I was wrong

 If you’ve been paying attention you’ll know I hardly ever watch the BBC these days. I keep mentioning that to account for my prolonged silences interspersed with off-topic observations.. 

However I have to comment on the reappearance of Abdel Bari Atwan, whose services I thought had been quietly  dispensed with by the BBC.  I was wrong. He was on Dateline again on 19th August, following the attack on Salman Rushdie.

Melanie Phillips has written about this topic as has the Jewish Chronicle both citing the most outrageous of his remarks. 

The BBC, of course, has no intention of reprimanding or silencing Atwan as they think he represents legitimate views, and letting him air them is an expression of the BBC’s even-handedness. 

The problem is, however, that along with the rest of the left the BBC genuinely thinks it is indeed upholding balance, fairness and objectivity. It believes that it represents the political centre ground. That’s why it views its critics axiomatically as extremists who can safely be disregarded.

To be fair to Bari, as we like to call him on ITBB, he did imply that carrying out the actual fatwa  in it’s original form (death to Rushdie the blasphemer) was a tad beyond its sell-by date, but he defended the principle that such blasphemy as Rushdie’s was “very, very cruel when he talked about the Prophet Mohammed and his wives” which was also “very, very dangerous”. He added: “About 90 per cent of the people of the Muslim world believe that freedom of expression [is] practised only to insult Muslims”.

I’m not sure if Dateline itself isn’t about to be axed. I read it somewhere. Maybe they’ve realised that it’s a tiny bit politically biased.

Melanie Phillips doesn’t stop there. In her criticisms of the BBC, as well as Atwan’s other offensive remarks, she mentions the infamous Balen report about the BBC’s bias against Israel.  It has never seen the light of day, and its ongoing secrecy has been defended to the tune of  around £300,000 (of licence fee-payers dosh) in legal fees.   She refers to her own appearances as the token right-winger who is

“almost never given the opportunity to address the lies told about Israel.”

Moving on

 Reporting from Gaza is a tricky affair because reporters are severely punished for, well,  reporting. 

Melanie Phillips: A remarkable story has been published by the Associated Press. It reveals that, shortly after Sunday evening’s ceasefire between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza, Hamas — which rules Gaza but had chosen to sit out that conflict — issued a set of instructions for journalists there:     

 Palestinians who work with foreign journalists were first informed of the new rules earlier this week in messages sent by the Hamas-run Interior Ministry. They were ordered not to report on Gazans killed by misfired Palestinian rockets or the military capabilities of Palestinian armed groups, and were told to blame Israel for the recent escalation.

But protests by the Foreign Press Association prompted Hamas to rescind that edict, as it constitutes “a severe, unacceptable and unjustifiable restriction on the freedom of the press, as well as the safety of our colleagues in Gaza”

However, Melanie Phillips says 

“.....rescinding the instruction hardly draws the sting. People in the west may not realise this, but journalists in Gaza only ever report what Hamas wants them to say. Gazan “stringers,” the local reporters upon whom western journalists rely to bring them information about what’s going on, conduct interviews with Gaza’s residents and act as western journalists’ guides and interpreters, know all too well that if they ever report what Hamas doesn’t want them to report they will be denied access or even that their lives will be in danger.”

Elder of Ziyon notes that:

“One of the criticisms of Israel when it comes to getting its side of the story out to the world is that it is just too slow, allowing the terrorists and Israel-haters plenty of time to get their version of things out and presented before the world audience. Israel just does not react quickly enough.

Not this time.

Now that Israel has demonstrated the ability to get its message across and reported in the media, what Israel needs is the ability to do this consistently.

Maybe it can even do a better job in presenting its side in the death of Abu Akleh.

Israel pushes back.

“… western media outlets stopped uncritically parroting Palestinian claims that Israel had caused the children’s deaths and started reporting the Israeli counter-claim, eventually conceding that some PIJ rockets had indeed fallen short into Gaza and probably caused Gazan casualties.” 

“…..the malice of the western media towards Israel knows no bounds. But these journalists generally speak no Arabic; and no Palestinian would have told them about the missiles falling short because Hamas rules Gaza’s journalists with an iron fist. They will report nothing that conflicts with the Hamas narrative.

If there's a softening of hostility towards Israel it seems to be largely confined to the US. The BBC, though, is unlikely to budge.

Camera.

Licence fee payers who fund the BBC’s permanent bureau in the Gaza Strip may well be wondering why, unlike AP, the corporation did not send staff to visit the sites where those shortfall missiles had landed and whether that has anything to do with Hamas’ known practice of intimidating journalists.

In fact, another report from AP gives details of restrictions imposed by Hamas which were opposed by the Foreign Press Association.

“Palestinians who work with foreign journalists were first informed of the new rules earlier this week in messages sent by the Hamas-run Interior Ministry. They were ordered not to report on Gazans killed by misfired Palestinian rockets or the military capabilities of Palestinian armed groups, and were told to blame Israel for the recent escalation.”

If that is the reason why Yolande Knell and her colleagues could not “check the figures independently”, then BBC audiences should obviously be told so.

One has to admire the ardour of Bowen’s Twitter and non Twitter followers who roughly fall into two camps: a) the Gullible and ill-informed, and b) Devout Arabists - for example our old friend Chris Doyle of CAABU. (See ITBB’s free-of-charge search engine.)

August 11, 2022

New role: I am now International Editor of BBC News. Will still do the Middle East, but after a year where I’ve spent a lot of time in Ukraine and Afghanistan, makes sense to look further afield.

