Fact-checking the BBC [2]

When I was a lad I listened to Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent to learn about the world. 

Are there autodidactic lads and lasses out there doing the same today? Are there still teenagers noting down the facts in Kate Adie's introductions?

I ask because today's From Our Own Correspondent included a feature on Georgia [the country not the US state] and began with a few facts from Kate. I imagine a teenager somewhere noting down [1] that  Russia has “a land border with 14 countries” and [2] that “eight of these countries were once part of the old Soviet Union” and [3] that one of them is “the central Asian nation” of Georgia [4] “which sits between Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan”.

If you were wondering the 14 countries with land borders with Russia are: Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, Ukraine, Finland, Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Norway and North Korea.

And the eight of those that were once part of the old Soviet Union are: Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

However, the next bit is where Kate Adie's facts begin going awry. Georgia is not a “central Asian nation”. Central Asia covers the area east of the Caspian Sea to the borders of China and Mongolia. It covers five countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, but not Georgia. Georgia is found in the Caucasus, at the intersection of Eastern Europe and Western Asia.

Our fact-hungry youngster would also be somewhat misled by Kate saying that Georgia “sits between Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan” because there's a bordering country missing from that list. Georgia also has a 136 mile border with Armenia.

So my childhood self, if living and listening now, would need to be as sceptical of the BBC's facts as I am now I'm a lot older. Not everything you hear on the BBC, even from Kate Adie, is wholly accurate.

Be afraid!

Jim Muir.  This is not an example of egregious bias. Rather, the bias is almost subliminal, but in Jim Muir’s FOOC audio essay on the US’s recent assassination of “General Qassam Soleimani” he and Kate Adie seem to be taking impartiality to an absurd level. Jim Muir’s final summing up.

“…….There’s no doubt that Soleimani was an integral part of a proud regime. His only boss was the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many saw him as the country’s second most powerful figure.

Having lived for a period in Iran, at times Muir speaks almost reverentially of the Ayatollahs and their repressive and vicious regime. His discernibly 'disinterested’ description of Qassam Soleimani’s career encapsulates the BBC’s value-judgement-free attitude to this particular political and civilisational issue. His last sentence warns us of the upcoming threat we now face. ‘Be very afraid’.

“We can only guess just now what they will be, but there will be consequences."

My thoughts are that if there is one issue over which a value judgement and a degree of partiality would actually be appropriate for a British broadcasting corporation to express without restraint or equivocation, this is it. On this occasion, the BBC’s conspicuous ‘impartiality’ stands out like a sore thumb. British values, eh.

Contrast this with Kate Adie’s next introduction, in which she uses far from impartial language to describe the Catholic church.

“In Ireland the power and the prejudice of the Catholic Church, combined with the state, insured that a grim regime of retribution was waged against unmarried mothers and so-called wayward girls and sometimes unwanted troublesome daughters. For over two centuries they were sent to institutions where scandals of cruelty and neglect were common, but mainly ignored by the authorities. Even today a government commission is looking into allegations regarding some former homes, and one where hundreds of babies and young children were buried in the grounds. Its report is due next month and Deirdre Finnerty has been talking to a former inmate:

The mother and (illegitimate) baby scenario of less enlightened, more pious times certainly deserve harsh words, but, as they say, the past is a foreign country, while the Mullahs are operating their 'foreign' evil practices in the here and now. 

"Is there an agenda?"

Here's a tweet I didn't expect to read from the presenter of From Our Own Correspondent:

Update

And guess what! It's not actually the BBC's Kate Adie. D'oh! 

(As ever when I post something stupid, I'll leave this one up for posterity as a constant reminder to myself to always fully check things before posting!)

Regular hand-wringing

Tapir & chips?

That From Our Own Correspondent Stephen Sackur piece on "vain, shameless, dog-whistling" Viktor Orban was immediately followed by Kate Adie saying:

To the other side of the world and another powerful populist leader, and another man who provokes regular hand-wringing among liberal politicians and journalists. Jair Bolsonaro's homophobic and misogynistic comments have helped make him a deeply divisive figure, though he was the clear winner in Brazil's presidential election last year. He's been criticised for remarks about the country's indigenous populations who he suggested are in the way of mining and agriculture.

Was Kate classing herself, Mr Sackur and her other BBC colleagues as "hand-wringing liberal journalists" there? (Or doesn't she do irony?) 

At least the piece that followed was by Tim Whewell, who was less interested in point-scoring and more interested in telling a story. He couldn't entirely hide the fact that his indigenous friend's taste for tapirs and jaguars wasn't quite what he wanting to hear. 

Tropical Trump

Today's From Our Own Correspondent began by focusing on the frontrunner in the upcoming Brazilian election.

The BBC presenter (Kate Adie) and BBC correspondent (Katy Watson) strew around a fair few adjectives about this man, Jair Bolsonaro. According to them he's "controversial", "right-wing", "notorious", "sexist", "homophobic" and "infamous". Plus he argues some things "falsely" and is guilty of "scaremongering". 

Maybe it's just me but I couldn't help getting the feeling that they weren't that keen on him. 

