“By Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight if the Iranian missile hits Israel.”
So bragged Abdel Bari Atwan, the most frequently invited panellist on BBC Dateline London.
This video of a conversation about the media’s bias against Israel between “Elder” (from EoZ) and Adam Levick (from UK Media Watch) reminded me of Atwan’s infamous statement - which should surely be regarded by any genuinely anti-racist organisation as a damning, career-undermining boast - yet there he often is on our Saturday morning BBC TV screens chatting away animatedly with his trademark flailing arms and bulging eyes while Carrie Gracie or Shaun Lay look on benevolently.
I suppose we must make allowances for the fact that the Trafalgar Square pledge dates back to 2010 and his dancing days may be over.
Another topic that came up in the EoZ video was a fanciful headline in a recent edition of the Mail online. Prince Harry Faces Backlash ….
It seems that Prince Harry invited injured IDF soldiers to participate in the Invictus Games, and when ‘Bari’, as the BBC affectionately calls him, raised an objection on the basis of his deeply antisemitic sensibilities, the Mail online chose to upgrade this solitary, one-man ‘objection’ to the status of ‘backlash’.
This is uncharacteristic of the Mail, but I’m not sure if it’s primarily motivated by Harry-bashing or Israel-bashing.
I found the technically challenged EoZ video in question worth watching because both speakers are equally ‘well aware of’ and ‘baffled by’ the inexplicable blindspot that persists in much of the western media; a tacit refusal to acknowledge the antisemitic pandemic that is rife in the Arab world, particularly within Palestinian culture. No matter how many studies reveal staggeringly high percentages of unadulterated, religiously rooted Jew-hate (not Zionist-hate) - shocking figures are consistently found in survey after survey - the largely atheist western media will obstinately insist that their much venerated Palestinians are ‘just like us’.
It was odd hearing two Americans pontificating over the current state of the British Labour Party, and deciding whether Keir Starmer was a good guy. Better than Corbs, that’s for sure.
A question that still troubles me is who on earth put that shelf up?
I’m aware that many of our readers are a lot less obsessed with the BBC’s anti-Israel bias than I am, but I wanted to post this video, which you don’t need to watch if you don’t fancy it.
The reason I chose to show it to you here is that I well remember introducing CifWatch's launch on the Biased-BBC site in the form of a Press Release back in August 2009.
Entering ‘CiFWatch’ into the B-BBC search facility brings up a considerable stash of pre-2012 material, written by me. I remember thinking, at the time (around 2008/9) that it was a good idea for me to join a general blog rather than a dedicated pro-Zionist one, knowing, (as any fule already nose) that pro-Zionist blogs and websites are no-go areas for the steadfast Israel-bashing brigade (whom I fondly hoped to influence) I actually imagined my critical take on the BBC’s anti-Israel reporting might ‘make a difference’. Embarrassingly naive, okay?
Recently the BBC’s left-wing bias has become (more or less) generally accepted, and there’s even some recognition that embedded within the heads and hearts of most of its staff is a default empathy with Israel’s detractors. I take no credit for any of that gradual sea change if that’s what it is. At all. I realise I am preaching to the converted and always was.
Interestingly, my original Press Release post attracted some flak from B-BBC purists who disapproved of advertising in all its forms and accused me of abusing my position. (Like, my privileged position of blogging on a controversial website constantly conscious of my responsibility to scrupulously fact-check for fear of shooting myself in the foot + scoring an own goal for “my cause” unpaid and in my own time.) I’m a lucky son-of-a-gun.
Anyway, I didn’t know Adam Levick from (any other) Adam back then, but now we know what he’s like we can decide whether or not we like the cut of his jib. A nautical term. I think he’s good. Take it or leave it.
It’s plain that the BBC is ideologically anti-Israel. I don’t think anyone would dispute that. It’s their way of expressing their impartiality.
Image of amusing mic joke/ gent 2nd left
The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas made a two-hour speech in Ramallah yesterday. The BBC has reported it.
