Miscellaneous: moving on

Orla Geurin’s gratuitously appended remark about the Palestinians follows the same pattern as Tim Wilcox’s notorious and equally inappropriate gaffe of an attack-line during a live interview with an  “Israeli-born Jewish woman” after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Remember? 

“Many critics though of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.”

Interestingly, the BBC defended Willcox just as they are defending Orla Geurin. Nevertheless, Willcox apologised (for any offence caused) “on Twitter”. I don’t know if Orla will be apologising, but I think not.

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People have noted Prince Charles apparently snubbing Mike Pence at the gathering. A video shows HRH passing along a handshake line-up, where he seemed to be avoiding both the hand-shake and eye-contact with the VP. Whether or not this was deliberate is uncertain, but I understand the two men were also seen chatting together, so maybe it was just a moment of clumsiness. 

What was deliberate was Prince Charles’s overly chummy meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the Holocaust-denying Palestinian leader. It makes a mockery of what had been rather a good speech by HRH, and it rather throws the whole thing into a new light. Slightly hypocritical, if you ask me. Cake and eat it.

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It’s totally inexplicable that much of the Holocaust-related commemorations avoid mentioning Muslim antisemitism in so many words. Various allusions are made to this in a roundabout way, with artfully camouflaged wording that carefully circumvents the necessity of confronting the oxymoronic aspect of the matter head-on. “We condemn all forms of hate” sounds ok as far as it goes, but sticking “and Islamophobia” onto the end of every lip-service condemnation of antisemitism epitomises cognitive dissonance gawn mad.

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The ‘very experienced Middle East reporter’ Orla Guerlin is discussed on BBCs Newswatch. It would appear the BBC are more than willing to totally disregard the concerns of the Jewish community. Not sure, based on recent history, if that’s really their best option! pic.twitter.com/YwBAaizBQi

— SussexFriendsofIsrael (@SussexFriends) January 24, 2020

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The sparsely attended parliamentary debate on the topic was sad to see. About six of one party and half a dozen of t’other. Speakers condemned antisemitism, but took care to avoid naming a source, a couple with oblique allusions to nameless persons connected to ‘this place’.

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If you like football, here’s a nice tribute from footballer chappies:

WATCH- Many if the U.K.s biggest football stars including Harry Kane, Gary Lineker, Frank Lampard and Glenn Murray (Brighton player) have come together to make a very powerful and moving video ahead of Monday’s #HolocaustMemorialDay. If you only ever share one thing make it this pic.twitter.com/tJagzcxjiV

— SussexFriendsofIsrael (@SussexFriends) January 24, 2020

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Meanwhile, the BBC has lost interest in Harry and Meghan thank goodness and all attention has turned to the Corona emergency and Victoria Derbyshire’s shock horror “Axed!”

On Orla Guerin

An unusually cheerful-looking Orla Guerin

It isn't every day that a senior BBC reporter is condemned for being “unjustifiably offensive” by a former BBC Chairman (Michael Grade) and a former BBC Director of Television (Danny Cohen). 

Nor is it every day that the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Campaign Against Antisemitism both come out against the same BBC reporter - the former calling her “crass”, the latter “sick”. 

But lugubrious BBC international correspondent Orla Guerin managed to pull off both feats this week, after that News at Ten report which seemed to link the Holocaust to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians which Sue posted about on Thursday. 

Conversely, plenty of people - mainly Corbyn supporters and Israel haters - rode to Orla's rescue, singing her praises for 'telling the truth'. 

As a reminder, here's what she said (at the end of her report):

In Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names, images of the dead. Young soldiers troop in to share in the binding tragedy of the Jewish people. The state of Israel is now a regional power. For decades, it has occupied Palestinian territories. But some here will always see their nation through the prism of persecution and survival.

In fairness, The Jewish Chronicle posted a defence of Orla Guerin from Gary Sinyor:

There was no need for those words. Guerin – yes typically - has mentioned the Occupied Territories in describing Israel but she’s not comparing the Holocaust with the Palestinians. One unnecessary reference in a report that reiterated the truth of the Holocaust, that addressed rising antisemitism, that movingly depicted a survivor from Belsen, that showed Israeli soldiers learning about the tragedy of their fellow Jews, that took up the last four-and-a-half minutes of the BBC’s main news bulletin the day before the actual memorial service, surely we can live that. In fact, we should be grateful.

