What to say?

Well, it seems - though the BBC remains cautious about this - that the founder of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Bigdaddy, has finally been decaliphinated by Donald Trump's special forces.

The BBC's elders are now chewing the cud on the matter:

John Simpson: The real credit for the death of al-Baghdadi must surely go to the dogged policework of US intelligence - plus, no doubt, the huge reward money to give him up.  

Hugh Sykes: Making up for all the lack of US intelligence which left so many resentful and angry Baathists and army officers without a future after 2003, allowing them to help Zarkawi & Al Qaeda at first and then Baghdadi to kill so many hundreds of Syrians and Iraqis. 

John Simpson: That really was Paul Bremer’s doing. As I understand it the US military and intelligence disagreed. 

Hugh Sykes: Yes. US military I was often embedded with around that time were hopping mad but wouldn't hop madly for my microphone. "Oh, Hugh, I w i s h I could go on the record!" one batallion commander said to me in desperation. And I was thinking of 'intelligence' in the IQ sense as well!

Blurring the boundaries

The boundaries between reporting and campaigning at the BBC are getting ever more blurred. 

Earlier today I cited the BBC's Quentin Somerville (a brave reporter) reporting the plight of orphaned children of dead IS parents caught up in dangerous camps in Syria and calling our failure to give them sanctuary "a disgrace". 

He's been doing his absolute best today to get three orphaned young children returned to London. 

Now, he himself says that it's been "particularly hard" reporting their "traumatic testimony". And that's perfectly understandable. They are very young, their situation is awful and all the fault was with their dead parents. Rescuing children in peril is a powerful and wonderful instinct, and Quentin can't be blamed for being overwhelmed by the feeling to do so. 

But it raises all manner of questions about BBC impartiality. 

He's going further and further in expressing contentious opinions on the matter. 

His reporting of the Shamima Begum and Jack Letts cases left me in little doubt that he was wanting them returned to the UK too, and a  tweet from him this afternoon further confirms that:

The SDF repeatedly told Britain to take back the likes of Shamima Begum and Jack Letts. Instead the UK stripped them of their citizenship. It was never a sustainable policy in the long term.

Has he overstepped the bounds, impartiality-wise? And, if he has, is he right to do so? 

Discuss (if you wish).

Reporting with feeling

The BBC has discovered three young children in a Syrian camp for detained IS members. They are said to have originally lived in London. The BBC reporter involved, Quentin Sommerville, is live-tweeting the news and crossing the line between straight reporting and active advocacy:  

• These three kids, Amira, Hamza and Hiba, are orphans of the Islamic State. Their nationality has been a mystery since they were found after the fall of Baghouz. Their in a Kurdish-run camp in NE Syria not far from the Turkish-led incursion.
• They speak Arabic. Amira, who is ten, was brought to Syria five years ago. Like many of the children left by radicalised parents, they are wary of revealing details about themselves.
• But when the kids are alone together, it was noticed that they spoke English.
• Amira hasn’t written in English for a long time. But slowly and carefully she wrote down what she could remember, spelling phonetically. She writes she’s from LaNDN uKeH - london, UK?
• After a while, she spoke to us in English. Have a listen, she’s trying to remember her life back in the UK.
• Amira told us about their escape from Baghouz. The BBC Syria team has dealt with a lot of traumatic testimony over the years, but this was particularly hard.
• “We were sitting there. They were hitting so much,” she said. “There was a little house and that big dusty mountain and behind it everybody was dead. In front of us was everyone who was not killed, the other people.”
• She continued, “We were going to pack our stuff and get out, the airplane came and bombed. So then my mum died, my littlest brother, my little brother and my sister. Then after that, all was getting on fire. We had to walk out.”
• “After that, I saw my (older) brother. He was walking up. He knows my mum was dead there. I think he was down there hiding from snipers and guns. So then after that, he ran there. When he was running that little house broke and went on fire so he died.”
• She goes on to describe - this girl of just ten years old - babies dying in her arms. Leaving aside nationality for a moment - this is a disgrace. There are kids in the camp who’ve been through the worst trauma imaginable and we aren’t giving them sanctuary?
• Their scars are real. This is eight year old Hiba. They have no trauma counsellors, no relatives who love them, no place to call home. We fought ISIS and said, “to hell with the rest, let them rot”.
• It’s thought there are around 30 british children in the camps. But all have parents - Amira, Hamza and Hiba may be the first British orphans. They want to come home.
• We have given all the details we have to the British authorities who are investigating. The kids aren’t far from the Turkish assault. This is a matter of urgency. They’ve already endured so much.
• The kids may not qualify as British nationals. But are we content with leaving them there in a camp full of radicalised women, and with another conflict about to overwhelm them? There are thousands of “IS” children stranded in Syria. Who will help them?
• And what does a little London girl, sitting in the Syrian desert dream of?
• You can listen to Amira here. We’ll be putting her story out across the BBC today, radio, TV and online in the hope that someone recognises her, Hiba and Hamza.
• *Feel free to retweet. There’s a granny in London somewhere who doesn’t know her grandkids are still alive. ENDS

BBC apologises for "Isil salute"

I hardly ever watch TV these days (she says, automatically disqualifying herself from doing what it says on the tin) but, alerted to a bit of a hooha in the press about a scene that had to be judiciously excised from Stacey Dooley’s Panorama about ISIS women, my ears pricked up. 

“BBC apologises after Stacey Dooley wrongly claimed women gave 'Isil salute' in Panorama documentary” screams the Telegraph.

The papers are full of the shocking news that Stacey Dooley had been filmed mistakenly describing the ‘one-finger’ Islamic (Only one God) sign as “the ISIS salute”)  and that the BBC had edited out the offending words in a last-minute attempt to save their Panorama and make it acceptable to one and all.

