he said. 

The truth is that in today's Europe, it is becoming more and more difficult to tell the truth.”

Douglas Murray’s lecture about ‘freedom of speech’ is apposite here, and I commend Biased-BBC for bringing it to out attention.

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I binge watched Top of the Lake: China Girl. I have no idea why you can catch all 12 episodes on iPlayer, but you can. It was gripping till the last episode, which in the usual tradition of TV drama was not the best one. I thought it was a good series. The Telegraph’s critic didn’t think much of the first episode but he probably would have changed his mind had he stuck with it.  I’m not one of Elizabeth Moss’s biggest fans, but her performances in this, Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale were fine and dandy.  However, in my opinion the best performances were by the minor characters. The ‘madam’ in the brothel and all the ‘girls’ were terrific. As for all those complaints that it was pretentious, I must like pretentious.

Is 'enough' enough?

A new Gatestone Institute article by Douglas Murray  popped into my inbox. It’s one of those pieces that immediately make you go ‘that’s just what I was thinking’.

UK Terrorism: ‘Enough’ is not ‘Enough’. 

When Theresa May said ”Enough is Enough” many of us were relieved. ‘Things are looking up!', we thought. But such optimism is apt to perish like a shrivelled balloon still tied to the gate long after the party. 

After the recent spate of terrorism, one might wonder, ‘where exactly is all this long awaited clamping down?’ Where is the action? 

Unless something stringent and punitive is being cooked up undercover, in the hidden world of Spy v Spy, it would appear to be non existent. 

Instead, the government presents us with more weak and feeble stuff about ‘perversion of Islam’ and the media reminds us that ‘extremism comes from the far right as well, you know.’

As Murray points out, two recent events that fly in the face of ‘Enough is Enough’ have recently gone ahead without let or hindrance. 

Despite calls for it to be stopped, the al-Quds Day march, which takes place annually in central London, went ahead again this year as usual.  The speeches in this year’s march were particularly inflammatory and antisemitic. Yet nothing was done.  'Does Mrs May regard this as ‘enough’?' asks Murray.

Evidently not. Another openly antisemitic event was held in the heart of Westminster. 

“On the weekend of July 8-9, the Queen Elizabeth II Centre (right opposite Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament) was host to a "Palestine Expo" event. This occasion was advertised as "the biggest social, cultural and entertainment event on Palestine to ever take place in Europe”.

There, similar speeches and anti-Israel rhetoric took place as several observers can attest.

Of course, the BBC wasn’t interested.  The BBC does not view Palestinians who murder Jewish families as terrorists. 

Before setting off to murder Israelis in their own home, 19-year- old Omar al Abed from the West Bank village of Khobar wrote what he presumed would be his final words on Facebook.

“I am writing my last testament and these are my last words,” wrote al Abed.
“I am young, not even twenty-years old, I had many dreams and many aspirations. But what life is this in which our women and our young are murdered without any justification? They are desecrating the al-Aksa mosque and we are sleeping, it’s an embarrassment that we are idly sitting by. 

“You, those who have a gun and who are worn out, you who only bring out your gun at weddings and celebrations, are you not ashamed of yourselves? Why are you not declaring war for God? Here they are closing the al-Aksa mosque and your gun is silent.
“All that I have is a sharpened knife, and it is answering the call of al-Aksa. Shame on you, you who preach hatred. God will take revenge on you and will make it count. All of us are the sons of Palestine and the sons of al-Aksa. You, sons of monkeys and pigs, if you do not open the gates of al-Aksa, I am sure that men will follow me and will hit you with an iron fist, I am warning you.”

On this occasion the particular grievance was the imaginary threat to the al-Aqsa mosque that Palestinians and their leaders dreamt up to ignite and excuse another of their customary waves of ‘rage’. 

This religious rant is fairly typical of 'Allahu Akbar' style religious fanaticism, and no different from the religiously-motivated terrorism that continually erupts from East to West with ever-increasing visibility. 