— Jeremy Bowen (@BowenBBC) August 11, 2022

Boo Hoo then. Bye Jeremy! Hamas is missing you already.

I try shutting up for a change.

I began a new post about al-Aqsa the other day, beginning with “I really didn’t want to flood the blog with Israel-related posts.”  Then I wondered why I was apologising. Did I need a disclaimer? I imagined people saying “What?  Another piece about the al-Aqsa riots?” Anyway, it didn’t get written (but not because of 'not' flooding the blog.)

Later, and splish splash I was in the bath and idly reading the label on my flannel. (I often read labels) “100% cotton. Keep away from Fire”  I mean as if!  How likely is it that a small face-flannel would get too close to a fire, and how dangerous would it be if it did get so close that it caught alight (!) and burst into huge flames? It seemed absurd and reminded me of the legendary notice on a post in the in the middle of nowhere marked: “Do not throw stones at this notice” Not only absurd - but instigating a compelling desire you hadn’t thought of till you were forbidden to do so. (Quick! Get stones!)

That brought to mind those Palestinian juvenile delinquents desecrating their ‘third holiest place’, al-Aqsa, by breaking up significant archeological relics into stones and rocks to hurl at Jews who dared to place their filthy feet on the Muslims’ ‘holy’ ground. 

Yolande Knell must have missed that bit of the story. Perhaps she came in half way through the first act and spent the rest of the performance baffled about what was going on. All she could see was Israeli police having another go at Palestinian worshippers. The BBC’s context-lite reporting of that and similar incidents differed from the Jewish press’s accounts of the same thing. 

That’s so weird. I understood that the BBC was the most reliable news organisation in the world. I’ve written about violence at al-Aqsa at least once before. Years ago I think. It’s almost a ritual. No doubt the Beeb sees the annual desecration by Palestinian delinquents of their holiest spaces as old hat and low priority news-wise. Not really worthwhile going into it again and again.

Fresh trouble was reported briefly by Rebecca Jones during a BBC news bulletin earlier this week, but little or nothing else was to be found on the BBC website. The institutionally-hostile-to-Israel  Guardian mentioned it once but I think they got away with it. 

++++++++++++++

I stumbled upon a Zoom conversation on Jewish News Syndicate (new to me.) The panel included Melanie Phillips, who made an interesting observation. She said that while her occasional appearances on the BBC (and her column in The Times of London) afford her a tremendous platform she feels that her ‘mainstream acceptability’ comes at a price - the tacit understanding that her Israel-related contributions keep to a minimum. 

That’s how I’m feeling right now about flooding this blog. In other words, Israel-related articles can only be smuggled in up to and until you reach an indeterminate saturation point, and if you want to put ‘the case for the "other side"’ you may; a) bury your observations on sympathetic fora like Jewish News Syndicate, or; b) risk alienating the - let’s call them the righteous misinformed - by fighting un-winnable battles on the MSM. 

Of course, you could always just write on your own relatively niche blog and hope for the best.

Should I wade in on matters I know I’m relatively ill-informed about? With my vacillating opinions and known unknowns? I don’t know a huge amount about Ukraine and I suspect I’m guided by my own flimsy, fleeting emotions rather than objectivity. If anything, flag-waving curbs my enthusiasm.

 

Who, apart from Rod Liddle, admires Angela Rayner’s feisty political acuity? Do I? Not sure, but don’t think so.

 Do I know much about cake and wine in the work environment? No. The collapsing economy and/or imminent nuclear annihilation?  Not much. Can I opine with any credibility whatsoever? I think not. My advice to myself is: stick to what you know, and STFU about the stirred-up personal feelings that hang precariously on the shoogly peg of biased, one-sided reporting. I, for one,  should really shut up. 

Maybe I could embroider that onto a label.

Mind Your Language

This happened in the House of Commons yesterday:

Brendan O'Hara, SNP: Last night I tuned in to the BBC 10 o'clock news to get the latest on this terrible disaster, and I was absolutely appalled when a presenter informed me that around 30 migrants had drowned. Migrants don't drown. People drown. Men, women and children drown. So will the Secretary of State join me in asking the BBC News editorial team and any other news outlet thinking of using that term to reflect on their use of such dehumanising language and afford these poor people the respect that they deserve? 

Priti Patel, Home Secretary: Even during the Afghan operations and Op Pitting I heard a lot of language that quite frankly seemed to be inappropriate around people who were fleeing. So yes, I will.

I refer the honourable lady to Melanie Phillips:  “Pass the smelling salts: the BBC is right. Why is the Home Secretary endorsing an attack on objectivity?”

As Melanie say, Brendan O'Hara's argument is “tendentious” and “absured” - a “manipulative piece of verbal mischief”. Migrants' is “a neutral and objective term” - “the one term that accurately covers all these different categories of people making these unlawful Channel crossings”. He's seeking to “reframe” the mass illegal crossings of the English Channel as “a decontextualised humanitarian challenge which no-one with a heart could possibly resist. And he is requiring the BBC to assist him in doing so.”

 

As for Priti Patel's reply, Melanie writes:

So because she heard inappropriate language about Afghans, the Home Secretary is going to complain to the BBC for its use of wholly appropriate language to describe a different group of people in a different situation?

She continues:

Why is Priti Patel endorsing this attack on BBC objectivity — the very quality which the BBC is usually rightly accused of lacking? Why is she thus giving implicit succour to those who exploit the accelerating crisis in the English Channel — a crisis which she and Boris Johnson have failed to resolve — to denigrate those who wish to uphold the integrity of their country’s borders and the rule of law?

