The BBC's war against Israel

Sleeping fitfully last night while  waiting for the moon to go red I heard Kevin Connolly on the BBC World Service delivering the audio version of  this piece, sparked off, he says,  by a new book named “An Improbable Friendship” by Anthony David.

The introduction he was intoning woke me up sharp. I can’t remember Connolly’s exact words, but this paragraph from the article sums it up:

“You may be familiar with the history of the 1967 Middle East War - a short, sharp conflict in which, Israel captured land from Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a series of lightning operations.” 

I’m not sure that he actually said “You may be familiar with the history of the 1967 Middle East War”, but no matter, Connolly wasn’t going to be of any help to those of you who are not familiar with it. This may or may not have been entirely a bad thing, for whatever Kevin Connolly’s version of the history of the six day war seems likely to be - and I dread to think what it is -  I’d take a bet that we’re far better off without it.

So, it was “a short, sharp conflict in which, Israel captured land from Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a series of lightning operations.”

No reason, no rhyme, just a topsy-like event; there it was - it ‘grew’.

Let’s be clear, as pre-Corbyn politicians used to say. The six day war was a war of intended annihilation.  It was initiated by the Arabs with the intention of annihilating Israel. How cunning, how devious of Connolly to miss out the fact that Israel was fighting a defensive war.

I wasn’t too keen on this misleading,  emotive insinuation either:

“So Israel remains in control of the Golan Heights with its apple orchards and rolling pastures.”

Before the six-day war, Syria’s tanks and artillery were placed high on the Golan, 'apple orchards, rolling pastures' and all. The guns were pointing at, and visible from, kibbutzim below, posing a constant and ever present threat to the civilians living and working peacefully beside the Sea of Galilee. Make no mistake. In the spring of 67 there was a sudden, fierce escalation and a barrage of shellfire landed on Kibbutz Ein Gev.   Israel now controls the Golan for very good reasons. To protect Israelis and allow them to stay alive.

“And the West Bank of the River Jordan, with its huge Palestinian population and its growing number of Jewish settlers, is still under Israeli military occupation.”

Kevin Connolly might not know this. He might not know that the six day war was an intended war of annihilation against Israel, started by the Arabs. He might not know that most of the territory that was captured by Israel was returned (to Egypt) supposedly in return for peace.

If he doesn’t know why the occupation came about, he should damn well go and find out. He seems to think it’s because of unreasonable and unjustified warmongering by Israel, when the exact opposite is the case. 

Of course he does know all this really. He chooses to leave it out. How should I describe the BBC’s war against Israel and what is their intention?

I am mildly curious about one thing. Not for personal reasons, just to clarify something that bothers some of us. Does Kevin Connolly think Israel "has the right to exist?" Does he think it has any legitimacy whatsoever? 

Not that I care what Kevin Connolly thinks, but I am quite interested in whether he and his colleagues who report from the region actually have the authority - the BBC's blessing -  to represent the BBC by reporting everything that happens, and anything that takes their fancy -  solely from the Palestinian viewpoint. 

I suspect that despite the ‘impartiality obligations‘ that the BBC is supposed to espouse, there is an inherent Arabist default position which nothing will budge. No matter how cognitively dissonant  this becomes, what with the ever increasing turmoil in the Arab Muslim world. Muslims fighting, killing each other; followers of Islam changing the face of Europe and making their presence felt in Western democratic countries that they live in, but dislike. How long can this go on and how far can it go?  I say that rhetorically.  Propagandising and emoting against Israel is all the BBC wants to do.

Anyway, this “improbable friendship” theme is interesting. It’s between 98 (and a half) year old Ruth, the divorced widow of  Moshe Dayan and a deceptively youthful looking Raymonda Tawil, the mother-in-law of Yasser Arafat and mother of the fragrant Suha. 

Oddly, that portrait has found its way into the room and it looks as if it’s on the exact same easel as Suha's easel. Not so much a case of the eyes following you round the room, in this case the whole bloody picture follows you halfway round the world.   Is it a BBC prop? How bloody ridiculous. 