Well, when I say “reported it” I mean the BBC told us that the speech took place, but if you happen to be interested in what President Abbas actually said, you’d be disappointed because the bulk of the BBC’s report is about Trump. You’d have to make do with what appears under the sub heading “What did Mr Abbas tell the meeting?”
“Speaking to Palestinian faction leaders in Ramallah on Sunday, he said: "The deal of the century is the slap of the century and we will not accept it."
"I am saying that Oslo, there is no Oslo," he added. "Israel ended Oslo.”
So, what else did Abbas say in his ‘slap of the century’ speech?
Well, to find out you’d have to look elsewhere, say, here , here or here or here
EoZ commenter Y K summed it all up:
“Abbas clearly believes the nonsense he spews. The reason that he keeps spewing it, however, is not due to his stupidity (he's no Einstein, but underestimating him would be a mistake), but to a fact he's very well aware of: that with a few exceptions, nobody in the Western (and even mainstream Israeli) media would actually reproduce his verbal diarrhea in full. What will be presented to the audiences is a version carefully doctored in order to make the guy appear as a tragically misunderstood embodiment of “moderation".
It’s equally plain to see that the BBC isn’t alone in its ideological attitude to Israel. Our MPs are even worse. Alistair Burt is at it now. He’s not only defending Ahed, but the whole Taimimi clan, with whom he appears to be ‘friends’. So Corby isn’t the only one with mates.
Burt has stated: “The truth is the soldiers shouldn’t have been there and the young woman shouldn’t have needed to do what she did,”
As others have pointed out - using the word “needed” in this comment is tantamount to justifying all sorts.
I understand there is to be a parliamentary debate on Hezbollah on 25th of this month, secured by Labour Friends of Israel. All I can say is - be careful what you wish for.
Update:
"Israel Policy Forum expresses its disgust over President Abbas’s words to the Fatah Central Committee delegitimizing Zionism, denying the Jewish connection to the land of Israel, and peddling conspiracy theories about the plight of European Jewry. It is impossible to view Abbas as a viable negotiating partner when he continues to deny the right of the Jewish people to their own national movement and when he continues to insist that the basic recognition of a Jewish homeland is the original sin of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The injustice of Palestinians remaining stateless cannot and will not be rectified by a fever dream that wishes for a world in which Jews would also be stateless and in which Israel would not exist.
Words matter, and if Abbas’s commitment to nonviolence is worthy of praise, his commitment to vitriolic rhetoric is equally worthy of condemnation. Abbas’s unhinged screed provides ammunition to those who insist that the sole obstacle to peace is Palestinian denial of Israel’s legitimacy, making his hateful words instrumentally harmful as well as being utterly without merit in their own right. With his distortion of history and denial of reality, Abbas makes himself part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
Israel and the Palestinians must reach a two-state solution that recognizes both sides’ legitimate claims and narratives, and President Abbas must unequivocally recognize these mutual rights if he is to be a credible partner in the quest for peace."
Update: (another)
"Too many media reports whitewashed Abbas’ coverage. Perhaps editors didn’t attach enough importance to the speech to give their correspondents a longer word count, which might account for the short, sanitized reports by Reuters, BBC News, CNN and Sky News. "
I want to return to the soft boycott theme because I think there’s a bit more to it.
Stephen Pollard gives a legitimate and very powerful example of the BBC ‘soft-boycotting’ Israel. To recap. The Today Programme made a suitably big deal about a “truly transformative” medical breakthrough on treatment for prostate cancer, leaving its Israeli origins conspicuously absent from the report.
This does look deliberate. One might say the BBC is suffering from prostrate cancer. (See what I did there?) The BBC won’t risk offending the sensibilities of listeners who might be offended by an unexpected early morning encounter with praise of the Zionist entity.
