Battle cries

All but eclipsed by the battle between Sunak and Truss, the battle between the IDF and PIJ has reached the BBC headlines.

Using the “Israel said”/“claims”  formulation, Yolande Knell sets it out thus:

“As well as air strikes on Gaza, where Israel said its targets included a PIJ tunnel network, there have been continued arrest raids in the occupied West Bank. Dozens of members of PIJ have been detained, according to Israel

Gaza's health ministry blamed "Israeli aggression" for the deaths of Palestinians, and for the more than 200 people wounded.

Israel accused PIJ militants of accidentally causing at least some of those deaths - claiming on Saturday that the group fired a stray rocket killing multiple children in Jabalia, in the Gaza Strip. The BBC has not been able to independently verify this claim.

One can only speculate as to why the BBC has “not been able to” verify this claim but  Knell clearly signals which side of the fence she’s sitting on. 

I heard Knell’s bulletin  on the radio this morning. (1:38 ) She said, “Israel is blaming a misfired militant rocket for killing several people including children.”

 

Well, technically she’s right - Israel “is” blaming “a misfired militant rocket”,  in other words, a PIJ “short-fall”, which is often exactly what these incidents turn out to be - and would it be paranoid to suggest that Knell’s phrasing had an air of “They would say that, wouldn’t they” in true Mandy Rice-Davies fashion? 

If you don’t have time for acronyms,  “PIJ” stands Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (“Palestinian Islamic Jihad” is an Iranian proxy)

On the other hand, Richard Kemp sets out the situation thus: 

The media's inveterate Israel-opposers such as the BBC, CNN and New York Times have already printed deliberately slanted headlines painting Israel as the aggressor. Slavering for the last two days at the prospect of IDF-inflicted mass casualties, much of the media immediately and without any evidence eagerly pointed the finger at Israel over the tragic killing of seven people, including four children, in Jabalia camp in the Gaza Strip. They will undoubtedly try, but journalists and UN investigators will find it hard to refute the IDF's confirmation that they did not strike the location and have conclusive video and radar evidence that the deaths were caused by a misfired PIJ rocket, launched as so often from within the civilian population. This would certainly fit, as approximately a quarter of all terrorist rockets fired so far during this campaign have landed inside Gaza, not in Israel.

If you still don’t have time for acronyms, IDF stands for Israel Defence Forces - and the BBC is still an inveterate Israel-opposer.

Update

For those without access to her substack Melanie Phillips provides the antidote to the BBC’s (and the MSM’s) ‘half-the-story’ reporting. 

Even if you don’t know or aren’t interested in the politics, this will have a familiar ring to many readers:

"What was the immediate reaction of much of the media in Britain and elsewhere? Israel was blamed for defending itself and defamed by recycling Palestinian propaganda.

But of course. It happens every single time. You can write the script as soon as the first Israeli missile lands. You know there will be a total absence of context so that Israeli victim and Arab aggressor are reversed. You know that Palestinian lies will be believed and reported as truth. You know that Israel will be painted entirely falsely as the villain of the piece, as it is year in, year out. You know that untold numbers in the general public will buy into this demonisation." 

 

After setting out the background to the current situation, Melanie Phillips provides an example of - wait for it -The Telegraph’s regurgitation of Palestinian propaganda!

• [The Telegraph] makes no mention of the Israelis murdered by PIJ and associates in March and April.
• No mention of Iran’s involvement.
• No mention of PIJ’s rockets falling short into Gaza.
• No mention of the Israeli video showing this happening.

Whatever has happened to the once-responsible Telegraph? 

 

If even the Telegraph falls for this what are the chances that the BBC will fare better?

Zilch.

The Annexation Trigger

After being treated to decades of spiteful, passive-aggressive anti-Israel spin from Middle East editor Bowen and his subordinates, anyone with a smattering of political and historical knowledge of ‘Middle East affairs’ could rattle off a pretty good case against the BBC.

Last night Yolande Knell treated us to a mawkish, innuendo-laden report on the BBC World Service impliedly blaming Israel for interruptions to Palestinian children’s cancer treatments during the coronavirus crisis - although most obstacles seemed to stem from the P.A.’s latest strategy of refusing to ‘cooperate’ with Israel in answer to the proposed annexation of parts of the West Bank. I wasn’t certain what message she was trying to send to be honest, but I predict a whole lot more mileage will be extracted from that situation ‘going forward’.  

Although criticism of Israel-related reporting is but one factor in a bias-related bigger picture, many bias-watchers regard the BBC’s left-wing/anti-Conservative bias as their chief bugbear and therefore their main target, but in a way, the BBC’s anti-Zionist bias is the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of bias. 

Regrettably, the BBC’s Palestinian-advocacy reporting style has a wide reach. Compare the BBC’s uncritical regurgitation of the Palestinian narrative with the overtly hostile, ‘arms-length’ or even non-existent representation of the Israeli perspective that is routinely dished up by the BBC’s Middle East correspondents. Bog-standard, superficial and shallow reporting, served with ‘half-a-story’ contemporary and historical analysis.

Given that both Britain and Israel are democracies, this attitudinal imbalance is hard to explain. If ‘Palestinianism’ is rooted in (Islamic) religion-based antisemitism, surely a largely secular - or at least a not very religiously observant country like post 60s Britain would see Israel as a natural ally, while instinctively filing overtly racist,’Yahud-hating Palestinians’ as ’other’.  

