More questions than answers

Towards the tail end of the Today Programme (2:54:42) Clive Baldwin from the dreadfully partisan organisation known as Human Rights Watch was brought in to opine on the plight of Shamima Begum.

I wondered what he would have to say. He began thus: (Note. None of the following transcriptions is guaranteed 100% verbatim)

“As you said, John, ISIS committed very serious crimes; crimes against humanity [..] the key element is collecting all the evidence of war crimes in Syria and we should be focussing on those found to have been responsible for helping, assisting prosecuting and committing war crimes especially at the most senior level.

That sounds promising, I thought - he’s more interested in “The most senior level” than picking off the low-hanging fruit, so to speak.

The other guest, Yvonne McDermott Rees @Swansea_Law, has an unmistakably Irish accent. What can we expect from her? Well, she agreed with Clive. 

Y McD R
“It’s going to be domestic countries - Germany is going to be prosecuting for crimes like genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

(Humph to Clive)
“What about Shamima Begum?”

CB
“She has the right to enter Britain as a British citizen, if she does she should be investigated for anything she’s done to assist any crimes in Syria and Iraq and also security measures taken, taking into account that she was a girl when she went out there, um 15, and on a wider scale as well, and for the UK as a whole to know that this is a global problem; and her case has also highlighted what’s happening in Syria is also happening in Iraq as well, with the end of the war against ISIS, is you have these very large camps of internment, which are effectively open-air prisons, where lots of people are detained…previously people talk about the displaced people in Iraq, and it’s important that these camps close down as quickly as possible - again those most responsible for those crimes are prosecuted but everyone else has the right to return home.

I don’t know that “everyone else” should have the right to return home, wherever ‘home’ might be. Some of them may not have homes to return to. But it would be nice to think that these two commenters realise that this idiotic girl is but a drop in the ocean and that our fundamental problem goes deeper. 

Humph to Yvonne McDermott Rees:
 “How does one distinguish between those who carry out terrible acts and those who don’t actually wield the knife or pull the trigger, but support them, give them help?”

Y McD R
“Yes, this has always been a challenge in the prosecution of these international crimes.
We want to go after those who are most responsible. It’s not always the person who’s holding the gun, the weapon is the person who’s higher up in the chain of command the architect of these policies, to commit these crimes, so going after those most responsible is always going to be a huge challenge.
In this context we’ve got a brand new world in the sense that we have a wealth of citizen evidence,  so people have been gathering evidence on their mobile phones for example, but the challenge with using that kind of evidence in prosecutions is that if we’re going to prosecute those who are most responsible it’s still very difficult to find the evidence that links higher up to the chain of command.”

Precisely. Never mind small fry like Ms Begum - let’s go for the bigwigs. But which ones? The daddy of them all, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? Or one of those Imams that have so much influence on their followers in the West? 

 Humph, (who hasn’t really been listening)
But the idea of citizen evidence is very attractive Clive?

CB
Indeed, and my organisation as well, HRW, has been documenting crimes in Syria and Iraq for years now. It’s just making sure that evidence can be used in court, and that’s why this mechanism in Geneva is important, for its wide exchange of information and particularly the commanders, and what we’ve seen in Iraq is that when they’ve been prosecuting in Iraq is that they’ve only gone after very low-level people and it’s important now that we go after the most senior.

These answers pose another question. We know that HRW takes a left-wing, agenda-driven approach to morality as far as war crimes are concerned, so we have to wonder, is the desire to focus “on the most senior” war criminals just an excuse to let Ms Begum off the hook on “humanitarian grounds?”  Are they saying she’s just a drop in the ocean, so let’s just go for the big guys?

Or, on the other hand, was it a belated realisation that we face a far bigger battle than can realistically be won simply by imprisoning hundreds or maybe thousands of the fanatical individuals who’ve been captured red-handed on smartphones during the act of beheading some unfortunate infidel. (To be used later in court as evidence that the accused has literally acted out the fantasy of a better world in the shape of a global Islamic caliphate)  (and not the one who has incited the whole damned business from some God-forsaken pulpit.) 

I doubt it. Personally, I don’t think they’ve realised anything of the sort. I think they really do believe that they can defeat ISIS and various yet-to-be-invented off-shoots thereof, by inadvertently creating another gigantic Guantanamo Bay, while being very careful not to appear Islamophobic. 

As they say, good luck with that.

Swift self-selected non-select-committee summary

So much to blog /  so little time. 

The Islamophobia awards. The notion of giving the prize to Charlie Hebdo. 

For Islamophobia. 

A clumsier blunder you’d be hard pressed to find. 

Muslims already awarded Charie Hebdo the ultimate sanction - murder - as a prize for its alleged Islamophobia, so giving it a supposedly ironic ‘award’ should have been a gross embarrassment to all, especially the IHRC.

All those foolish supporters like Rowan Williams seem to have overlooked the fact that Charlie Hebdo wasn’t any more “Islamophobic" than other types of 'phobic' in the first place.  

At least Peter Oborne has come out and cemented his position as honorary Islamist, which I suppose is a good thing in the spirit of transparency. 

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This new report has the military and legal expertise that Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and  Navi Pillay ( former  United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) lack. 

However, many people are expected to fall back on the Mandy Rice Davis manoeuvre to dismiss the 2014 Gaza War Assessment. That’s because the organisation that commissioned the report is called JINSA. The “J” stands for Jewish. Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. They may be Jewish, but “The authors know the Laws of Armed Conflict far better than the NGOs do.” H/T EoZ)

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I don’t know if the dumbed down BBC is interested in that kind of thing and I can’t be arsed to try and search their new-fangled website these days. 