I don’t want those of us who criticise the BBC’s ‘prostrate’ strategy to lay ourselves open to accusations of spin and cherry-picking, so I think we should acknowledge that it’s a boycott, Jim, but a soft one, i.e. not as hard as the boycotts we are familiar with. So I’m preempting all that with this.
The recent flurry of interest in the BBC’s ‘soft boycott’ of Israel reminded me of something certain bloggers addressed a few years ago.
Yolande Knell had suddenly, with nary a warning nor explanation produced an “Impartial” article about Israel. (Wonders have a habit of ceasing.)
It concerned one of Israel’s scientific achievements.
At the time I commented as follows:
“ I have to say that this is not such an isolated incident. If you search for, say, “weizmann institute” on the BBC News search box any amount of stories come up. I remember a couple of years ago coming across several positive scientific reports by a young lady from the BBC who was temporarily based in Israel. I’ve forgotten her name, but I seem to recall that she had written something on facebook about moving on. There were several reports by her around 2010/ 11. I don’t know if these examples are actually hers, but they were similar. (‘sniff code device’ controls wheelchair’) and (“Women’s tears reduce men’s sexual desire – scientists”) They might not have been so prominently displayed on the BBC website as Knell’s piece, I can’t remember.”
Since then I have had a bit of a dig, and I came up with a name. Victoria Gill. If I’m right, she was temporarily seconded to Israel as the BBC’s science correspondent around 2010. While she was there she produced a number of positive reports about Israel’s scientific and medical breakthroughs.A few pieces by other writers are buried there too.
They rarely make the national headlines they are worthy of in the same way that certain other dramatic scientific and medical breakthroughs occasionally do, and unlike Knell’s article which appeared in “News” they seem to appear in the BBC’s Magazine format or similar.
It’s not be a case of ignoring them altogether then, but more one of categorising them as special interest subjects and tucking them away where only geeks will boldly go.
It’s still a kinda boycott, Jim but not as we know it. Maybe this is nitpicking, but sometimes nits have to be picked.
I think BBC Four is definitely the best TV channel around, but having steered clear of the bulk of BBC1’s dramas, soaps and other flim-flam, I surprised myself by accidentally enjoying Happy Valley. It was so realistically acted that one could almost suspend disbelief at the plot(s) with multiple misery and mayhem, blood and guts and alcoholism.
I understand that I’m not the only one who couldn’t grasp every single syllable. It’s that ubiquitous breathy, sigh-speak that’s so incomprehensible, specially when delivered at breakneck speed in an accent to which one’s ears are not attuned.
*****
No problem with dialogue in Trapped, BBC Four’s 12-part drama, in which the weather plays the starring role. It’s the subtitles, stupid.
Great fun discussing the story with one’s nearest and dearest, apres ski, so to speak. “What do you think he meant? Who could have known that? Why didn’t she go home”?
The biggest challenge is the characters’ names as the spelling and pronunciation bear no apparent relation to each other and the letters look like random Scrabble tiles.
With all these dark Scandi thrillers one thing you do know. The villain is never the black or immigrant guy. You can rule them out. They always include one or two as a suspect, so you can beat yourself up later for having had those racist suspicions. Nevertheless, it’s quality escapism.
******
I enjoyed the programme about the CPS, also on BBC Four. Having been peripherally involved in a comparatively trivial but complex court case (fraud) which involved an interminable amount of preparatory research, I thought this film was informative and well constructed. It tackled each case fairly, and managed to convey sincere sympathy with the bereaved mother, while avoiding the mawkish “how does that make you feel” line of questioning.
*******
It was interesting to hear William Shawcross of the charities commission talking to Humph this morning. For a second there I almost thought they were going to discuss this:
A British charity that raises money for a Dubai-based Muslim missionary TV channel faces a fine as high as £250,000 ($347,000) over broadcasts According to The Times of London, the Islamic Research Foundation International, based in Birmingham and indirectly funded by UK tax breaks, has given most of its charitable income in the past two years to Peace TV.