As non-racist Brits, shouldn’t we at least find the Palestinians’ intractable refusal to accept Israel’s existence a little problematic? Since the opposite seems to be the case, the obvious conclusion must be that this demonisation of the Jewish state stems from the ‘oldest hatred’.

However, the word ‘Annexation’ has triggered a new wave of anti-Israel angst. 

Mark Regev has been Israel’s UK Ambassador for over four years. Here’s a link to his ‘goodbye interview’ It seems like only yesterday that he was merely Israel’s ‘spokesperson’ and his very appearances on the BBC would send the haters into paroxysms of fury.

Palestinians: Is It Really about 'Annexation'? Khaled Abu Toameh offers another perspective on Trump’s plan for peace. He says that the Palestinians’ opposition to annexation encompasses twin objections; the religious one and the political one. According to Islamic clerics and scholars, Israel has no right to exist anywhere in the region, so with that in mind, any legality (or otherwise) appertaining to ‘annexation’ is but a trivial detail, therefore irrelevant to the ultimate objective - eliminating Israel altogether. 

Mahmoud Abbas, whom the BBC persists in regarding as a ‘potential partner for peace’ claims that annexation would destroy any chance of a ‘two-state’ solution, ending all hopes of peace with Israel. According to officials, the plan would irreversibly deprive the Palestinians of their right to establish an independent and sovereign state on the (unsustainable) pre-1967 armistice lines. 

The BBC, being determined to see such disingenuous role-play as ‘the voice of reason’ takes Abbas’s words at face value. But the P.A. is actually with the clerics. Neither strand really wants ‘a state’, or is capable of forming one. Their idea of peace is simply ‘no Israel’. 

True to form, the BBC’s Tom Bateman puts the customary BBC spin on the matter. I don’t know if that was Bateman’s own headline, but whoever penned it is clearly hostile to Israel and sympathises with the Palestinians. Israel annexation: New border plans leave Palestinians in despair

Getting to grips with the complexity of Netanyahu / Trump proposals or analysing the long-term potential is of little interest to Tom Bateman whose job is to promote the BBC’s agenda, which disregards the welfare of the Palestinians. Stuck with their appalling leadership, encouraged to kill Jews by Abbas’s outrageous ‘pay for slay’ policy, and ensuring that the existing stalemate is prolonged indefinitely.

At the present time, while old allegiances in the region are shifting, the BBC’s current anti-Israel animus has been triggered bigly by the word “annexation’. An emotive concept indeed, but what does it mean? That terrible word alone evokes expansionism; land-grab; occupation. But this isn’t the idea at all. 

I don’t claim to be an expert on the legality or otherwise of Trump’s plan for peace, but one thing I have gathered from my research so far is that the idea of ‘annexing’ parts of the West Bank appears considerably less ominous than Israel’s detractors would have us believe.

Here is another piece explaining Trump’s “Deal of the Century”   Israel has the right to annex parts of Judea and Samaria   by Eli Vered Hazan:

“So before explaining what annexation is and why it is imperative, it is important to emphasize a few things: France and the United Kingdom are vocal opponents of the agreement. The United Kingdom, which controls 17 territories, spread over thousands of miles across the globe, is criticising a territorial process in which there is a deep connection between a country and its citizens. France maintains control over 13 colonies thousands of miles away and even uses some of them for nuclear experiments, yet opposes our connection to our historical homeland. Not only that, Turkey illegally invaded and took over Northern Cyprus but threatens Israel over the mere potential of Israeli sovereignty. All of them claim that for Israel “it is not the same”. In fact, they are right – it is not the same.

and from Melanie Phillips

“Under international law, annexation has a precise meaning: the forcible incorporation by one state of the territory of another state. This does not apply to the disputed territories, which never belonged in law to any other state. 

Israel has the only legally grounded claim to this land, including the never-abrogated duty given to the British in the 1920s to settle the Jews throughout what is now Israel, the disputed territories and the Gaza Strip. 

Far from being an illegal annexation, extending Israeli law to these areas actually implements international law after some nine decades during which it was flouted and then ignored by Britain and the world community. It is those who oppose the sovereignty proposal who show contempt for the law.”

If it’s too easy to tar her with the “She would say that” brush, legal expert Eugene Kontorovich, lays out the situation fully in this article: Don’t Buy the ‘Annexation’ Hype (WSJ is behind a paywall, but I will post it in full over the fold.)

I didn’t want to display my ignorance by spouting nonsense about something I know very little about, so I did try to digest as much of the document as I could, and I dutifully watched the interesting (to me) video below. In the end, it seems that the specifics of the annexation plan is still a work in progress.  Also, at the end of the day, the legality is never the main and ultimate clincher when it comes to Middle East policy. Emotion is the real game-changer; hearts and minds and so on.

Even if the annexation ploy turns out to be just one strategic move in a long-term game, and the objective is a genuine, just and lasting peace, the BBC is never going to give us a fully-rounded picture because it is ideologically and ‘institutionally’ opposed to it and not entirely convinced of Israel's right to exist.

Legal situation fully explained overleaf.

A Christmas BBC tradition continues

I meant to point this out yesterday, but life intervened - and, anyway, BBC Watch in on the case. 