The BBC is often very wrong, but on this occasion it is absolutely right. When a Conservative Home Secretary takes up a position to the left of the BBC, something has gone very badly awry with British politics.

Indeed. 

"It should not have been shown and we apologise for the offence caused"

Three weeks ago we published a post about Melanie Phillips's strong criticism of the BBC for allowing BBC Arabic to broadcast a piece about Ahlam Tamimi - a notorious female Palestinian terrorist who murdered 15 people, including seven children, and injured more than 130 in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem. Melanie said that BBC Arabic "sympathetically presented" her story, titled it with her name and the words "Your voice is loud and clear", and "framed as a sentimental human interest story" which "whitewashed the murderous activities" of her and her terrorist husband and "presented them as victims of censorship and the Americans". It ended with a plea from the terrorist to Jordan's King Abdullah. 

Well, the BBC has now issued an apology on its Corrections and Clarifications page admitting that the segment breached BBC editorial guidelines and that it "should not have been shown":

BBC Arabic Trending BBC World Service, Monday 8 October 2020 

On 8 October, the BBC Arabic Trending programme broadcast an item on Ahlam Al-Tamimi’s appeal to the King of Jordan to be re-united with her husband. Ahlam Al-Tamimi is a Jordanian citizen who was convicted in Israel and sentenced to multiple life sentences after 15 people including 8 children were killed in a suicide bombing in Israel in 2001. She was released to Jordan in a prisoner swap between Hamas and Israel in 2011 but remains on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list for conspiring to kill US nationals. This segment of the programme was in breach of our editorial guidelines and we have removed the clip from all our digital platforms. It should not have been shown and we apologise for the offence caused.

23/10/2020

This, of course, is to be welcomed, but is removing the clip from its digital platforms the full extent of the the BBC's response to this? Shouldn't it be the subject of a proper investigation? Who was responsible for this report? Who authorised its broadcast? Has any disciplinary action been taken? Will any disciplinary action be taken?

"BBC incitement to baseless hatred"

 

Haifa

The headline of Melanie Phillips's latest piece sums up her point punchily:

The BBC's problem is worse than "wokeish" bias. 

When it comes to its approach to Israel, it incites baseless hatred

She doesn't believe that the next BBC chairman, whoever that may will, will make inroads when it comes to changing "the BBC’s appalling treatment of Israel":

For years, it has presented Israel in the most distorted way, portraying it falsely as the rogue state in the region while downplaying or ignoring the attacks on Israelis and the incitement and antisemitism that are daily features of Palestinian Arab life.

And she details an extraordinary piece of broadcasting from BBC Arabic that "whitewashed" Ahlam Tamimi - a notorious Palestinian terrorist who murdered 15 people, including seven children, and injured more than 130 in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem. The piece "sympathetically presented" the story wanted to tell about herself" and was titled with her name and the words "Your voice is loud and clear". Lasting six minutes, it was "framed as a sentimental human interest story" which "whitewashed the murderous activities" of her and her terrorist husband and "presented them as victims of censorship and the Americans". It ended with a plea from the terrorist to Jordan's King Abdullah. Melanie writes:

The media watchdog CAMERA UK has observed that the programme made no criticism of either of the Tamimis. None of those who were murdered in Ahlam Tamimi’s terror attack was mentioned. The item said she was merely “accused of involvement” in the Jerusalem bombing (despite her own public admission of the crime) and failed to mention the reason for her husband’s imprisonment at all. 

The true wickedness of the Tamimi item is that it was broadcast on the BBC’s Arabic service. The BBC’s foreign-language services have a global reputation for broadcasting supposedly factual, trustworthy information to countries where objective news is in short supply. 

Yet this item gave a platform to a heinous terrorist to spout her propaganda, thus confirming the lies about Israel and the west that incite the Arab world to hatred and violence. More specifically, it added to the mythology around her in Jordan which, despite its peace agreement with Israel, has a population consumed by hatred of Israel and the Jews and for whom the murderous Tamimi is a rock star.

"This is hardly an isolated example", she adds, citing other examples, before concluding:

These are but a tiny sample of the BBC’s institutionalised hostility towards Israel. For years, it has uncritically recycled Palestinian propaganda as innately credible and true, while treating demonstrably factual Israeli statements as mendacious propaganda.

It systematically downplays or disregards Palestinian attacks on Israelis and generally treats any eruption of violence as a story which only “kicks off” (as one BBC reporter said gleefully during an escalation of hostilities) when Israel retaliates with force. Israeli victimisation is simply not seen as a story at all.

When Israel is forced to defend itself, the BBC frequently portrays its armed forces —the most ethical and human rights-obsessed military in the world — as monstrous child-killers and aggressive destroyers.

The immediate and demonstrable effect on the British population is hatred of Israel and a spike in attacks on British Jews. It is no exaggeration to say that when it comes to Israel, the issue is not BBC bias. It is BBC incitement to baseless hatred.

The BBC is regarded around the world as a byword for objectivity and accuracy. That’s why its departure from those ideals is so pernicious.

Perhaps the most chilling thing about it, though, is this. BBC executives are genuinely, painfully aware of the news outlet’s unique power and reach, and of their duty under its founding charter to uphold objectivity and fairness and hold the line for the middle ground.

But they are simply unable to process the fact that they view Israel, among other issues, through a profoundly distorting ideological prism. And that’s because they believe implacably that the positions they hold are unarguably objective and fair, that they do represent the middle ground, and that therefore by definition those who claim the BBC is biased are themselves extremists and can be safely disregarded.