Like daughter

Like mother

Now, it’s all well and good that Kevin Connolly has this idea to make a film for the BBC about a heartwarming story of friends across the divide, based on a new book.  But it’s more than a coincidence that as far as I can tell this tale is seen (sigh) from the anti-Israel perspective. If I’m told that the book is less partisan that Kevin’s film, I’ll be delighted to hear it, but I’m doubtful.

Incidentally, another story about friendship and cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians didn’t catch the BBC’s imagination at all. Kevin Connolly didn’t choose to make a film about it, which seems a shame, as it involves another of the country’s favourite topics, football. I bet a film based on that would generate as much interest  - and do more good for the ‘peace process’ than, If I may say so,  this indulgent bit of flim-flam.

Ruth Dayan is indeed a sweet old lady, and no doubt she had a tough time being married to a man she said she should have divorced “ten years ago’” (I assume she meant ten years before she did divorce him) “for political reasons”. Kevin Connolly was keen to tease that out.

Moshe Dayan may have been a difficult man. He may have been a terrible husband. But let’s not forget that if it weren’t for Moshe Dayan and his brave brothers-in-arms, Israel would have been overrun by the enemies that surrounded it then (and still do) and Mrs Ruth Dayan may not have lived till 98 and a half to enjoy a friendship with Raymonda, the mother-in-law of that corrupt old rogue Yasser Arafat. 

I had a little look, just to be sure. Just to make sure that Anthony David is as impartial as Kevin Connolly and the BBC would have us believe. 

I went to Google, as you do, and saw that prof. Anthony David collaborated with Palestinian activist Sari Nusseibeh to produce an earlier, autobiographical  book “Once Upon A Country”

A review by Jeffry Goldberg is generous, but clearly states where the author is coming from.

“Once upon a country “ by Sari Nusseibeh with Anthony David.
“This is a rare book, one written by a partisan in the struggle over Palestine who nevertheless recognizes — and bravely records — the moral and political failures of his own people. This is not to say that Nusseibeh is a Zionist. For one thing, Zionists aren’t in the habit of quoting — approvingly — Noam Chomsky, and Nusseibeh catalogs, sometimes at unwarranted length and in exaggerated form, the sins of Israel, particularly the sins of occupation and settlement. And the narrative he presents in this book is undeniably the one devised by Arab, and pro-Arab, historians. There is no doubt that the 1948 war, which erupted upon the establishment of the state of Israel, did not end the way his family hoped it would, and Nusseibeh unpersuasively argues that the Jews were the Goliath in the fight, rather than the David. “

The new book "An Improbable Friendship" hasn’t been reviewed yet, and who knows, it might be full of surprises. But Kevin Connolly’s film tells a decidedly partisan tale, demonising Moshe Dayan, over sentimentalising or infantilising  his ex-wife Ruth just because she’s an old, old lady, omitting the context and background of the six-day war, giving undue respect to the Arafat family.

On the BBC World Service the continuity announcer thought it was sweet that she insisted on including the 'and a half' in that 98 years old, just like children do. Somehow, that says a lot.

Suha and Zeinab revisited

I woke up in the middle of the night and switched on the radio, just in time to catch a familiar voice saying “Suha Arafat”. It was, of course Zeinab Badawi, and I was wondering if this was another case of deja vu all over again; was I hearing the same episode of HardTalk that I’d blogged a while ago? Was it a figment of my imagination, or was it one of those dreams that are so close to reality that you’re wondering, in the dream, if it’s really a dream?

It was “another chance to hear” Suha and Zeinab, for no apparent reason other than, perhaps, to reignite the vexing question of Yassir’s assassination. 

The audio version gives quite a different impression from the full-on technicolor version. No portrait of Yasser leering down from his easel to distract one - no time to ponder over Suha’s flawless make up (has she got a lady-in-waiting or does she do it herself?)

There’s just the conversation. No frills. Because I missed the start of the introduction I wasn’t quite sure if I was hearing an updated version, or whether this was an unadulterated repeat of the January interview.

Suha was still convinced that old Yasser had ingested a dose of polonium in his frugal lunch -  just a little fish or chicken don’t you know -  because he was in fine fettle up to that fatal day. “My husband  was a fitness fanatic”, she said - good diet, abstemious, and the picture of health. We’ll have to take her word for it. He didn’t have aids after all.