Yes, yesterday's From Our Own Correspondent featured a little bit of festive Israel-bashing and a complementary article has appeared on the BBC News website too.

BBC Watch has been forensic about it. I'll confine myself to summing it up like this: There are shepherds abiding in the fields and a pregnant Mary-like villager, and they're unhappy, and it's all (Herod's) Israel's fault.

This is nothing new. Here's me in 2015:

Some Christmas traditions - decking the halls with boughs of holly; singing old carols; eating, drinking and being merry; complaining that Christmas has become too commercialised; watching The Queen and Morecambe and Wise, etc - have been around for many a long year now. Others are more recent, such as BBC Middle East correspondent Yolande Knell's pre-Christmas piece from Bethlehem where she uses the Christmas story to paint Israel as the modern-day Herod.

And here's me in 2017:

One of the BBC's hallowed Christmas Eve traditions is their now yearly piece from Bethlehem about how hard-done-by those poor Palestinian shepherds abiding in the fields (or in concrete buildings) are thanks to those horrible Herod-like Israelis.

The BBC chap responsible year is one Jeremy Bristow. In recent years, as noted above, it's largely been Yolande Knell's job to do the 'Shepherds abiding/Israel's to blame' story, but she's away on maternity leave thus Christmas (h/t Hadar at BBC Watch). So that's why Barbara Plett Usher did the Bethlehem gig this year. 

Of Language and Lod

Rina Shnerb

BBC Watch takes apart a report about the murder of a 17 year old Israeli girl by Palestinian terrorists on Saturday's Midnight News on Radio 4, criticising several aspects of it: 

(1) The use of 'politically partisan language' - "militant", "settlement", "occupied West Bank" and "protests". 

(I'm assuming BBC Watch would prefer "terrorist", "village", "Judea and Samaria" and "violent riots"). 

(2) The 'downplaying' of the gravity of the attack which killed the girl while she was out hiking with her family.  The BBC's Yolande Knell said, "Unusually, a homemade bomb is said to have been used" whereas The Times of Israel says, "Channel 12 quoted unnamed officials as saying that the size and complexity of the device indicated that one of the major terror groups was behind the attack" and Channel 13’s military correspondent says that the IED weighed between three and four kilos and contained a large amount of shrapnel, adding that the incident was “planned and organised – and not a spontaneous or improvised terror attack”. 

(If the Israeli voices are correct there, then the BBC appears to have seriously mischaracterised the nature of the device used). 

(3) Yolande Knell's 'choice' to use the Arabic pronunciation of the name of the Israeli city of Lod. She pronounced it 'Lud'. 

(What a strange thing to do on Yolande's part! She unquestionably did pronounce it in the Arabic version 'Lud' rather than the Hebrew version 'Lod'. Is that another BBC guideline or her own choice?) 

BBC Watch is right to claim that the language used was deliberately chosen and also right that the chosen words cannot but shape how the listener reacts to the story. 

The geographical words used in point (1) are those recommended by the BBC's own editorial guidelines and commit the BBC to a particular line on the politics of that geography (which you may agree or disagree with), and the BBC's refusal to use words like "terrorist" and "riot" are a longstanding BBC policy to try not to be 'judgmental' in their language. Here such language is more favourable to the Palestinians than the Israelis, softening the harshness of the Palestinians and hardening the image of the 'occupying' Israelis. 

Quite why Yolande Knell gave a central Israeli city an Arabic pronunciation though remains beyond me. Was she being deliberately provocative?

As an aside, here's a fascinating YouTube video about the beautiful 19th Century rebuild of the Church of St. George in Lod - a church the city's Muslim overlords (even Saladin) kept on knocking down:

We go back 800 years (Updated)

I heard Yolande Knell’s report this morning. It sounded all wrong. Perhaps BBCWatch will give us a more sympathetic account of Israel’s position on all this in due course, but although I’ve spent far too long looking at the story online from as many angles as I can bear to unearth, all I can say is that none of the parties involved come out of it particularly well.

The left-wing press and of course, the BBC have had a field day. Of all the reports I’ve read, most seem to take the view that an injustice has been done to the current tenant of the New Imperial Hotel Jerusalem,  75-year-old Abu Walid Dajani who has been running the hotel for 800 years. (not personally, I assume)

 The villain of the piece, according to Knell and the left-wing press, is ‘right-wing Jewish group Ateret Cohanim, which has a nefarious aim. What could that be?  To “stop a Jewish take-over” or to “Judaize” East Jerusalem “which the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state”. 

 Since Ateret Cohanim are quite open about that aim, one might ask oneself whether such a take-over is so very terrible. In other words, is the Palestinians’ “want” enough to make it the Palestinians’ “right”??

The factor that makes this 14-year-old story newsworthy at this time is the Israeli court’s recent decision to uphold the validity of the sale. 

The actual legal dispute concerns the alleged corruption surrounding the sale (14 years ago) of various properties including this hotel. The former owner of the properties was the Greek Orthodox Church, who didn’t come out of it smelling of roses either. 

The dodgy individual involved in the transaction was former Church finance director Nikolas Papadimos who has since done a runner.

Predictably, Yolande Knell was openly sympathetic to Mr Dajani and she took an adversarial tone with Daniel Luria, the representative of Ateret Cohanim; again, much as expected. 

