On an old theme, probably harped by bards these days, today's Dateline Londonon the BBC News Channel was one of those editions where a right-leaning, pro-Brexit guest is let in and allowed to counter the programme's' usual, sometimes suffocating left-liberal, anti-Brexit bias.
Today it was blog favourite Alex Deane.
Alex - as ever on Dateline the doughty Christian in the lion's den - not only didn't get eaten but repeatedly bopped the three opposing lions on the nose as well.
Our Alex, in a good way, never disappoints.
One of those ravenous lions was another of our blog favourites, Nabila Ramdani. She never disappoints either - though in a less good way.
Our Nabs went off on not just one but on several. Yes, the new Boris Johnson-led government, according to Our Nabs, is sinister, far-right, extreme, freaky, etc, etc.
And she really, really, really had it in for Priti Patel. (Hmm. Wonder why? Is it cos Priti is right-wing and pro-Israel, or is it cos Priti is Hindu?).
In July 2017, the BBC replied to a valid complaint about Nabila Ramdani, a “French freelance journalist of Algerian descent who specialises in Anglo-French issues, Islamic affairs, and the Arab world” whose offensive and misleading anti-Israel remarks were allowed to pass unchallenged by the presenter during one of her many appearances on Dateline.
“We have spoken to the production team and presenter to remind them of the need to ensure that any contentious remarks are challenged and questioned, at whatever point they are made during the programme.”
The presenter in question was Jane Hill. The other day I spotted Nabila Ramdani on the screen again, but at the time wasn’t able to watch the programme.
Sure enough, it seems she was at it again. Moreover, the presenter was, once again, Jane Hill. Here is part of the offending rant:
“So essentially Donald Trump accuses the Palestinians of not being polite enough as their land is stolen, as they are routinely murdered in their thousands, imprisoned in their hundreds and undergo in all manners, all manners of human rights abuses. And there was of course no mention of the incredibly provocative decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem while completely ignoring the Palestinian right to East Jerusalem as their capital. And what I found particularly disdainful was the way Trump threatened to wash his hands of the entire Israel peace process, making out that he’d had quite enough of the boorish Palestinians, again signalling that they should somehow accept their fate and also be polite towards the billions of dollars poured into Israel to ruin their lives.”
(emphases added)
Jane Hill did not challenge any of these comments, but she did give a signal that she might have realised they were offensive, as she responded with: “And we will certainly talk about that on another day.”
On the other hand, Jane Hill might have suspected that the remarks were controversial without knowing whether they were true or not, and would have been unable to challenge them securely.
In which case, if you’re going to get someone as partisan as Nabila Ramdani on your programme, get someone who is capable of countering their lies.
We did wonder why that particular Tweet was cited now; it’s not breaking news or anything. Then I realised that it was just a bit of background to contextualise an article about Cologne that Ramdani penned the other day for the Independent
Nabila thinks you need to know that :
“Brown men are not inherently more misogynistic or brutal than white men, and Muslims are just as likely to be family-orientated, peaceful citizens as their counterparts from other religious and cultural heritages. Neo-Nazi groups such as Germany’s Pegida – an organisation becoming increasingly active in Britain – instead jump on the propaganda, using sacred half-truths about Cologne to spread hatred and violence.”
There. Now you know. Oh yes, and you also need to heed this warning:
“The refugee-as-rapist construct is the kind that has been used to demonise people throughout history. The idea is that you apply frightening characteristics to those you view as political enemies. In the 1930s Cologne’s Jews were described as 'Untermenschen' (inferior people) menacing European culture, before 11,000 were murdered during the Nazi Holocaust by “racially pure” Aryans, many of them beer-swilling Christians.”
“See what demonising innocent people leads to” she seems to be suggesting, menacingly. Don’t you just admire the way Nabila forgets her own words
“Le peuple juif est complice, encourage et prend part a la barbarie innommable du gvt” (Translated, perhaps a bit clumsily as:The Jewish people connives, encourages and participates a unspeakable barbarism of Israeli Government.
and, while she’s at it, she’s simultaneously perpetrating the “Muslims are the new Jews” meme, an analogy which is both grossly hypocritical and false.