As for his likely left-wing opponent in the second round, he was described as "left-wing" and...oh, nothing else. So he must be OK then. 

The title of today's episode on the BBC website is:

From the BBC’s Own Correspondent

When I heard the trailer for Thursday’s FOOC announcing that we were to be treated to a tale from Israel by Yolande Knell I felt obliged to listen. 

(I promptly forgot.) However, I listened later on iPlayer. 

Kate Adie’s introduction was typical. In just a few words she managed to refer to the UN and the EU, and include one “Israel says” and one “bulldozed.”

At first glance, it might seem to any casual listener that Yolande Knell was making an admirable attempt to give a balanced account of this tale. After all, she tells of witnessing the eviction of an Israeli settlement “illegal under international law” and on the other hand mentions the proposed construction of several new ones. She speaks to some Israelis and some Palestinians to find out what they think. 

The subtle difference between her approach to Israeli and Palestinian spokespersons is discernible to my twitching antennae, but that’s not the only problem we have with Yolande Knell, Kate Adie and the BBC.

In this particular essay she gives the impression that the settler family with the eight children and the American sounding name are religious fanatics who believe Palestine is theirs by God-given right.  

This might well be exactly the case. It probably is; but bringing it up quite so explicitly in this report, while omitting any reference to the religious (Islamic) fanaticism that underpins the entire Israel/Palestine conflict seems crass, if not deliberately obstructive. 

The issue of the legality / illegality of settlements is complex and convoluted. There are umpteen online resources available should anyone happen to be interested in finding out why “Israel disagrees” or “Israel disputes” that “settlements are illegal under international law” and on what legal precedents their argument is based, (the West Bank was annexed  by Jordan 1948 - 1967)

Though routinely referred to nowadays as “Palestinian” land, at no point in history has Jerusalem or the West Bank been under Palestinian Arab sovereignty in any sense of the term. For several hundred years leading up to World War I, all of Israel, the Kingdom of Jordan, and the putative state of Palestine were merely provinces of the Ottoman Empire. After British-led Allied troops routed the Turks from the country in 1917-18, the League of Nations blessed Britain’s occupation with a document that gave the British conditional control granted under a mandate. It empowered Britain to facilitate the creation of a “Jewish National Home” while respecting the rights of the native Arab population. British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill later partitioned the mandate in 1922 and gave the East Bank of the Jordan to his country’s Hashemite Arab allies, who created the Kingdom of Jordan there under British tutelage. 

Following World War II, the League of Nations’ successor, the United Nations, voted in November 1947 to partition the remaining portion of the land into Arab and Jewish states. While the Jews accepted partition, the Arabs did not, and after the British decamped in May 1948, Jordan joined with four other Arab countries to invade the fledgling Jewish state on the first day of its existence. Though Israel survived the onslaught, the fighting left the Jordanians in control of what would come to be known as the West Bank as well as approximately half of Jerusalem, including the Old City. Those Jewish communities in the West Bank that had existed prior to the Arab invasion were demolished, as was the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. 

After the cease-fire that ended Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, Jordan annexed both the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But, as was the case when Israel annexed those same parts of the ancient city that it would win back 19 years later, the world largely ignored this attempt to legitimize Jordan’s presence. Only Jordan’s allies Britain and Pakistan recognized its claims of sovereignty. After King Hussein’s disastrous decision to ally himself with Egypt’s Nasser during the prelude to June 1967, Jordan was evicted from the lands it had won in 1948. 

This left open the question of the sovereign authority over the West Bank. The legal vacuum in which Israel operated in the West Bank after 1967 was exacerbated by Jordan’s subsequent stubborn refusal to engage in talks about the future of these territories. King Hussein was initially deterred from dealing with the issue by the three “no’s” of Khartoum. Soon enough, he was taught a real-world lesson by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which fomented a bloody civil war against him and his regime in 1970. With the open support of Israel, Hussein survived that threat to his throne, but his desire to reduce rather than enlarge the Palestinian population in his kingdom ultimately led him to disavow any further claim to the lands he had lost in 1967. Eventually, this stance was formalized on July 31, 1988.

.....but it seems that for ease of comprehension (or deception, whichever you prefer) the BBC has rounded the complexity up (or down) to the nearest slogan, in the same way one might round up or down some fiddly numerical figure in order to simplify it. 

“That’ll do”, is roughly what they must have decided.  “In order to simplify all that guff about ‘who originally owned (or did not) own the land’,  we’ll call all settlements illegal, and say that they are illegally built on ‘Palestinian land’.”

What exactly is meant by “Palestinian land” when uttered by the BBC is unclear, but it obviously sounds good enough to reinforce the dumbed-down concept of ‘stolen land’.

Knell repeats the generalised Palestinian view that the removal of this outpost shows how hard it would be to take away other much larger Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but her earlier description of the homes, (flimsy) coupled with the relative ease with which the evacuation appears to have been  executed belies this message. As for “land they want for their state”, well, the operative word here is “want”. 