What I didn’t get was the apparently gratuitous soundbite  (audio of a woman screaming because she was being evicted by ‘settlers”) “earlier this year.”  I think I heard a gunshot in there too. Was this directly relevant to this case? Who knows. Or was it emotive ‘sound effects’, put in the report just because.

The vox-pop type quotes we heard from Mr Luria sounded disjointed, and I couldn’t help wondering if his comments about “Jewish Land” and so on had been truly representative of the whole of his testimony. Was I only hearing what I wanted to hear?

It all struck me as rather John Sweeney. There, I’ve coined a ‘thing’; to do a John Sweeney.

One detail we didn’t get from Knell was that Abu Walid Dajani hadn’t paid any rent for 14 years, but I suppose he probably had his reasons.

Update:
BBC Watch has come up with the goods

"Not only did this report repeatedly promote inaccurate information concerning the properties which are ostensibly its subject matter but Yolande Knell has clearly exclusively embraced the Greek Orthodox Church’s narrative. 

More gravely, Knell unquestioningly promoted the partisan political narrative she long since adopted with her framing of Old City houses inhabited by Jewish Israelis as ‘illegal settlements’, the inhabitants as ‘settlers’ and her uncritical amplification of the claim that the location is “Palestinian”.

“It’s very amazing”

Q.I.   Quite interesting. (I thought so, anyway)

Here’s a young Saudi guy called Mohammed Saud, who visited Israel and was surprised to find he liked it a lot. He explains why this joyous experience was so unexpected:

“I saw many newspaper on the media that show a different image - that there is no coexistence;

that the people can’t live together, that there is a war. It’s not right at all. It’s very amazing.”

Interestingly (I thought so) the video-maker chose to illustrate the media “that show a different image”  with just two images:

1.) Yolande Knell BBC 

2.) Ben Brown BBC

Churnalism

Yolande Knell, BBC News, Tel Aviv

My favourite BBC Watch piece this past week featured BBC Middle East correspondent Yolande Knell.

It looked at a BBC World Service report  (6th June) which she then recycled for an edition of Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent (13th June).

And, by the looks of it, that wasn't the only bit of recycling she engaged in!

BBC Watch notes its remarkable similarity to an earlier Associated Press report (4th June).

Here's that AP report in full:

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Hundreds of Israelis have participated in a mass wedding in Tel Aviv to demand the right to same-sex marriage ahead of the country’s Gay Pride week. 

Tuesday’s event involved an unofficial wedding ceremony for 23 gay couples, who walked down the aisle, took vows and danced at a banquet, cheered by friends, family and supporters. 

The annual pride parade, set for June 14, draws flocks of foreign visitors to Israel, which flaunts itself as one of the world’s most gay-friendly tourist destinations. 

Yet political rights for Israel’s gay community lag behind increasingly widespread cultural acceptance. 

Jewish ultra-Orthodox parties, which wield significant influence in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government and have a monopoly over matters of religion and state, have rejected legislation that condones homosexuality, which they see as defying Jewish law. 

And here's Yolande's BBC report, via the BBC Watch transcript:

Beaming, Nikita stomps on a glass wrapped in foil to cries of muzl tov – congratulations. But this isn’t a traditional Jewish wedding: it’s a symbolic one. Nikita and his long-time partner Roy are in a row of 23 gay couples hugging and kissing. All walked down the aisle and took vows at an open-air mass ceremony in Tel Aviv.

But while same-sex marriages are increasingly recognised around the world, here in Israel they’re still not legal. The state doesn’t permit any civil marriages – only religious ones – and there’s no religious gay marriage option. ‘We participated so everyone would see us and know we exist’ Nikita says. ‘We love each other, we want to be married and have a normal life’.

Tel Aviv’s gay-friendly reputation – which it recently flaunted while hosting the Eurovision Song Contest – draws many same-sex Israeli couples to live here as well as lots of foreign visitors. Every year its pride parade along the beach has a carnival atmosphere. Young and old, gay and straight join the huge party, many dressed in flamboyant outfits or skimpy swimming costumes.

But in Israel rights for the gay community fall behind rising cultural acceptance in society.

In the Right-wing coalition governments of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jewish ultra-orthodox parties have had an influential role. They reject any proposed legislation which they see as condoning homosexuality, saying it defies Jewish law.

Hmm.

So here's a summary of the overlap:

1. "walked down the aisle"
2. "gay-friendly"
3. "flaunted"
4. "foreign visitors"
5. "fall behind rising cultural acceptance in society"
6. "reject any proposed legislation which they see as condoning homosexuality, saying it defies Jewish law"

So is the BBC's Yolande Knell a journalist or a churnalist? 

Transcript: BBC News at Ten, Monday 15th May 2018

Newsreader: Tonight at ten, dozens of Palestinians are shot dead by Israeli forces, as America opens its new embassy in Jerusalem. At least 52 people have been killed in the bloodiest day of violence for years after the embassy's controversial move. More than 2,000 people have been injured in the clashes. Israel said it was acting in self-defence. The violence flared as the Embassy's opening ceremony took place - attended by President Trump's daughter and son-in-law. Israel's prime minister called it a glorious day. 

