No matter how hard we try to stick to our ‘BBC bias’ remit, going off-piste is sometimes irresistible. (to me)
I wanted to mention an Intelligence Squared debate - the motion was “Anti-Zionism is Anti- Semitism” - but I thought its relevance to the BBC might be seen as tenuous or off-topic. Then I realised that the chairperson was Carrie Gracie. So it’s legit after all.
You can read a full transcript of Melanie Phillips’s opening speech here.
I watched the whole thing, and it wasn't until Mehdi Hasan stood up to speak that I properly understood why Melanie Phillips had described the audience as ‘hostile’. They whooped and hollered appreciatively before he uttered a single word. In other words, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Some of the random shots of the audience during Mehdi Hasan’s closing speech helped hammer that notion home.
On the bright side, the ‘for’ votes increased by 4% (from 15% -19%.) However, ‘against’ increased by 17 votes (from 59% - 76%)
The extra (21%) came from the per cent that claimed to be undecided (26% before, and 5% after.) Surely Mehdi’s clownish manner couldn’t have been that persuasive? One might wonder if the undecideds had been entirely honest about their ‘undecidedness’ at the outset.
Have you taken up the MCB’s generous invitation to visit 80 Mosques? It was devised so that Muslims can explain their religion to us.
But why not offer open, spontaneous visits? Spot-checks if you like. Seriously, what’s the good of a pre-prepared presentation, or ‘pitch‘, like on Dragons Den.
“Hello Dragons. My name is Abdel and I’m here today to show you why you need Islam. I want several million con reverts and I’m offering nought percent of the business.”
We don’t want to be given the run-around, do we? Not like Hans Blix and those procrastinating weapons inspections. Fobbed off.
“No, you can’t come in today. It’s not convenient. Come back tomorrow when we’ve had a bit of a tidy up.”
Undercover Mosque. Who could forget.
********
For some reason we’re not subjected to Mehdi Hasan on the BBC as often as we used to be. I haven’t seen him on QT or TBQs recently, have you?
Maybe the BBC has noticed that he’s sub standard. Never mind, our loss is Al Jazeera’s gain. He has shows: “UPFRONT” and “Head to Head”. His interrogation technique is just up Al Jazeera’s street - childish, partial, and unresponsive.
Watch this “interview” with Israeli MK Tzipi Hotovely. Who does Mehdi think he is? Jeremy al-Paxman?
Funny thing is that that Marc Goldberg sees this differently.
“She (Tzipi Hotovely) has shot herself in the foot so many times that all he has to do is basically quote her statements back to her in order to make her and by extension Israel look like a bunch of land grabbing assholes”
Goodness me. I wouldn’t call ‘telling the truth’ “shooting yourself in the foot” - although it might seem that way if a) you don’t like the truth and/or b) you’re not sure what the truth actually is.
*******
This blog lacks a women’s page. We’ll be giving more beauty tips in future. And, you know, celebrity gossip and fashion. Migrant-camp chic and so on. And asking questions on your behalf, such as: some voices on the radio are confusingly gender-fluid, but does it actually matter?
But why oh why did he have to keep wearing that wretched keffiyeh?
Update:
Anonymous (one of the many) has brought a fascinating Al Jazeera related issue to our attention, see below.
One thing you can say for Al Jazeera, you do sometimes get a thorough discussion on that channel. They often broadcast extensive statements and arguments by Israeli speakers even though they are usually outnumbered by pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel speakers.
Tommy Robinson, one of the organisers of Pegida UK, appeared on Al Jazeera this evening in a panel discussion. But this 3 minute clip includes the part Al Jazeera cut out. You’ll see why when you hear it. And all that follows a pretty pathetic trick the presenter tries to pull by switching the Koran for the Hebrew bible!
As it's Friday night, we're going to hand over the blog to Ed Miliband (remember him?) for a while...
Thanks Craig, that's a great question. Good to be with you here at ITBB. (And, no, it isn't biased). And, look, thank you for all of your support following my party's humiliating defeat this past May.
Look, I want to come to the detail of that in a minute, but I want to make a broader point which is a very, very important point for the future of the country. I believe passionately that politicians should sound human...
Sorry to interrupt there, Ed, but here's something you might want to read - and that's far too irresistible not to post..
I remember the first time I realised Ed Miliband could be the next Labour leader. Standing in a packed room at the TUC's Congress House headquarters in January, at Ken Livingstone's Progressive London conference, I watched as the younger Miliband brother, clad in a fleece and jeans, inspired a captive audience of party members, Trots, anarchists, Greens and, yes, Liberal Democrats. Speaking without notes, the then climate change secretary passionately made the case for tackling global warming, despite the depressing deadlock at Copenhagen a month earlier. "He's awesome, isn't he?" whispered the young woman next to me, her eyes alight with excitement.