But no. It wasn’t even about charities pestering vulnerable previous benefactors with phone calls. It was only about ageUK, which has been in trouble for misleading oldies with some dodgy dealings with energy suppliers. Not very ethical, I know, but doesn’t ‘buyer beware’ apply to people over a certain age or what? It’s just that if you’re going to flag up one charity-related transgression, why not go the whole hog and bring in the rest of them?
********
At the moment the complaints about the BBC’s pro-EU tendency seem to have touched a raw nerve. I don’t know if the fact that Julia Hartley-Brewer, (the author of a pithy piece in the Telegraph about BBC bias) was on the QT panel, but David Dimbleby made a point of mentioning being seen to be even-handed and unbiased in his introduction to that strange edition of the programme last week.
The precocious 16 year old seems to have made such an internet hit - (went viral, she did) that everyone overlooked Julia H-B’s robust defence of Brexit, Diane Abbott’s ridiculous eye-rolling and absurd hairstyle, not to mention Giles Fraser.
*********
A more long-term issue surrounds the BBC’s anti-Israel stance. I say stance, but it increasingly verges on outright activism. The repercussions are everywhere, not least within the actual PM.
So David Cameron was lured into making a throwaway, almost casually pejorative remark about Israel, by one of the Muslim MPs whose antisemitic tendencies are being constantly reinforced by the BBC’s increasingly overt anti-Israel activism. “Does the Prime Minister agree with me..” goes the question....
I daresay David Cameron hasn’t read any of it, (smiley face) but I’ve written quite a lot about CAABU’s Zionist-bashing propagandistic intent, but I do wish he would apply some essential ‘buyer beware’ to the unreliably sourced issues the new batch of Muslim MPs invite him to agree with them about. Or is David Cameron getting too confused to make up his own mind?
**********
A whole cluster of really ill-informed Israel-bashing stuff has been getting through recently. Ken Loach managed to slip a barrage of unverified anti-Israel slander past Ritula Shah the other evening on The World Tonight. Ritula Shah was ill-equipped to challenge any of it, and what’s more, she probably had neither the will nor the way.
***********
If the BBC is really so sensitive about those accusations of bias, why is it so thick-skinned and insensitive about accusations of bias concerning the one area in which its bias is the most blatant, egregious and cruel - even dare I say racist - of all? Yes, they probably do get complaints from both sides. But it’s quality, not quantity that counts
After all anyone can submit a complaint. “Does the BBC agree with me” for example, “that filthy, brutal, Islamophobic, apartheid entities should never be given the oxygen of publicity” and, if one were minded to, one could count that as a valid antidote to the actual truth.
We bloggers tend to become a little incestuous. We pat each other on the back, link to each other and I suppose we create our own little bubble. Some might say we regurgitate, plagiarise, gossip, and preach to the choir.
Perhaps we’re almost as biased against the BBC as the BBC is biased against our politically incorrect viewpoints. Perhaps we all try hard not to let our biases cloud our ability to see the bigger picture. But the BBC hardly ever entertains the possibility that it could be at fault, and it’s powerful enough not to care.
The area of biased broadcasting that interests me most, (anti-Israel / pro-Palestinian reporting, casual antisemitism and the BBC’s incessant and insidious efforts to normalise Islamic practices and customs) has ramifications as wide as anyone cares to make them.
One thing that has always troubled me is the way we allow people to get away with words and phrases that have become meaningless through over-use and laziness. I remember writing about this in July 2010. (updated)
“Constant repetition of a word or phrase can render it meaningless.Trotted out over and over again, words and phrases like illegal war, apartheid and human rights violations lose their impact; particularly when they’re bandied about thoughtlessly by ill-informed people who have no idea whether they are justified, appropriate or the truth.
We’re all trapped by words like peace, war, Zionist, Palestinian. Nazi. Fascist. Neocon.We say antisemitism, you say Islamophobia; we say terrorist, you say religion of peace; we say Islamic, you say unIslamic; we say legitimate, you say illegitimate; we say Israel, you say Zionist entity; we say biased, you say balanced. Tomato, potato, potahto, tomayto. Let’s call the whole Jeremy Bowen off.”