My immediate thought (and possibly yours too) was that the BBC had caved in under pressure from the vociferous Muslim community, naturally outraged at the very idea that Islamic State (so-called) is Anything To Do With Islam.

So I dutifully turned to iPlayer and watched Panorama. 

Guess what? I thought it was jolly good. For what it was. How could such a short film encompass the whole sad and sorry situation, nuances, irregularities, special cases and all?

Stacey Dooley's Panorama did a far better job than I’d expected. Where she was able, Stacey Dooley asked many of the questions viewers would want her to ask. 

As an irreligious cynic, I noticed that some of the ISIS women themselves got a bit hot under the niqab when Stacey Dooley tried to differentiate between IS and Islam proper. “It’s all Islam”, one irate woman said.

To me, the trappings of all religions seem ridiculous. The more extreme, the more obnoxious yet comical they look. Most religious dogma actually strikes me as kind of babyish, like some play-rules dreamed up by a couple of 5-year-old girls on a wet afternoon. If I had any influence (which you’re relieved to know I haven’t) I would do my utmost to separate these IS widows into smaller groups and not have them cooped up together where they can re-radicalise and re-indoctrinate each other in perpetuity.

As it is, the mothers and children in these godawful camps are kept in line and intimidated by a dim-witted and tyrannical sisterhood. The minute one has an independent thought she’s punished and perhaps her tent is torched.

If we have to spend huge amounts of taxpayers’ money on foreign aid, instead of boosting the grotesque Palestinian  ‘Pay for Slay’ policy or funding UNRWA textbooks full of pro-Hamas propaganda, why not devise a way that some smaller mother and child units could be set up in Syria or perhaps even in their own countries. I guess such ventures would still be looked upon as imperialist rehabilitation units and vilified by western liberals who insist that Jihad and all the unmentionable cultural and religious quirks of Islam must be seen as a credit to the tolerance within liberal western societies, and must not be interfered with by outsiders.

Silly season 2

A couple of weeks ago I suggested that Islamic State (so-called) needn’t bother to do all their own terrorism. They could either farm most of it out to the lone wolves and persons with ‘mental health issues’, officially treating them as self-employed affiliates on a zero hours basis.

Or, to save irksome admin, they could just claim responsibility for every murder that takes place anywhere.  The terror factor would be easily as efficient as are, say, bogus burglar alarms in deterring opportunist burglars. Islamic State (so-called) wouldn’t even have to lift a finger.

Alternatively, they could simply re-designate Islamic State (so-called) as a mental illness and be done with it. 

*****

Since they are having trouble finding a replacement for Dame Lowell Goddard,  may I nominate Shami Chakrabarti? She is a lawyer, isn’t she, and has had recent experience of whitewashing handling an inquiry. 

Accusations of hypocrisy on the part of Jeremy Corbyn (a long-standing opponent of the non-elected elitist Lords) for nominating Chakrabarti for a peerage are being vociferously countered by Chakrabarti supporters who insist she’d be a great asset to the Lords.  

Orchestrating reform from within, rather than from without, which chimes nicely with similar assurances by the Labour leader about his friendships with Hamas and Hezbollah. 

It’s disingenuous but at least it’s consistent.

Politics, Hamas and Islamic State

Idly watching the parliament channel yesterday I realised the topic was the Israeli / Palestinian situation.

My ears pricked up.  I paid attention to what I was watching. It was the HoC. International Development Questions.

This exchange occurred:

 John Howell: I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.The Prime Minister has been clear that Palestinian incitement will not be tolerated. As many as 25 Palestinian Authority schools are named after Palestinian terrorists, including Dalal Mughrabi, who killed 37 Israeli citizens. Will the Secretary of State assure me that no British aid goes towards such schools or to support the glorification of terrorism? 

Justine Greening: The Prime Minister and I have been very clear that the UK deplores incitement on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We monitor any allegations of incitement closely and raise instances with both the Palestinian and the Israeli authorities. Regarding the UK’s direct financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority, which provides civil service salaries, it goes only to approved individuals through a World Bank trust fund that has an independent audit.

(emphasis added) Justine Greening looked irritable. What, I wondered, is the  incitement on the Israeli side of the conflict? I suppose the government might argue that it’s Israel’s foreign policy. (settlements; the blockade; checkpoints.) But in the long run it all boils down to the fact that the incitement on Israel’s part is its actual existence.  Anything that could be termed incitement from the Israeli side (other than its success, which its enemies find infuriating) pales into insignificance in comparison to the encouragement from the Palestinian leadership - literally and explicitly - to commit violent and murderous acts against Israelis 

Two isolated incidents, the murder of the Dawabshesh family and the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir are the only examples of what could remotely count as comparable in terms of violence against innocent civilians, but they were not incited and were roundly condemned by everyone, everywhere. No schools were named after the perpetrators. No streets were dedicated to them. No-one called them heroic. 

It makes you wonder. Is the government actually aware of the situation? To what extent? Is there anyone in government who understands what is happening?

 A full version (pdf) of this report into the recent Israel/Gaza hostilities “Operation Protective Edge” was published recently. It really needs to be read in full. 

It comes after the earlier UN investigation, which came to the conclusion that war crimes were committed by both sides. 

Some Pro Palestinian advocates have already dismissed the report by the High Level Military Group as biased because some of the individuals in the group are known to be, or have been, pro Israel. 

This cuts both ways, as the dismissers themselves apparently fail to acknowledge.

Dismissers! acknowledge thyselves! 

Also, it’s worth mentioning that those who cavalierly shrug off the report's findings rely on the disproportionate death toll to ‘prove’ their point, even though this concept has been forensically debunked (as detailed in the report) in accordance with the Law Of Armed Conflict. This raises doubts as to whether the critics have in fact read the report before trying to discredit it. 