Suha was insistent that someone - it must have been a traitorous Palestinian - had slipped the poison into his healthy lunch on behalf of the Israelis.

Healthy diet

I was certain I’d heard that the poisoning theory had been definitively debunked by the French, Swiss and Russian investigators, but at the time of the interview, Suha hadn’t received those disappointing results, and she wouldn’t have liked them very much when she did receive them.  

She’ll be appealing the findings. I don’t know if this is ongoing.

Now that I was able to properly listen, I realised that Suha was saying that old Yasser, the father of the Palestinians -  specifically the father of every single Palestinian child - wanted to establish a secular state.  Confusingly, he had made Suha convert from Christianity to Islam when they were married, secular old rogue that he was. 

 The only aspect of religiosity that concerned her  greatly was the unthinkable prospect of Jews being allowed to pray at the Temple Mount. She thought the very idea was beyond the pale. She got so worked up at the whole idea of Jews praying at the Temple Mount that Zeinab had to calm her down,. ”The Israeli government assures us that it’s not going to happen.” said Zeinab in a calm voice. 

The bit about the money was as dramatic as ever. “Where is it?” asked Zeinab. “Where are Yasser’s millions?” I remembered the gestures with which Zeinab accompanied that question, looking round the room exaggeratedly, as if for a giant safe or a mound of ingots.   

I wonder why the BBC World Service thought it was a good idea to resurrect this peculiar interview, specially since with hindsight the poisoning claim looks so ‘conspiracy theory’.

Why on earth did they do it?

Carefully made up

Should you take the sincerity of the spoken word for granted when you see or hear it on the media? Some might think, cynically, that what we get is more a matter of what the spokesperson has decided to say today.

That thought persisted when I watched the HardTalk with Zeinab Badawi and Suha Arafat. (H/T BBCWatch. Congratulations to Hadar Sela on a very well deserved accolade.)

HardTalk.

You know that expression ‘rats fighting in a sack’? Something like that popped into my head.  

Zeinab and Suha. Two harpies play-fighting on the BBC.

Everyone who’s aware of Zeinab’s interviewing history would be pretty naïve to expect any kind of penetrating grilling from Zeinab, a least in the case of an Arafat.  In the event, apart from the usual propagandistic cliches that Suha knew she could get away with, it was Zeinab who came across as equally, if not more, ‘partial’ than the (relatively) poor widow. 

Some of this interview was hilarious, some plain weird.  Hadar noted Suha’s evasive answers and picked out the most fanciful of the propagandistic allusions she slipped in, more of which later, but what about Zeinab’s performance?

Zeinab asks Suha “when you’re living in Malta in relative comfort and you see the struggling  of the Palestinian people....how does that make you feel?”

Well, Suha feels terrible, but she and her daughter wouldn’t be safe in ‘Palestine’.  “The name Arafat.. it’s not easy.” Fair enough. I can quite believe they’d be a sitting target,  even more so now that the Islamic State terror group has managed to set up bases of power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The section one could call “Where’s the money?” was strange as strange could be. Zeinab mentioned eleven million dollars that were supposed to be in bank accounts “under your control - where is it? 

“Where is the money?” 

At that, Zeinab looked around with a theatrical gesture, meaning .... what? I don’t quite know. Did she mean the spartan fixtures and fittings? As in “I see no outward signs of wealth here?” Can’t be that.

Perhaps she meant the opposite. The ‘relatively comfortable' surroundings. Maybe she was alluding to the considerable sum Suha has very likely thrown at cosmetic dentistry and personal grooming. (Nice eyebrows, by the way.)

Well, “this is character assassination - not against me - against my husband.” Suha did look, momentarily, a little shifty.

I must digress a minute. You know how the BBC crew will ‘stage’ these films? (well, they do) They’re inclined to fiddle with elaborate lighting contraptions and turn off any humming fridges. They spend time artfully placing the subject before a suitable background. 

I just thought it was hilarious that a huge portrait of Yasser must have been wheeled in on a whacking great artists easel so he could leer down on the proceedings throughout the interview.  I wonder if they brought the easel with, as a prop? Perhaps Suha is a painter.

