We need to talk about bias

After unearthing some historic Hitler-related Tweets by its employee Tala Hawala the BBC dismissed her from her job as Palestine Specialist for BBC Monitoring. 

An impassioned response to the dismissal appeared on Twitter and was reproduced by some of the media, many of which chose to close comment fields that are normally open to the public. This is so sensitive a topic that a partial “don’t go there” situation apparently prevails. We’re tacitly colluding in a conspiracy of silence. (Are we?) The prospect of being drowned under a tsunami of un-woke, racist hate-speak must be a bit too much for the editorial community if there is one.

Why though - why close the comments? Opinions on Israel and the Palestinians (and sometimes on ‘Islam-in-general’) are invariably divisive and turn nasty at the drop of a hat, but I wonder if preemptively cancelling comments altogether is a sensible policy. It probably is, while the general public is so ill-informed and ill-equipped to argue knowledgeably. See that, BBC? 

But suppurating boils ache to be lanced, and because this blog is all about the BBC and Bias, and because one aspect of the media’s egregiously one-sided reporting is the BBC’s pro-Palestinian / anti-Israel bias, particularly by omission but also by inference and outright advocacy -  because of all that -  we need to talk.

In the self-pitying reposte above, Ms Hawala paints herself as a victim of the pro-Israel mob. I’ve heard it argued that her views are perfectly in accord with the BBC’s, therefore singling her out for dismissal is unfair and that she merely crossed the line with a much-too-unsubtle reference to Hitler, accidentally a little too overt and in-yer-face to pass for impartiality.

“I apologise for my single offensive and ignorant Tweet” came the weasel-worded non-apology. “I blurted out the “Hitler was right” remark in the heat of the moment” This confession looked suitably self-deprecating with a whiff of mea culpa thrown in. and had she left it at that, with the possibility of a Naz Shah style redemption. ‘Lessons learned / sorry for what I did‘ she might have bought herself some time. 

But no. Racism will out. Begging for sympathy, Hawala painted her heat-of-the-moment outburst as understandable. Cherry-picking incidents from Israel’s 2014 retaliatory incursion into Gaza - devoid of context and full of obvious omissions - not least three murdered Israeli teenagers - was a clumsy and stupid tactic. She even managed to trash her own boast, of (her own) ‘impartial and professional journalism’ by coming out with a litany of stereotypical antisemitic conspiracy theories. Hoist on her own gratuitously self-damning petard and reducing her vindication thing to parody.

There’s no way back. Chances of reconciliation - quashed. She needn’t worry though. There are plenty of opportunities still open to her. The Times might be interested.  

For anyone who still cares, that loaded allusion to ‘Industrial in scale’ is quite obscene 

Losing the plot

This isn’t directly related to one specific incident of BBC bias but I’d suggest that the BBC’s long-term anti-British and Islamophillic message has influenced the Government and is behind the appalling decision to “genuflect to their arch-enemies by refusing to support their greatest ally, the United States, in its resolution to extend the UN arms embargo on Iran.“

This interesting article  Appeasement: The European Sickness by Col Richard Kemp, and another posted last Thursday by Douglas Murray The Foreign Office has lost the plot in the Middle East highlight the same thing. Why is this so-called Conservative government acting like a load of wobbly lefties? We might as well have voted for Jeremy Corbyn.

Last Friday the UN Security Council rejected any extension of the arms embargo on Iran. That embargo — imposed in 2007 — began to get phased out after the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. But a ‘snapback’ provision was put in place intended to allow the return of all such sanctions should Iran violate the terms of the deal. Iran has been violating those terms for some time, but on Friday, when the United States hoped that its allies would join it in deploring this fact, only the Dominican Republic voted with it. The UK, like France and Germany, chose to abstain. On the question of whether Russia and China should once again start selling arms to Iran, this country apparently takes no view.

It would be nice to be able to say that this was peculiar. But it isn’t. In the same week that Britain abstained at the Security Council the US brokered an historic deal elsewhere in the Middle East. Under its supervision, the United Arab Emirates and Israel signed an agreement to normalise relations. The Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin, has now invited Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed to visit Jerusalem. As the economic and diplomatic benefits of normalisation become clear, other countries in the Middle East are expected to follow suit. Deals like the UAE-Israel agreement are part of a larger attempt to find unity among states wishing to avoid Iranian dominance. Hence President Rouhani’s threatening condemnation of the UAE for its ‘treacherous’ actions. There are rumours of Bahrain and even Saudi Arabia at some point joining the UAE’s acceptance of reality.

There must be something in the water that’s turning everyone into self-hating imbeciles of indeterminate gender. Is it the plastic beading we’ve ingested? Is Covid-19 a message from God - a cull? Pestilence and plague be upon us. I think I’ll have to start going to church or should that be synagogue? No, it would probably have to be mosque.

The only heartening thing is that the comments below such articles (in the so-called right-wing press at any rate) which used to be peppered with antisemitic innuendos now seem to have mellowed. Now the comments are mainly pro-Israel with the odd racist troll chipping in here and there. 

This sea-change was especially notable below the line in a piece by Stephen Daisley Have Arab nations forgotten about Palestine by accepting Israel?