Yet the BBC refuses to connect terrorist violence perpetrated by a Palestinian with the same thing when carried out by your common or garden jihadi. Thus, BBC has decreed that the use of the emotive word ‘terrorist’ applies to the latter but not the former. This, says the BBC, is because it contains a value judgement.  

What message can be taken away from this puzzling inconsistency?  Either they see Israelis as so ‘other’ that the news that some of them have been slaughtered in their beds is, to them, neither here nor there.  Worse, it could be that they actually feel that the murder of Jews is all in a good cause.

It puts one in mind of the case in 2010 where activists who broke into a Brighton weapons factory and caused £200,000 of damage were found ‘not guilty of conspiracy to commit criminal damage’. Why not? Oh, because they were acting with “lawful excuse”.

Could it be that the general level of understanding of the Israeli / Palestinian conflict at the BBC, from the highest level to the lowest, is so poor that they seriously believe that Palestinian murderers are acting with ‘lawful excuse?’

Perhaps they apply the same principle  to al-Quds and Palestine Expo, too, but they’re skating on thin ice if they half-believe British victims of terror had it coming, and that our ‘foreign policy’ gives Islamic terrorists ‘lawful excuse’ to self-detonate outside a pop concert. 

In The Conservative Woman a post by Niall McCrae demonstrates where  our famous tolerance extends far beyond the call of duty. "British values' are being weaponised against Britons." 

“Last Friday’s front page of The Guardian featured a Muslim woman who is suing a school for its allegedly discriminatory dress code. After her daughter gained a place at the prestigious Holland Park comprehensive, Rachida Serroukh attended a talk by headteacher Colin Hall. Both she and her daughter were wearing full Islamic dress. A teacher asked Serroukh for a word in private, and advised her of school policy against masking of children’s faces. Serroukh told the Guardian reporter: ‘As the teacher was female I lifted my veil when we were talking’. How nice of her.

Holland Park is known as the ‘socialist Eton’. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds struggle to get in, but the culture of the school is emancipatory and secularist. Nurturing local Muslim girls’ potential would be regarded as central to the school’s mission. Yet this leftward institute is now threatened by Wahhibi entryism. In a completely one-sided report, The Guardian presents the school as a pariah, and Serroukh as a cause celebre.

Why was this case given such prominence, and such obvious support, by a ‘progressive’ newspaper? A large photograph of Serroukh on page 2 of The Guardian has her sitting on a sofa, shrouded in black except for her hands and eyes. The newspaper appears to be boosting its diversity credentials, but we must consider the powerful socio-political forces of globalised media and rapidly shifting Western demography. The Guardian is not only virtue-signalling, but also market-signalling.

Islam is Islam.  Enough is Enough. 

Rock and a hard place

Contrary to what you might think, we at ITBB don’t take everything we read on websites at face value. Even the ones we generally respect and agree with. There’s always another side to an argument if you seek it out, and there’s always someone with another take on any issue.

I often link to articles on Gatestone Institute, and I’m going to do so again now. 

This interesting piece harshly criticises Emmanuel Macron, and given that the BBC is at this very moment delightedly reporting some violent demonstrations in France against “far right Marine Le Pen”, I’m linking to it ‘for balance.’  

Not that everyone who has deep concerns about Emmanuel Macron automatically supports Marine Le Pen. It boils down to a case of the lesser of two evils. But which one is the lesser?

Recent elections have posed a similar conundrum. Trump or Hillary? Which of the two was the least worst?

Brendan O’Neill has an interesting  piece in the Spectator.  It’s a scathing exposé of the rabid feminists who supported Hillary merely and solely because she was a woman, willingly disregarding her unimpressive political record. 

That being the case, he asks: ‘why don’t the feminists unconditionally support Marine Le Pen for exactly the same reason?’ Well, they just don’t.  O’Neill is not endorsing Le Pen. Far from it. He’s merely exposing the stupidity  and hypocrisy of the feminists. 