(Something about the Arafat countenance belies Suha’s insistence that her husband was a fitness fanatic before being poisoned with polonium. Yasser Arafat the health freak. Hmm.)

However, when it comes to the nitty gritty, it wasn’t clear who Suha fears most or regards as the greatest enemy, Hamas or Israel. 

She said, or has decided to say, that she and Yasser hadn’t put all that effort, suffering and struggle “all our life” for Palestine to become an Islamic state. But “it should have Muslim law” “We want the Muslim laws, but not the Muslim state.”

So what’s the actual difference? I must say this seemed confusing, and if Zeinab had her wits about her she might have insisted on clarification.

Suha also said what happened in France was terrible, a crime, and France opened its arms to immigrants who should have been appreciative of the Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité they were lucky enough to experience in France

Zeinab turned to the subject of Yehuda Glick who had also been a guest on a recent HardTalk, and mentioned the ‘religious dimension’ to the problem. Suha then adamantly  defended the Muslims. “It’s not the time to provoke the Muslims.” 

Suha keeps saying: “This is not a religious...it’s a nationalist cause”  Well if Mr and Mrs Arafat sincerely ever thought it was simply a nationalist cause, it sure ain’t now. Of course in truth, the whole basis of the Arabs’ rejectionism is religiously based. It is and always was a religious cause. 

 Regarding Hamas’s aspiration -  the extermination of Israel:

 “You’ve also said recently that the armed struggle is no longer plausible. When you look at your husband’s legacy, with the olive branch in one hand and the gun in the other, do you believe that he was wrong, then, to believe that there could be an armed struggle that would bring results” 

Suha decided to say,  “In the beginning Yasser Arafat agreed that there would be an armed struggle” History, not me,  will judge him, she declared.

She seemed to be saying that Hamas is making the people pay too high a price. She said: “Why did they not build shelters instead of tunnels?”

“Should now the armed struggle recognise Israel?” Asked Zeinab, with an inscrutable expression. Is Zeinab for or against?

“Listen. Come on! They have to recognise Israel” replied Suha. “They have to recognise Israel because there’s no other way. Don’t tell me they are going to banish Israel from the river to the sea.”

It all seems a bit vague. A little bit woo and a little bit waay; a bit dodgy.

So what does Suha really think? 

A few days ago, Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement posted the above picture to their official Facebook page. It demonstrates that the movement still favors violence as the way to obtain statehood. 
A stone, a knife, a Molotov cocktail, a gun, a hand grenade, an assault rifle and an RPG illustrate Fatah's progress in terms of more and more sophisticated weapons. These are the means with which it works toward its goal - to "finish with a state," as the poster states: "We started with stones .... and we will finish with a stateThe Palestinian National Liberation Movement [Fatah]"[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page", Jan. 18, 2015]
For years, the Palestinian Authority and Fatah have promoted violence. Palestinian Media Watch has documented numerous statements emphasizing their adherence to "armed struggle" and veneration for the rifle. This week's stabbing attack in Tel Aviv was encouraged by such promotion of violence by the PA and Fatah who have both explicitly encouraged attacking Jews and Israelis with knives.

Does she not know about this? Perhaps she doesn’t do Facebook.

Hadar had treated us to a comprehensive list of Suha’s propagandist nuggets:

“When there’s a rocket on Israel we have 1,000 people who are killed in the same day.”“Gaza…the most crowded city in the world…”“…more than 1,000 people who are still in the coma…” [after the conflict last summer]“….nothing happen [with the peace process] because Israel continue to do settlements, Israel continue to build the wall….”

as well as some of Zeinab’s, including the reference to “some progress being made on the diplomatic scene”, meaning Mahmoud Abbas’s ICC manoeuvre. Progress on the diplomatic scene? What an odd way of putting it, for an impartial BBC employee I mean.

Finally this brings me to Zeinab’s pronunciation. Like Yolande Knell, she’s gone native on “Ramallah”. Rumul-lah!