Instead of the usual sneers and anti-Israel snarks, the general tone was positive and supportive of Israel. Maybe more people are getting bored with the Palestinians than ever before. And what is it about the so-called right-leaning press? They have gone all woke and lefty too. The Times is promoting Caitlin Moran for all it’s worth and many people are not keen. Her prose is sparky and entertaining but her attitude is more Guardianista than many an actual Guardianista.

Why on earth is The Times using Sara Tor? She’s a poor writer, but is a Muslim and has written affectionately about the charity called Islamic Relief Worldwide. 

The section's sub-heading is: ‘Swift action” don’t all laugh at once. Btl comments were held up for hours, but the ones that eventually crept through were as critical as they could be bearing in mind the heavy moderation that is deemed necessary. 

To Hell in a handcart; amen. 

‘Germans are good engineers’ and other slurs

“Here! This’ll interest you “ said my beloved as he thrust today’s Times at me. Turns out it was a report about a part-time university lecturer being sacked for a racist remark, even though the 'bigotry' in the remark was ‘positively’ discriminatory. The clever Jews smear, if you like.

The current atmosphere of heightened racial sensitivity is the perfect setting for mountains to be made out of molehills. To extrapolate: As 'one’ myself, my antennae are set to ‘trigger-hair’ mode, and they bristle disproportionately at the merest whiff of the stereotypically racialized innuendo.

Even the assumption that this article would be of special interest to *me*  could be construed as a bit, well, totalitarian in principle, at any rate in the present media-propelled climate of racial ultra-sensitivity.

Anyway, although I have some sympathy for both sides in this particular case, the new taboo on words and meanings that may or may not have  ‘racist’ connotations seems utterly bonkers and amounts to the curtailment of  Free Speech. 

The current ‘racism’ malarky isn’t confined to ‘race’ these days, either. It’s not about race at all now, rather it’s about clumsy, one-size- fits-all categorisations, where exceptions definitely don’t prove (or disprove) the rule. 

Blanket-style categorisations are always potentially dangerous. I must admit that when I read the article, one of my first instincts was to look at the picture of the Dr Bonar to see if she looked Jewish.  I recognise that my small act of curiosity has racist connotations, and the fact that my own physical appearance is hardly typical of anything much clouds the matter further and makes me look hypocritical.

I’m being silly about what isn’t much of a laughing matter, especially to the two people concerned. So I Googled Stephen Lamonby to see how the case has been reported in the wider press. Blimey! It’s everywhere!  The headlines vary:

 “Sacked lecturer said “Jews were cleverest….’ (Times)

“Southhampton lecturer sacked over racial stereotype comments….” (BBC) 

“University lecturer. 73, is sacked after telling colleague…….(OMG Daily Mail)

and so on, almost ad infinitum.

Funny dat. If you look through them, the majority of headlines mention Jews.  “Jews are the cleverest” they scream. I think the collective agenda behind that specific emphasis is designed to mark the irony of ‘even’ positivity being deemed racist and indicates that the media’s sympathies lie with the professor rather than the accuser. “How unfair and ridiculous the sacking is; things have gone too far” is the message I get from the most frequently featured framing.

The conspicuous exception is the BBC, which has a very different take on the issue. The illustration it uses doesn’t feature the individuals at all. It’s a picture of a rather austere university building. 

Solent University building

Pointedly, the focus of the BBC’s report is on (negative) remarks about black people. 

“..black students did not have it "in their DNA to do engineering” ” is the example given.

Only twice in the report, towards the end, does the BBC mention Jews - almost as an afterthought.

 

So what’s going on? 

Has the BBC belatedly become over-sensitive to the whole antisemitism debacle? There’s a lot of it about at the moment, what with the breaking news of damages being  awarded to the ‘whistle-blowers’ who took part in John Ware’s BBC Panorama.

If anyone is interested in my personal opinion, I have mixed feelings about the Lamonby case and I think it’s one example of the BBC taking an unusually independent approach to a potentially ‘low-hanging fruit’ of a news item, albeit for questionable reasons. 

I think demonising the offendee, Dr Bonar, which many of the other reports appear to do is also unfair. When anyone suddenly asks you if you are Jewish because of any perceived stereotypical characteristic they may have divined around your persona, it tends to make your hackles rise. “What does this mean?” one is bound to ask oneself.

And don’t forget, this court case was brought about by Professor Lamonby about unfair dismissal and not by Dr Bonar about racism. The reporting tends to give the opposite impression.

Maybe the pendulum has swung way too far in the wrong direction, and any casual, stereotypical generalisation whatsoever allows the media to make a massive mountain out of what might, a short while ago, have qualified as a mere molehill. 

Untitled post

Reluctantly for me, back to this blog’s original remit. The BBC. It’s Friday 13th; unlucky for some. 

I rarely agree wholeheartedly with TV critiques in, e.g., The Times, (£) but today’s review by Carol Midgley hit the spot. 

The topics addressed were last night’s new drama, BBC One’s ‘Keeping Faith’, and ‘Eat Well For Less.’