Even he says, however, that Orla Guerin didn't need to say “For decades, it has occupied Palestinian territories” there, and that it's “typical” of her that she did.

Indeed.

Dreams destroyed

Are you getting the impression:

• that the BBC has now morphed into an anti-Trump faction? 
• that there's next to no attempt to deliver ‘balance’ (bringing in counter-views)? 
• that the BBC is proceeding from the underlying assumption that the Trump measures are morally and legally wrong? 
• that the BBC is (with rare exceptions) bringing on people on who substantiate that perspective? 
• that BBC presenters are acting only as midwives to the overall goal of illustrating what a dangerous man President Trump is?

If so, please join the club.

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Tonight's early evening news bulletin on BBC One exemplifies all of the complaints listed above (and thanks to David Keighley at News-watch for helping to clarify them in my mind). 

At the risk of wearying you all with transcripts, this post will end with a full transcript of the relevant portions of this BBC One bulletin. It's worth studying just to see how the BBC does it. 

Note the absence (except for a short quote from Donald Trump) of voices supportive of the presidential order and the contrasting plethora of voices hostile to it. 

Note also the language of Eleanor Garnier's report, pre-describing the Trump plan as "the most extreme of his campaign policies" and the way she quite openly ticks of the UK's prime minister ("It now seems that's far easier in theory than in practice") and says that Mrs May "failed to live up to her own words". In what way is that neutral, uncontroversial reporting?  

Eleanor Garnier's report is eclipsed however by Nick Bryant's emotion-heavy piece, where critics predominate (speaking passionately) and heart-tugging stories are intended to hit home with viewers, arousing their sympathies for the 'victims' of Mr Trump's actions. His final words ("They'd spent all their money on the plane tickets and seen their American dreams eradicated with the stroke of a pen") echo his colleague, Alex Forsyth's "with a flourish of his pen" yesterday, surely implying the cruelty of 'The hand that signed the paper'.  

And then came Orla Guerin. And where Nick Bryant pulled on our heart strings by ending with "They'd spent all their money on the plane tickets and seen their American dreams eradicated with the stroke of a pen", Orla ended her comments by talking about a "victim" of the Trump policy who said that "Donald Trump had destroyed his dreams". 

They must feel that they are doing the right thing in being so openly and intensely one-sided, that Trump's actions justify the scale of the bias, but they are surely finishing off their claims to impartiality once and for all.

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Transcription, BBC One Evening News, 29/1/2017

Newsreader: The government seeks assurances from Washington about how British citizens might be affected by the US travel ban. The order from President Trump came hours after he met Theresa May at the White House - now there are calls for his state visit here to be cancelled. Despite a court order - and protests against the ban - the administration has signalled today that it is pressing ahead. We'll be looking at the reaction here - and around the world. 

Newsreader: Good evening. Theresa May has ordered the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary to try and obtain assurances from the Trump administration about how its travel ban on people from seven mainly Muslim countries will affect British citizens with dual nationality. Sir Mo Farah is among those who fear they'll be affected, and politicians from different parties have been calling for President Trump's invitation to pay a state visit to Britain to be rescinded. We'll have the latest from the United States in a moment - but first, our political correspondent, Eleanor Garnier, on the growing row here. 

Eleanor Garnier: New leaders and new friends. It was all going so well. Then just hours after Theresa May left Washington, Donald Trump enacted one of what many think is the most extreme of his campaign policies. By then, the Prime Minister was in Turkey for trade talks, where she avoided condemning the President's travel ban. 

Theresa May: Well, the United States is responsible for the United States policy on refugees. The United Kingdom is responsible for the United Kingdom's policy on refugees. 

Eleanor Garnier: But then, overnight, a new statement clarifying that the Prime Minister did not agree with this kind of approach. But some, like the British Olympian Sir Mo Farah, are still worried. He was born in Somalia but lives in America and says he's deeply troubled he'll have to tell his children that he might not be able to come home. And one of Theresa May's own MPs, who is born in Iraq, says he'll also be affected. 

Nadhim Zahawi: For the first time in my life, last night, I felt discriminated against. It is demeaning. It's sad. I'm a successful man and a politician. It's the people who don't have the platform that I have who could get stuck in an airport for hours and hours, of no fault of their own. They are British citizens and they should be looked after. 