Of all the Oxbridge candidates running for Labour leader, it is Ed Miliband who displays the common touch - or, in the words of Neil Kinnock, the "X-factor". "He has a special ability to lift spirits and motivate people - the capacity to inspire," says the former Labour leader. The younger Miliband's strategists and supporters have known from the start that this is their man's strongest selling point: his ability to reach out, in our new, plural era of coalition politics. Throughout this protracted contest, throngs of energised Ed Miliband supporters have descended on the various hustings holding placards proclaiming "Ed Speaks Human".
Let us be clear: Ed M is not JFK. Nor is he the British equivalent of Barack Obama. But he does have the all-important ability to connect with ordinary people, especially the young, and to motivate and inspire them.
So, Ed, what do you make of that?
Thanks Sue, that's a great question.
Look, while I was walking on Clapham Common one night, I met a man called Gareth. He said to me, "Look, I want a politician who speaks human". I said, "Look, I am that politician". Gareth voted UKIP. We need to listen to Gareth...
Sorry, Mr Miliband, I'm going to have to interrupt you there. We've run out of time, I'm afraid. Back to Laura in the studio...
Thanks Craig. Now the Labour leadership contest may not be thrilling the nation but Twitter and the Newsnight audience are clearly swinging Jeremy's way. (Corbyn's, not Paxman's of course). Here's our political editor, Allegra Stratton... Laura, I've learned tonight that Andy Burnham has received the backing of the Unite and Thunderbirds unions. According to Twitter, Liz Kendall is a Tory and the only hope for the nation is to vote for me...er, for Yvette Cooper. Thanks Allegra. Now here's the former shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, and restaurateur and friend of Yvette Cooper, René Artois Thank you for coming onto Newsnight. Now, M. Artois, who do you think would make the best leader for Labour? Merci, Laura, you stupid woman. Ah, Yvette!... And to you, Ed Balls? Ah, Michelle of the Resistance!...er...Ah, Yvette!
Two things we’ve been saying for years on Biased-BBC and Is the BBC Biased? have suddenly become more obvious than ever.
The first thing we’ve been saying for years concerns the BBC’s left-wing bias.
Over the years interviewee and interviewer have come to find themselves corralled into a kind of ritualistic courtship pattern. If it’s a left-wing subject the tone is gentle and coaxing, perhaps with a spot of token feather-ruffling.
If the subject is not left-wing, there is normally a hostile, badgering tone peppered with interruptions and adversarial rejoinders. The recent incontinent whooping and cheering from the audience of the BBC’s latest flying circus was something to behold. Never mind the irrelevant claims concerning ‘weighting’, the evidence was there before our very eyes.
The second thing we’ve been saying for an equally long time concerns the BBC’s obsessional fascination, ostensibly supportive of ‘the Palestinians', but in reality it’s a surreptitious compulsion to demonise Jews and / or Israelis. This has become especially clear now that Christians are being persecuted (by Muslims) and Palestinians are being massacred by forces other than Israel.
Yarmouk. No pictures of injured civilians
As Craig says, the BBC’s distinct fixation with the former and lack of interest in the latter highlights the bleedin’ obvious.
Incidentally, David Cameron’s recent interview in the Atlantic about antisemitism and the safety of British Jewry in the current climate is worth mentioning here because of the disparity between his intent and his actions.
Cameron says he’d be heartbroken if all the Jews fled.
“I don’t think in Britain we have all the answers, but we’ve been quick off the mark in stopping the hate preachers coming in.”
I mean, really? How so?
“We have to clear up the problems you find on campus, we’ve got to go after incitement and hatred and violence, we’ve got to do more work with the Jewish community to help them protect themselves. And we’ve been doing these things.”
Yes, “we’ve got to” and no, we haven’t been doing them.
“So I think in Britain we’re taking the right approach, tackling anti-Semitism, emphasizing the contributions of the Jewish community, and all the rest of it. It’s something that needs renewed attention.”
I can just hear him reeling off that list, as is his wont when in electioneering mode. Words; meaningless until they make it happen.
“People have every reason to be concerned because you’ve got several things happening at the same time. You’ve got the poisonous narrative of Islamist extremism, which is targeting Jews generally. You’ve got specific attacks in Europe. And you have the rise of anti-Semitism on campuses or in public life, including sadly in Britain in some cases. Plus, you’ve got the issue of delegitimization being pushed, the boycotts of the state of Israel by universities and the like, and soon you add all these things up and you can see why some in the Jewish community are very concerned.”