Keeping Faith began atrociously, got a bit worse, then suddenly became terrific and ended with me chomping for the second episode. Word has it that this first instalment, which initially had the faux-stylish air of a sanitary towel advert, is not typical of the whole series and I’m glad to hear it. Because initially it was like playing cliché bingo.

Yes indeed. 

I might have mentioned this before, but my nearest and dearest has little time for TV dramas. The opening moments are often enough to drive him into another room to watch the history channel muttering ‘The Archers',  codeword for everything that’s wrong with - - well, dramas.

Obviously, with its atrocious beginning, he abandoned Keeping Faith almost as soon as the titles were over. Actually, the titles were very clever, both the imagery and the trendy 60s, retro, no-caps typography.  Curiosity, or perhaps heat-induced lethargy, led me to persevere with this production and eventually it came good. Some of the dialogue was hard to catch (maybe I need a hearing aid) but it’s well worth keeping faith with. 

(I’ve  swerved sharply several times already to avoid puns with ‘keeping’ and ‘faith’  so can we let that go?)

Eat Well For Less. What can I say?

I don’t know what’s more alarming: that it needed Gregg Wallace and Chris Bavin to travel to Blackpool to point that out or that such blindingly obvious stuff makes primetime TV. Probably the latter.

Spot on.

Who is Chris Bavin? I ask that in my best Edith Sitwell (or Edith Evans or both) with the emphasis on “is”. We all know who Greg Wallace is even if we don’t know why he’s on TV all the time. Why?

What is it about sloppy Cockerny enunciation that the BBC finds desirable? It’s grating. 

It’s fair enough to point out that home cooking is best. Perhaps there are generations that don’t know that it’s cheaper, more nutritious and usually tastier than your average takeaway. But they always gloss over all the tedious shopping, chopping and washing up home cooking entails. You’re tired. You’re hungry.  That is surely a large factor in the appeal of the takeaway. That or get a maid.

I'll revert to non-BBC bias mode. This is about another piece in The Times (£)  Times 2, to be precise, “culture” and a long article by Andrew Billen, one of the reviewers I like. It’s about Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the 19 year-old cellist who ‘shot to fame’ after he performed at the Royal Wedding. 

Well, if you didn’t know already, he’s black. I don’t know enough to compare Sheku’s cello-playing with that of other winners of BBCYM. He’s undoubtedly brilliant and inspirational. I can’t tell whether or not there’s a tiny element of positive discrimination in the adulation he’s receiving, but I found the bit about multiculturalism pretty annoying. I don’t care whether players are black, white or any combination, but I do know that this country desperately needs more young orchestral players, period.  If Sheku’s youth or charisma succeeds in attracting young players to take up the instrument, excellent. From any race, colour or creed.

Couldn’t resist.

P.S. I couldn't think of a title for this post so I've just called it 'Untitled Post'

Camel Corps

The BBC doesn’t get it, but Roger Boyes does. He has an excellent piece in the Times (£) today. Prince William’s visit is a snub to the camel corps.

I strongly recommend it. What? you don’t subscribe to the Times? I’m not cheeky enough to paste all of it into this blog, but perhaps this excerpt will tempt you.

William of Arabia, aka the Duke of Cambridge, heads out to dusty Ramallah today to meet the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. It’s a remarkable encounter for the second-in-line to the throne and not just because the Palestinian is a nasty piece of work (doctoral dissertation: “The secret relationship between Nazism and Zionism”). The sheer political sensitivity of an official trip to modern Israel and to the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank is such that no member of the royal family had ever undertaken one. 

A shift in geopolitics has made the visit possible — and a cultural change in the Foreign Office, which has for many decades advised the royal household that it is better to don the appropriate headgear and butter up Arab autocrats than engage with the gritty detail of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. The fear of giving offence to princelings has been the defining trait of the so-called camel corps of Britain’s Arab enthusiasts within the Foreign Office. It has, with flanking assistance from oil men and aerospace executives, become an almost institutional lobby that sees Israel as the troublemaker of the region and Arab leaders as deeply misunderstood.

By the way, although I first read it in the newspaper, I looked online to see which way the comments were swingin’ At the time of writing they’re mostly supportive. Good.

As far as I’m concerned, it puts a certain gentleman in his place. (Link: see latter part of 3rd paragraph)

Almost four years ago I wrote this: (link: see section above the crocodile)

“This brings to mind the advice that a former British Ambassador to Amman gave to Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s.  

"It is presumably in the national interest to do what we can to counter Arab fears and suspicions that the leader of HM opposition is already a prisoner of the Zionists.” 

The gentleman in question is charming enough. I met him at a friend’s house. He has a great deal of admiration for Yassir Arafat and holds the kind of Arabist views that Oxbridge-FCO types imbibe from birth. With the exemplary manners of his ilk,  he held forth on the topic, undeterred by not being particularly au fait with the facts. (at least not of the ‘other’ side of the story) Self confidence carried him through.

  

Our hostess had mischievously seated him next to me at dinner. All I can add is that his adulation for Arafat remained undiminished despite having slight reservations about being expected to kiss the corrupt, malodorous old rogue. Anyway, I imagine he would have his own views about the Royals visiting the region. The BBC of course remains impartial.