PM Netanyahu: President Trump, by recognising history, you have made history. 

Mustafa Barghouti: Nothing will break us. Not Netanyahu, not Israel, not the United States. 

The White House has blamed the Palestinian group, Hamas, for inciting today's protests. We'll have the latest on the unfolding situation.

Newsreader: Good evening. Palestinian officials say that Israeli forces have shot dead more than 50 protesters in Gaza, on the same day that the United States opened its new embassy in Jerusalem. More than 2,000 Palestinians are reported to have been injured. Protests have been taking place along Gaza's border with Israel for six weeks but they intensified dramatically today as Donald Trump made good on his controversial election promise to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - a city that both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their own. The move has infuriated Palestinians not least because it comes exactly 70 years after the formation of the state of Israel in 1948. From Jerusalem here's our Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen. 

Jeremy Bowen: Palestinians call these protests the 'Great March of Return'. For many of the young people who rushed the border wire with Israel, it was a one-way journey. Israel used tear gas and bullets. The Prime Minister said the security forces were defending Israel's borders, its sovereignty and citizens. The dead and wounded, he said, were the fault of Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement that runs Gaza. Palestinians say that their rage comes from Israel's brutality and its denial of their right to independence. Protests and killing went on for most of the day. In Jerusalem, police scuffled with Israeli peace campaigners outside the American Embassy. For what is left of Israel's peace movement, this is a dark day. Inside, the US Marines showed their colours, and so has the Trump administration. It's broken with an international consensus that Jerusalem's status is undecided, so embassies should stay in Tel Aviv. President Trump's daughter Ivanka did the honours. 

Ivanka Trump: We welcome you officially, and for the first time, to the embassy of the United States, here in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. Thank you. 

Her father appeared on video. 

President Trump: Israel is a sovereign nation, with the right like every other sovereign nation, to determine its own capital. Yet for many years we have failed to acknowledge the obvious, the plain reality that Israel's capital is Jerusalem. 

Ivanka's husband is a senior adviser to her father. They celebrated with Israel's Prime Minister. 

PM Netanyahu: What a glorious day! Remember this moment! This is history. President Trump, by recognising history, you have made history. 

Moving the embassy is a triumph for Prime Minister Netanyahu, it's a promise kept for President Trump, and most Israelis are happy. But so far, there is no evidence to back up Mr Netanyahu's claim that it's good for peace. In Ramallah, on the West Bank, Palestinians demonstrated against what the Americans call the 'new realities', and against old ones. For Palestinians, keys are symbols of the dispossession of 750,000 refugees never allowed back after Israel beat the Arabs in the 1948 war. 

Mustafa Barghouti: We're marching in the best traditions of Martin Luther King and Gandhi, peacefully, nonviolently, insisting on our right for Jerusalem as our capital and for our right of return. Nothing will break us, not Netanyahu, not Israel, not the United States. 

In Jerusalem's old city at the weekend, Israelis distributed flowers to Palestinians, apologising. They were apologising for this: an annual march by nationalistic Israelis through the overwhelmingly Palestinian Muslim quarter. The parade celebrates Israel's capture of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war. On the streets, the lead-up to today's events has been tense and angry. Mostly it was noise and insults. Sometimes it boiled over. 

Daniel Luria (Jewish settlement activist): Nobody is saying that Arabs can't live here, of course they can live here, but sovereignty is a different story...)

Jeremy Bowen (to Mr Luria, interrupting): You can't say...You find it hard to say the word 'Palestinians', don't you? 

Daniel Luria: There are Arabs living in this area...

Jeremy Bowen (to Mr Luria, interrupting): Why don't you call them 'Palestinians'? 

Daniel Luria: There's no reason to. 

Jeremy Bowen: Why? 

Daniel Luria: Because there is no such thing as 'the Palestinian people'. There never has been. 

There's always tension and hatred in Jerusalem and on days like this it is very stark. That's because Jerusalem is right at the centre of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The future of this city is probably the most politically radioactive issue in the entire Middle East. More people will suffer and die if leaders on both sides cannot calm this crisis. The Americans believe that with Saudi support they can persuade Palestinians to accept less than the state they want, but in Gaza nearly two million people live with little hope, less patience and a belief that they've lost enough. Jeremy Bowen, BBC News, Jerusalem. 

Newsreader: In a moment we'll speak to Jeremy Bowen and to our North America editor Jon Sopel in Washington. But first let's go to Yolande Knell in Ramallah. And, Yolande, the mood there tonight? 

Yolande Knell: Here in Ramallah the Palestinian leadership has declared three days of mourning and a general strike. Those protests in Gaza were on a huge scale and they produced the bloodiest day there since the 2014 conflict with Israel. Tonight, the Palestinian president at his headquarters here, Mahmoud Abbas, has accused Israel of carrying out massacres. He has repeated that the US can no longer be a mediator in the peace process and has called instead for international mediation. What we are seeing at the moment is plenty of international condemnation of what has happened down at the border and international calls for restraint. Both South Africa and Turkey have recalled their ambassadors to Israel. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu though is defending the actions of Israeli forces. But what really remains to be seen is what's going to happen tomorrow when all the funerals take place of those people who were killed. They include several children, one a boy as young as 14. And afterwards you can expect that many of the mourners are going to march back towards those border protest camps. 