Yup. All that and more, but Islamist extremism isn’t the only kind of “Islamism” that engenders antisemitism. I’m afraid it’s endemic in the Muslim community. Mehdi Hasan even says so, and Mehdi even stuck his head above the parapet over Yarmouk, although he blotted his copybook with some dodgy references to Israel - conveniently confirming my previous point.
I digressed slightly because what I set out to do is draw a comparison between two pariahs.
Nigel Farage and Israel!
Ukip is the new Israel, in that the BBC has succeeded in delegitimising both in a similar fashion.
For example they see both of them as racist, they discredit anyone who dares to support them or make an uncritical comment about them; then they set the gremlins on them.
I always used to complain that Israeli spokespersons were sabotaged by BBC technology. In this day and age surely someone could arrange a line with decent sound quality on the rare occasions that an Israeli spokesperson is allowed to get a word in. But no. They have to sound as though they’re trapped in a deep underground cave talking through a woolly balaclava with no mouth-hole.
The same thing keeps happening to Nigel. How come there’s always something wrong with the line? When a youth group representing each party was being interviewed about their voting intentions the other day, whose sound link do you think stuttered to a standstill?
When Nigel was interviewed by Andrew Neil this morning, was he speaking from outer Mongolia? No! he was somewhere in suburbia. In his own garden perhaps. Then why was there a humungous time delay on the line? It looked as though he was stumped by the question, each time. Not a good look.
The BBC must think we’re really really stupid, the lot of us.
Following the update to the previous thread to the effect that there suddenly seems to be a move to persuade the world that ‘the‘the prophet Mohammed’ (to distinguish him from any other ordinary Mohammed/Mohammad, and not to imply that he’s everyone’s prophet) - that the Muslim prophet whose image must not be reproduced, is forgiving and would rise above criticism with a smile. Well, maybe not with a smile.
"The prophet just rose above it"
Mehdi Hasan said it on Question Time, and later on This Week the Muslim ‘comedienne’ Shazia Mirza said it again. What is going on here? Has there been a memo from Allah?
That Question Time was bad enough. The lowlight was Anna Soubry’s announcement that these nothing-to-do-with-Islam terrorists weren’t ‘racist’ because they killed everyone indiscriminately. She hadn’t even heard of their coincidental propensity to accidentally target Jews. This is a tory M.P.
People must have voted for her.
David Starkey by the way said some brave things, but we knew - and so did he - that he was only there to make sparks fly. He kind of looked resigned to it. I don’t think he enjoyed being controversial as much as he used to. All the fun seems to have gone out of it. And he made a couple of slips, which didn’t help. At one stage he mentioned ‘Ahmed’, which was either Starkey’s ‘generic-Muslim name’ for Mehdi, or directed at the questioner, ‘Hamid’. Naturally Mehdi assumed the former, and chalked up another point with a smirk.
I don’t want to base my argument purely on ad homs, but Mehdi is such a clown that it’s hard not to. His over-the-top gurning and exaggerated pronunciation of anything Moossslim is parodic to the point of, well, slapstick.
“My prophet, when he returned to ‘Mukka’ in triumph, he forgave all the people in that city who verbally insulted and physically abused him earlier on in his life.” - That’s the kinda guy he was.
Everything every M.P. on that panel said was highly offensive. Are we expected to vote for these people? It’s my right to be offended.
As a matter of fact, I thought their ultra PC remarks about teacher/pupil sexual offence court case was bordering on bonkers. Starkey was right. Why didn’t someone ask the social worker in the audience who spoke so vehemently about adult responsibility ‘at what precise point does a ‘child’ become and ‘adult’?
Yes indeed the teacher was in a position of trust, which he abused, and yes he was in a position of ‘power’. He was found guilty. Remember, though, the girl was over the age of consent, old enough to get married, and no doubt a young woman’s passionate infatuation and sexuality, which many an adult male (M.P.s no exception) knows very well, puts her in a position of power too,
Enough of that off-topic aside. I feel like poor Judy Finegan begin-agin. Where’s Richard?
Somehow I’m living in a world where no-one is allowed to speak the truth. No-one can acknowledge reality. What is to become of us?
Which brings me to This Week. Now I should be a fan of Andrew Neil by rights. But somehow I’m not. He’s the nearest thing we’ve got, and I suppose one should be grateful for small mercies, but what about his unfunny joshing about that ‘Birmingham is a Muslim no-go area” debacle? Ha very ha. Not.