The Gatestone piece is damning, too, but about Macron. His economic policy is basically the failed policy of François Hollande, (the continuity politician, as the BBC likes to say) and his stance against the Islamisation which is evidently engulfing France at the moment appears to be non-existent. 

(Terrorism) “will be part of the daily life of the French in the years to come” he has said. For all that, the author, Guy Millière is less than enthusiastic about Le Pen. 

Now Macron has suddenly decided to exploit the “is she or isn’t she” question that hangs over Le Pen, which is her alleged antisemitism. Like father like daughter. Macron has pledged that he’s the one who will stand up against antisemitism. Hmm. That will be a difficult circle to square.  The French voter is between a rock and a hard place,

and some would say, so are we. 

Do people find Theresa’s strong and stable ‘rock’ as hard as Jeremy’s ‘all over the place’? We’ll have to wait and see.

"trouble in the banlieues of Paris"

A comment from esteemed blogger  Daphne Anson citing two pieces about  anti-Chinese sentiment in France prompted me to have a further look. 

The Telegraph piece by David Chazan, is a  report about a demonstration that took place in August. The Chinese demonstrators were demanding protection from “muggers who they say prey on them because they are seen as easy targets.”

Chazan gives this fatal incident the passive treatment: 

“The death of a 49-year-old Chinese tailor after being badly beaten in a robbery earlier this month has lent new urgency to the long running complaint that Asian immigrants are systematically attacked and robbed in the French capital.”
[…] 
“……Chaoling Zhang, the father of two who died on August 14 after being punched to ground in the north-eastern suburb that is home to some 4,000 Chinese immigrants. No arrests have been made over the attack.”

(The BBC did report the incident at the time) 

“The father-of-two had been attacked by three men while walking with a friend, a police source said.”

The BBC’s recent article by freelancer Kevin Ponniah A killing in Paris: Why French Chinese are in uproar was published on 26th October 2016 and includes the following passage:

“During a recent trial of three youths accused of 11 attacks in a three-month span in Aubervilliers, the defendants insisted the ethnicity of their targets was just a coincidence. But when interrogated by police, they reportedly admitted to seeing Chinese people as "easy targets" with money on them.”

So it seems that the police did make some arrests. The BBC’s piece describes the killers of “Zhang Chaolin", a 49 year old Chinese tailor as  “three teenagers” and all reference to ‘ethnicity’ is confined to the term “ethnic Chinese”. Kevin Ponniah deals with the tribulations of various ethnic Chinese individuals and the wider issue of anti-Chinese racism in France. He focuses on a Paris suburb, apparently a kind of Chinatown, Aubervilliers, which he describes as:

“A working-class and immigrant-heavy area, home to more than 1,200 mostly Chinese wholesalers, Aubervilliers is an important European textile centre. Buyers come from far and wide to haggle over Italian-made coats and Chinese-made shirts.”

Here is a nice piece about Aubervilliers, “Europe's made-in-China clothing capital.” 

In stark contrast to the BBC’s standard reporting of murdered ‘nameless’ Israelis, the article gives the victims of French anti-Chinese racism the ‘full Palestinian victimhood’ status without any mention of the ethnicity of the perpetrators.  As Daphne Anson says, this leaves the impression that the anti-Chinese racism is coming from the indigenous “white” French.

The Telegraph has this, albeit somewhat buried in the depths of the article:

“Community workers say many muggings are committed by members of other minorities living in the area, generally of Arab or African origin.

Paris officials corroborated the figures but declined to identify the robbers by ethnic origin.”

A link takes you to this Telegraph report about trouble in the banlieues of Paris from 2005. 

"A country in flames… French cities teeter on the edge of anarchy"

But is this *“NTDWIist” attitude unique to the BBC?  I Googled, and came up with several pieces from France 24 which were just as evasive.

France 24 - lots about the victims, nothing about the perpetrator.