FYI, This is how the HLMG describe Hamas:

“Following Israel’s disengagement in 2005, Hamas, a terrorist organisation proscribed by the United States and the European Union among others, gained full control of Gaza in a violent coup in 2007. Hamas’s charter explicitly obligates the organisation to destroy Israel through Jihad in order to establish Islamic rule. Its military leadership and most of the organisation’s manpower are in Gaza while its political leadership is split between Gaza and Doha, Qatar. External actors play an important role in supporting Hamas, with Iran in particular being responsible for upgrading Hamas capabilities through the supply of weapons and training. 

1. Founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas - an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (“Islamic Resistance Movement”) - was established as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987. Combining Palestinian nationalism with Islamic fundamentalism, antisemitism and conspiracy theories - the Jews control the media and were behind the French Revolution and both world wars, according to the document - the Hamas charter, known as The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, places an explicit obligation on the organisation to destroy Israel and states that Hamas “...strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine… [and] believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf… [and that] it, or any part of it, should not be given up… as long as earth and heaven remain… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”1 The atrocities the organisation has committed against Israel in the pursuit of this mission, in particular its campaign of suicide bombings prior to the construction of Israel’s security barrier, have made Hamas one of the most prominent terrorist organisations on the planet, proscribed among others by the US, EU, Canada and Australia. 

All emphasis added. 

I wonder if Justine Greening (or the BBC) is aware of this definition of Hamas? 

This is from the section about ... well. It speaks for itself ... the media’s role.  

Media Manipulation and Intimidation 

1. Hamas coupled this strategy on the ground to a wide-ranging information effort aimed at eroding Israel’s legitimacy. It deployed a sophisticated social media strategy, segmented by audience, and issued directives in pursuit of its goals, such as instructing its supporters to always make reference to civilian casualties, or compare Israel’s operation in Gaza to the Holocaust.44

1. Moreover, Hamas as a matter of policy constrained press freedom in Gaza and even threatened reporters into acquiescing to their demands about coverage. A Hamas official acknowledged that the group strong-armed journalists in Gaza into a reporting style that bolstered its narrative, keeping many under surveillance, forcing them to “change their message” and expelling from the territory those who sought to film the launching of rockets at Israel, whom it accused of “collaborating with the occupation.”45 Most outlets failed to mention these constraints when covering Gaza, in many cases contrary to their own published guidelines. 46 The Foreign Press Association in Israel condemned “the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza.”47 Reporters told of being interrogated and intimidated by Hamas officials, who also prevented photographs being taken of any wounded or dead terrorists at the alShifa hospital, even though their presence there was common knowledge.48 Rather, only images of wounded or dead civilians were permitted.

1. Hamas’s media manipulation was not just by censorship, however, but included the proactive fabrication of its narrative in pursuit of its key strategic goal of utilising the media for its assault on Israel. The Washington Post newspaper documented several cases of scenes being “prepared” in advance of Hamas led visits for photojournalists, as well as the coaching of a young child for television news.49 This management of the all important imagery of the conflict appears to have been successful with Hamas fighters being virtually invisible. Several New York Times slide shows on the Gaza conflict, for example, while showing Gaza civilians in distress and IDF tanks and personnel, failed to show a single armed Hamas operative or rocket launching squad.50 Moreover, Hamas effectively used members of the media as human shields in similar fashion to its own civilian population, deliberately endangering their lives. Reporters witnessed a Hamas unit firing an RPG adjacent to a crowded hotel occupied by foreign journalists and some NGOs. In Hamas’s strategic win-win calculation, either the presence of high-profile civilians would protect its operatives or a retaliatory strike would be a major propaganda victory.51 A similar report by India-based NDTV on Hamas assembling and firing a rocket next to a hotel used by journalists was filed hours after the reporter left Gaza, because according to the reporter, “Hamas has not taken very kindly to any reporting of its rockets being fired”.52 

1. Hamas’s effective manipulation of the messages emanating from Gaza during the conflict is not just a matter of upholding the standards of accurate and balanced reporting, but rather, coupled to its strategic concept, forms a core part of a deliberate strategy to shape the narrative around the conflict in its favour. The impact of this strategy in the form of the resultant media imagery amplified by misinformed commentary about LOAC is a key reason why Hamas is able to act with the unlawful modus operandi of a terrorist organisation, but enjoy a strategic communications advantage over Israel, which seeks to act within LOAC. 

1. This dynamic is substantially aided by a broader asymmetric advantage Hamas enjoys in the media space, which often fails to reflect Hamas’s modus operandi not just in reporting, but also in ascribing equal weight to Hamas pronouncements to those of Israel on events during conflict, despite one being a terrorist movement and the other a democratic state. This has a serious effect on the strategic environment for Israel and has allowed some of the greatest gains for Hamas’s misinformation strategy against Israel. 

...though Jeremy Bowen and Lyse Doucet dispute it. They deny any knowledge of intimidation or restrictions on their reporting imposed upon them by Hamas. If this is genuine it must be because there was no need for any strong-arm tactics as the BBC’s army of reporters were already on message.

The next segment of the HoC spectacle concerned BDS.  I thought David Cameron opposed BDS, in agreement with Boris. Not so. Here’s the bit I found particularly startling.

Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab): Surely the Secretary of State will be aware of the guidance on the Foreign Office website, which warns UK companies thinking of investing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the “legal and economic risks” if they engage in“financial transactions, investments, purchases, procurements and other economic activities in Israeli settlements or benefitting Israeli settlements”because of the illegal nature of those settlements and their being an obstacle to peace. Does the right hon. Lady therefore agree that it is perfectly reasonable for both public and private institutions to pay due regard to that advice when they make their own investment and procurement decisions?