Neither Andrew Neil, Diane Abbott, Michael Portillo nor the unfunny comedienne nailed it. None of them properly got to grips with Nabila. Her point, which they failed to accept, was that any depiction of the prophet (Muslim) is offensive to Nabila and thousands upon thousands of her co-religionistas.
Even if one were to draw a stick man, and label it “The Prophet Mohammed” it would offend her. If one were to put a turban on a smiley emoticon and caption it ‘Mo” she would be hurt.
It doesn’t matter whether the cartoon-Mo was depicted in his ‘all forgiving’ mode - even though his all-forgivingness is something Mehdi, Shazia and the-man-who-forbade-the BBC-to-air-the-Hadith-that-says-he-wasn’t insist is one of the prophet’s most outstandingly humane characteristics - that is irrelevant and beside the point.
None of these outraged Muslims care one iota about the content of the cartoon save for the fact that it depicts an image said to be that of the Muslim prophet Mohammed.
We may find that hard to take seriously. And we do.
Portillo protesting that the cartoon was well meant, Nabila arguing that any depiction of Mohammed was a deliberate provocation, Portillo and co reiterating that a well-meant cartoon depicting Mohammed was no excuse for outrage, Nabila arguing that everyone depicting the prophet is being knowingly inflammatory, everyone saying that ‘giving in’ would appease radical Islam. Round and round in circles, and letting Nabila get away with alleging that no-one would dare publish an antisemitic cartoon. That’s the funniest thing anyone said all day. Shazia could have livened up her act with it.
I see Lucy Winkett has been quiet this year. No stunt to highlight Israel’s ‘apartheid wall’ . The plight of (non-Palestinian) Christians in the Middle East seems to be concerning the media, but apportioning the bulk of the blame to “ *Islamic State” (*not the real Islam) still leaves room for a goodly share of the blame to be directed at Israel for the convenience of the BBC-educated Israel-basher.
Mehdi Hasan has resurrected that tired old “analogy”: ‘What if Mary and Joseph tried to get to Bethlehem today?’ (answer: They’d get stuck at an Israeli checkpoint)
Sounds like a joke in a cracker.
The Washington Post has a counter speculation. (answer: They might get murdered by Palestinian terrorists)
(Of course Mehdi is primarily famous for downright moonbattery, but occasionally he’ll come up with a smidgeon of sense, which puts one in mind of his friend Peter Oborne.
Mehdi is a poor man’s Peter Oborne. In a slightly different league, certainly, but parallel. In comparison with his overall output, Oborne’s antisemitic outbursts are few in number, whereas with Mehdi the reverse is the case - the posturing and childishness is the norm and episodes of wisdom are rare. Of course Oborne’s ‘lapses’ (his obsession with the Jewish Lobby etc.) are all the more damaging, whereas whatever credibility Mehdi might have possessed fled with the grovelling letter to the Mail and the infamous cattle video.)
Much of the media stubbornly chooses not to attribute the persecution of Christians and other non Muslim faiths, including “lesser Muslims”, to the rise of political Islam throughout the Middle East. That would mean incriminating Islam, and would necessarily include Hamas and Fatah. Instead they begrudgingly admit that the problem is associated with Islam, but solely confined to the not-the-real-Islam branch of Islam.
Oh well. The zeitgeist is so anti-Israel these days that the BBC’s anti-Israel attitude has become publicly acceptable. Yesterday’s dinner table fashion has obviously trickled down. Which brings us back to Knell.
Leila Sansour is a (half) Palestinian Catholic. I wonder what she made of the Pope’s platitudinous Christmas message. He condemned religious violence, (who wouldn’t?) and called for peace in the Middle East (ditto)
Hadar at BBC Watch was the first to point out that by promoting the film ‘Open Bethlehem” Knell has surely breached the BBC’s impartiality rules for employees -
“It is essential that BBC staff, BBC correspondents on non staff contracts and freelances known to the public primarily as presenters or reporters on BBC news or current affairs programmes do not undertake any off-air activities which could undermine the BBC’s reputation for impartiality. Nothing they do or say should bring the BBC into disrepute. No off-air activity, including writing for newspapers, magazines or websites, writing books, giving interviews, making speeches or chairing conferences should lead to any doubt about the objectivity or integrity of their work for the BBC. If BBC journalists, presenters or reporters publicly express personal views off-air on controversial issues, then their editorial or on-air role may be severely compromised.”