Reuters, a similar story, but the piece did include this ‘random’ information:

“Tourist traffic in Paris has dropped significantly since attacks by Islamist militants last November, leading to sharp declines in sales for luxury goods makers but also for the capital's retailers, hotels and restaurants.”

Googling ‘Aubervilliers’ produced this: European 'No-Go' Zones: Fact or Fiction? Part 1: France

Soernn Kern. January 2015.

“Another township of Seine-Saint-Denis is Aubervilliers. Sometimes referred to as one of the "lost territories of the French Republic," it is effectively a Muslim city: more than 70% of the population is Muslim. Three quarters of young people under 18 in the township are foreign or French of foreign origin, mainly from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. French police are said to rarely venture into some of the most dangerous parts of the township. 

The southern part of Aubervilliers is well known for its vibrant Chinese immigrant community along with their wholesale clothing and textile warehouses and import-export shopping malls. In August 2013, the weekly newsmagazine Marianne reported that Muslim immigrants felt humiliated by the economic dynamism of the Chinese, and were harassing and attacking Chinese traders, who were increasingly subject to robberies and extortion. The situation got so bad that the Chinese ambassador to France was forced to pay a visit to the area. 

In response, the Socialist mayor of Aubervilliers, Jacques Salvator, suggested that the violence could be halted if Chinese companies would agree to hire more Arabs and Africans. The Chinese countered that Muslims do not work as hard as the Chinese, that they are more demanding, and that they complain too much, according to Marianne.
After local officials refused to act in the face of increasing Muslim violence, the Chinese threatened to "call on the Chinese mafia" for protection. Muslims responded by launching a petition to have the Chinese expelled from the area. 

Also in Aubervilliers, the magazine Charlie Hebdo reported in 2012 that the town hall was obligating non-Muslim men who want to marry Muslim women to convert to Islam first, even though France is ostensibly a secular republic. One such man, Frédéric Gilbert, a journalist, was told: 

"You can convert in any mosque in three minutes. All you need do is to repeat 'with conviction and sincerity' this sentence: 'I recognize that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is his prophet,' and the Imam will agree that you have converted to Islam.’”

Well I never. 

My friend, a fusspot, once deconstructed a burger he was suspicious of, only to find a beetle-like corpse within. 

“Seek and ye shall find” said a onlooker, disapprovingly.  In other words it’s your own fault;  if you’d been less picky and just eaten it you’d have been none the wiser.

Is this what I’ve just been doing, seeking and finding, and if so, would we have been better off none the wiser?

*NothingToDoWithIslam-ist 

The might of the pen

May I recommend a recent article on Gatestone by Richard Kemp and Jasper Reid.

Why? Because it covers all the bases, from A (for antisemitism) to Z (for Zionism.) 

It’s a must-read. Here are two excerpts that have particular resonance for this blog.

Recognizing their collective inability to eliminate Jews from their historic homeland by force, the Arabs have waged a pernicious and all-pervading propaganda war to demonize the Jewish State. Their lies have included the blatant falsehoods that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are illegal under international law; that the Israeli government operates an oppressive apartheid state; that the IDF is strangling Gaza under an unprovoked and illegal siege; that successive Israeli administrations have been the sole obstacle to peace in the Middle East; and that Israeli security forces deliberately murder innocent Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.Understanding that the might of the pen is magnified by the flash of the sword, the Palestinian leadership and their Iranian paymasters have frequently used violence to seize international attention. Provoking the Israelis into killing Palestinian people to ensure global condemnation was the true purpose behind the Gaza rocket wars and the recent wave of murderous knife attacks and car-rammings.

This is why we see Western leaders condemning Israel for insufficient restraint while defending itself from lethal Hamas rockets, when they know full well Israel has done all it can to avoid civilian deaths. It is why not one single EU member state had the courage to vote against the false condemnation of Israel for war crimes in the UN Human Rights Council last year. It is why the British government unequivocally asserts that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal when it knows they are not. It is why Prime Minister David Cameron, a friend and supporter of the Jewish state, accused Israel of turning the Gaza Strip into a 'prison camp' when he knew it had not.These false and malicious condemnations fuel hatred of Israel and of Jewish people everywhere. They are driven and intensified by a media that is dominated by strident, virulent and unyielding anti-Israel bias.