In other words, BBC group-think is a hermetically-sealed thought system. Which is why, if whoever takes over at the top wants to restore the once iconic BBC to elementary standards of objectivity, fairness and decency, they will have their work cut out for them.

The full article can be read here. 

And a further startling article on the background to the terrorist story above and the BBC's involvement with it can be read here.

Recap

As I was saying in my previous post, we all make use of cherry-picked examples when it suits us. Sometimes it’s genuinely necessary to cherry-pick for quick and easy, soundbite-style emphasis, but there’s a fine line between wilful bias by omission and diluting one’s argument with too much background information. Taking things out of context on purpose is nasty, but people who do it habitually dent their own credibility, which ultimately has to be counter-productive. 

Back to finding oneself politically homeless, which is how Melanie Phillips seems to feel. I mean, the way politics is constructed automatically involves a whole bunch of compromises and caveats. It’s a Party Line thing. We toe it for the sake of political unity and efficacy. Finding flaws and faults in your political or ideological compatriots is par for the course.

Who could support Trump unconditionally?  With unconditional love? No-one! He’s decidedly repulsive, inarticulate, almost infantile and seemingly totally un-self-aware. But somehow, his fundamental political instinct seems - if not ‘simply the best’- at least “better than all the rest.”

Another of my bête noire obsessions is the Sarah Champion contradiction. She’s cast as the epitome of unjust political ill-treatment and victimhood - sacrificed at the altar of Corbynism. But she’s no saint, and painting her as one is lazy and misleading. She’s a 'Philo-Islamic' antisemite who kowtowed to the Rotherham Muslim community throughout a vitriolic anti-Israel campaign in 2014, and who sat through Rotherham’s grooming gang activities for a good long while before ‘bravely’ speaking out. So, no, she’s not quite the innocent victim she’s made out to be. 

(I've posted this video about four times now - it's when the camera pans out to reveal 'the room' that I find fascinating)

On the opposite side of the coin, there’s the curate’s egg of Miriam Margolyes. She’s totally and utterly wrong, ignorant and gratuitously vociferous about Israel. Nevertheless, a certain charm still seeps through the narcissism, crudeness and ungainliness. If you see what I mean.

In a similar vein, there’s Jo Brand. Everyone loves to hate her, and even more so following her battery acid quip. Not funny Jo. However, she has a certain wit and I liked her ‘Getting On’ sitcom. It was quality TV.

See? I even like the Guardian. Only for its TV reviews and recaps, mind. At the time when most TV dramas are more or less incomprehensible, the Guardian is invaluable for  ‘explaining’ what passes for ‘the plot’.

I was wrong about David Goodhart. I felt insulted by his definition of ‘Leavers’ as ‘somewheres’, which I interpreted as a euphemistic term for parochial, narrow-minded and insular. Turns out not to be exactly the case. 

I’m ambivalent about nearly everything -  the thing that goes “I used to be indecisive but now I’m not so sure’ that's me, that is. 

Although I am pretty decisive about the (admittedly few) things I do know about. As Douglas Murray said - when you read nonsense about something of which you have first-hand knowledge, it dents the credibility of everything else that emanates from the same source. 

The Annexation Trigger

After being treated to decades of spiteful, passive-aggressive anti-Israel spin from Middle East editor Bowen and his subordinates, anyone with a smattering of political and historical knowledge of ‘Middle East affairs’ could rattle off a pretty good case against the BBC.

Last night Yolande Knell treated us to a mawkish, innuendo-laden report on the BBC World Service impliedly blaming Israel for interruptions to Palestinian children’s cancer treatments during the coronavirus crisis - although most obstacles seemed to stem from the P.A.’s latest strategy of refusing to ‘cooperate’ with Israel in answer to the proposed annexation of parts of the West Bank. I wasn’t certain what message she was trying to send to be honest, but I predict a whole lot more mileage will be extracted from that situation ‘going forward’.  

Although criticism of Israel-related reporting is but one factor in a bias-related bigger picture, many bias-watchers regard the BBC’s left-wing/anti-Conservative bias as their chief bugbear and therefore their main target, but in a way, the BBC’s anti-Zionist bias is the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of bias. 

Regrettably, the BBC’s Palestinian-advocacy reporting style has a wide reach. Compare the BBC’s uncritical regurgitation of the Palestinian narrative with the overtly hostile, ‘arms-length’ or even non-existent representation of the Israeli perspective that is routinely dished up by the BBC’s Middle East correspondents. Bog-standard, superficial and shallow reporting, served with ‘half-a-story’ contemporary and historical analysis.

Given that both Britain and Israel are democracies, this attitudinal imbalance is hard to explain. If ‘Palestinianism’ is rooted in (Islamic) religion-based antisemitism, surely a largely secular - or at least a not very religiously observant country like post 60s Britain would see Israel as a natural ally, while instinctively filing overtly racist,’Yahud-hating Palestinians’ as ’other’.  

As non-racist Brits, shouldn’t we at least find the Palestinians’ intractable refusal to accept Israel’s existence a little problematic? Since the opposite seems to be the case, the obvious conclusion must be that this demonisation of the Jewish state stems from the ‘oldest hatred’.

However, the word ‘Annexation’ has triggered a new wave of anti-Israel angst. 

Mark Regev has been Israel’s UK Ambassador for over four years. Here’s a link to his ‘goodbye interview’ It seems like only yesterday that he was merely Israel’s ‘spokesperson’ and his very appearances on the BBC would send the haters into paroxysms of fury.