Muslim Mumpreneurs

File under the heading “Any other matters that take our fancy”

*****

An example of the normalisation of Islam in The Times: 

“Islamic toy store puts children on the path to peace” says the headline.

Unlike the paper version, the online piece doesn’t illustrate the products this unfortunately named mum, “Nazia Nasreen”, is marketing. It just has a picture of two innocent youngsters, boy and girl, happily playing with toy alphabet bricks. The Arabic variety.

In fact the Times presents it as a good-news business story - a young mum with entrepreneurial ambitions - what’s not to like?  Oh, and her aim is to put children on the path to peace.

The OMG Daily Mail has the story too. 

“She is in a group of leading British 'Muslim Mumpreneurs', which also includes Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain, who juggle bringing up children and running successful businesses in what has traditionally been a male-dominated world.” 

[...] She said: 'A lot of times children learn the wrong things and that's where the extremism kicks in. If the right educational toys and books are provided from a young age, we can instil the correct Islamic ethos and values in our children'.

That’s what it says in the Mail, and they have illustrated some of her wares.

Muslim Barbie (sold out) As far as I can tell it’s your bog standard Barbie wearing a Barbie headscarf - why can’t anyone just customise their infidel Barbie? 

The above is possibly a poster.

Three little girls who look about 7 or 8 years old dressed in black, with hijabs plus a handy epithet from Abu Dawud:

“The prophet said: “If anyone cares for three daughters, gives them a good upbringing, marries them (to good husbands) and treats them well, they will enter paradise”  “

There must also be a booklet on how to be a good husband. Possibly.

The oddest thing of all is….. three leaflets or booklets entitled: (in order:)

 ETIQUETTES OF EATING;   HAVE YOU PRAYED?;  THE MONTH OF RAMADAN. 

These items ("toys") will put Muslim children on the path to peace and instil the correct Islamic ethos and values in them. 

Is this a joke?

Who knows; the cover illustrations are straight out of South Park.

Moral improbity and turpitude

As the founding father of the BBC, Lord Reith has long been regarded as a model of moral probity and rectitude. 

However, newly released documents show that he tried to reveal the scurrilous secrets of his private meetings with the royal family and Winston Churchill. Clement Attlee, the prime minister, intervened to scupper the publication of Reith’s memoirs, branding them “objectionable” and in “bad taste”. 

The term “Reithian” is used today to describe the high-minded standards set down for broadcasting by the first BBC director-general. Yet in private papers civil servants poured scorn on his abilities, describing him as gossipy, vain, peculiar and a failure who was “not designed for teamwork”.

Hahah! 

“gossipy, vain, peculiar and a failure who was “not designed for teamwork” a bit like me, then, apart from the eyebrows. I’m starting to warm to him.  

Or maybe not. 

This Telegraph article from 2006 -  a review of his daughter’s book “My Father”  shows Reith to have been a megalomaniac and a complete bastard. 

‘...it was a surprise and a delight, one of the best family memoirs I have read - honest, funny, sharp, well-written but never bitter - although a person other than Marista would have had plenty to be bitter about.’ 

(Elizabeth Grice Daily Telegraph)

 It says here that he was a great admirer of Hitler:

It was later revealed that Reith was a great admirer of Adolf Hitler. On 9th March 1933 Reith wrote "I am certain that the Nazis will clean things up and put Germany on the way to being a real power in Europe again.... They are being ruthless and most determined". Later, when Prague was occupied, Reith wrote: "Hitler continues his magnificent efficiency."

Marista Leishman wrote about her father with a good deal of humour, but under the circumstances ……what else could she do?

A fan of the BBC has responded to the Times piece as follows: 

“I'm interpreting this article as "See, the BBC was rotten from the start'. Bonuses all round at Murdoch HQ.”

Others, not necessarily all fans of the Murdoch Press,  might simply interpret the article as "See, the BBC was rotten from the start” 

What the papers say

Now I’ve done my review, I need to do a review of the reviews of it that have appeared in the press. Andrew Billen (Times/paywall)  is one of those (rare) reviewers who sometimes sees things from an independent angle. He isn’t completely taken in, as the other somewhat gullible reviewers often are in the mainstream press. 

For example, his review (July 6th) of “A song for Jenny”, (one family’s experience of their daughter’s murder in the 7/7 terrorist attack on London)  bucked the trend. 

The Guardian’s  verdict of that drama was so gushing that I hastily skipped to the comments below it. The Guardian’s commentariat seem to have woken up recently. Many of them spotted the flaws in this production. It’s a brave person who dares to criticise such a project, but once the first arrow is slung it’s less risky. 

Here’s one example:

“What happened that day was horrific and I totally sympathise with all concerned and am relieved that no-one from my family was caught up in it.
That said, this drama was unbareably (sic) awful; stilted acting, twee set pieces, clichéd, melodramatic, and utterly thrilled with itself.
The BBC has lost its way, maybe because society has lost its way.”

That commenter took a small hammering for that, but still.