Migrants, charities, virtue signalling and mandatory emoting

Caitlin Moran, author, columnist and celebrity watcher is a punchy writer who specialises in human interest stories and light-hearted selfie-centric  observations. She also talks extraordinarily quickly.

The Times has had a hand in elevating her upwards and onwards, beyond journalism, to celebrity-hood in her own right.  It’s that Emma Thompson-Cumberbatch Benedict syndrome. 

I suppose if you’re revered by thousands, why not take advantage? Why not email a few friends (a term that can be interpreted in a way of your choice) and get them to collaborate with you to raise money for “the refugees”. Everyone’s a winner. 

Fair enough. Apparently the money raised is to go the Save the Children. What they intend to do with it I know not.

Just as long as the charities that benefit from all the fundraising confine themselves to helping orphaned children, who may willingly assimilate and absorb their host countries’ culture, which whole families or unaccompanied young men are unlikely to do.

In an interview with Anita McVeigh on BBC News 24, (thanks for the publicity?) Moran, with those annoying arched eyebrows, speed-talked her project up with all the ‘mandatory emoting‘ one would expect. 

In the interview, she stated confidently that little Aylan Kurdi’s family fled from persecution, and he ended up dead. 

It is widely believed that the father’s account is flawed, but even so, the child undoubtedly died, and the politicians of the big wide world must urgently come up with some kind of rescue plan for dealing with the exodus of families displaced by wars.As Douglas Murray says “Where is the ‘Ummah’ now?” 

But that’s not the point. It’s that failure to fully inform the viewer again. I don’t know if Moran and Cumberbatch are Corbynistas, but there are too many people amongst those pleading for more and more Syrians to be given sanctuary in the UK and Europe who seem unaware of the effect that an influx of thousands of Muslims will have on the western world.   

At least let them know.

Melanie Phillips had a full page opinion piece in yesterday’s Times. (£)

I have yet to see this view being explored  - sympathetically at least - on the BBC. I don’t claim to watch the BBC as much as I used to. Please let me know if I’m mistaken. 

Accepting these migrants is a huge mistake

Britain can’t be expected to take in a flood of displaced people that will alter the cultural balance of the country for ever.In Germany, posters saying “Refugees welcome” and “Nobody is illegal” have been appearing at bus stops and demonstrations. At a rally in Oxford last weekend, demonstrators held up home-made placards saying “We welcome refugees (given the chance)” and “We are all human”.These people are merely telling us about themselves. Public expressions of compassion signify that a person is good. Their absence demonstrates heartlessness. This has been called “virtue signalling”, or mandatory emoting, and it has now reached its crazy apotheosis in the great migration crisis.”

Soeren Kern, Gatestone Institute:

“Based on Pew projections, the Muslim population of Germany reached an estimated 5,068,000 by the end of 2014. The 640,000 Muslim migrants arriving in Germany in 2015, combined with the 77,000 natural increase, indicates that the Muslim population of Germany will jump by 717,000, to reach an estimated 5,785,000 by the end of 2015. This would leave Germany with the highest Muslim population in Western Europe.
By way of comparison, the surge in Germany's Muslim population would be equivalent to the Muslim population of the United States increasing by 3 million in just one year.Critics say that German officials, under pressure to solve Europe's migration crisis, are ignoring the long-term consequences of taking in so many migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.”

“Islamic Sharia law is advancing rapidly throughout Germany, with Sharia courts now operating in all of Germany's big cities. This "parallel justice system" is undermining the rule of law in Germany, experts warn, but government officials are "powerless" to do anything about it. At the same time, German judges are increasingly referring and deferring to Sharia law in German law courts.”