The BDS movement is gaining respectability with virtue-signalling student bodies and lefty ethical activists, and an atmosphere of antisemitism has gathered momentum to a terrifying degree. Even Oxford University, considered one of the top universities in the world, has succumbed.
Apartheid is a state-sanctioned discriminatory policy based on the obsolete principle of racial superiority / inferiority. Make no mistake, it has nothing to do with Israel or “What Israel is doing” to the Palestinians. Yet somehow, the apartheid state label has got itself attached to Israel in the minds of the anti-Israel activists who know no better.
Daphne Anson always manages to find disturbing videos of demos and protest marches that have taken place under our very noses here in the UK. She ferrets out some extraordinary film clips, and from Australia, is able to see our problem with antisemitism more clearly than we do.
She featured this video on her website recently (also on YouTube) It’s straight from a Channel Four News item addressing the governments latest guidelines on the BDS movement.
That’s Channel Four, with its distinctly lefty, anti-Israel agenda, apparently unconstrained by those infamous obligations that force the BBC to perform all manner of linguistic contortions in the name of their charter’s impartiality pledge.
Channel Four Newsroom’s figurehead’ is the unashamedly pro-Palestinian Jon Snow; Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Kathy Newman are his trusty sidekicks.
This particular exchange was chaired by Jon Snow, wearing one of his garish trademark ties (graphic image of rainbow vomit) It was an uncharacteristic challenge by Snow that rendered the BDS activist - not exactly speechless, but, it’s fair to say - incoherent.
Using the oft-posed, pertinent and potentially stymieing gotcha, namely “why aint you boycotting Saudi Arabia?” he demolished her credibility with ease.
In defence all she could offer was the well-worn retort: “ I. Aint. Interested. In. Saudi. Arabia.” (reworded by me)
In the spirit of regurgitate, plagiarise and gossip, I bring you this from UK Media Watch (formerly CifWatch.)
Malia Bouattia, NUS Black Students’ Officer, currently arguing the case for BDS against Israel, actually argued (in October 2014) against a student union motion to boycott Islamic State. Not only that, but she did so on the grounds that ---wait for it -- doing that would be Islamophobic.
No bloody wonder she was momentarily lost for words.
Here is a summary of the film clip Channel Four ran by way of an introduction, preceding the studio chat.
“I think this is an attack on freedom, like, if I don’t wanna buy Israeli goods, I don’t wanna buy Israeli goods” said one of the first students interviewed.
This demonstrates so much stupidity, ignorance and illogicality that I hardly know where to start. But let’s remind ourselves of the government’s actual statement as outlined on the BBC website (The Moral Maze)
“Now the government is planning a law to make it illegal for local councils, public bodies and even some university student unions to carry out boycotts. Under the plan all publicly funded institutions will lose the freedom to refuse to buy goods and services as part of a political campaign. It's said that any public bodies that continue to pursue boycotts will face "severe penalties." The government believes cracking down on town-hall boycotts is justified because they undermine good community relations, poison and polarise debate and fuel anti-Semitism.”
Do students really believe individuals are going to be made into criminals if they decide to personally avoid buying Israeli goods?
Another student, waving his arms around in lieu of articulacy asks “If I don’t go into a shop to buy Israeli goods, is that violent?
“Others agree with the government’s stance that boycotts undermine community relations and fuel antisemitism” said Assed Baig sounding very like Ali G, before approaching Jonathan Sacerdoti who said:
“........ 84 percent of British Jewish people believed that boycotting Israeli produce constituted intimidation of Jewish people..
That was the gist of Sacerdoti’s contribution, and one does wonder how much material was edited out of the film, which abruptly cut to footage of one of the historic demonstrations against South African apartheid.