Judging by the trailer for the film, it looks distinctly ‘cheesy’. My guess is that it’s a clunkingly sentimental collection of half-truths and cinematic cliches. I haven’t seen the film of course so I may be wrong. Please don’t take my word for it. (As if!)
I might as well get all chummy and mention Daphne Anson’s post as well as Craig's. We’re all promoting each other, obviously, rather like Knell, Sansour, her hubby Nicholas Blincoe (former adviser to Nick Clegg) and the BBC’s own cutting edge wit and Middle East expert Jeremy Hardy.
(+ John Donnison and a few other BBC staff e.g. Rana Haddad.)
Bonding over cups of Yorkshire tea, Knell and Sansour chat about promoting Open Bethlehem, the film about Israel’s “asphyxiation of a little town with a world mission behind a wall that stands for all that is wrong.”
When not advising the deputy prime minister, hubby Nicholas devotes much of his time to various forms of anti-Israel activism. Meanwhile Jeremy Hardy is busy cracking hilarious jokes about the Jews on the BBC, starring in Sansour’s cutting edge political drama “Jeremy Hardy versus the Israeli Army” and hosting an informative Q.A. about Open Bethlehem.
Leila Sansour is furiously Tweeting about it all, and petitioning for an inquiry into the BBC’s pro-Israel bias.
Good luck with that. If they ever hold such an inquiry, will they release it?
I saw an episode of Head to Head, Al Jazeera’s answer to .... I don’t know what, a kind of debate or something. The person in charge is Mehdi Hasan posing as Islam’s answer to Stephen Sackur. He must think of himself as a thoughtful interlocutor whose penetrating questions and mental agility will slay his opponent with one or two crushing blows. He is wrong. He comes across as a bully, a hypocrite; lazy of thought and shallow.
The production gathers together an anti-Zionist mob - their version of our very own baying, smirking Question Time audience - well they would, wouldn’t they - to watch Mehdi batter and badger at anyone foolish enough to volunteer to be jeered, sneered, derided and interrupted. The victim was Dani Dayan on behalf of ‘the settlers’. He wasn’t going to get very far. Plainly. Opposing him was a collection of ...oh I won’t even go beyond Ghada Karmi.
Mehdi bullies, shouts people down, twists their words. Each time he scores a point he becomes more cartoon-histrionic and more starey-eyed and odd. Talking of heads, since that’s the name of the programme, Mehdi’s head is quite a strange shape. Flat at the back; minus the bit of brain that controls rational thought maybe. The audience smirks expectantly, aware that giving a credible response to Mehdi’s erroneous unanswerable questions is going to be nigh on impossible, which gives them much satisfaction.
Not all my precious time is spent blogging. I have parallel obligations; domestic servant, business partner, confidante to random strangers (dunno why) and a lot lot more. Ugh! I hate “lot lot.” I threw it in to see if you were listening.
Some of my time, and yours I bet, is spent looking for things in and around the home. My specialism is the vital message written on a piece of paper. Everything in the vicinity has to be sifted through and no paper must be left unturned. If whatever-it-is does turn up at the end of a hard day’s goose-chase, it infuriatingly reveals itself not to have been on a piece of paper at all, but on a greasy old brown envelope or a torn off bit of newspaper. Or a scrap of wood.
This time can never be reclaimed. What’s the moral?
Blogging also means reading, and I limit that to one or two core websites like Harry’s Place, the Spectator and the iPlayer.
Harry’s Place has the most interesting btl comments and the articles often address subjects I like. I’m a mere infant compared to many of these commenters, you’ve noticed.
Why am I telling you this? Oh yes, I’m telling you because I first heard about the Newsnight debacle on an H/P thread. The article was titled: “Who Speaks for British Muslims? Reflections on Newsnight” with the sub heading: some perspectives on the recent Newsnight debate.
The Harry’s Place discussion veered off at a many faceted tangent and developed into a fascinating thread about Islam in general. Disqus’s nesting system is helpful in that a ‘reply’ states which poster it’s addressing, but it throws the chronology out the window. If you happen to come upon the thread, say, a few days late, there’s a continuity problem, which is hard to unpick.
The so-called Newsnight ‘debate’ was also alluded to by Craig here. Debate it was not, but I thought it sounded like a spectacle one ought to watch. So I looked at it on iPlayer.
It was in fact a free-for-all involving the three most irritating male media-Muslims, whose individual incoherences merged into one unintelligible incoherence with Jeremy Paxman smirking in the background.
The item was introduced with a short film by Maajid Nawaz. It featured an excessive amount of smoking on hookas.