Palestinians: Is It Really about 'Annexation'? Khaled Abu Toameh offers another perspective on Trump’s plan for peace. He says that the Palestinians’ opposition to annexation encompasses twin objections; the religious one and the political one. According to Islamic clerics and scholars, Israel has no right to exist anywhere in the region, so with that in mind, any legality (or otherwise) appertaining to ‘annexation’ is but a trivial detail, therefore irrelevant to the ultimate objective - eliminating Israel altogether. 

Mahmoud Abbas, whom the BBC persists in regarding as a ‘potential partner for peace’ claims that annexation would destroy any chance of a ‘two-state’ solution, ending all hopes of peace with Israel. According to officials, the plan would irreversibly deprive the Palestinians of their right to establish an independent and sovereign state on the (unsustainable) pre-1967 armistice lines. 

The BBC, being determined to see such disingenuous role-play as ‘the voice of reason’ takes Abbas’s words at face value. But the P.A. is actually with the clerics. Neither strand really wants ‘a state’, or is capable of forming one. Their idea of peace is simply ‘no Israel’. 

True to form, the BBC’s Tom Bateman puts the customary BBC spin on the matter. I don’t know if that was Bateman’s own headline, but whoever penned it is clearly hostile to Israel and sympathises with the Palestinians. Israel annexation: New border plans leave Palestinians in despair

Getting to grips with the complexity of Netanyahu / Trump proposals or analysing the long-term potential is of little interest to Tom Bateman whose job is to promote the BBC’s agenda, which disregards the welfare of the Palestinians. Stuck with their appalling leadership, encouraged to kill Jews by Abbas’s outrageous ‘pay for slay’ policy, and ensuring that the existing stalemate is prolonged indefinitely.

At the present time, while old allegiances in the region are shifting, the BBC’s current anti-Israel animus has been triggered bigly by the word “annexation’. An emotive concept indeed, but what does it mean? That terrible word alone evokes expansionism; land-grab; occupation. But this isn’t the idea at all. 

I don’t claim to be an expert on the legality or otherwise of Trump’s plan for peace, but one thing I have gathered from my research so far is that the idea of ‘annexing’ parts of the West Bank appears considerably less ominous than Israel’s detractors would have us believe.

Here is another piece explaining Trump’s “Deal of the Century”   Israel has the right to annex parts of Judea and Samaria   by Eli Vered Hazan:

“So before explaining what annexation is and why it is imperative, it is important to emphasize a few things: France and the United Kingdom are vocal opponents of the agreement. The United Kingdom, which controls 17 territories, spread over thousands of miles across the globe, is criticising a territorial process in which there is a deep connection between a country and its citizens. France maintains control over 13 colonies thousands of miles away and even uses some of them for nuclear experiments, yet opposes our connection to our historical homeland. Not only that, Turkey illegally invaded and took over Northern Cyprus but threatens Israel over the mere potential of Israeli sovereignty. All of them claim that for Israel “it is not the same”. In fact, they are right – it is not the same.

and from Melanie Phillips

“Under international law, annexation has a precise meaning: the forcible incorporation by one state of the territory of another state. This does not apply to the disputed territories, which never belonged in law to any other state. 

Israel has the only legally grounded claim to this land, including the never-abrogated duty given to the British in the 1920s to settle the Jews throughout what is now Israel, the disputed territories and the Gaza Strip. 

Far from being an illegal annexation, extending Israeli law to these areas actually implements international law after some nine decades during which it was flouted and then ignored by Britain and the world community. It is those who oppose the sovereignty proposal who show contempt for the law.”

If it’s too easy to tar her with the “She would say that” brush, legal expert Eugene Kontorovich, lays out the situation fully in this article: Don’t Buy the ‘Annexation’ Hype (WSJ is behind a paywall, but I will post it in full over the fold.)

I didn’t want to display my ignorance by spouting nonsense about something I know very little about, so I did try to digest as much of the document as I could, and I dutifully watched the interesting (to me) video below. In the end, it seems that the specifics of the annexation plan is still a work in progress.  Also, at the end of the day, the legality is never the main and ultimate clincher when it comes to Middle East policy. Emotion is the real game-changer; hearts and minds and so on.

Even if the annexation ploy turns out to be just one strategic move in a long-term game, and the objective is a genuine, just and lasting peace, the BBC is never going to give us a fully-rounded picture because it is ideologically and ‘institutionally’ opposed to it and not entirely convinced of Israel's right to exist.

Legal situation fully explained overleaf.

Trace'n'Track

I’m going to take advantage of the current paucity of comments to return to my niche topic. You might have noticed that ever since the rest of the non-leftist media/blogosphere has (belatedly) recognised how agenda-led the BBC is, I’ve been deviating more and more from the blog’s core raison d’etre. However,  many of the things that have been bothering me are ultimately traceable back to the BBC. Track'n'trace. 

First and foremost, the entire content of the current page of links on the EoZ website is, as a whole, more disturbing than ever. Believe me, I thought that even before I saw this comment:

“Today the thread was more insane and chilling than usual and the threads here usually tend to be quite insane. It managed to surprise and alarm me.”

Of course, “Elder of Zyion” is just about the most prolific the blogger on the block, and true to form, that long ‘linkdump’ article has already been superseded by the next one.

I’m guessing that my interest in this issue is not every reader's cup of tea, but it’s (half) my party and I’ll cry if I want to. For brevity’s sake, I’ll try to stick to the ‘special bits’ like they did when someone was evicted on Big Brother.

Because the issues covered on that site are so huge, I tend to concentrate on UK focused material, but it’s a US-based site and I am interested in developments ‘over there’ too.