I’ve no idea what Caitlin Moran would have to say about any of that. We don’t know because it’s something she hasn’t written about. It’s something she might not even know about. Or care. 

The tidal wave of compassion for migrants is accompanied by a troubling absence of appreciation for the achievements and sacrifices of previous generations, fought on our behalf at enormous cost. The cavalier willingness of the politically illiterate and those raised on celebrity culture to throw it all away is what is really shocking.

Middle East Myths and the Media

Whenever you find yourself arguing about the Middle East, you’ll probably have the luck to be up against a fan of Ilan Pappé or Noam Chomsky. That is a major stumbling block.

Venerated historians can reference archival material till the cows come home, but documentary evidence seems not to figure in Israel-hating arguments, which are usually emotional and often inexplicable.

The media’s focus is permanently fixed upon Israel’s imperfections (which bear an uncanny similarity to ours) while no-one seems remotely uncomfortable about the seismic imperfections of her enemies. 

How easily we cherry-pick whatever suits our preconceived fancies and how nonchalantly we disregard the rest. Facts only get in the way.

Denis MacEoin’s piece for Gatestone “Will Facts Ever Displace Anti-Israel Fiction? tackles one specific example, which stands for all the rest.

Batting for the Palestinians, we have the Irish. 

The IRA  has connections with the PSC, and the Irish do tend to support the Palestinians. Perhaps they still can’t forgive the Jews for killing Christ, even though Pope Benedict XVl said he has done so personally, (most generous) but that’s not what Denis MacEoin was addressing. He was infuriated by an op-ed piece in a widely read newspaper, the Irish Examiner. He describes the piece, written by  a little-known journalist named Victoria White, as “an uncompromising diatribe, a spittle-flecked assault on Israel that dragged out the usual false claims of “ethnic cleansing” during Israel’s war of independence in 1947 and 1948.” 

It is certainly most upsetting to come across factually inaccurate and slanderous material in a setting (or out of the mouth of a person) from whom one is entitled to expect better, and it’s typical of what happens when we get embroiled in un-winnable arguments with people who believe what they want to believe, fact or fantasy. Such people always seem suspicious of Jews and want to think the worst of them. The ascribe all manner of malevolent motives to Jews, and have persuaded themselves to doubt the legitimacy of Israel. 

We don’t know why so many people are antisemitic or emotionally pro-Palestinian. It could simply be because they’ve been educated, informed and entertained by the BBC.

Or the Guardian. 

Denis MacEoin considers that Pappé’s infamous book “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” is so one-sided that it is in effect fraudulent. 

Despite the fact that Pappé’s interpretation of historical events has been discredited and debunked by serious historians who substantiate the counter narrative with carefully researched documentary evidence, the Israel-hostile theses of Pappé and Chomsky satisfy the anti-Zionists by reaching the parts that other views don’t reach. Israel-negative interpretations fulfill a role and therefore have been highly influential. Revisionist historians supply fiction that replaces facts rather than temporarily displacing them.

With the help of the media, several specific myths have taken hold in a big way, from the mythical “ethnic cleansing“ of Palestinians in 1848, the so-called “genocides” that are supposed to have taken place from time-to-time ever since, the imaginary apartheid, the “siege” of Gaza, and the general vilification of Israel and all who sail in her. All these myths are neatly encompassed in the phrase ”What Israel is doing.” Those four words, frequently uttered by Jenny Tonge and others, elicit knowing looks from people who actually know nothing. 

From Pappé’s book Victoria White has chosen one of the most significant ahistorical misunderstandings: “The campaign to ethnically cleanse the city of Haifa of Palestinians.”  MacEoin explains in detail that this did not happen - in fact the opposite is the case. There was no campaign, other than that of the Arabs to exterminate the Jews. “The Exodus of 1947-1948”, was an Arab-led exodus, engineered by Arabs, for the sole purpose of facilitating a planned annihilation (of Jews), which, as we know, failed. 