Nawaz, Hasan and Ansar are notoriously verbose and apt to prefer the sound of their own voices to those of other people, but obviously the chaos wasn’t predictable enough for Jeremy Paxman, as he saw fit to exacerbate things with a provocative remark about Nawaz’s famous Jesus and Mo cartoon T shirt Tweet. This scuppered any hope of finding an answer to the original question: “What is a spokesman for the Muslim community? What does it mean, how do you get the job?”
Nawaz presents himself as a reformer. Actually he seems just as much of a self publicist as the other two, who also present themselves a reformers, of a slightly different, equally unconvincing strain. At the end of the day it’s the same old same old.
These gentlemen are never off our screens. My perfect unbiased BBC day would have to be Maajid/Mehdi/Mo-free, and it would also have to have at least one Woman’s Hour without a discussion about the veil or any other topic that starts from the premise that Muslim values are universally accepted, and/or of interest to all and sundry. The unfortunate assumption that this is the case has crept by stealth into much of the BBC’s output. As Shirley Conran said ‘Life’s too short to stuff a Muslim.
I always find vital messages in the end. Usually under some papers on one of the surfaces I mentioned, or on the back of an old exercise book. It’s very satisfying. Happy Mother’s day to me.
Before this site turns into just a Harry’s Place fan-site, (you know, like Harry’s Plaice) - and not counting Craig’s multi faceted material - I’m about to raise some more H/P related topics, which have little direct relation to the BBC's bias apart from its full-on promotion of the benign nature of Islam.
Firstly, further to my last, I see there’s a whole thread about Victoria Brittain’s bonkers homage to Abu Qatada in the Graun, which led me, via ‘Judy’ in the comments, to an earlier piece dated December 3rd 2008 devoted to that same lady entitled “Victoria Brittain is a Disgrace”.
She had a crush on Abu Qatada even then. This led me to think deeply (that’s how I sometimes think) about the left’s allegiance with Islam.
How, I pondered, could we have come from society’s mass rejection, fifty or so years ago, of the pious and dogmatic appurtenances of religion, (all religions) - the kind of thing that caused intolerable hardship for, say, unmarried mothers, illegitimate children, homosexuals and people who managed to get themselves stigmatised for all sorts of non-conformist practices and personal circumstances - to the state we’re in today?
From the illiberal God-fearing, authoritarian society of the post-war 50s in which sexual repression, original sin, corporal punishment - beating with the taws - was routinely practiced in schools; all these things that we threw off with a communal sigh of relief around the first time Kenneth Tynan said fuck on the telly and the mini skirt and, as Philip Larkin wrote “Sexual intercourse began in 1963 (which was rather late for me) -- Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP.” :
How, I pondered, (I was still at it) could the people who pioneered the new freedoms, or the generation that benefited from such pioneering, suddenly embrace the exact opposite of all this, embodied in Islam, in the name of tolerance and freedom?
Sarah AB must have been thinking along similar lines, as she has entitled her article “Victoria Brittain’s Logic Fail”
Still pondering.
Anyway I couldn’t help watching the Oxford Union debate, which is featured on another H/P thread. It took place on the day after Lee Rigby was murdered, but has belatedly been uploaded to YouTube.
Because the Woolwich atrocity was so sensational and so fresh in everyone’s mind at the time of this debate, logic says the timing, if nothing else, should have affected the outcome. In other words the murder of Lee Rigby should have provided a conclusive trump card for the opposing motion; but in the event the motion “Islam Is a Peaceful Religion” was passed 286/168.
This tells us something about the Oxford Union and the naïveté /idealistic gullibility of youth, even, nay, particularly, the precocious, highly educated, articulate, top-notch variety of youth of the OU. These are not just any old youth, these are the O & C Oxbridge youth. No-quibble money-back guarantee and dine-in for a tenner and all that, but they are still unsophisticated enough to be taken in by the showmanship and manipulative trickery of Mehdi Hasan.
Of course Mehdi’s disingenuous tactics and melodramatic performance were not the only things that won them the motion.
Anne-Marie Waters needed no help from Mehdi in furthering the failure of the opposing motion. She was remarkably uncharismatic, and a problematic strand of her gravity-defying side-fringe which needed to be rearranged non-stop didn’t help her delivery. The content was weak; it more or less comprised a list of the things that have been brushed aside many times by those who insist all violence is “unIslamic”, and a distortion of the ROP.
Daniel Johnston spoke with authority, but his performance was defensive, and somehow forgettable, whereas, though the content was weak, tricksy, full of straw men, largely irrelevant and a classic example of projection, Mehdi did the actions, the gestures and the passion. His intro was straightforward ‘stand-up’. He all but told us about the funny thing that happened on the way to the theatre, ladies and gentlemen.