Eleanor Garnier: By this morning, government ministers were publicly criticising Mr Trump's plans. 

David Gauke: The Prime Minister is not a shoot from the hip type of politician. She wants to see the evidence. She wants to understand precisely what the implications are. There's always pressure to respond within a news cycle, and so on. The important thing is, we are saying we disagree with it and we do think it's wrong. 

Eleanor Garnier: Friends can be candid with each other. That's what the Prime Minister said before her trip to the States. It now seems that's far easier in theory than in practice. And having failed to live up to her own words once, there is now criticism she's undermined her own strategy. Plus, there are growing calls for Donald Trump 's state visit later this year to be called off.

Jeremy Corbyn: I'm not happy for him coming here until than ban is lifted, quite honestly. Because look at what's happening with those countries. How many more is it going to be. And what will be the long-term effect of this on the rest of the world? 

Eleanor Garnier: This relationship, like many, is complicated, but as the government presses for British exemption from the travel ban, Mrs May will hope she's done enough to keep Mr Trump onside. Eleanor Garnier, BBC News, Westminister.

Newsreader: President Trump - and members of his administration - have today been defending the scope of the ban, with some suggestions that it could go further. But there are legal challenges, and one judge ruled to suspend the deportation of refugees and those with US visas who've been stranded in airports. Nick Bryant reports from New York, where several protests have taken place. 

Nick Bryant: Protest is becoming a permanent feature of the Trump presidency. And at JFK Airport last night the demonstrations lasted deep into the early hours. "Let Them In", they chanted. New York has always been the great gateway into America. The protesters believe the executive order flies in the face of US values. 

Senator Elizabeth Warren: It's an attack on the very foundation of democracy. 

Nick Bryant: Demonstrations took place across the country. These are scenes in Boston as a US senator defied the US president. 

Senator Elizabeth Warren: I cannot believe this is happening. I always knew Donald Trump would be bad, but not this bad and not this fast. 

Nick Bryant: At this courthouse in Brooklyn came a late night legal challenge and civil liberties lawyers emerged claiming a victory as the federal judge temporarily blocked part of the executive order. 

Anthony Romero, ACLU: President Trump enacts laws and executive orders which are unconstitutional, and illegal, and the courts are there to defend everyone's rights. 

Nick Bryant: What started as a protest outside this courthouse in Brooklyn has now become a celebration. At the arrivals hall at Dallas Airport outside Washington, the joy of reunion. A Muslim woman from Iraq finally making it back into the country. 

Muslim man: All of a sudden I get a call telling me they are detaining my wife who is a green card holder, legal resident in this country. 

Nick Bryant: But, despite the court ruling and others making it through immigration, the Department of Homeland Security said it would continue to enforce the executive order. Prior to the court ruling, President Trump expressed satisfaction about how his ban was being implemented. 

Donald Trump: It is working out very nicely and we are going to have a very, very strict ban. We're going to have extreme vetting. which we should have had in this country for many years. 

Nick Bryant: And this morning he doubled down on Twitter. "Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting now. Look at what is happening all over Europe and indeed the world - a horrible mess". These Syrians thought their US visas offered them the chance of a new life. But this Christian family of eight was refused entry at Philadelphia Airport and forced to fly back to Beirut. 

Syrian woman: My son has been in America three years, and they did not even let me call him. There's no humanity. 

Nick Bryant: They'd spent all their money on the plane tickets and seen their American dreams eradicated with the stroke of a pen. Nick Bryant, BBC News, New York. 

Newsreader: So as you saw there, one of the countries affected is Iraq - one of America's closest allies in the fight against IS. Let's turn then to Orla Guerin, our Middle East correspondent. How does that relationship between the two countries square with the scope of this ban, Orla? 

Orla Guerin: Well certainly we've seen that President Trump isn't afraid to trample on sensitive alliances. The ally in this case is a key partner in the battle against the so-called Islamic State. President Trump says that's one of his top priorities. Predictably, we have already had calls from Baghdad for the government there to respond. The foreign affairs committee of the Iraqi parliament has called for the government to take reciprocal action and the influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has said that Americans should now have to leave Iraq. There are about 5000 US troops on the ground. They're playing a very important role, largely assisting and advising the Iraqis in this battle against IS. At this stage, we don't know what action, if any, the Iraqi government may be willing to take, but certainly it's going to face domestic pressure on this. For both countries, there's a lot at stake. For individual Iraqis, they are already falling victim to this policy. We spoke to one man today who should been beginning a new life this weekend with his wife and two children in the US. Instead he was turned around here at Cairo. He had worked for a company connected with the Americans. He said he had put his life on the line, and after all of that, Donald Trump had destroyed his dreams. 