Current thinking seems to credit “us” with bringing about the end of South Africa’s apartheid system, solely or primarily because of “us” boycotting South African produce. I just wonder if world-wide anti-racist zeitgeist didn’t have just as much to do with that timely policy change. We never boycotted American produce, did we? I don’t think so. Yet cruel and shocking racism was once rife in the US, and state sanctioned, to boot.
“Actions like this are a vital tool,” say students. Rafeef Zidah (Palestinian society SOAS) says it’s disgraceful that government is attacking local democracy and stopping councils making ‘ethical decisions around investments’....... ‘we have the right to have an impact on corporations that we disagree with’....’and for Palestinian rights as well.’
Hang on. We have a democracy, which means we vote for our representatives. We don’t (yet) have anarchy, where we all take direct action against whatever we disagree with.
“Interestingly, that same spurious linkage was made in a statement put out by the BDS campaign’s Rafeef Ziadah (also an employee of ‘War on Want’) several hours before this programme went on air.”
I thought Ms Ziadah didn’t look like your average student. More about War on Want later.
“So what would you say to those who say that boycotting Israeli goods is antisemitic?” asks Baig, in his best Ali G patois, addressing another student who said he was Jewish. His BDS advocacy (asaJew) is worth several bonus points “Human rights violations”, he says, and “Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.”“We shouldn’t confuse BDS with antisemitism” was his message, which is one way of putting Sacerdoti’s statement into PC perspective; you could almost hear the film editors crowing.
“The guidance comes when cabinet minister Matthew Hancock is visiting Israel and the government says that locally imposed boycotts can hinder Britain’s export trade” says Baig, to end the film.
The implication of that narrative is crystal clear. The government’s guidance on BDS is purely a matter of self-interest, i.e., it’s cynical and mercenary.
Cut to Jon Snow in the Channel Four News studio. Seated in the pro-Pali / BDS corner, Malia Bouattia representing the NUS, and in the Zio corner, James Sorene from BICOM. Both are extraordinary looking individuals. (Malia Bouattia has masses of hair, James Sorene has huge eyes.)
“There’s no criminal consequence to having a boycott” begins Jon Snow, addressing James Sorene.
“I think some of your reporting was a bit overblown” explains James. In respect of procurement - “they can’t discriminate on the basis of nationality.” [..] “Most British people do not want a boycott - they believe it will hurt Israelis and Palestinians and only 12% believe a boycott will do anything at all.”
Perhaps they will remember the SodaStream fiasco, when anti-Israel pressure resulted in Palestinians having to forfeit secure and well-paid employment, all for “the cause”.
“People want non-violent options in relation to facilitating, you know, solutions” says Malia Bouattia.
How boycotts actually effect ‘solutions’, and what those ‘solutions’ would involve in the wildest imagination of the BDS movement remains to be explored.
Do boycotts hurt? asks Jon.
“The economic effect may be minimal,” says James, “but those who are close to what is a tragic, complex conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, which we all want resolved, is that this armchair activism will do nothing. Interfaith dialogue is needed, whereas boycotts just put up barriers and people stop talking.”
Not that talking to Hamas and /or Fatah seems even possible, let alone likely to bring about peace. Even less so in the current incendiary climate. Never mind, let wishful thinking prevail.
“We should look at history. Look at apartheid in South Africa.” says Malia.
“If people didn’t take to the streets, if people didn’t campaign and enforce the implementation of a boycott as we did as the NUS, where did those conversations that went on for hundreds of years, go?We’ve seen continued expansion of settlements, we’ve seen continued abuses of human rights, of international law totally thrown in our faces and we have no trust in the processes that exist”
James Sorene says:
“People who know the facts know that it is nothing like apartheid, a criminal regime running a racist policy; this is completely different. Both parties are trying to reach a solution. They’ve been talking on and off for many years - they became very close to a solution - we need to keep working at that - government realises that boycotts in local communities are incredibly divisive, they whip up all sorts of ill-feeling and fear and the same thing happens in student unions. The Jewish students....