The Telegraph’s Michael Hogan was even more gushing than the Guardian. Since the Telegraph has recently started morphing into the Guardian, I hesitated briefly before skipping. 

One commenter said:

I'm sorry and, to be fair, I only watched the last 20 minutes of it but I found it to be trite, manipulative and self serving. I would give them a trowel if they were going to lay it on any thicker.

Someone said he had no business commenting on something he’d only watched 20 minutes of, and the majority of Telegraph commenters  seemed to have been ‘deeply moved’ by the programme.

Andrew Billen was the only MSM critic that had anything critical to say. After the obligatory expression of sympathy for the real characters in the tragedy, he admitted that he thought the drama was ‘unsatisfactory.’ His article was headed: Big issues drowned in sentimental song.” (£) There you have it. Now for his take on Children of the Gaza War.

Andrew Billen's review of Lyse Doucet’s film was short and comparatively sweet.  It started with praise, and continued with descriptive text. Then he said:

 ”What was annoying was that Doucet’s film was scrupulously balanced by her visiting Israeli children traumatised by Hamas’s rocket attacks on their homes - yet still unerringly pointed to the propaganda victory that Israel has awarded to the Palestinian cause.
Israel would never have attacked if its citizens had not been attacked first. Hamas doubtless deliberately sheltered its rocket launchers in civilian areas and next to schools. The fact remained that only one of the 500 dead children was an Israeli child and holes in the walls of a kibbutz are no match for what we saw of the tragic remains of Gaza City.”

So he found some of the omissions annoying! He inferred that none of this would have happened if Hamas had not willingly instigated it. This needs to be said loud and clear. What is everyone afraid of?

Now to the Telegraph.  Harry Mount was won over by Lyse. Despite initially confessing that he was on ‘red alert for some Israel-bashing’ Harry’s antenna were not very effective last night. In fact they must have been switched off altogether.

“But Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, is more on the ball than that. She was even-handed in her interviews with Palestinian and Israeli children caught up in last summer’s 51-day war – when rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, and Israel responded with massive force. More than 500 children were killed in those 51 days, and thousands more traumatised. One 12-year-old boy saw his brother and three cousins killed on a Gaza beach by a rocket from an Israeli gunboat. His 1,000-yard stare, and husky voice – old beyond its years – were haunting.
The simple words of children were all the more affecting. “We didn’t know the beach was dangerous,” he said. Those poor souls murdered on a Tunisia beach last month must have thought much the same.”

This received a well deserved bashing of its own in the below the line comments.

"The simple words of children were all the more affecting. “We didn’t know the beach was dangerous,” he said. Those poor souls murdered on a Tunisia beach last month must have thought much the same."
Equating Israelis and Isis terrorists is wrong on many counts. Not even mentioning that on the previous day there were accounts of rockets being fired from the same spot on the beach and that the figures were not identified as children but assumed to be running cometant (sic) is something that should be mentioned in this article. The impression given is that the Israelis murdered the kids intentionally as the Isis terrorist did in Tunisia. Fact: There is no war and there was no war in Tunisia more than there was a war on 7/7 in London or 11/9 in NY. Fact: there was a war during the beach attack in the Gaza strip and in Israel.”

said one person.

'When we grow up, we're going to kill them' The arab/muslim dreams of death and killing.The Jew/Israeli about life and how to make it better for his/her children. Hamas in Gaza build terror tunnels and couldnt give a g'dam for their people. Israel builds bomb shelters to keep its people safe.”

said another.

The Independent. Sally Newall’s review was brief and descriptive rather than overtly judgmental. The reviewer’s choices of which quotes to reproduce in her article was quite sufficient to show clearly which side she identifies with.

The only btl comment at the time of writing is telling:

“When the BBC momentarily departed from its Zionist bias, in one of its token gestures like this programme, and actually mentioned the plight of the Palestinian refugees in Yarmouk refugee camp, Doucet said they were descended from those who'd fled the fighting between Arab armies and Israel in 1948. An absolute distortion of the truth. They were driven out by Israeli terror, and they have lived in pain ever since. There is no balance between a bully and his victim. The BBC's reporting on Palestine is an exclusively Zionist narrative, in contrast with the excellent Al Jazeera. Doucet would do well to get some training from AlJ.”

Blimey. The commenter was using a thoroughly British name, too.

Oddly enough, the Guardian hasn’t reviewed it yet.

Best of a bad bunch

This seems to be a case of the BBC’s anti-Israel bias being the least of the worst. In the spirit of "The BBC’s is the worst form of bias, except for all those other forms that can be observed" it seems that the BBC, although far from perfect, hasn’t stooped so low as the Guardian, or fallen so deeply into the abyss as - of all things - the Times.

There was a terror attack in Israel on the evening of April 14th by a terrorist / gunman/ hero, which killed an Israeli father of five / off-duty policeman / settler, depending on whose side you’re on.

This incident was the subject of two BBC Watch articles that dealt with various amended versions of the BBC report.

On 16th April the BBC made a brief mention of the incident, albeit buried in an article about the peace talks.

“Israel is also angry at the killing of an off-duty Israeli policeman by a gunman in the West Bank on Monday, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover. His wife and child were wounded in the attack outside Hebron.”