Newsreader: Jon Sopel in Washington. What has the White House said about today's violence? 
Jon Sopel: Well, there's been no calls for restraint from the White House. Instead they've put the blame full square on the Palestinian leadership, on Hamas, for what has happened. "We believe that Hamas is responsible for these tragic deaths, and their cynical exploitation of the situation is what's leading to these deaths" - that was from the White House deputy spokesman a little bit earlier. Now, I went with Donald Trump a year ago to Saudi Arabia and Israel when all the talk was of pulling off the biggest deal of them all, bringing peace to the Middle East. But ever since Donald Trump announced his intention to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, we hear a lot less about this. An important component though in Donald Trump's decision-making has been domestic public opinion. Yes, the Israeli lobby, but that's not as important as another group. Evangelical Christians have been out in force supporting the President today. They were an important part of his base. 80% of them voted for Donald Trump, 16% voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. That explains a lot of what President Trump has done with the inflammatory consequences there have been. 

Newsreader: And Jeremy in Jerusalem, the worst violence for years seen today. The fear must be, what happens tomorrow?

Jeremy Bowen: Well, there is a real risk it could get worse. I mean, that is the thing. That is the kind of thing that can happen here. You know, those scenes of today, those scenes in Gaza, in the West Bank, and the ones at the new American Embassy, they show the absolute divergence between those two different views of the conflict, what causes it, where it should go, and perhaps as well the ways to solve it. The fact is, that while there are always... The fact is there are two groups here in this land. Two peoples who want the same piece of land. And until they find a way to split it up fairly, between them, in a way that helps both sides, makes both sides makes some compromises, until they get to that point, then they will continue to condemn their children to the kinds of things that they've suffered. I'm talking about Israelis and Palestinians, and the kind of things that their parents and grandparents suffered as well. This is a very old conflict. And there is perhaps a potential settlement to it, but people cannot grasp it. 

Newsreader: Jeremy Bowen, Jon Sopel and Yolande Knell, thank you all. 

Smokescreen revisited

Due to my lack of rigour with regard to ‘tagging’ I know I have missed zillions of postings concerning Yolande Knell, but suffice it to say that there are 34 tagged as such on this blog alone, and a similar search brought up several on Biased BBC from 2011, although I’m pretty sure  earlier ones exist somewhere in the ether.

B-BBC 2012

B-BBC 2011

B-BBC 2012

B-BBC 2012

B-BBC 2012

B-BBC 2011

I’m telling you this because of a below the line remark on a BBC Watch post that I’m about to expand upon in a minute. 

Michael says: “when you begin to talk about Knell’s interview, it would be better to give readers a little background on Knell. New people here may not know who she is.”

So the Knell-related preamble was directed at anyone who doesn’t know what we BBC bias nerds think of Yolande Knell, and for anyone New. (Hello.)

It has always struck me that the BBC positions people like Knell solely on the ‘Palestinian’ side of the violent confrontations with Israel it reports - those it chooses to report, that is, because much Palestinian-instigated aggression goes unreported by the BBC. (Click on the link and scroll down for the full effect.)

Here, I’m talking about 'the Palestinian side' in a geographical as well as an ideological sense. We get the human interest angle, the bird’s eye view, the scene that’s looking at Israel from the other side of the fence where malign Israeli forces appear to be spying on us from menacing Nazi-era watchtowers and occasionally taking pot-shots at innocent Palestinian bystanders just for the hell of it.

Another stranger-than-a-mere-coincidence phenomenon is that, particularly on the radio, the voices of Israeli officials are made to sound even more remote due to a mysterious technical aberration that suddenly interferes with the sound; a sort of hollow echo that makes them sound mechanical, robotic and other-worldly.   

These things all happened during the recent reporting of the March of Return / Friday of the Tire or whatever slogan the Hamas marketing department thought would go down well with the cannon-fodder it was designed to inspire.

The one I blogged recently, starring Chris Mason  which I titled “Smokescreen” and a TV version featuring a little more of Yolande Knell and her Interviewee. 

I’m returning to this partly because BBC Watch has fleshed out the details that I failed to provide. This is because Hadar Sela knows much more than I do about such things, and I imagine not everyone has the appetite for the minutiae of hostilities between hostile neighbouring villages pre 1948.

The first point that cannot be emphasised enough is how ludicrous and unrealistic the concept of the March for the Right of Return actually is. The Right of Return is not the same thing as the Law of Return as decreed by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922. The latter provides a safe haven for peoples of Jewish heritage when, for example, Jeremy Corbyn turns Britain into The Weimar Republic, whereas the former is a parody of it, purely intended to hasten the progress of Israel’s destruction. Perhaps the BBC doesn’t see the distinction.

There may be a case for compensating any legitimate property owners amongst the original refugees that fled or were displaced in 1948, but the concept of a Right of Return of millions of their descendants is a non-starter. The Arabs started the war, they lost the war, and as yet the Palestinians haven’t shown the ability to create anything worthy of being respected as a viable future state. The march is a stunt and a declaration of Hamas’s determination never to reach a peaceful “two-state” solution. 