I thought this carefully made-up Suha came across as much more reasonable than the Suha who made hysterical claims about Israel poisoning the old rogue. Perhaps everything she said was as carefully made up as her face. She wasn’t wearing her mad hat for HardTalk, and Zeinab seemed disappointed. No doubt she would have preferred to play the voice of reason against widow Arafat’s histrionic anti-Zionism. Instead Zeinab took the role of part sycophant, part interlocutor and part fellow anti-Zionist, slightly deflated at her failure to coax as much virulence from her subject as she’d hoped.    As Hadar said, a puff piece.

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

(or if it’s anything to do with Israel, eliminate the positive and accentuate the negative)

Of all the media coverage of ‘Ariel Sharon the man’ I’ve looked at today, I don’t think the BBC’s has been the most biased. Yesterday they dwelt far too much on the bitter reactions of Israel’s enemies, though there are some grudging attempts at balance, frequently qualified by those obligatory ‘buts’.

I understand there are individual BBC Twitterers who would have it otherwise. No balance and no buts.

The comparison between the overall coverage of Sharon’s life and death and Mandela’s hasn’t gone unremarked. Where Mandela’s dodgy past was airbrushed out of the narrative, Sharon’s (arguable) violations were given undue prominence, in some cases overshadowing everything else.

It was chilling and creepy that Jack Straw chose ‘not to speak evil about the recently departed’ when he was questioned by Andrew Marr this morning. No doubt he’s going to wait until the coast is clear before telling us what he really thinks.

The absence of any nuanced or contextualised understanding of the predicaments Sharon faced throughout his political and military career has allowed myths and memes to take over the asylum. 

However, who is interested? Not many, and the bravado in a snippy one-liner is enough for one smug commenter below the Telegraph’s obit. He has interposed the thread again and again with: “Sabra and Shatila” or “Sabra and Shatila massacre”. 

The  Kahan Commission found Sharon indirectly responsible for not preventing Phalangist forces from murdering Muslim civilians as well as terrorists in the refugee camps. 

“It had been estimated that there may have been up to 200 armed men in the camps working out of the countless bunkers built by the PLO over the years, and stocked with generous reserves of ammunition.”

This incident didn’t take place in isolation. There was a long and bloody build-up, as there always is, but the buck has to stop somewhere and Sharon took responsibility and resigned from his position as Minister of Defence.

The other myth that has embedded itself in the minds of the masses is that Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount ‘sparked off’ the second intifada. Arafat’s own wife Suha, she of the Arafat poisoning farrago, stated that the intifada was already in the pipeline, and hubby had ordered her to scarper  before things got rough. She probably had her own motive for saying this, but she did say it.

So yes, Sharon was involved in incidents that wouldn’t look good ‘outwith’ a war situation. But so are all soldiers, everywhere, and some are reprimanded and others are not.

However fair and honest these obituaries and ‘life of the man’ stories aim to be, the selectivity in emphases shows exactly where the reporter is coming from and whose side he or she is on. The myths bear no relation to ‘fair‘ or ‘honest’,  and Honest Reporting’s choice of title for its article seems to be asking quite a lot of the public.    “Debunking the Media Myths”.

 If ‘debunk’ is defined in its strictest sense: “expose the falseness or hollowness of (an idea or belief).” then that is indeed an accurate description of what-it-says-on-the-tin. However,  if the implication is that exposing the falseness and hollowness of an idea or belief is the same thing as changing hearts and minds, they’re on the long and windy road to nowhere.

Sharon never pretended to be a saint, and his admirers don’t claim he was one. Remarkable men rarely are, and that includes Mandela.

Update.

I’m afraid Jeremy Bowen has just managed to tip the balance. The BBC has caught up with the worst of the media in the league table of anti-Israel bias with Bowen’s report  on tonight’s ten o’clock news.

The report was supposed to be about Ariel Sharon’s lying in state, but  Bowen slipped in more information about the vengeful feelings of the Palestinians than anything whatsoever from the Israeli point of view. 

A brief interview with Mr. Olmert was followed by shots of Bowen’s unintelligent-looking head, regurgitating ancient grievances through the tired old Palestinian Muslim prism that Bowen is wedded to. He ended with  that vague one-size-fits-all accusation that Jenny Tonge likes to bandy about. “What he has done to them”. We may never know exactly what that is. It’s probably protected on the grounds of being held in private for the purposes of journalism, art or literature