No. “Let me begin” he said sarcastically, “by aplogising to Anne-Marie for.....[list of atrocities as cited by Anne-Marie]”
I think the inference was that she was tarring him, personally, with “the terrorist brush”. How very dare she! Yes, says Mehdi, waving his arms, even “the conservative prime minister” agreed that Woolwich was nothing to do with the real Islam.
Still waving his arms, and bouncing up and down a bit, he told the audience that algorithms were a Muslim invention, and without algorithms there would be no lap-tops. (Aahh.Victoria Brittain’s theory that book-learnin’ inventiveness and cultural cred equals righteousness - by that token Israelis must have achieved celestial beatitude already.)
“a mixture of cherry-picked quotes, facts and selective ... a farrago(Farrago) of distortions, misinterpretations, misquotations....” (not to mention mispronunciations) and that, ladies and gentlemen, was directed at the other side! Oh physician .. do kindly heal thyself....
As for Mehdi’s own recent, much admired acknowledgement that antisemitism is rife in the Muslim world. Well, he admits did say that, but now insists he never said it was anything to do with the ROP. It was imported from the Christian-Judeo world. So there. All that stuff in the Koran about the Jews was from... the Jews.
“Had Muslims been in charge in the 1940s, six million extra Jews would still be alive” he continued, on a roll. “I’m not going to take a lesson on antisemitism ...from a continent that murdered six million Jews” He surely meant succeeded in killing six million Jews, a feat that “the Muslims” could not surpass, despite the best efforts of Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini.
“Terrorists think, mistakenly, that Islam is not a peaceful religion. They agree with the opposition!” he says, triumphantly.
So. Islamist violence-mongers commit violent Jihad in the name of Islam, but according to Mehdi and real Muslims they’re mistaken because “true” Islam is not a violent religion. Wrong-headed Islamists and wrong-headed ‘Islamophobes’ agree. They are colleagues by mutual misconception.
The peaceful Muslims are the true Muslims and the true Muslims are the peaceful Muslims.
Slight problem along the lines of the proof of the pudding being in the eating.
I.e. However many times and however much Mehdi insists Islam is peaceful, our lying eyes see utter chaos and turmoil in the Muslim World.
So. Despite the fresh horror of Woolwich, 7/7, 9/11, Bali and other indicators of the unpeacefulness of Islam cited by Anne-Marie as well as those she failed to mention, and notwithstanding “hell-up” from Lebanon to Luton, Mehdi’s entertaining gig managed to convince Oxbridge’s creme de la creme that peaceful Muslims represent “True” Islam. There is no doubt that Mehdi would argue the case unto his dying breath, even if he happened to be the last man of that opinion still standing.
Still pondering on how the left arrived at its present paradoxical position, I moseyed over to Socialist Unity to see what they had to say about Anne Marie Waters in relation to her then possible candidacy for Labour / Brighton Pavillion. It didn’t help. There seemed to be a general consensus that criticising Islam is bigoted, right wing and racist. End of, as they say.
It concerned Martha Kearney’s interview with Mark Regev, which took place around the time of the death of Rachel Corrie.
Rachel Corrie was allegedly mown down by an IDF bulldozer as she was protecting a Palestinian home. That’s their story and they’re sticking to it.
Much doubt has been cast on the veracity of that tale, but suffice it to say that the late Rachel Corrie’s so-called heroism is legendary in the world of anti-Israel activism. A play has been written about her, and pages and pages of material in honor of her bravery are featured online. Her anti-Americanism and virulent hatred for Israel are less well-publicised.
The complaint is about Kearney’s awkward attempt at balance, in particular in the wording at the end of this phrase: “Clearly Rachel Corrie was one of the casualties of what happened that day – and I know Israeli soldiers died too”.
The objection, as far as I can tell, was that Israeli soldiers did not die on that day, though if that sentence was correctly reproduced here it doesn’t even state that they did, (die on that day) and the complainant seemed also to believe that Kearney’s question carried the implication that Rachel Corrie’s death could be morally counterbalanced by soldiers’ deaths. Or something like that. The BBC Trust’s review doesn’t touch upon the fundamental questions surrounding the incident, so the fact that the Trust came down on the right side, ruling that “there had been no breach of the guidelines”was probably a matter of luck rather than judgement. Furthermore, the Tust’s acknowledgment that “the question was poorly phrased and therefore gave a false impression” was enough of a concession to the PSC for them to claim a victory, which in many ways it was, as the Trust, impliedly, accepted the anti-Israel version of the Rachel Corrie incident in toto. If that is indeed the case it rather undermines the PSC’s allegation that the BBC is biased against the Palestinians. But they wouldn’t see it that way.