Justine Greening: They should do that; that is good Foreign Office advice. We have been very clear that we deplore illegal settlements, because they take us further away from a two-state solution and peace in that part of the world, when we need to be taking what could be final steps and final chances to reach a two-state solution.

Richard Burden is a well known Israel-hater and BDS activist. Justine Greening’s eyes glimmered with loathing as she gave her answer in favour of BDS and I had the impression that David Cameron was sitting right beside her.   Good Foreign office advice? BDS? Who knew?

Later, in a section headed Gaza: Youth unemployment, came this: 

Simon Danczuk: Gaza still faces restrictions on access to 35% of its agricultural land and 85% of its fishable waters, and Gazans are rarely allowed to travel outside their territory. Until such restrictions are removed, DFID will continue to work with one hand tied behind its back. Does the Minister not agree that the real problem is the blockade of Gaza?

and this:

Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab): Can we make it absolutely clear that supporting the Palestinian people has nothing whatever to do with anti-Semitism? I wanted to clarify that at the outset.Does the Minister not agree that the appalling situation in Gaza—and he has given us the figures—shows the need for the developed democracies to do far more? What hope can there be for the Palestinian people when they are faced with so little hope of obtaining jobs and having a decent life? Should we not be far more concerned with the Palestinian tragedy than we are?

 this:

Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con): Does my hon. Friend not agree that the ill-considered, short-sighted campaign for boycotts and disinvestment is actually leading to more unemployment among the Palestinian people?

and later, another relevant section in the HoC International development session concerned: “Gaza: Water and Sanitation.” 

After documenting a litany of Gaza’s woes, implicitly all because of Israel’s blockade:

 Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab):“What can be done about that, or is it just a case of lifting the Israeli blockade and getting on with life?”

After which: 

Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): The hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) speaks about the blockade, but surely if they did not embrace Hamas and continually fire rockets into Israel, there would not need to be a blockade in the first place.

Hoorah for the blonde in the back row. (Not that the water shortage in Gaza is due to the blockade. It’s due to disputes between the PA and Hamas and the shambolic and corrupt administration in Gaza) but then, what does one expect when the present state of ignorance about the situation prevails?

What do we expect while our major news organ fails in its duty to inform, educate or entertain.

I often wonder if any BBC journalists ever look at the website Palestinian Media Watch.  

 It seems unlikely. They might not even have heard of it, but even if they have I doubt if they’d want to know. They’d consider it a hate site, which I suppose it is, in that it’s a site that’s all about hate. It probably contains too many implicit value-judgments for the delicate sensibilities of BBC policy makers.

If they did deign to look at it, they'd be able to educate themselves about the glorification of terrorists, one theme that constantly pours from the Palestinian media. PMW provides English translations of the incitement to violence and the pure racist Jew-hatred that emanates from Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies. Antisemitic obscenities are scatter-bombed over Palestinian audiences, day in and day out. 

If any BBC employees ever do see this side of Palestinian society, the viewer never gets any indication of it. 

The website MEMRI features subtitled videos (in English) showing Islamic Scholars, clerics, sheikhs and imams spouting outrageous, venomous nonsense about Jews deliberately designed to inflame the audience, but if any BBC employee accidentally stumbled upon one of these, no doubt they’d reflexively dismiss it as propaganda and ‘smears’. 

Why does the BBC refuse to acknowledge the existence of such racist hatred? This deficiency feeds the ignorance of our MPs.  

Closer to home, does the BBC have any interest in the allegiances of personnel they invite to opine on, say, radicalisation, terrorism and matters appertaining to the Middle East? 

Do commissioning editors read articles documenting such allegiances? Do any BBC investigative journalists ever investigate it?

Do the BBC’s political editors know of websites like Elder of Ziyon, BBC Watch, UK Media Watch?  They must be aware of the Gatestone Institute. Calling it all ‘far-right propaganda‘ is no substitute for at least taking it in. 

The website Harry’s Place isn’t far right. It’s kind of centre leftish. It frequently exposes darlings of the left or hard left for what they really are. Hard-line Islamists with pro-Jihadi tendencies and terrorist sympathisers.

  

Someone recently commented:  

“What I want to know is why is this left to Harry's Place to collate and expose? Where are our newspapers? Where are they? Why are they not exposing this? Why are they asleep at the wheel?”

Wouldn’t you like to know that too?  Instead of doing its job - ‘educate inform and entertain’ - the BBC seems to be part of a tacit collusion between ill-informed politicians, ageing adolescents and left wing journalists who are desperately trying to convince themselves that Muslim communities, Islamic leaders and Muslim individuals of all degrees of intensity and religiosity are thoroughly virtuous and completely unrelated and unconnected to Islamic State, which is nothing to do with Islam.  

Unlike a certain person whose head was repeatedly banged against a wall by torturers, some of us bang our own heads against brick walls without the outside help. I’ve been banging mine against one for aeons, millennia, asking the same questions, in vain. 

Why does the BBC report the Israel / Palestine conflict with a moral equivalence so scrupulous that equal credence is given to Hamas (terrorists) and Israel. (democratic state)  The BBC’s mindless pursuit of value-judgment-free reporting amounts to the failure to distinguish between guilt and innocence, good and bad and Islamic extremism and normality. 

For those who think Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam, and that terrorism is nothing to do with the real Islam, which is “the religion of peace”, and for those who call Hamas and Hezbollah their friends, and refer to them as militants because the word “terrorist” would constitute a value judgment of the wrong kind, then look up the Times and the Times of Israel, who recently reported

"Hamas fighters are defecting to Isis."