The first shocker concerns a man named James Zogby, then president of the Arab American Institute. I haven’t researched it, but I assume it’s a bit like CAABU. 

The headline on EoZ is: 

Historic Video Unearthed: The Arab American Plan to Defeat America’s Jews. 

The link takes you to “Americans for Peace and Tolerance.” (me neither) The word “historic’ threw me at first because the video in question is only about 30 years old. How historic does that sound to you? Not very, as far as history is concerned. The video itself features an interview broadcast on Jordanian TV circa 1998; the article's strapline is as follows:

 The Arab American Institute outlined a plan to undermine pro-Israel support in America — and it worked.

It seems that Zogby went to Jordan to garner support for his plan to undermine the Jewish community in America. He would do so by harnessing the Left’s natural opposition to “oppression” by promoting the ‘Arab’ interpretation of  Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

“Zogby saw the power of framing Israelis as “white oppressors” of innocent, indigenous, darker-skinned Palestinians. And he saw the possibilities of mobilizing left-leaning ethnic, racial, and religious groups against “Israeli oppression.”
The prescient Zogby understood how the Jewish left could easily become the willing lynchpin of his strategy.”

One only needs to look at the current situation to see how effective this was and is to this day.

If you have the stomach to watch it - I’m afraid I didn’t quite make it all the way to the bitter end, I would be very pleased to hear if Zogby explained what the ultimate goal of all this anti-Israel galvanising actually was?

*********

The next item on the link-list is by Melanie Phillips. The Barbarians Inside the Gates

You’ve got to read it. 

Now, as we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks, white society is being vilified by anti-white racists who viciously smear as a bigot anyone who objects. Western culture is being stripped of its historical memory, with the removal by violence or under intimidation of statues commemorating those whose behaviour in a different era doesn’t conform to the enforced orthodoxy of today.

This article really is one of those ‘must-reads’

**********

Next on the list. Celebrities mistakenly or misguidedly posting approving tweets and comments about Louis Farrakhan’s oh so powerful speech. I admit I haven’t heard of a single one of these Hollywood heroines but their abject stupidity is less surprising than the attempts by various antisemites to silence anyone who criticises Farrakhan. (Chelsea Handler? What? Who? Why?)

********

This next item is very like the one above. It features something that many of us have seen already. 

When Rosie met Jim.

"The image went viral on Facebook and Twitter garnering millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes and shares. An apparent beacon of hope against racism."

It’s about BLM yet again, and the revelation that the cuddly grandpa with the placard “Racism is a virus - we are the vaccine” is really a Holocaust-denying racist named Jim Curran.

"His name is Jim Curran, an Irish nationalist and regular attendee at meetings of the Far Right/Left crossover group, Keep Talking. This extremist organisation was recently exposed by the CST and Hope Not Hate. They detailed how extremists from across the political spectrum (ex-Labour members Elleanne Green and Peter Gregson, Gill Kaffash and Tony Gratrex formerly of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and convicted Holocaust Denier Alison Chabloz and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke compatriot, James Thring) met to obsess over antisemitic conspiracy theories: from the ‘Jews did 9/11’ to outright Holocaust denial."

(to namedrop but a few.) As if the truth isn’t awkward enough, the really frightening thing is the way the “anti-racists” refuse to accept the truth. Undaunted, and in the name of anti-racism, they defiantly double down, spouting antisemitic / anti-Israel rhetoric as if to bolster their virtue.

" Despite the fact that concerns about Mr Curran were now flowing around social media, a series of prominent media and social justice organisations were more interesting in promoting the romantic narrative that than the messy truth. The Labour group, Momentum, posted the picture on their Facebook page with the caption “more of this please” and a leading figure in Amnesty UK shared it."

**** 

There’s more, but I think that’s quite enough for one day.

meanwhile, there's this:

Chris Williamson will be joined by Jackie Walker, Max Blumenthal, Ken Livingstone,Tony Greenstein & Marc Wadsworth
Thursday 18th June at 7.30pm.

Defending Free Speech and Challenging Manufactured Consent.

Join us on Resistance TV
Watch live on Youtube or Facebook#FreeSpeech pic.twitter.com/KaHLSTISVa

— The Festival of Resistance (@TheResistFest1) June 13, 2020

Sorry for today's YouTube videos overshooting the sidebar  - there seems to be a technical issue with Blogger and YouTube. (Same as yesterday)

First they came for the statues

First, they came for the statues. 

“TAKING A KNEE” TO THE DESTROYERS OF WORLDS

Melanie Phillips has written an excoriating analysis of the current crises. 2020 is the real 1984. Eloquent, forensic and deeply insightful.

There is one aspect that needs closer examination though. The question of whether the ‘thuggish’ and ‘far-right” groups who are planning to defend the status quo (monument-wise) are reprehensible for their principles, or merely for their methods.

After all, Tommy Robinson’s Luton-born compatriot (who cut her documentary teeth on “My Hometown’ ("sorry, episode currently unavailable"!!) is currently one of the BBC’s most esteemed luvvies. 

The weakness of the Conservative government, the police, the media and the powers that be are leaving an opening - a vacuum - into which ‘Tommy Robinson’ and his motley supporters *thuggish groups around the country” are bound to fall. All this is troubling, but it raises another question. 

When highly educated and intellectual voices like Melanie Phillips reflexively condemn Tommy Robinson who, by the way, does an excellent job of discrediting himself, are they aware that he is not exactly the ‘ignorant racist thug’ they dismiss him as?