Corrie’s posthumous deification looks like a bit of a travesty. Firstly, when Corrie was run over she was crouching below the cab, out of the cab driver’s eye-line, where he couldn’t possibly have seen her. It is claimed that she wasn’t defending a Palestinian home, but, probably unknowingly, the entrance to an arms dump. There were discrepancies regarding the home, which was said to be still standing long after it had allegedly been bulldozed, and various additional circumstances involving Corrie herself as well as other Western activists. They were ultimately pawns in the propaganda war, which exploits foreign useful idiots because the martyrdom of a Westerner is more valuable to the cause than your common or garden martyr.
Another complaint, which belatedly succeeded in persuading the BBC to scrap some inflammatory material in an online description of a programme entitled “Gaza Surf Club” aired on 5th November 2012.
“The people of Gaza are hemmed in by checkpoints and walls, fences and watchtowers and few are able to leave the territory or to import and export goods.”
has been deleted altogether,as has: “defy both the Israeli blockadeand a sea that's often polluted with raw sewage”.
Were these sentences ever relevant or accurate? Or were they simply symptoms of the Tourette’s anti-Israel tic that the BBC just can’t help.
A small victory, too little too late, but a victory nonetheless.
Here’s another weird complaint, which got nowhere. It wasn’t made to the BBC, but it was indirectly related by way of the BDS movement, which is a typical manifestation of anti-Israel advocacy in the guise of pro-Palestinian advocacy. Anti-Israel activism usually masquerades as Pro Palestinian advocacy, in that people who profess to support the Palestinians invariably prove to be far more interested in attacking Israel, almost forgetting the poor Palestinians in the process. Being honest about this would look like racism. Not would. Does.
The Clackmannanshire Boycott Fiasco.
Exposing council members to too much BBC and too little intellectual curiosity is the likely cause. It inspired council members make a sadly misconceived gesture, the exact nature of which is unclear, both to them and everyone else. The complaint, which was made to the council and of course not the BBC, proved ineffective. Amusing banter (Modernity BlogHarry’s Place and more recently again, here) alleviated the gravity of the situation by making the council look a bit foolish.
“Clackmannanshire Council said it would resist all economic and political support for Israel in order to “end suffering in Palestine”
says the JC article. This might possibly ease, if not end, the suffering of the Palestinians, by cheering them up. Resist! Resist! Go Clackmannanshire!
“The boycott was implemented by 11 councillors after lobbying by anti-Israel activists from the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.”
Note the overt reference to “anti-Israel” activists. The councillor who entertained with his witty defense of their boycott-that-isn’t-a-boycott does appear a little confused. Asked why the council were being somewhat selective with their boycotting, specifically, avoiding anything that would inconvenience them, he declared:
“ The Council is not implementing a boycott of Israel. Council has though, agreed to resist, insofar as legislative considerations permit, any action that provides political or economic support to the state of Israel.”
Resist! Resist! etc.
Not cutting off your nose to spite your face-ism is a wise kind of ism. Clackmannanshire council’s metaphysical resistance goes to show that a complaint may be futile, yet usefully illustrate the ramifications of contagious anti-Israel-itis.
And now for something completely the same. Mehdi’s weird interview with Lord Ahmed was mentioned on the Clackmannanshire thread by the way. That’s where I first saw it.
This time I don’t think Lord Ahmed’s, or for that matter Mehdi Hasan’s feelings about the Jews and/or Israel emanate from the BBC. They are more of an ingredient of the Muslim anti-Israel-ism that Mehdi had recently spotted. But really, these two back-slapping co-religionists, aren’t they a hoot? Mehdi, with his cattle on the one hand, and his “Oh, look! Antisemitism in the Muslim world!” shock horror on the other, and Lordy Ahmed with his Vicky Pollard impersonation “It weren’t me anyway, anyway; because I would never do that” He couldn’t believe some ‘twisted mind’ said something he didn’t remember saying because there’s ”no word for Zionist in Urdu.” Which apparently isn’t even true, but yer but no and anyway truth has abandoned the good ship Ahmed.
P.S.
Who still thinks Glastonbury is cool? John Humphrys seems to. Him and Farmer Eavis. Oh, and the producers of radio 4’s Today. That’s how dumb radio 4 is these days. What are radios 1,2,5 and 6 for? Keep Glastonbury away from radio 4.