Currently, the increasingly overt antisemitism in universities is in the spotlight, with a notable resignation and a cancelled engagement.
“What this article is silent about is the way in which antisemitism, under the cloak of anti-zionism, has been institutionalised on the left since the days when Ken Livingstone was Mayor of London.
When he regularly made antisemitic criticisms of Israel or made pointed Jew-baiting sneers at Jews, the Labour leadership sat on its hands and/or said, "Oh, just Ken."But I also heard people high up in the Labour Party say they had many seats in marginals in constituencies with large Muslim electorates. So that meant it was inconvenient to do anything about antisemitism in the party.
[...]For years, Labour has been happy to have very senior MPs and Shadow and former junior ministers go off to Gaza to shake the hands of the leaders of the terrorist and violently antisemitic Hamas organisation; Labour's current leader has been their friend for decades.
And that's without even mentioning the virulent demonisation and hatred of Israel that pours out of the trade union movement-- and inflicts itself on any union members foolhardy enough to challenge the hard left hatred line.The Green and Liberal Parties and the SNP are the same. Though there are anti-Semites in the Tory Party and UKIP, they do not embrace this demonisation and hatred incitement.”
So now I’m getting to the point. The virtually unconditional support for the Labour party - or at least for the Labour party B.J.C. TM - from 99% of the BBC tells us that this particular ‘institutionalised attitude of the left’ is the BBC’s default attitude.
It also explains why the BBC allows antisemites such as Nabila Ramdani to opine (as experts) on programmes like Dateline, and no-one turns a hair.
Another btl comment, by ‘wildcolonialboy - this time on the H.P. Nabila thread mentioned at the top of this piece:
I pointed out her anti-semitism on Twitter, she immediately blocked me.
I'm complaining to the BBC and Guardian about her anti-semitism, hopefully ensure this racist doesn't get further commissions”
Sadly, the default response that comes to my mind is: ‘good luck with that’ ... as they say on the internet.
In the wake of the January jihadist massacres in Paris, French-Algerian journalist Nabila Ramdani was all over the BBC, to such an extent that many people (including us) commented on the fact.
She became the BBC's go-to 'expert', despite espousing some startling opinions - especially her repeated criticisms of the murdered writers at Charlie Hebdo for offending Muslim sensibilities.
It wasn't surprising, therefore, to switch on Newsnightlast night and find her on their hastily-summoned panel of experts, or to wake up this morning and find that Today had invited her to act as one of their two experts throughout the entire programme (she made three separate contributions), or to see that she then moved immediately over to the BBC News Channel after Today had ended to act as their 'expert', contributing three separate interviews over the course of the following two hours.
Having heard so much of her I heard her making the same points across all three platforms, using remarkably similar forms of words on each occasion - especially to describe the attacks, which (rather disconcertingly) were almost word-for-word each time. She also twice stated that now wasn't the time to criticise the French authorities over security before going on to do precisely that (at some length on one occasion). And she was also keen to express her concerns that Muslims might be unfairly 'stigmatised' because of the attacks.
I did notice, as at the time of the earlier Paris massacres, that the killings at the kosher supermarket in January didn't get a mention. They never seemed to engage her attention much. She didn't mention them on any of these platforms today, despite repeatedly recalling those earlier attacks.
I’ve been trawling through the interweb to find a video of Ghada Karmi’s bonkers appearance on Sky. I thought at least someone might have posted it on YouTube. No luck. The nearest I got was (via Yiftah Curiel’s Twitter) the identity of the charming JPost journalist who preceded her.
Her name is Lahav Harkov. The other thing I stumbled across was that after her interview she had a Twitter spat with Dateline London’s favourite Algerian journalist Nabila Ramdani who ended up having to delete one of her more overtly antisemitic Tweets.
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.