Pro-Palestinian activists have this myth in their top ten. It is a myth, but one that underpins the whole victimhood strategy, which gets the pro-Palestinian juices running.

BBC Watch critiques a programme called “Agree to Differ” that was recently broadcast on radio 4. 

Hosted by Matthew Taylor, formerly chief adviser on political strategy to Tony Blair, this very myth was was alluded to by one of the participants, and left unchallenged. Rafeef Ziadah was introduced as a “Palestinian performance poet and human rights activist.” As an introduction, that might sound commendable to the uninitiated, but it should perhaps have included the strap-line “...and leading anti-Israel campaigner”.

If Matthew Taylor’s grasp of the history is representative of the average government adviser on political strategy, is it any wonder we’re in the middle of an Islam-related crisis that no-one seems to know how to resolve.

There are far too many slapdash and poorly-prepared BBC interviewers and chairpersons publicly mishandling important discourse. They fail to challenge or correct errors, and their ignorant or partisan attitudes infuriate the better-informed audience and mislead the gullible, the vulnerable or the emotionally incontinent.  

If they don’t know something, please don’t let them pretend they do.

   

A programme currently being trailed is to be aired on Saturday at 20:00 on Radio 4. It’s an episode of Archive on 4, called Media and the Middle East. Here’s the blurb: 

 “The rockets and missiles fly, from Israel into Gaza, from Gaza into Israel. It's the latest iteration of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours which has flared since the very founding of the Jewish state in 1948.
Accompanying the conflict has been an unprecedented level of media coverage. And almost nothing is uncontested. Every sentence, every word of a news report is parsed for signs of bias by individuals and organisations dedicated to ensuring a fair deal for their point of view. Coverage is measured in minutes and seconds of airtime. Media organisations stand accused, by both sides, of prejudice, systemic bias and deliberate distortion.Why does this particular conflict, above all others, attract the attention it does? And why does it create such strong emotion, even among those with no connection to the region?John Lloyd, a contributing editor at the Financial Times, examines the evolution of coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the founding of Israel to the present day.With contributions from journalists and those who monitor them, Lloyd asks why there is such focus both on the conflict itself and on those who report it. He traces the way reporting has developed from the early television age, through the introduction of 24-hour news channels to the inception of social media. And he examines the challenges of reporting fairly and accurately on a conflict in which every assertion is contested.”

The very first sentence gives an example of the last/first syndrome, so it doesn’t look promising. 

Are “the media” feeling sorry for themselves because we’re scrutinizing every sentence for the smallest scintilla of bias? They wonder why there is such a disproportionate focus on the region, when they might ask themselves whether their own disproportionate obsession with the subject has anything to do with it. 

Who is John Lloyd? Is he a covert anti-Israel zealot or just a common or garden mildly anti-Zionist media boffin? Or a Jew? 

Woops! He’s a communist. Oh no, it says here that “Lloyd is a former communist who became a critic of the left’s anti-imperialism, and a proponent of military aggression by the United States and its allies.”  He wrote about Bias and the BBC in the Guardian in 2007. (A long time ago.)

Whenever the BBC tackles something like this and promises to lay bare the myths once and for all, it usually manages to make things even worse.  If the programme makers don’t even understand the very complicated history, or they learn the mythical version from each other, how can they make a fair assessment of possible bias? Even if they did make an effort to look further than Chomsky they’d be conscious of the Palestinian Solidarity campaigners looking disapprovingly over their shoulder. 

There was a symposium the other day, the panel were all vigorous anti-Israel campaigners who, after mutually reinforcing a few of their favourite myths, agreed to get up and ‘do something’.   They’re all much more pro-Palestinian than Hamas. If all the Palestinians came to their senses and realised that they’d benefit from accepting Israel and getting on with building a positive, neighbourly, shared future, that lot would be furious.

For some reason YouTube won't let me upload this video, but I might tempt you to look at it (Two parts) with these grabs instead.