The BBC’s original article was illustrated by a photograph of Israeli solders, one aiming his weapon, with the caption:  ”Tensions are high in Hebron after an Israeli policeman was killed in the West Bank” A lone gunman shooting at cars is clearly a terror attack, yet he military style picture implied that the policeman was killed in the line of duty. The details of the attack were freely available, had one of the BBC’s intrepid reporters taken the trouble to seek them out.

Later, an improved BBC version states:

“Tensions were raised on Monday when an off-duty Israeli policeman was killed by a gunman in the West Bank, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover. His wife and child were wounded in the attack outside Hebron.”

As BBCWatch points out, the BBC did not fully report the terrorist nature of the attack, nor that it was praised by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Nor did the BBC spot that no-one from the PA had condemned it.

All articles in which the BBC refer to this incident primarily concern the postponement of peace talks; references to the attack appear in ‘non-consecutive paragraphs” 

This reporting contrasts sharply with the screaming headlines habitually employed whenever a Palestinian is shot by an Israeli soldier. Whole stories are frequently devoted to news of the death or injury of every Palestinian unwise enough to attempt to breach the security measures Israel is forced to take in order to protect its citizens from just such occurrences.

However, the Guardian was worse than the BBC. In a piece entitled “The Guardian has absolutely no idea why a Jewish man was murdered near Hebron” Cif Watch points out several examples of biased writing from the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont, their new Jerusalem correspondent.  

“One Israeli was killed three others injured after their car was hit by gunfire as they travelled through the West Bank on the eve of the Jewish Passover holiday.”

Our old friend passive language, which alludes to the pesky “gunfire” that’s apt to snuff out anyone unlucky enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Like lightening. But for good measure, the Guardian introduces an element that the BBC, for once, does not.  The settler thing.

“The family in the car that was hit was understood to be en route from their home in Modi’in – an Israeli town split across occupied Palestinian and Israeli territory – to visit the mother’s family for the traditional meal that commences the Passover religious festival. The shooting was the second incident in the past two days on the West Bank.”

Cif Watch says:

“This paragraph represents the first attempt to impute ‘settler’ status upon the victim.  However, Beaumont gets it wrong. Modi’in does not extend into “Palestinian territory”. (The Maccabim section of the greater Modi’in-Maccabim-Re’ut municipality – encompassing a few zip codes – are in what’s known as No Man’s Land, which refers to land between Israel and the West Bank whose sovereignty was never fully clarified after the War of Independence in 1948.)”

The article, like the BBC’s, all but attempts to justify this attack by stating:

 ” The shooting comes amid increasing tensions following a stalemate in peace talks.”

before again returning to the theme of settlements.

“It also comes hard on the heels of permission by the Israeli army on Sunday for three settler families to move into a building in nearby Hebron, after a long legal battle and culminating on Sunday with the authorisation by Israel’s defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, of the first new settlement in Hebron since the 1980s."

Then Cif Watch has: 

“Beaumont descends to the absurd, feigning ignorance as to the likely motive: ”However, with no immediate claim of responsibility the precise motives for the shooting remained unclear.”

...and finishes by highlighting another passage with selective use of passive language “five Israelis have been killed” (by evil spirits?) neatly juxtaposed with “82 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces”.

But wait. Here’s the Times. “Israeli policeman is shot dead amid fury over settlers’ return.”

There we have it. All the elements of bias rolled into one. This report is tagged ‘Catherine Philp. Hebron.’

“An Israeli policeman was shot dead near Hebron on the eve of the Passover festival as Jewish settlers celebrated their return to a disputed house in a Palestinian area of the West Bank city.Three families moved into the building on Sunday evening, protected by Israeli soldiers, hours after Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli defence minister, granted permission for their return — six years after their initial eviction.” 

says Catherine. The rest is behind the paywall, but I’ve got the paper version.

“The first apparent retaliation for the return of settlers came on Monday night when a man opened fire on a car outside Hebron” she states confidently. So it wasn’t just any old terrorist attack. it was a perfectly formed retaliation.

There follows several paragraphs about the Supreme court ruling that found in favour of ‘the settlers’ , the long-running ownership dispute over the building, the final decision being in the hands of the defence minister Moshe Yaalon and the claims that this was  a provocation aimed at sabotaging US-backed negotiations.

She quotes a Palestinian human rights activist, as you do, who voiced predictable opinions about exposing, exploiting and expanding, and a settler who voiced predictable opinions about torpedoing negotiations.

She gives statistics about the number of settlers, residents of Hebron, Palestinians, soldiers and border police, how many restriction have been imposed, how many acts of violence have been perpetrated by both sides, and how many Muslim worshippers Baruch Goldstein killed. 

In fact the rest of the article is devoted to the Supreme Court ruling about the disputed house, the evictions and reinstatement of the settlers, the legality or otherwise of the purchase of the property and the fact that at one stage the eviction prompted “violent retaliation against their Palestinian neighbours”. 