Newsreader: Orla, thank you.

Lord Grade slams Orla Guerin and the BBC

(h/t BBC Watch)

Following on in many ways from the previous post....

Former BBC chairman Michael Grade has written a letter to the BBC's head of news James Harding condemning the BBC's reporting of recent events in Israel, including its moral equivalence between Palestinian terror and Israeli response (something Mark Urban's report was full of).

His immediate target was the report by Orla Guerin which Sue blogged about here and Hadar blogged about here:

Lord Grade criticised the report’s apparent promotion of “equivalence between Israeli victims of terrorism and Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli security forces in the act of carrying out terror attacks”. 

He highlighted that: “An emotional interview is conducted with the father of a dead Palestinian youth who had been killed committing a fatal terror attack. However, the report failed to show the emotional distress caused to Israelis by any of these recent attacks. This is inexcusable”. 

Lord Grade continued: “Additionally, it was improper of the correspondent to claim that “there’s no sign of involvement by militant groups”, before immediately showing footage of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) banners at the home of a 19 year-old terrorist who carried out a deadly knife attack at Lions Gate in Jerusalem on 3rd October. PIJ is a well-known Palestinian terror organisation and it has since claimed responsibility for the attack and praised by Hamas, another internationally proscribed terror organisation. This directly misleads viewers”. 

Commenting on the footage of an elderly Palestinian gentleman confronting Israelis soldiers in Hebron that were firing gas canisters, Lord Grade criticised the lack of description of the wider context. He said: “The carefully selected footage failed to show the stone-throwing protestors prompting the presence and action of Israeli security forces. While this footage is entirely worthy of broadcast, I strongly feel that viewers lacked visual and oral description of the wider context thereby limiting their awareness and understanding of what is an undoubtedly complex issue”.

He also took aim at that outrageous BBC News website headline which Sue blogged about on 5 October:

“Regrettably, this is not the first time the standard of reporting and impartiality has been unsatisfactory in recent weeks. On Saturday 3rd October, I was disappointed to see the BBC News website publish a misleading and counter-factual headline: ‘Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attacks kills two’. I note reports that this headline underwent four revisions following public criticism”.

He also attacked the BBC for failing “to fulfil its obligation to viewers” by not showing its audience cases of Palestinian Authority officials praising the attacks and calling for more, saying that Palestinian incitement, “has played an undeniable part in stoking tension recently and is an important part of the story”.

I have to say that I think Mark Urban's report last night was just as guilty of that. 

Mixed feelings

This is Orla Geurin’s report, and the topic of BBC Watch’s recent post.  Orla  gives the Palestinian side of the story. 

But not all of it. 

Shafi Halabi, the killer’s father is grief-stricken but unapologetic, Orla tells us. He says he feels pride and sorrow. As Hadar says, it’s a sympathetic portrait.  Here’s the bit that the BBC didn’t feature, from Palwatch.org:

“I speak while I am blessing my son on his martyrdom death and I am proud that he died to defend the women of Palestine. He avenged the women carrying out Ribat (religious conflict/war over land claimed to be Islamic) at the Al-Aqsa mosque.
He avenged them. He avenged them against the impure enemies. He avenged them and made everyone lift his head up high. May he find favour in the eyes of Allah, praise Allah.”

I wonder why he didn’t say that to Orla. Or if he did, why she didn’t show it in her film. Could it be that it makes him seem like a religious fanatic? An Islamist extremist of the type we're supposed to disapprove of?      Might that lose him a little of that empathy that the BBC works so hard to foster.?