“Though Hamas is an Islamist group, Isis propaganda accuses it of corruption and a lack of religious fervour, while castigating it for agreeing cease-fires with Israel.”
“Though Hamas with 35,000 fighters under arms appear unassailable in Gaza it finds it difficult to counter the message of Isis. In January Isis flags were seen flying in Gaza at a demonstration against Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.”

Even though the penny is beginning to drop about Islamic State, the connection between that vile organisation and Hamas has yet to be acknowledged by the MSM or the government.

"The so-called British Broadcasting Corporation"

Over at The Spectator, Isabel Hardman castigates politicians for "trying to boss the BBC around" over the issue of what to call Islamic State.

Now, she's undoubtedly correct that there's a lot of deflection going on here from hapless UK politicians, As she says,

...while language is powerful, this sort of thing is what people who are supposed to be powerful end up talking about when they feel powerless, when an issue feels just too big to take hold of at once.

 ...but her main concern is that the letter from 120 MPs calling for IS to be re-branded as 'Daesh' is "an attempt by politicians to tell journalists what to do", and that's wrong:

...the point is that politicians should not be trying to dictate what journalists write or say. That’s not how it works.

[I note, being The Spectator perhaps, that Isabel 'forgets' to criticise the PM for his similar intervention in the debate]. 

Here's how her piece concludes:

Will they ‘actually achieve something’ that helps the people in the countries being ravaged by Isis, or just ‘achieve’ a ‘victory for common sense’ that means they can pat themselves on the back, toddle off home, and think that today they really made a difference, without even having to get their heads around what they’d like to see from the UK government in terms of whether action against Isis in Syria could make a difference, what the limits of that action would be, and what the legal basis for doing so when President Assad doesn’t look likely to ask the UK to join the strikes in the country? They did discuss these questions in this afternoon’s debate, but it was on the subject of Isil/Isis/Daesh/IS/They Who Must Not Be Named that MPs seemed to grow the most aerated, and a number started their interventions with the issue of the name, before moving onto other issues. They are free to use whichever name they want, but then so are journalists free to use the terms their organisation has settled on without politicians bossing them around. That’s the annoying thing about democracy.

Now, there's a good deal of sense in Isabel Hardman's piece but - even though I strongly disagree with the PM and those MPs over this (and strongly distrust their motives too) - I'd just like to put on record my feeling that another "annoying thing about democracy" is that democratically-elected politicians do have the right to make their views known about what they see as poor reporting - including poor BBC reporting. 

If they were to try to legislate to force the BBC to call Islamic State "the so-called Islamic State" or "Da'esh", then that would be abhorrent and deeply undemocratic and barricades would have to be manned, but if they are just having their say (even if it's en masse) - criticising the BBC - then why, in a democracy, shouldn't they have a right to say it? 

Why do journalists - including those at the BBC and Spectator - think that they shouldn't be criticised by politicians? Because such criticism compromises their journalistic independence? 

Well, as we saw the other day, Tony Hall of the BBC sent those 120 MPs (including Boris and Eck) packing. Any journalistic organisation can either reject or ignore such criticism if it disagrees with it. That's how it works.

Or does it?

Here's a comment posted below Isabel Hardman's piece that gives an alternative take on what happened this week, which I thought I'd share with you.

If nothing else, it shows just how rum this strange row has been:

The Masked Marvel • 20 hours ago 

Perhaps the BBC is wrong to continue to call the terror group ‘so-called Islamic State’ or ‘Islamic State group’, but that is a matter for the BBC, and those who consume the BBC’s output, the licence-fee payers. 

Perhaps? It is wrong. It is dishonest, and is a deliberate attempt to control public thought. That's a matter for everyone, and it's rather disgraceful to deny what's going on. The worst part of it all is that the BBC were already doing it before Cameron popped his head in, and are now not only able to pretend they haven't been referring to the 'so-called Islamic State' all along, but get a prized opportunity to appear to stand up to the Government and declare their editorial independence. Even Ms. Hardman has bought into the charade, believing this to be a case of politicians attempting to influence journalists, when in reality it's the other way round. 

The whole thing is a farce, and it is collusion. The BBC have already been working overtime to declare that whatever is going on over there is unIslamic. Anyone who denies is this is lying or deliberately avoiding the facts. The latest pathetic performance we've had to witness is a series of BBC personalities shedding crocodile tears for the cameras over the lost family of innocent lambs who have been victimised by online groomers and decided that to be proper Muslims they had to leave Bradford and join ISIS. To say they did it for religious reasons is an unapproved thought, and so is squashed. 

Now here comes David Cameron to declare that it's wrong for the BBC to do what they haven't been doing, and to encourage them along the path they've already taken. Now they can go the full Orwell and deny outright that the Islamic State - which people are deliberately choosing to join because of the name - is what it says on the tin. Complete denial of reality. This was collusion between the Prime Minister and the state broadcaster to push a thought control agenda, and no mistake. Both have the same Social Cohesion goal of trying to convince the public that it's nothing to do with the true Islam. One needed a public platform to do it (again), and the platform was happy to provide itself for a mission on which it was already dedicated. 

The only remaining question is, who set this up? Did this come from No. 10 or was it a BBC idea? The only thing about which one can be certain is that we won't learn about it from Ms. Hardman. 

From now on, everyone should refer to it as 'the so-called British Broadcasting Corporation'.

A rant from Mark Mardell

Mark Mardell was fond of editorialising when he acted as the BBC's North America editor. 

Curiously, he obviously still believes it's appropriate to sound off in a highly opinionated fashion - even though he's now a presenter on Radio 4's The World at One and The World This Weekend. 

Even by his standards though, his latest blogpost - Cameron is not asking the big question on Islamic State - is stonkingly opinionated. And on a highly controversial subject too.