By the end of the piece Catherine Philp has all but forgotten about the late Baruch Mizrachi and his wife and children. Nevertheless she’s hell bent on implying  moral equivalence between the Israelis and the Palestinians, despite the first five words of the headline. Someone was shot dead, remember?  So at best the BBC was the least bad and at worst the BBC was the least worst.

Gorgeous George

I know it's a bad, bad  thing to bust the Times's paywall, but I feel the need to share part of Danny Finkelstein's latest article with you (as it's excellent), even though it's got absolutely nothing to do with BBC bias. 

I just want to say how much there is to admire about George Galloway. It is true that we haven’t always seen eye to eye. However, it is impossible to avoid the many things about him that are genuinely impressive.

He takes a keen interest in the Jewish people. He is well travelled, making his presence felt in some of the most dangerous places in the world ruled by some of the worst dictators. He has made friends with people who are otherwise friendless. He has a tremendous vocabulary, deploying words such as “indefatigability”. He has been a doughty supporter of Sharia.

He has been one of the finest MPs ever to dress in a bright red leotard and pretend to be a cat. He is a prodigious litigant. He has been an entertaining host of Iranian state-sponsored television programmes.

I am sure there are other things, and I will keep thinking. You see this week I’ve been struggling with the same problem as Matthew Parris — what to say when someone you disapprove of dies. How do you avoid looking either insensitive or a hypocrite?

I’ve decided the best way is to start saying nice things about such people while they are still alive.

I thought I’d begin with the hardest case. How did I do?

No, there won't be another fracking pun in the title of this post

According to a report in The Times (£) the BBC has been accused of bias by the fracking company Cuadrilla and by UKOOG, the industry body which speaks for shale gas companies. 

Given the way my local BBC news programme Look North West seems to have a less-than-friendly obsession with the subject of fracking, it's hardly a surprise to read that it's a local BBC current affairs show, Inside Out (Yorkshire and Lincolnshire), that finds itself under (hydraulic) pressure. 

The fracking organisations main charges against the programme (broadcast a month ago) are:

(a) that the programme chose to concentrate on claims that the process could damage children's health and environmental disaster.

(b) that they gave undue prominence to the claims of one critic of fracking.

(c) that they introduced that critic as a shale gas expert while his credentials are actually disputed. 

(d) that one of the programme's presenters quoted unnamed independent research which claimed the "health of newborn babies within two miles of fracking sites can be severely compromised."

(e) that Cuadrilla was not approached by BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire to contribute to the programme.

The Times quotes the BBC's response:

We reject the accusations levelled at the BBC by Cuadrilla and UKOOG. The programme featured a range of industry bodies and experts, as well as the Minister of State for Energy, and presented opposing viewpoints in relation to regulation of the industry.

As this edition of the programme isn't available for re-watching, it's hard to independently judge whether Cuadrilla or the BBC are correct, but what stood out for me from The Times article was the evidence from The Times itself that this had indeed been an error-strewn programme from the BBC - points to which we don't yet have the BBC's response:

The company also challenged the BBC over Mr Hill’s credentials. The programme said that he had worked on oil and gas rigs around the world for 20 years and had “fracked for gas in Africa”. When contacted by The Times, Mr Hill said he had “searched for gas in Africa for two years” and denied fracking for gas there, which he said he had stressed to the BBC before the programme was was broadcast.

The presenters also claimed that the Government had adopted a recommendation by Mr Hill for companies to use a “traffic light” system to monitor for seismic activity during fracking. The Department of Energy and Climate Change said the claim was incorrect, insisting that Cuadrilla had initially proposed the system, which was adopted after recommendations by two government-ordered reviews.

That sounds pretty damning, doesn't it?

If you like spin, you’ll love this

 “Almost a tenth of babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim, a breakdown of census figures shows.The percentage of Muslims among the under-fives is almost twice as high as in the general population. In an indication of the extent to which birthrate is changing the UK’s religious demographic, fewer than one in 200 people over 85 is Muslim.
One expert said it was foreseeable that Muslims who worshipped would outnumber practising Christians.” It’s not inconceivable” said David Voas, professor of population studies at the University of Essex.”
“Data from the 2011 census showed that the proportion of Muslim children aged 0-4 was 9% compared with a total Muslim popultion of less than 5%.“It certainly is a startling figure” said David Coleman, professor of demography at the University of Oxford.

So says this piece on the front page of the Times 10th Jan, headed: 

“Rise in Muslim birthrate as families ‘feel British” (£) 

 Contrary to Professor Voas,  who “saw no prospect of Muslims becoming a majority in Britain” simple mathematics make it inevitable that Muslims certainly will become the majority in Britain. 

If, as has been stated, the Muslim population in this country is doubling each decade,  plus immigration of one sort or another and the practice of bringing spouses in from other countries etc., then no wonder the Muslims will feel more  ‘British’. It would certainly make Britain more “Muslim”, which is roughly the same difference.

Professor Voas’s Google trail produced this: 

 “The Jewish Agency for Israel has announced that the number of United Kingdom Jews emigrating to Israel, or making Aliyah, in 2009 was, at 853, the highest recorded figure in 26 years and 37 per cent above the 2008 level.”