Jon interrupts:
“That’s about Israel, but what about other countries, I mean do you boycott Saudi Arabia, for example, for the human rights violations there, do you boycott Russia, for example, for human rights violations there?”
Malia:
“Um. I’m feeling slightly on trial as the leader of all boycotts worldwide. What we’re talking about here is the right to boycott, based on the fact that we feel there is a violation of human rights, of ethics, and we want to implement them and enforce them and some people will use words, like the non-violent solutions as the case of BDSing Israel. We have to come back to that question itself, that if people feel that this is in violation of those rights, then by all means implement those solutions and, you know, these guidelines that are coming out will not just affect Palestinian activism or BDS for that matter, it expands to those campaigning on fossil-free, those campaigning on divesting on trade.....
Jon, turning to James:
I’m bound to come back to...aside of the inter-communal tensions, which you’ve described - on the ground, it doesn’t have any impact does it? There is no effect in Israel at the moment.”
“There is a minimal effect,” says James,
“ but let’s be honest. What Matthew Hancock was doing there - Britain needs Israel. We need Israeli hi-tech, we need Israeli scientific cooperation, one is (indecipherable) on the NHS from Israel .. we need Israel,. But the silence on the issue of other boycotts speaks volumes to those people who will say that (unintelligible)
"We have to leave it. We’ve run out of time."
What I intended to highlight when I started this post, was the meaninglessness of phrases like “Human rights violations” when they are uttered in respect of Israel and the Palestinians. Another one is “What Israel is doing to the Palestinians” and “Palestinian rights”
“Human rights violations” sound like very terrible things, but what actually are they? Denying Palestinians the right of return? Denying Palestinians the right to eradicate Jews from “Muslim lands?” Violating their rights to stab a Jew because of the occupation?
What terrible thing IS Israel ‘doing to the Palestinians?’ Trying to stop them from attacking Israeli civilians ? Taking measures so that Israelis can live their lives without being stabbed, bombed or run down?
Palestinians do deserve human rights. That is they deserve to be divested from the hatred and lies they’re indoctrinated with from birth by believers of their own unnatural, self-loathing, Jew-hating religion. Palestinians should start boycotting Islam.
Pro Palestinian students and left-wing parrot-like ignoramuses get away with perpetuating all that lazy, historically illiterate nonsense because of biased, distorted, historically inaccurate reporting.
Tonight there’s a Moral Maze episode on this topic. Let’s see what they have to say on the matter. Melanie Phillips is on the panel, with Matthew Taylor, Claire Fox and Jill Kirby.
Okay. We listened to the Moral Maze. Michael Buerk kept trying to broaden out the debate. He didn’t want it to be specific, lest it get bogged down in the Israel/Palestine question. But that’s precisely what it should have been about. The more bogged the better, in my opinion.
It emerged from the guy from War on Want, that one of the reasons they defended BDS was that the Palestinians requested it. Yup. The Palestinians requested it.
Jonathan Sacerdoti was one of the witnesses. He tried to bring the topic back to the core issue - antisemitism and intimidation of Jews, but Michael Buerk wasn’t happy with that. He steered the conversation away each time, which was irritating.
Jill Kirby seemed to think they (Jews) should suck it up because she believes the principal of ethical boycotting is sound.
I think I need to listen again in order to to absorb the whole thing properly. It wasn’t an entirely bad debate apart from Matthew Taylor’s constant interruptions and his habit of rudely talking over others.
(Why do lefties and Muslims always do that? Have they no manners?)
I’d like to thank my co-bloggers and the entire “BBC-bias” family; my parents - if it weren't for them I might not be here - and Mr Google for facilitating my research. Most of all, thanks to Israeli technology, without which none of this would be possible. Thank you thank you.
To the rest of you, go on, boycott Israel produce, all of it, and don’t forget to wipe your hard-drives before you destroy your equipment or donate it to a good cause. The Palestinians, maybe?
Israeli technology? Yes please. The Palestinians can’t get enough of it.