 Or, is it simply that the ‘mob’ who seem to rule the roost these days, would, in turn, condemn her by association, (even more than they do already) should she or anyone like her be caught expressing the slightest smidgeon of sympathy for T.R.

We can’t all be Oxbridge graduates. Personally, I’m full of admiration for the eloquence and perspicacity of figures such as Melanie and writers like Brendan O’Neill and Douglas Murray, (bended knees!) so I would really like to understand whether they are right to dismiss T.R., or are they fearful of the Twitterati mob……. or merely being snobbish? 

Genuine question.

Balancing act

“20 years ago today the Israeli army killed my friend and BBC colleague Abed Takkoush in South Lebanon. They fired a tank shell into his car from their side of the border wire. They claimed we were terrorists. Abed left a wife and 3 teenage sons 

I’d decided to stop to do a piece to camera. I got out of the car with cameraman Malek Kanaan. Abed stayed in the car on a phone call to his son. A minute or two later a Merkava tank crew about a kilometre away fired at the car. 

It was the middle of a bright sunny day, with perfect visibility. They were close enough to see us clearly with the sophisticated optics in a Merkava tank. Yet they claimed we were terrorists. 

Israel was pulling out of a long occupation of Lebanon because Hezbollah had made it too costly for them, by killing Israeli soldiers. They were on high alert but we were miles behind their retreating forces. We were journalists doing our jobs. 

Abed should be celebrating the end of Ramadan with his family. They suffered a grievous loss. Israel has every right to defend itself. But we were no threat, civilians covering the story, moving openly in bright sunlight. It took many hours before Abed’s body could be recovered.”

Jeremy Bowen’s (extremely distorted) reminiscences have set off an anti-Israel Twitter-mob that comprises many Muslim names, including the BBC’s former Head of Religion, Aaqil Ahmed.

I remember that like it was yesterday. I hope Abed’s family are ok after all these years?

— Aaqil Ahmed (@aaqil1969) May 23, 2020

Of course, it’s “not all Muslims” etc. Or is it? On that theme, I offer you this interview with historian and expert on Islam, Raymond Ibrahim.

I seriously fear creeping Islamisation and the seemingly inevitable Islamic influence over Britain. I fear for myself and my family and I grieve on behalf of my deceased parents and for the memory of my grandparents who fled to  Britain for safety from persecution in the late 1800s.

Many prominent pro-Israel figures, including the most eloquent and articulate, are afraid to express their true fears and feelings about the rise of Islam because of a very rational and justifiable fear of being dismissed as “racists” and “ ‘phobes". Perhaps that’s why Melanie Phillips is always careful to qualify her substantive criticisms of Islam with the caveat ‘it’s not all Muslims’. 

Recently, I've been sensing that I'm not completely alone in having such concerns. It’s a fine line between bravely ‘speaking out’ and falling into the trap of being marginalised into insignificance by the politically correct mafia, and that’s one hell of a balancing act.

What shall we do?

When artists describe themselves as ‘self-taught’ - which they often used to announce boastfully - one could interpret that as a warning that they’re just ‘not very good’. Of course, when art colleges swapped traditional teaching for conceptual ephemera, all that changed. Nowadays, ‘self-taught’ all but evokes self-motivation and personal commitment. 

I can’t remember why I started off in that vein. It was either because I’m permanently conscious of my own deficiencies, or because I wanted to explore the woeful state of ignorance surrounding my favourite topic. (A bit of both - not an either-or.)

I’ve been watching some webinars. They make pretty painful viewing because technical bugs plague both the audio and the image. Constant freezing; fuzzy sound that keeps getting out of sync with the picture and I’d have liked proper captions to identify the speaker. 

One of the webinars I watched yesterday ‘Propaganda in Schools’ (H/T David Collier) was about the aforementioned ‘woeful ignorance’ surrounding Middle East history and the Israeli - Palestinian conflict. The misinformation and bias, or what we now call ‘fake news’  has been passed down from generation to generation, gathering ever more ludicrous moss as it goes along. 

The hour-long webinar tackles various aspects of the problem and probably has limited appeal, but what was particularly fascinating to me was the detailed description of the contents of Palestinian textbooks; explicitly Jihadist, blatantly inciting violence, glorifying martyrdom, and all to the tune that ‘Palestine’ is rightfully Muslim ‘from the river to the sea’ and that’s it. The icing on the cake was the reminder of the painful fact that we - the British taxpayer - help fund this bile through UK foreign aid. Keep an eye out for Marcus Sheff.

Melanie Phillips reports the gradual defrosting of relations between Israel and certain Arab leaders,  who are almost at the end of their tether with Mahmoud Abbas’s increasingly strident and stubborn intransigence.

 “Saudi writer Abdulhamed al Ghobain, a political activist who reportedly shares the viewpoint of the reformist Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, told BBC Arabic TV: “There is a deluge of opinions against the Palestinian cause… Unfortunately, the Palestinians have lost. The Palestinians have not contributed anything. We can say that they are emotional people whose behaviour is governed by their feelings…

“People say out in the open that they do not care about the Palestinian cause and about the Arabs in general, and that we must steer our relations in keeping with our interests. Israel is an advanced country and we can benefit from it. We should deal with reality. The relations with Israel have become warm. It is no longer just about normalization.”

One of the worst offences a Palestinian can commit these days is to show any sign at all that they’ve ever thought about ‘normalisation’ with Israel. This self-sacrificial position even precludes accepting generous offers from Israel, including direct help connected with coronavirus.