Mind you, it’s a bit behind the times, the figures stop at 2009. But it makes you think. It could be a trend.

Douglas Murray noticed the Times article, and has written about it here. 

 “ Something big may be happening, and people can see it is ha  ppening, but best not to mention it in case people are ‘alarmed’. Elsewhere in the piece there is an account from Batley in West Yorkshire of how the growing young Muslim population there has led to ‘pubs, hospitals, houses and public buildings’ being turned into ‘Muslim private schools, madrassas, mosques and a Sharia court to satisfy rising demand from families.’ “

Isn’t it odd though. Douglas Murray, Melanie Phillips and/or anyone associated with the Henry Jackson Society have all acquired the same status that the EDL used to have. I think it’s known as the pariah status. Health warnings and disclaimers have to be attached, should one be about to quote from, or say anything dangerously near to  something any of them might have ever said.

The stigma of being labelled ‘far-right’ places them and their observations beyond the pale. All persons with an opinion that happens to coincide with one associated with any of the aforementioned, must preface [their opinion] with “I’m no fan of (Douglas Murray, Melanie Phillips, anyone from the Henry Jackson Society, or God forbid, the EDL) but......

Well.  I won’t try that, not that anyone gives two hoots what I think, because I do agree with them.  

“Rapidly growing Muslim families are making their mark on society however. The DoE lists 136 Muslim schools, 125 of them in the private sector. Britain’s first halal food festival […] attracted 15,000 visitors.[…]there are already 1,600 mosques..”

continues the Times. The article contains a suggestion; don’t panic!! That advice stems from the opinion of that silly, pollyanaish fellow Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra.

”It’s not about Britain becoming a Muslim country, but about Britain enabling the practice of Islam, which gives confidence to the vast majority of muslims. it’s a great country to regard as our home.”

But, sorry, I don’t find that reassuring in any way.

“Philip Lewis, a scholar of Islam and author of Young, British and Muslim, warned that the one-in-ten birthrate could “generate alarmism.” He emphasised the the variety of the Muslim population acrss the country, which in London included an affluent Arab elite and Europeanised Turkish Cypriots. In parts of the urban north, though, there was a “bicultural reality” of indigenous and Kashmiri working classes.”

Oh good. 

That reminds me. A long time ago, in the days when the Biased-BBC blogspot was magenta, BBC spokespersons used to chip in occasionally. Using various pseudonyms they would mingle democratically with the below-the-line commentariat in order to counter allegations of bias, mainly by posting obscure out of date links to the BBC website to disprove some charge of bias by omission.  We were told in no uncertain terms  that we shouldn’t mention a certain subject.”You’re not helping,” said one, in exasperation. “You’re undermining community cohesion.” 

  

That’s what the BBC thought it was up to; protecting community cohesion, with all its desperate attempts to normalise supremely unBritish aspects of Islam by infiltrating programmes of all genres with ludicrous plots and features designed to sanitise cultural differences. 

They tiptoed round anything that might cause offence to Muslims for fear of civil unrest. They still do. With considerable success it seems - they’ve just announced on the BBC radio 4 news, oddly enough, that there is to be a new Muslim family on Coronation Street, which is, I believe an ITV soap. Dammit I’ve made myself into a high court judge.

That short-sighted strategy will surely wreak its revenge. The desire to appease the Muslims stretches from letting women exercise their freedom of expression by encouraging them to walk round draped in black from head to toe, to the communal demonising of Israel and limply accepting the transparently stupid, illogical claims that Islam-inspired terrorism is justified in the light of ‘our foreign policy’. 

If this leads to the complete demise of the UK’s dwindling Jewish population and the irreversible  legal and cultural Islamification of British towns and cities I hope I’m not around to witness it. Or is it too late to say that.

When the BBC encapsulated the liberal left’s hand-wringing self examination with its infamous post 9/11 QT, it exposed a trend. Everyone was asking ‘what have we done?’ ‘ Are we wrong about everything?’ ‘ Should we beat ourselves up for thinking we were ever right?‘ 

Challenging old-fashioned values is one thing, but not to the extent that we abandon ours and take up someone else’s, especially if they happen to be far, far worse. Soon we’ll be asking if Hitler was right all along. In fact this is already happening.

The death of Ariel Sharon couldn’t have demonstrated more clearly that moral equivalence is the order of the day. Casting aside the question of (dis)respect for the deceased, the precedent already well and truly set in the case of Margaret Thatcher, the Palestinian voice was aired on the BBC as prominently as the Israeli one. More so.

“We” (and I’m using “we” to mean the BBC-led left-leaning establishment) ignore the hateful, vengeful, misogynist, homophobic, antisemitic and the violent. We willfully turn a blind eye to values and practices antithetical to everything we (used to) believe in, just so that we can rationalise our mind-boggling confusion. It’s now an accepted  ‘norm’ that this upside-down scenario is here to stay. 

The BBC’s blatant, in-yer-face, Israel-Palestine moral equivalence is considered ‘impartial’, and the tipping point, in which the Palestinian/Islamist perspective is considered morally superior to the Judeo/Christian perspective has passed the point of no return.