Even handed

I don’t know if I omitted the link to Karen Harradine’s piece about UNESCO in The Conservative Woman, but here it is.

Once again, if you haven’t already done so I urge you to read it. And here’s another good’un by Rod Liddle (£) more or less on the same topic, with a little more info on UNESCO’s outgoing director Irina Bokova. He speaks for many of us. (i.e., me)

A few days ago I wondered about something I heard Nick Robinson saying, which seemed dubious to me. Was I imagining it?  Craig gave him the benefit of the doubt, so I left it. Don’t wanna be too OTT with the paranoia, do we, nit pickers?

However, it concerns Ms. Bokova so I’ll stick it in here just for the hell of it:

“Did anyone hear Nick Robinson talking to the outgoing director general of Unesco, Irina Bokova?
He said to her:

"You use language for protecting a site in east Jerusalem which everybody knows - even (in) the BBC knows - that’s used by Palestinians and not used by Israelis, and therefore is designed to offend"

In other words, obviously the BBC is sympathetic to UNESCO’s relentless campaigning against Israel, but nevertheless “even the BBC knows" that referring to the Western Wall and Temple Mount only by their Muslim names will not go down too well. 

It might be Nick’s way of saying the ‘value-judgement-free’ BBC is conscious of its obligation to  appear even-handed over matters concerning Israel and the Palestinians, so when UNESCO decides to declare another “Palestinian” world heritage site it should choose its words more carefully.
Or, it might have been Nick inadvertently letting the BBC’s default anti-Israel agenda (a value judgement) slip out. It’s just that little word: “even” that gives the game away. In my humble opinion. 

Feel free to disagree.

My Conservative woes

Ever since the election was announced I have been avoiding bias-watching and blogging about political programmes. It’s not that I’m not interested, I certainly am. It’s just that I’m incapable of separating my subjective political views from the business of critically objective bias-watching. 

I find it hard to leave my views at the door, so to speak, and as you’ll have noticed, the stop-watch department is in the hands of my co-blogger.

However, there are certain things that I might as well get off my chest. The only credible party at the moment is of course the Conservative Party. That goes without saying. But there are certain things that Theresa May has said that have me deeply worried. Policy issues.

One is her bizarre insistence that it’s only when violence is incited or is being plotted, or after it has taken place that we need to be concerned about Islamic extremism, let alone take action against the perpetrator. It’s plain stupid. As politicians are wont to say - “What kind of country do we want to live in?” 

The  other matter is the ring-fencing of international aid. I don’t even think it’s a vote-winner.

I watched Charlie Webster talking about her near-death experience from a malaria-related complication, and her heartfelt appeal for aid towards malaria prevention, worldwide. She said eradicating malaria is not only do-able, but in the long-term, completely cost-effective. I understand she spoke about this on Capitol Hill recently.

I’m sure there are other worthy causes we might support, and I have no problem with the government aiding genuinely humanitarian causes.

However, the waste associated with present arrangements concerning the distribution of our foreign is shameful. On The Conservative Woman Karen Harradine has written a powerful two-part study of how the DFID money is really spent, which you must read. That topic would make a terrific BBC investigation. You’d think they’d snap it up before Channel 4 gets its hands on it.

Not only the £800 that is being paid (from your money) by the PA as a monthly salary to the murderer of British student Hannah Bladon who happened to be travelling on the Jerusalem light railway when she was stabbed to death by a disgraced and certifiably insane Palestinian man who believed  the act would give him “a way out of his problems”. Which it did - so, not quite so insane after all. That’s Mahmoud Abbas’s peacemaking strategy for you; his preparation for Statehood.

 That particular abuse of foreign aid is absolutely appalling, but it’s not the only abuse Ms. Harradine exposes. The widespread corruption and misuse of British taxpayers’ cash is truly shocking. Do read both articles, part one here and part two here. 

Why no outcry?

Before The Conservative Woman site (TCW) published several articles by Karen Harradine I was never quite sure what TCW’s official policy was on - err, you know, Israel and the Jews, or, if you prefer, Zionism and antisemitism. As we all know, it is a commonly held belief that antisemitism emanates from the right - the Foreign Office; Rowan Laxton and so on.

A recent TCW piece by Kathy Gyngell dispels all doubts and confirms my suspicion that they do indeed get it. 

"Why no outcry over the insidious and disgraceful rise of antisemitism" touches on Corbyn’s trip to Syria in the company of Baroness Tonge and others, where they were cordially received by President Assad. The jaunt was funded by another of those organisations dedicated to the elimination of the Jewish State, The Palestinian Return Centre. (PRC)

Also featured is the Rev Stephen Sizer, the Guildford vicar who’s so obsessed with Israel  that his bishop had to warn him to cool it. 

Another example of the insidious and disgraceful rise in antisemitism cited by Gyngell is the extraordinary behaviour of an orchestrated chorus of screaming pro-Palestinian students at University College London who violently disrupted a talk by an invited Israeli speaker. The mob intimidated the small number of attendees, who, along with the speaker, were stranded in a room till they could be escorted past the mob by police. Neither the BBC nor the Guardian reported this incident. 

And as Kathy Gyngell says “Our silence is beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to Germany of the early 1930s.”

Before I get to the subject of the comments beneath that article, I’d like to draw your attention to a podcast of a conversation between Damian Thompson and the Rev Ravi Holy. Yep. Comes out “ravioli”. In the podcast they’re chatting about antisemitism amongst the middle-class. I know about this as I could honestly say that some of my best friends are middle class antisemites, the sort who have little or no idea that that is what they are.

Every time someone posts an article about antisemitism on a not-especially-pro-Zionist platform - like, say the Spectator, a considerable number of antisemitic comments appear below the line, most of which unintentionally illustrate the actual point the author has clearly made.  

One thing that unites these commenters, despite their diversity and varying degrees of vitriol, is a staggering ignorance of the history and the politics of the Middle East. The comments below Damian Thompson’s podcast provide a rich display of inanity, triviality, trolls and responses to trolls. No wonder he wrote a piece about comments. 

TCW has an equally revealing below the line display. Amongst the majority of supportive comments appear familiar monikers of some of those internet regulars, purveyors of the usual antisemitic ‘tropes’ - much as I dislike using that word, (but that’s what they are) - such as the Jews control everything, a conspiracy theory out of  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

Of the 168 comments to date, they are a minority but still alarming because of the wilful and determined ignorance they revel in.

The BBC’s failings in respect of providing thorough and accurate reporting have a lot to answer for in this regard, particularly inaccurate online historical information concerning the creation of Israel as well as the absence of material covering the current and historical religious fanaticism of Hamas and the PA. 

The practice of selective impartiality is frequently taken to the brink of absurdity, where fear of making value judgments completely obscures reality. The opposite of reporting.  

I believe John Reith was an antisemite, so one could say the BBC was keeping up a tradition. 

(But this is not the 1930s, and ve have vays of making our voices heard.)