An interesting piece by Manfred Gerstenfeld in ‘Artuz Sheva’ (who looks alarmingly like Jeremy Corbyn in the illustration ) but don’t let that put you off(!) recounts that Israelis are not fully aware of how bad their image is overseas. Top in every field of excellence to which Israel cares to apply itself, but nil points for its own self-publicity.

“A few months ago, I had a brief talk with a former Israeli minister. In all sincerity this Minister believed that some Israeli ministries deal competently with antisemitism and anti-Israelism. They have been given funds to do so. The idea that ministerial employees and ministries with all their constraints can possibly deal with a complex problem like this is however absurd. 

The basics of strategy is that attack is the best defense. Palestinian extreme hate mongers are an easy target. Their leading party, Hamas, is a genocide promoter and the second largest Fatah -- and the Palestinian Authority it controls -- are murder glorifiers. The employees of a new Israeli anti-propaganda agency in their first days of employment would only have to go through the Palestinian Media Watch website to get a rapid indication of how to expose the Palestinian Arabs. Hate speech, demonizing, antisemitic cartoons, and misuse of Western funding are just a few among many topics.”

An underlying theme of the webinar was ‘what can be done about it?” I hope, by drawing the problem to the attention of people whose eyes normally gloss over at the first sound of “Israel/Palestine” that, in my self-taught clumsy, learn-as-you-go fashion, I am doing my bit. While my family (much to their irritation) would complain that I can’t be faulted on ‘personal commitment and self-motivation’ I can’t tell how effective I’ve been, if at all, over roughly a decade of trying. 

Wither and die!

I don’t think either of us wants the blog to wither and die. In lieu of a considered answer, I give you some knee-jerk responses.

1) Twitter has addled our brains. Short attention span / Attention Deficit is the disorder of the day.

2) Echo chambers make me sad.

3) Teachers (might) testify that force-feeding a well-worn syllabus onto yet another fresh intake is the personification of tedium. Only in this case the exam never comes. The BBC grinds on just the same. After a decade of blogging (ultimately the same old stuff), repetitive tedium injury kicks in. 

4) In the unrequited pursuit of the youth market, the Beeb has forgotten that the young eventually grow up. Stop it BBC! You are not Marks and Spencer. 

5) Monkey Brains was indeed a prolific commenter and sometimes his was the sole response to a post.  Maybe it was simply an aversion to Disqus or my own ‘rebuke’ that drove him away. He deserved his own blog.  

6) I can’t see what is wrong with the layout of Disqus. Maybe the problem is your end?

7) In days of old (when knights were bold and posts were long and thoughtful) it was even busier below the line. Check out archives circa 2016 and earlier.  

8) Personally, I feel we have almost exhausted the BBC’s bias. I’m not satisfied with endless nit-picking over the BBC’s individual transgressions any more (there’s an app for that) and I think - if we’re to continue - we need to broaden the remit. 

9) I’m not a proper Conservative by the way. I dislike the overly dogmatic anti-lockdown rhetoric one finds on TCW, and I did think the btl discussion engendered by Melanie Phillips’s (presumably now out of favour with Kathy Gyngell) attack on Lord Sumption’s anti-lockdown stance raised far more interesting, diverse and debatable points (on both sides) than the echo chamber that is the default of many Conservative-leaning blogs and websites. 

Less isolated

Here we go again. Writing a blog about BBC bias and then boasting that I don’t watch it. Well, I do watch some of it, more of which later. I have spent most of my life - say, at least half of it, being in a minority of one. (That covers opinion, ideology, ethnicity and lots of other stuff.)  Shall I name the ways? Perhaps another time.

This is leading up to one of those ‘housekeeping’ posts that bloggers have to do from time to time, usually when the comments are too sweary or too plain nasty.

Ha! I have been alone (in this blog) in supporting the lockdown strategy, one whose success is almost entirely reliant on a high degree of cooperation from the public. We know Lockdown not the only possible strategy on the table, but it’s the one that the government we voted for believes is in the country's best interest. 

Our experiment with Disqus seems to have deprived us of our most prolific commenter, but I think I’m right in saying that most of our regulars disagree with me on this topic.  I haven’t particularly engaged in the debate because (as I keep having to repeat) I am still of the opinion that it’s “too soon to know’.  I think the time for dogmatic criticism of the Government is not now. I am Mr Undecided and I’m sticking with it.

So, what’s all this a preamble to? It must be something. Okay, it’s Melanie Phillips. I don’t agree with her on absolutely everything - apart from her every word on Israel - but she too is in favour of the Lockdown approach. 

Look at this! The Times(£):

“Like every other country suffering from this pandemic, Britain faces a horrible choice between protecting the economy and safeguarding life and health. Its rate of death and serious illness from Covid-19 has been higher than most countries. The reason for that, along with other necessary criticisms about the government’s handling of this crisis, should wait until all the evidence is in.”

If you haven’t got access to the Times, I’m sorry. I don’t feel entitled to reproduce entire articles. (I did it once but I think I got away with it.)

“Yet among people for whom damage to the economy outweighs all other considerations, there’s no acknowledgement of Johnson’s complex balancing act. For such people, lockdown must end immediately. Some of them claim, moreover, that there never was any need for it in the first place. The virus, they say (with scant regard for either humanity or settled facts) poses no serious threat because it only kills relatively few old people or those who would have died this year anyway. By contrast, they say, Sweden has curbed the virus while suffering far fewer deaths than Britain, Italy or Spain without locking down its population, thus protecting its economy.”

Anyway, I feel a little less isolated now. 

As for the Disqus thing, I think the jury’s still out. We were hoping to attract a wider, livelier and more diverse disqussion below the line. We’ll wait and see what transpires.