He mocks David Cameron for saying that Islamic State poses an "existential threat" to the UK:

One has to have a fairly lurid imagination to envision that IS could snuff out the UK. 

He also implicitly includes the PM in his description of the "emotive words and stirring phrases from politicians around the world" - as is made explicit by his later description of Mr Cameron's proposals on how to deal with IS as "portentous pronouncements".

He also gives Tony Hall the finger by ranting about his feelings about the terminology used to describe the so-called so-called Islamic State:

It is perhaps telling that Mr Cameron objects to the BBC using the phrase "Islamic State", he prefers Isil - which stands for Islamic State in the Levant - or the preface "so-called" .

No doubt there will be a big debate about this, but personally I loathe that phrase. 

It is only used in ordinary conversation in scorn: "Your so-called girlfriend. 

And, it seems to me, once we start passing comment on the accuracy of the names people call their organisations, we will constantly be expected to make value judgements. Is China really a "People's Republic"?

Now, I have to say that I agree with Mark Mardell on that - and on other things in this piece. His strong opinion here mirrors mine, but...

...I'm an unpaid blogger, and he's a well-paid senior BBC news presenter. I am allowed to express strong opinions. Is he?

And, seemingly inevitably when it comes to 'old hand' BBC types (and where I part company with him), he ends by blaming...

...can you guess?...

...no, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, just try to have a guess who Mark Mardell of the BBC ultimately blames for the appeal of Islamic State...

...go on, can you guess?

Yes, it's us! The West! We're to blame!:

But there is a critical element that is often ignored, a Western aversion to what should be obvious and beyond debate - the appeal of IS is not just an increasingly violent and fundamentalist interpretation of a religion, not just a retreat into the values of the past in the face of the shock of modernity, but an explicitly political reaction to the actions of the West.

******

Incidentally, Mark Mardell has been backed over this by a fellow BBC journalist, via a re-tweet from a Palestinian-American columnist:

Birds of a biased feather flock together, eh?

Oh my God! Roy Greenslade of the Graun agrees with the Daily Mail!

Crikey, Roy Greenslade of the Guardian is praising the Daily Mail!

[Pause, while blog author Craig is revived by smelling salts by fellow blog author Sue, who then faints herself on hearing about Professor Greenslade's unprecedented behaviour].

Less surprisingly perhaps, he's praising the Daily Mail for praising the BBC (whilst, being who he is, also adding the odd sly dig at the Daily Mail). 

What the prof approves of is this from the Mail's latest editorial:

Full marks to the BBC for resisting political pressure to drop the term ‘Islamic State’, the name by which members of this vile death cult refer to themselves. Will MPs stop fussing irrelevantly about what to call them – and turn their minds to defeating them?

Get the smelling salts out yourselves, because I agree with both of them.

"...and that would not preserve the BBC's impartiality"

Some newspaper headlines aren't being entirely fair to the BBC in implying that Tony Hall said the corporation must be "fair" with Islamic State -

I can't see the word "fair" or "unfair" anywhere in Lord Hall's reply to Conservative MP Rehman Chishti - and yet the words "fair" and "unfair" are the very ones which are doing the rounds and causing the BBC some problems (see, for example, the comments threads below the Times and Telegraph articles). [I know. Your heart must be bleeding for them too].

What the BBC Director-General actually wrote is that the word Da'esh is "a pejorative name" coined by Islamic State's enemies ["including Assad supporters and other opponents in Syria"] and that if the BBC were to start using this term it "may give the impression of support for those who coined it and that would not preserve the BBC's impartiality". 

In other words, Tony Hall doesn't want the BBC to be seen as supporting "Assad supporters and other [IS] opponents in Syria" by using their "pejorative name" for Islamic State.

That is not quite the same as saying that the BBC wants to be "fair" to IS, is it?

That said, adopting Lord Hall's own logic, doesn't using the name IS calls itself, i.e. "Islamic State", also risk giving "the impression of support for those who coined it" and fail to "preserve the BBC's impartiality" too?

Has he thought his position through? (Or am I missing something?)

The Telegraph has posted the letter in its entirety:

So you may read for yourselves what Lord Hall wrote:

Thank you for the letter from you and your colleagues, advocating the use of the term Da'esh. 

As you know, there is no agreed description of the group which calls itself in Arabic, "al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa al-Sham". Translation into English of the full name can be difficult because of different interpretations of the meaning of al-Sham. Hence ISIS, or ISIL, which the US government and the UK government prefer. Both these acronyms in English contain references to Islamic State, i.e. "Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham" (or "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria") or "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant". 

There is no tradition as I understand it, of acronyms in Arabic and the word Da'esh is not an acronym of "al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa al-Sham" but is instead a pejorative name coined in Arabic by its enemies, including Assad supporters and other opponents in Syria. Unfortunately this term may give the impression of support for those who coined it and that would not preserve the BBC's impartiality. 

The BBC takes a common sense view when deciding how to describe organisations; we take our cue from an organisation's description of itself. As we seek descriptions which are comprehensible to our viewers, listeners and online users which lend themselves to use in headlines in news bulletins and online. For these reasons the BBC has used Islamic State as the name in English of the organisation known as "al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa al-Sham" in Arabic. And we have, typically, shortened this to IS. However, we have recognised that used on its own the name Islamic State could suggest that such a state exists and such an interpretation is potentially misleading. So, we have caveated the name "Islamic State" with word which qualify it, e.g. "so called Islamic State", "the Islamic State group", "the Islamic State organisation", "Islamic State extremists", "Islamic State fighters", etc. I doubt given the context we provide in our reporting, that anyone listening could be in any doubt what kind of organisation Islamic State is.  