As BBC Watch points out, the sister of this confusion is the concept of Ancestral Lands. The idea seems to be that if the Jews refer to their “Ancestral Home’ so can the Palestinians, but these are different things.  The Jews are alluding to their 3,000 year old association with the region, their one and only  ancestral homeland, whereas when the BBC says:  “what Palestinians see as their ancestral lands” they don’t explain that in order to qualify for refugee status, one only had to claim a mere minimum of two years of residency in Mandate Palestine. That muddies the situation considerably, and doesn’t take into account a factor, which might be classed as ‘whataboutery’,  but the truth is that an even larger number of Jews were driven out of Arab and North African countries and forced to leave their possessions behind whereupon they were absorbed by Israel and began new lives, not kept in camps for decades and used as political pawns. 

Not all Palestinian refugees are indigenous. Many current Palestinians classed as refugees originate from all over the place. The old Egyptian rogue Arafat was from Egypt, for example, and it’s thought that the well-known Tamimi propaganda machine originates from the Abu Tamim tribe in Saudi. The Ancestral Lands theme is another parody of a legitimate Israeli one; arguably a counterfeit concept borrowed from a genuine one.

BBC Watch also highlights the “forcibly displaced” legend that was casually slipped into the narrative. Also, the unquestioning repetition of unverified casualty figures provided by the “Palestinian health ministry” (Hamas) which has become standard BBC practice. Sloppy and unethical.

Then - Knell’s contribution. A human interest story featuring a 72 year-old Palestinian man, retired English teacher Ahmed Abdullah. BBC Watch provides the context that Yolande Knell leaves out, and poses a loaded question shaped to receive a specific answer.

“When the Israelis say it’s just Hamas that’s trying to stir up violence…”

I addressed that in my earlier post, but at the time I didn’t have the will to tussle with the rest of the item, which included Chris Mason interviewing the head of the political NGO B’tselem about his organisation’s call for Israeli soldiers to disobey orders, as unrepresentative as, say, Russia Today inviting Jeremy Corbyn to give the definitive assessment of Theresa May’s response to the Skripal incident.

Then we heard an IDF spokesperson speaking from within a echoing dungeon, no doubt an ante-room to the burning Hell of Hades.

The 'day of the tire'

I don’t know much about the mainstream Jewish community and even less about the group known as Jewdas, but from what I’ve read, being anti-Zionist is a prerequisite for joining the Corbynista cult.

By aligning himself with ‘Jewdas’ and the ‘Judean Front’ or ‘Labour Voices or the Front for Judea’, the Party and its leader can ‘prove’ that they’re not antisemitic in the sense that they don’t “hate Jews”. The Jewish identity of these anti-Zionist rebels provides the smokescreen. With friends like that, (useful idiots is the accepted term) how could Jeremy be racist? Of course opposing the existence of the Jewish State while accepting Islamic and several other types of state makes one a hypocrite or an antisemite, as does parroting falsified Palestinian propaganda.

The BBC News channel is reporting the antics at the Gaza / Israel border. Yolande Knell is there wearing a helmet and a flak jacket. Naturally, she’s embedded with the Palestinians and views the unfolding stunt from Hamas’s point of view.  Other points of view are available. 

Paying the necessary lip-service to the BBC’s charter, she does mention Israel’s clear warnings (that anyone approaching the border fence or attempting to damage the fence or infiltrate Israeli territory will be shot.) However, by parroting Hamas’s justification for the unruly demonstration as though it’s all in aid of a perfectly reasonable demand, she ditches impartiality altogether. They want the right of return, she says, as though granting the (several million) descendants of the 1948 refugees their imaginary ‘right’ is just a matter of humanitarian generosity. Come on.

And then the wording. Is the BBC aware of any historical facts? Yolanda Knell believes that in 1948 “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians were forced out of their homes, or were forced to flee.”

She didn’t state by whom. Is it any wonder that so many people are dazed and confused?

The riots on the Gaza-Israel border are all part of Hamas’s plan pic.twitter.com/eokDOmdk2I

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) April 6, 2018

To believe or not to believe, that is the question...

Ah! Israel was the second story on this evening's main BBC One bulletin, and it was classic BBC stuff.

I watched it with rolling eyes.

I drafted a post giving it a long-winded fisking but then decided against it. Something shorter will do it justice.

Yes, it began with the usual 'people are being killed by Israel' angle: 

The Health Ministry in Gaza says that at least 13 people have been killed by Israeli security forces along the Israel-Gaza border.

and cited as its source "the Health Ministry in Gaza" - which is, of course, Hamas-controlled (not mentioned by the BBC here).

Did the BBC fact-check their claims?

And, yes, Yolande Knell did much of the familiar BBC stuff in her commentary, with talk of "family entertainment" from those protesting Palestinians and cryptic language about "a call for peaceful marches" (somehow) turning to violence, accompanied by such turns of phrase as "A chaotic rush to the hospital, with hundreds of Palestinians injured in Gaza". 

And, yes, her report was 'BBC impartial' in featuring an Israeli military spokesman in a gently breezy cornfield alongside (1) a male Palestinian protestor and (2) a female Palestinian protestor. 

And, yes, of course, there were those old BBC favourite, "Israel's military says" and "But Israel says".

But the funny thing about this was that I first watched this BBC report without sound and just looked at the images broadcast by the BBC, and what I saw was the kind of thing often described as "Pallywood'.

It may have been real, but it looked unreal, and almost like propaganda.