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"Muhanned Halabi killed 2 Israelis, Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Ahron Bennett, and injured Bennett’s wife Adele, and their 2 year old son in a stabbing attack in the Old City of Jerusalem on Oct 3rd 2015. Following the attack he was shot and killed by Israeli security forces. Prior to his attack, in a post to his private Facebook page, the terrorist referred to recent terror attacks as part of a “third intifada,” and said that it was a response to Israel’s actions at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and that the Palestinian people would not “succumb to humiliation.” This is a reference to the PA libel that Israel is plotting to take over and destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and to the PA’s portrayal of Jews praying on the Temple Mount as “an invasion of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

More on Orla

There's a complementary post to Sue's Tired of waiting over at BBC Watch:

Orla Guerin tells BBC audiences Al Aqsa Mosque ‘sacred to Jews’

Orla's style of reporting is described as "overly dramatic and exaggerated" - a succinct way of putting it. 

Indeed Hadar's style couldn't be more different to Orla's. In this piece, for example, she patiently points out a number of inaccuracies (whether intended or otherwise) in Orla Guerin's latest reporting, specifically her 9th October TV report. 

Here's one passage from Orla's piece:

Israeli security officials are playing that down but the police are on alert, especially in Jerusalem’s Old City. It’s home to the Al Aqsa Mosque; sacred to Muslims and Jews. Tensions over the shrine have fuelled the latest unrest and unleashed a new danger for Israelis: stabbing attacks.” [emphasis added]

...Hadar notes two errors on the BBC reporter's part here: Firstly, the Al Aqsa Mosque is not sacred to Jews. That's the Temple Mount (which isn't the same thing at all); and, secondly, stabbing attacks are far from new (there were sixteen in the first eight months of 2015 alone). 

BBC Watch goes on to list a number of important omissions too, compounding such inaccuracies. 

It's well worth a read - and, no doubt, complaints will be going in on the strength of it.

The one small crumb of consolation - so far - is that Fergal Keane hasn't flown in yet.

Tired of waiting

The BBC has been largely ignoring the escalating troubles in Israel. Sky has covered it, albeit problematically. By that I mean that they gave equal airtime to two experts, only one of whom was sane. That’s balance for you.

I usually complain that the BBC is unhealthily obsessed with Israel, at least with regard to Gaza and the West Bank, but in this instance a little background would not have gone amiss. 

My grievance with the BBC for not reporting the violent clashes in the West Bank up till now is that they seem to be waiting for Israel to act before suddenly deciding that it’s news. Then they can imply that Israel is overreacting. 

However Ismail Haniyeh has said this is the third intifada, so I guess that justifies sending in Orla.

She’s so empathetic with the Palestinians - I understand that she’s married to “an Arab” - that she ended her report with the most bizarre statement I’ve heard for a long time. Referring to the rock-throwing, stabbing, brainwashed delinquents rushing round screaming “Allahu Ackbar” with whom she identifies, Orla said:  

“The unrest is spreading, carried forward by those who are tired of waiting for a Palestinian state.”

“Tired”? Yep. They look positively exhausted. 

“Waiting”?  That’s not any kind of waiting that I recognise. Even if it were, ‘waiting for a Palestinian state’ how?  Are they hoping a Palestinian State will come along and park beside them, rampaging mob that they are - like a double decker?

By that token Orla, are ISIS beheading and butchering people because they’re “tired of waiting for an Islamic State?”

Might have been better worded

Further to Craig’s ‘Not upheld’ post, here’s one way of conceding a point without admitting they’d done anything wrong. (People always seem to be saying they haven’t done anything wrong these days.) The  BBC Trust has reviewed viewers' complaints and come up with their verdict.

Honest Reporting:

“Might have been better worded.”

Orla Geurin said there had been “no evidence that Hamas had been using human shields”.

But of course there was plenty. Instead of apologising for airing a factually incorrect statement about a highly sensitive topic, the BBC claimed only that it might have been better worded.

Quite funny though, as euphemisms go. If the BBC asserted that the moon’s a balloon, Elvis is alive and their reporting is 100% impartial but later claimed that these statements ‘might have been better worded’, we’d have a good laugh at their wit.

“Might have been better worded” is a phrase that will come in handy for the comedians amongst us. 

The BBC seems to have floated the idea that since there was in fact massive evidence of Hamas using this tactic, and during the piece in question Orla did refer to rockets being fired in close proximity to residential neighbourhoods, viewers should have been able to figure out for themselves whether she was telling the truth or talking nonsense. 

That defence is hardly a glowing endorsement of their reporter’s observational and journalistic ability. 

It sort of sidelines much, if not all reporting. Say anything you like, the audience can make of it what they will.