Smokescreen

I don’t usually listen to the World Tonight, but I happened to turn the radio on tonight in time to catch Chris Mason introducing the BBC’s version of what’s been happening on the Gaza border.

His introduction took me aback. This is a late-night post, written in haste. Make allowances. 

“When you hear, or use the word smokescreen, the chances are the speaker is indulging in a spot of imagery about a ruse designed to disguise someone’s real intention.
But along the eastern borders of the Gaza Strip today a smokescreen was a literal description of the tactic deployed by Palestinians; the choking black clouds, the result of burning tyres, had a simple purpose - make it harder for Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border to shoot protesters in Gaza.
This was the second week of a planned six week protest set to end on 15th of May, the 70th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, or catastrophe in which more than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced by Israeli forces in the Arab Israel war of 1948.”

Before I go any further, that short introduction is stuffed to the gunwales with with malign insinuations and the most blatant falsehood came last. 

If the BBC sincerely believes that 750,000  Arabs (not Palestinians - the brand hadn’t been invented in ’48) were ‘forcibly displaced by Israel forces’ they are factually wrong and they really need to check with  reliable, non partisan sources. Most credible historians recount that most of the Arabs who fled in 1948 did so following instructions to ‘get out of the way’ issued by warmongering antisemitic Arab leaders who intended to demolish the nascent Jewish state and mistakenly assumed this would be quick and easy. 

‘Israeli forces’ is hardly a suitable way to describe hastily trained, armed Jewish pioneers and Holocaust survivors fighting for their lives.  In other words, Chris Mason is regurgitating Palestinian propaganda based on wishful thinking and racist hatred of the Jewish people. So who’s been using a smokescreen as a tactic?

Doesn’t the phrase “making it harder for the IDF to shoot protesters”  imply that the trigger-happy IDF takes pleasure in shooting Palestinians? I thought so; but then I would.

Next, we were treated to Yolande Knell chatting with her pet refugee, who probably still has the deeds to his mother’s house, which the family lost when five Arab armies tried and failed to eliminate the Jewish state and all who sailed in her. Now he thinks it’s his ‘right’ to march back to his ancestral home taking his twenty five grandchildren with him.  Pity; they should have stayed put and accept Israel, like the ones who made the sensible choice.

Yolande Knell then urged him to deny that Hamas had orchestrated this planned protest. Why? Hamas’s plans have surely been documented and widely publicised by all, including Hamas themselves.I suppose she thought it was worth a try - some people might not have seen it on t’internet.

My point is that the BBC is openly inciting hatred. One-sided, factually erroneous reporting only encourages the pro-Palestinians and the anti-Zionists to believe they’re supporting a good and righteous cause, and that there is a realistic possibility that Israel will be eliminated. 

This gives the haters false hope, and is tantamount to openly inciting, nay, whipping up antisemitism. 

Then, to add insult to injury, the BBC reverts to full smokescreen mode, effecting pretend outrage at Corbynistic manifestations of antisemitism. It’s a disgrace. Thank you and goodnight.

Corbyn. In a permanent state of reflection (but not looking in the mirror)

Daily Politics. H/T  Happy Goldfish 

Who is Lord Dubs?  Alf Dubs was helped to flee Czechoslovakia at the age of 6 by the late Nicholas Winton when the Nazis arrived in the late 1930s. His father was Jewish.

Here he is speaking about antisemitism in the Labour Party on the Daily Politics on 21st March. 

Jo Coburn:

“Over the weekend, one of your colleagues, Lord Levy, threatened to resign unless Jeremy Corbyn, your leader, makes absolutely clear that anti-semitism will not be tolerated in the Labour Party, saying he's not gone far enough in cracking down on it. Do you think Jeremy Corbyn could be doing more about that issue?" 

Chuka Umunna:

"It would be completely disingenuous for anybody to deny that in fringes on the left there have been problems with anti-semitism. but I tell you what, if anyone can lead the charge. in stamping it out and showing a zero tolerance to it, it is Jeremy." 

Lord Dubs: 

"I think we've got to be careful that when people are critical of Israeli government policy, they're not accused of being anti-semitic. There are some people who tend to merge the two. Clearly they are totally different!"

 It’s understandable that former refugees would identify with immigrants and tend to be in favour of immigration. However, someone should point out that there is a big difference between Jews fleeing Nazism, where their very existence was  a crime, and Muslim immigrants fleeing intra-Muslim war zones and, in their host countries remaining in closed communities that are fundamentally hostile to the west.

Look at the smug expression on David Davis’s face as he nods in agreement with Lord Dubs’s assertion that critics of Israeli government policy mustn’t be accused of being antisemitic. 

This superficial deflection really shouldn’t be allowed to pass unchallenged. Criticism of Israeli government policies all too often is very clearly antisemitic, as it invariably ignores the provocation and aggression that necessitates much of the Israeli government policies designed to protect Israelis against violence. These policies are usually the ones that antisemites criticise the most, and they get away with doing so simply because the violence, racism and incitement that exists within Palestinian society is rarely reported in the western media.

Another H/T to the Happy Goldfish. 

Radio 4 The World Tonight with Shaun Ley . “Jewish organisation criticises Corbyn“

I don’t much like the tone of Shaun Ley’s interview with Jonathan Arkush and later with Ken Livingstone, but that’s subjective.

Ley:

“(Jeremy Corbyn’s) brother might have views that you don’t like, but he’s not, as it were, his brother’s keeper, is he? The judgment is not what the Labour leader says but what he does.” 

 Should Shaun Ley describe Piers Corbyn’s poorly disguised antisemitism as ‘views you don’t like’? 

Re. using the word Zionism as a pejorative:

Arkush: 

“All it means is the right of self-determination for Jewish people” 

Ley:

“And the distinction between the right of self-determination and what the Israeli State itself does - what its current government does and what its policies are - is it possible in your view to oppose what the current government of Israel does and not be antisemitic?

Back to deflecting. “What the current government of Israel does” is a commonly deployed mechanism for insinuating that Israel is gratuitously ill-treating poor defenceless innocent Palestinians; it’s the context-free  insinuation that lets antisemites off the hook. (The context being that the Palestinian leadership’s fundamental position is the immutable, unshakeable,  permanent, entrenched opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, both in action and in words forever and ever amen.)

Arkush:

No problem because Israel is a vigorous democracy and its critics are just like critics of our own government. [...]I’m concerned about hostility to people because they are Jewish.[...]  

Ley:

Have you confronted Jeremy Corbyn with this? Only it’s one thing to come into a radio studio and make these criticisms and allegations but I wonder if you’ve tried to raise it directly with him.

 It’s almost as if Arkush has just barged his way into the studio uninvited, like a political gatecrasher on a mission to defame the Labour Party.

Arkush:

I put some things to him (about his meetings with terrorists and holocaust deniers) will you now say that on reflection that they weren’t a good idea and you won’t repeat them, and I pressed him, and all he would say is that he would reflect on them. Two months have passed.

Ken Livingstone (0:15:10) on the phone-line. 

 “I’ve been a member of the Labour Party for 47 years, I’ve never heard someone say anything anti-semitic.”

Jonathan Arkush 0:16:00

 “Well, just in the last few weeks we’ve had a stream of Labour figures who have said things which are anti-semitic on social media, and I’m not sure why Ken Livingstone hasn’t heard them.”

Craig will be back soon, blogging about all manner of things. Sighs of relief all round.