Had the BBC checked its authenticity?

It started with three scenes of large number of Palestinian men rushing with men on stretchers. (Real? Fake?) The Israelis were shown as menacing military figures silhouetted in the distance with brave Palestinian figures standing alone against them. Crowd after crowd after crowd of (military-aged) men were shown ducking and running as they fled the Israeli response. Another man was shown on a stretcher.

And, seriously, straight after the calm-looking/complacent-looking Israeli soldier featured 'for balance', there was shown a young boy leading the crowd with a Palestinian flag (like Liberty leading the People)!

And then more Palestinian men were shown running from the Israeli response.

Who filmed these images? If it wasn't the BBC, where did the BBC get them from? Did the BBC verify them?

It's a terrible thing when you feel that you can't trust your nation's leading broadcaster, but I certainly didn't feel at all confident about the fairness or the honesty of this report.

And, as we know, such things seriously matter. 

Yolande Knell BBC (No activity?)

Yolande Knell

You may have read elsewhere about "an anti-Israel Facebook group full of the most extreme anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, ridden with white supremacists". 

Well, according to BBC Watch, a high-profile BBC reporter has been "revealed" to be a member of this "secret anti-Israel facebook group": namely BBC Middle East correspondent Yolande Knell...

...a reporter who has often featured on this blog, Biased BBC, BBC Watch and other blogs of this kind under the charge of being biased against Israel. (We have 32 posts about her). 

The group, PALESTINE LIVE, was founded by anti-Israel activist Eileanne Green and the evidence that Yolande Knell of the BBC is a member of this group "that includes among its membership Holocaust deniers, antisemites and conspiracy theorists" is this:

BBC Watch says this means that Yolande Knell's "position as an ‘impartial’ BBC correspondent reporting from the corporation’s Jerusalem bureau is severely compromised".

Others, however, are not so sure. 

Given her lack of activity on the site, they ask, could she have been added to the secret group without her consent?

Or, just as plausibly, could she have joined simply for research reasons - i.e. to observe and listen as part of her work?

I'm sure there will be efforts made to try and get some answers.

That said though, we never did get an answer to the questions about her involvement in the promotion of a Palestinian activist's film in London back in 2014. 

The Girl With The Gigantic Hair

There are other political lionesses with giant hair, but only one female anti-Israel activist bears an uncanny facial resemblance to the late lamented Shrek The Sheep. 

The Tamimis are professional anti-Israel agitators, and members of the extended Tamimi family have developed full-blown careers out of their activities, which range from world-wide public speaking engagements, to creating candid camera set-ups in collaboration with the B’Tselem Camera Project, to blowing up civilians in Israeli Pizzerias.

The most widely publicised film clips of little Ahed date back to the days when she was a mere pipsqueak. Aged about 9, she was filmed while thcreaming and thcreaming and waving her tiny fists at IDF soldiers and earning herself the affectionate nick-name Shirley Temper. The family are extremely passionate about rock-throwing, non-violently.

It’s tragi-comic, unless you’re concerned with the way the BBC has been reporting the aftermath of the Tamimi’s latest stunt, which you will know, began with a small Pallywood production which didn’t seem to go exactly to plan. The idea was for Ahed and her mates to set-upon two IDF soldiers with a flurry of pushes and non-violent slaps and punches in the hope of capturing some juicy propagandistic footage, while Mrs T filmed the action on her phone.

Here, we ought to speculate about a potentially different outcome. What if the soldiers had responded with equally non-violent slaps, punches or heaven forbid, non-violent real bullets? Would that have been considered a more successful outcome?  Of course there wasn’t much risk of that, which, as we all know, is why little Ahed went ahead.  The real triumph for the Tamimis is the arrest and trial of little Ms Temper. 

People who believe that all Palestinian violence is justified because of the occupation will never be satisfied until Israel is disbanded. Others believe that if the Tamimi clan and its ilk gave up their interminable struggle against Zionism, stopped hating Jews and started thinking positively about everyone’s future, there would be a better outcome, if not  actually ‘peace’.

BBC Watch examines some of the BBC’s reporting. On 3rd January 2018 a newly appointed Today Programme presenter cuts her teeth with a shaky interview with MK Dr. Michael Oren and Yael Stein of B’Tselem. Ms. Gracie admonishes Dr. Oren for applying the term “beat up” to Ahed’s assault, which I tentatively attribute to the UK / US language barrier. I think Brits reserve the expression for serious altercations, as in ‘beaten to a pulp’ whereas Yanks mean ‘to hurt’. Anyway, it’s the kind of slip-up that doesn’t do anyone any favours.

Yolande Knell’s approach is all too predictable. On 8th Jan 2018 John Humphrys introduces the item.

Knell pays lip service to impartiality by allowing some air time to the Israeli point of view, but we can tell where her sympathies lie by the way she introduces and speaks to Bassem Tamimi. He’s “making coffee", she tells us, subtly humanising the man whom some regard as a monster.

The video in which Ahed Tamimi advocates ‘martyrdom-seeking operations’ is less well known.  but never mind. There is a plethora of exploitative anti-Israel propaganda on YouTube, some starring Ached Tamimi’s 11 year old cousin “the youngest journalist in the world”. As a journalist and propagandist precocious little Janna Jihad is shaping up nicely.