On our sidebar, the small handful of websites we thought relevant when we set up this blog constantly jostle with each other for top billing as soon as new articles appear. Recently I’ve noticed that while Sky, Google and the Guardian usually feature serious news, the BBC increasingly seems to focus on trivia and sport. 

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Talking of which, I’m quite amused and entertained by the Clarkson debacle, particularly the way certain people pronounce the word ‘fracas’. Michael Grade said “Frackarse” for instance. (I thought the ‘s‘ was  silent but what do I know?)

The fracas business is more entertaining than Top Gear so let’s hope it drags on as long as possible.

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Last and arguably not least I have to just mention the abuse of the house-room we give (i.e. purchase) to the garbage beamed into our houses in the shape of yesterday’s wall-to-wall coverage of yet another of those laughable select committees chaired by very important pompous master of ceremonies Keith Vaz. I understand other channels gave that panto similarly extensive coverage, but somehow it was all the more offensive from the BBC. I can’t really explain that.

There they were, three self righteous victims and one smug legal advisor sitting in a row, being encouraged  by their inquisitors to  think up ever more far-fetched grievances against the police and justify blaming everyone but themselves. 

Who was the elderly gent on the committee that sounded like Joe Pasquale who assured the family that clearly I.S. is nothing to do with Islam? 

What exactly is a select committee, who selects it and what good does it do? 

Miscellany for the weekend.

Some tales that demonstrate the BBC’s confused approach to Jews and Israel.

They didn’t make much of Yom Hashoah, but a few new holocaust stories have appeared on the BBC, so perhaps this is their way of commemorating. 

There was Dorit Oliver-Wolff on Saturday Live, and  Anne Frank's stepsister Eva Schloss on the website talking to Stephen Sackur about her war-time experiences.

 But heartrending/heartwarming holocaust stories are nothing new for the BBC. It’s the Jews that defend themselves the BBC is less keen on.

 Another Donnison Tweet leads us to Lyse Doucet’s interview with Daniel Levy, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Paul Charney, the chairman of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and by Dror Moreh, the director of 'The Gatekeepers'.

It’s obvious that the BBC will like this documentary for the very reasons Paul Charney warned against, i.e. that criticisms of Israel’s political policies  expressed by the six former heads of Shin Bet in the film would be used as a tool by Israel’s detractors to further their ongoing delegitimization of Israel.

Donnison’s Twitter page also contained a Tweet by his colleague and award nominator Paul Danahar, which led to this interesting article by HRW on a topic also covered, in a weirdly sanitised form, by the BBC.

Interestingly, no details are spared in the HRW piece, and I well remember Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, Sarah Leah Whitson, causing concern amongst many people by ingratiating herself and her organisation with the Saudis during a fund-raising mission,  by highlighting  HRW’s  battles with "pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union and the United Nations." yet having nothing to say about Saudi Arabia’s own human rights abuses.

Here’s another thing that caught my eye, because it was written by Raffi Berg who once left a comment on Biased BBC asking for guidance on some phrasing. (November 22, 2012 at 6:47 pm)

“ The way we have been wording our paragraph on when the fighting started is causing endless complaints. It’s the specific reference in time which is upsetting people.We have been saying:The conflict began last Wednesday when Israel killed a Hamas military leader, saying it wanted an end to rocket attacks from Gaza. More than 110 Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed.To a lot of people, the conflict was already raging, and they interpret that as blaming or putting undue emphasis on Israel.Can we please use the following form of words which gets round that:Israel launched its offensive, which it says is aimed at ending rocket fire from Gaza, with the killing on Wednesday of a Hamas military leader. More than 110 Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed since then.ThanksRaffi Berg Middle East desk BBC News website +44 203 614 xxxxraffi.berg@bbc.co.ukhttp://www.bbc.com/middleeast

and another:

November 22, 2012 at 6:48 pmPlease remember, Israel doesn’t maintain a blockade around Gaza. Egypt controls the southern border. Israel maintains a blockade around its borders with Gaza, as well as a naval blockade. It also controls Gaza’s airspace.We’ve mistakenly said “around Gaza” in a number of recent stories, which has generated complaints.Raffi Berg Middle East desk BBC News website +44 203 614 1824raffi.berg@bbc.co.ukhttp://www.bbc.com/middleeast

These rather odd comments indicate at least that Raffi Berg is willing to listen to his critics. He also wrote this, which didn’t go down very well with BBCWatch

His article about Israeli ‘Frankness’ is quite nice as it happens, and most likely well-intentioned, but it also plays into the hands of people who consider superficialities to be the most significant pointers to ‘a peoples’ fundamental character.  How many times have I heard people praising the inhabitants of various Islamic states, poverty-stricken and wealthy alike, for their tradition of hospitality and generosity to strangers, and extrapolating from this that as a people they must be blameless for everything else. 

How many times have I heard tales of the rudeness of Israelis, whether at home or abroad, from people who extrapolate from this that Israelis must be solely to blame for the tribulations of the Middle East. They don’t get it, and the little bit at the end of the piece about “Sabra”, which comes from the name of a cactus fruit - prickly on the outside but tender within - characteristics which arguably best define Israelis, will probably be lost in the rush to condemn Israel yet again. For that reason, i.e., the likelihood that such things will only be half understood, and as such used as tools by Israel’s detractors,  articles like this are risky. In the current climate these things need to be strongly counter-balanced with an equal amount of positive stories. We’ve a long way to go....

Update.  See this post for  a full explanation. http://isthebbcbiased.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/nice-but-dim.html
The post I referred to above that appeared on Biased-BBC was not put there by Raffi Berg. It was posted by "Soothsayer" in order to make a point. I assume it was an internal memo.