The Prime Minister made clear yesterday that he had no quarrel with the use of the term "so-called Islamic State" but that he objected to the use of Islamic State unqualified. So does the BBC. I hope you, and he, will be reassured that we will redouble our efforts to ensure that when we use the term Islamic State we will caveat it with qualifiers, typically the "Islamic State group", to distinguish it from an actual, recognised state. We will also continue to use other qualifiers when appropriate, e.g. extremists, militants, fighters, etc. To avoid overuse we will also usually revert to IS after one mention of the Islamic State group. 

I hope this helps address your concerns.

Here's a potential solution to the BBC's problem. 

Maybe, to truly "preserve the BBC's impartiality" the BBC should take a leaf out of its own coverage of the 'spare room subsidy'/'bedroom tax' (or, going back in time, the 'community charge'/'poll tax'), and start regularly using formulations such as "Islamic State, also called Daesh", or "the self-styled Islamic State, also known as Daesh". That way every bunch of murderous thugs and fanatics in the Syrian conflict would be treated to full-blown BBC impartiality and Lord Hall could rest easy in his bed. 

After all, we wouldn't want the BBC to be "unfair" to Assad supporters and IS's Islamist rivals, would we? (Would we even be able to sleep at night?)

Nothing to do with Islam

Please stop calling IS 'Islamic State'!

David Vance has written on Biased-BBC about this morning’s exchange between the Prime Minister and John Humphrys, in particular the bit where David Cameron said: 

“I wish the BBC would stop calling it ‘Islamic State’ because it is not an Islamic state,”

Suitably chastised, John Humphrys complied. 

  

David Vance introduced his post thus:

 “Ok, here’s a curious one in which I defend the BBC against the Prime Minister.” 

and of course, with this I concur.

What I find confusing is this. No, it’s not an Islamic State (yet) but it aspires to be one. (Palestine is not a state (yet) but people keep  calling it Palestine as if it were.) So is David Cameron's objection directed at the fact that we’re prematurely calling it a state, when we hope it never  succeeds in becoming one? Or is it because we don’t like to call it Islamic, because it’s NOTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM (which is a religion of peace?) 

Recommendations

Sometimes here on “Is the BBC Biased?” Craig and I recommend that readers might like to progress onwards and upwards to BBC Watch for a more in-depth version of a topic we’ve blogged. Let’s call ours ‘the beginner’s version’ whereas Hadar’s is ‘advanced’. 

Sometimes we have to wait a day or two, but today BBC Watch has posted part one of a detailed exposition of Avi Shlaim’s contribution to this programme, and I have to say it was worth waiting for.

I devoted but a single paragraph to prof. Shlaim, but now,  please go to BBC Watch and read the full Monty.

*******

There was a special live version of “the Listening Project” this morning. Fi Glover trailed it on the Today programme. They did mention the problem of eliminating people who merely wanted to  rant about some pet grievance, and I couldn’t help recalling this. 

*******

This morning Today featured an item called something like  “What is it like living under Islamic State?”  (in preparation for the future?) 

 The website has selected a particularly  profound quote from the piece. 

'Media is the most important weapon' (At least the BBC has noted this.)

Borders, Oil and Power and a bit of Israel-bashing

BBC World service Newshour Extra. The BBC’s Owen Bennett Jones hosted a discussion called “Borders, Oil and Power in the Middle East.” 

Newshour extra.  The blurb:

The map of the Middle East, established after World War One almost 100 years ago, is crumbling. Islamic State militants now control large parts of Iraq and Syria including the border region that divides the two countries, and their territorial ambitions have not ended there. Is Islamic State permanently re-drawing the map, or can the traditional regional powers retain their dominance? What are the consequences for the people who live within those borders and for control of the region's vast mineral wealth? Owen Bennett Jones discusses these issues with professors Fawaz Gerges, Rosemary Hollis, Sari Nusseibeh and Avi Shlaim, and John Hamilton, the London director of Cross-Border Information.

(Photo: A group of IS fighters in an undisclosed location in Iraq holding guns and wave IS flags. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

Colourful fashions sported by IS fighters, from l - r : 

Blazer and baggy pants combo accessorised with full-face kaffiyeh; khaki and stone baggy-pants look topped off with black full-face pashmina; nightie, tea-towel, sandals and AK- 47; combat ensemble and balaclava; black top-to-toe accessorised with bullet-belt and colour co-ordinated face-scarf; lounge suit, grey v-neck jumper and colour co-ordinated full-face kaffiyeh; flack jacket layered over hoodie, teamed with khaki low-crotch pants, full-face black mask and AK-47 

I.S. flags, black edged with gold-fringing: retro look inspired by granny’s velvet curtains.

Although I’m not qualified to evaluate the panel’s comments about the political journey that led to the current situation in the Middle East, I was sorry to see that three members of the panel are from the anti-Israel school of historians and lecturers.

Somewhat more realistic was  Palestinian Al Quds University ex-president Sari Nusseibeh, who ‘retired’ from his post last year, three days after masked supporters of Hamas marched through the Al Quds campus.  Sari Nusseibeh spoke of religion, politics and human values.

Sari Nusseibeh

At the time Tom Gross said:

“Mr. Nusseibeh should stay and show that he is the moderate that he purports to be, by engendering a spirit of tolerance and moderation among students on campus, rather than allowing military-style parades that encourage violence, and that other students, who simply want to study, find intimidating,” said Gross on Thursday. “Were he do to this, President Nusseibeh could play a significant role in helping create a better future for Palestinians and Israelis alike.” 

Fawaz Gerges is on the BBC’s speed dial, and has been known to assert that I.S. has nothing to do with (the real) Islam. He said Isis is on a course of self-destruction. “Once the dust settles you’re gonna see the collapse of this particular utopian project.”    

      

Rosemary Hollis is a professor of Middle East Policy Studies, City University. She analyses the concept of ‘narratives’ (Israeli v Palestinian) in a scrupulously “even-handed” manner, but is inclined to be more ‘even-handed’ about the Palestinian narrative than the Israeli one. She chaired a Chatham House Q & A  called:  “What next for the Middle East Peace process?” during which a question was posed, beginning: “I want to thank Professor Mekelberg (a panellist) for his very succinct summary of Israeli policy: grab more land, sit and wait. I’ve never heard it so succinctly summed up.” (Just to give a flavour of the kind of event Rosemary Hollis seems to involve herself in.)

Professor Hollis  questioned whether the western concept of nation states is as seminal as they like to believe. She said the Sykes Picot order should not stand.

Rosemary Hollis

Avi Shlaim  had more to say about Sykes Picot. 

“Britain made three irreconcilable promises, promise to the Arabs, Sykes Picot agreement to carve up the Middle East at the expense of the Arabs and The Balfour declaration. Palestine, the thrice promised land.” He opined that all the borders had remained stable except one. (Israel’s)   Avi Shlaim, as we already  knew, is in favour of the ‘one-state solution’, which he appears to believe, if implemented, would somehow bring about peace in the region. (albeit after thirty or so years.)

Avi Shlaim

Apart from an introductory statement by Sari Nusseibeh there was virtually no acknowledgement from Owen Bennett Jones  or the other three panellists of the irrationality of political Islam, so the discussion, in my view, was meaningless. 

What started out as a programme about borders (in view of Islamic State’s recent efforts towards obliterating them all to create a worldwide caliphate) gradually morphed into a discussion questioning Israel’s legitimacy via a rather complex, specialised exposition of the current state of the oil industry. 

All the speakers appeared to regard the Arabs, the Palestinians, various Islamist groups (bar I.S.) as rational beings, rather than religious, Jew-hating fanatics, many of whose  raison d'être is the ‘removal of Israel’ (or more specifically all Jews) from so-called ‘Muslim lands.’

Talking to Islamic State

This viewer comment -

Every second of airtime given to these ISIS terrorists is a gift to them. If their intention is to strike terror in people's hearts, then the press is helping them all the way.

Andy Wood

- was the starting point for Steve Hewlett's interview with the BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson on this week's Newswatch. 

As it was such an interesting interview, I thought I'd transcribe it for posterity. It touches on such important subjects.

*****

Steve Hewlett: John, thanks very much for coming. Are you, do you think, and the media more generally, really guilty of giving IS propaganda?

John Simpson: Oh, it's the kind of thing that people say whenever you get this kind of situation, or "You're giving them airtime. You're doing their propaganda work for them". I mean, what is news? I mean, otherwise, we would be reporting anything. People often say, "Oh, would the BBC have been in Berlin in 1943?" Of course we would have been - if we'd have been able to - of course. We don't want to tell people less than we can. We want to tell them as much as we can. 

Steve Hewlett: You've been covering conflicts for a long time, often featuring combatants, some of whom are described as "terrorists" from time to time, and one thing and another. How is covering this conflict differ?

John Simpson: This is really, really hard. I've kind of made what I laughingly call "a career" out of being on the other side. Not the side...not our government's side, not the side of people who say "You shouldn't give these people propaganda", but going and trying to see what's happening there. I used to do a lot of work with the IRA. Then I went to Argentina during the Falklands War. I...all of these kind of things....

Steve Hewlett (interrupting): You met the Taliban!

John Simpson: I met the Taliban, and I spent a lot of time with...Yes, and I would really like to go and see ISIS - except that I would be one of these characters in an orange jump suit with my head being sawn off. And when it's as extreme as that it really does made it difficult. If I could find a way, Steve, of going and being pretty sure I'd come back, I would do it. I wouldn't tell the BBC before I did it or anything, but I would go and do it. But I haven't found a way of doing that.

Steve Hewlett: Do you think that because of this, or that effect, that we are less well informed about this conflict, the dynamics of it, than we might otherwise have been?

John Simpson: I think if we saw the kind of people that are in places like Ramadi and Mosul up front and listened to what they had to say I think that would be the strongest propaganda against them that's imaginable. It may be some of them are wise enough to realise that and that's why they don't want to do it.

Steve Hewlett: How sure can you be that you know what's happened? I mean in the piece that we looked at there's a bit where you say, "One of the things about this conflict is you never see the enemy. You see lots of people firing, but you never see who they're firing at" and all you're able to say is that IS are somewhere over that ridge, sort of thing. How sure can you be that you're getting the truth of what's going on?

John Simpson: It's hard, of course. The fact is the Iraqis aren't terribly good at...well, they're not actually very good at lying, the Iraqi government, and, of course, when they win some places back they're not terribly good about taking journalists there. But you can go there. You can see by the facts on the ground whether ISIS is there or not. I mean, frankly you rather hope they won't be.

Steve Hewlett: One last question, if I may: You said that if you could you would like to talk to ISIS, if you could do it without losing your head, so to speak...

John Simpson: In every sense!

Steve Hewlett: Have you made any attempts to get to them, and are any arrangements underway? Attempts to...Is there other form of communication at all?

John Simpson: Well, I probably wouldn't say if there were, but actually no, because I don't know through the normal channels in Iraq and Syria and so forth...I don't know how to make contact with them. But, you know, you get a nose for these kind of things and one day it might be possible. The problem is you've got to have absolutely failsafe agreements that they won't kill you. You know, whatever else, that's not a very bright idea. I don't want to make the news. 

Steve Hewlett: OK, thank you very much indeed.