It’s when she reports her favourite falafel shop that the difference is most marked. The descriptive adjectives she uses to describe her Palestinian interviewees verge on the affectionate. 

Anyone would think that the Israelis are the religious fundamentalists and the Palestinians are rational, personable and hard-done-by. Not a single reference to Hamas or Islam, Jew-hatred or terrorism, none of which play any part in Knell-world.

Craig has kindly supplied the following transcription, which is over the page.

ThunderSnow

Over to Channel 4 News and this tweet from a disgruntled Jon Snow:

I think it's fair to say that the Twitter response hasn't exactly gone his way. Most have pointed out that Donald Trump isn't even in the White House yet and that, consequently, presidential responsibility for Mr Snow's distressing inconvenience lies with a certain Barack Obama. Naturally, some have also accused the Channel 4 News anchor of 'fake news'.

Meanwhile, back at the BBC, this morning's From Our Own Correspondent had a dispatch from the United States and you will surely never in a million years guess what it's starting point was. Oh,, you have guessed! Yes, 'fake news'. (Will every FOOC from the States for the next four years include a mention of 'fake news'?)

Kate Adie's introduction to this quite interesting feature began somewhat defensively:

Journalists - no exception here at the BBC - like to think we're accurate and as impartial as we can be. No one's perfect, but the intention is to provide clear, unbiased news. Not everyone believes that. And a mere glance at the extraordinary and abrasive press conference with Donald Trump, after lurid allegations had been made about the President-elect, had him pouring scorn on some sections of the media. He branded CNN "fake news", adding about the BBC: "That's another beauty". The words 'fake news' peppered his comments. The problem, according to history professor Robert Colls, is that in America in particular it's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish real, non-partisan news from other things that sound like news.

"Brexit, Trump, the refugee crisis, wars across the Middle East, terrible terrorist attacks"

If you were thinking that 2016 has been a good/great year politically-speaking (especially with the Brexit vote), then Kate Adie's introduction to this morning's From Our Own Correspondent might strike you as being strongly biased in the other direction. She had a little list:

Hello. Today, last day of the year, and we have something different on the menu. Quite a year! And many might say a thankful 'goodbye' to it. Brexit, Trump, the refugee crisis, wars across the Middle East, terrible terrorist attacks. What's the view from our correspondents far away?

Bias, bias everywhere. And not a drop of impartiality to drink.

Flag of Liberland

Today's From Our Own Correspondent began with a piece from Ireland by playwright Vincent Woods on how: 

...the political temperature has changed in Ireland as a result of Britain's Brexit vote and Donald Trump's Brexit Plus. In a country slowly recovering from its Celtic tiger mauling the potential consequences of Brexit come in a count of hard minuses and the potential fallout from a Trump presidency may add to our woes...

...thus combining negativity about Brexit with negativity about Trump (a double whammy).

Then the BBC reporter I suspected might actually have been crying with dejection at Trump's victory during BBC One's election night coverage, Katy Watson, told us about post-Trump "dejection" in Mexico. ('No me gusta'' might sum up the mood there). She sounded perkier today, bless her, but her tale certainly wasn't a cheery one and she let us into a secret (albeit a secret that wasn't hard to guess a few night's ago on BBC One):

As a journalist my job is to be impartial but it is impossible not to feel for my friends here. 

She certainly showed her feelings on Tuesday night. This morning, in contrast, she gave the Donald a thoroughgoing 'fisking' for his false impressions of Mexico, calling some of his comments "laughable". Courtesy of a friend (one degree of separation) she even got to name check "bigotry, racism, xenophobia and nativism" and connect them to Mr Trump and his supporters.

Hearing all of which (plus having seen her as the US election results were coming in), I don't think it's at all unfair to say that "impartial" BBC journalist Katy really doesn't like the US president-elect.

Liberland

After a piece on Somalia's "negotiated democracy" from Alastair Leithead full of classic FOOC alliteration and assonance (within just ten seconds I noted "complex clan conflicts", "mixed militia", "war tore" and "state structures crumbled"), came a piece on libertarianism in the Balkans (the would-be Free Republic of Liberland - "a gun-toting libertarian utopia", in Jolyon Jenkins's words - between Croatia and Serbia), provoked by the libertarian candidate in the US election (about whom Kate Adie was duly mocking in her introduction).

And, to end, there came a piece by our old (pro-EU) friend Anand Menon "tracking again across a pro-Brexit Europe" [as the programme's website puts it], "doing it again across borderless Europe, tasting the food and experiencing unity as well as division" [as Kate Adie put it, before being sarcastic about Donald Trump].

Our [anti-Brexit] Anand was tasked by FOOC to tell us how we in the UK are viewed by "other Europeans...at this delicate moment". He's still "amazed" at the EU's lack of borders - and he meant it in a good way, finding it wonderful. He used to love travelling across Europe by brain. They love English, "my mother tongue". But there's diversity too - good for food, back for politics. "The Brexit threat" in the Netherlands is that it might strengthen "populist firebrand Geert Wilders", for example. A Czech journalist "in perfect English" was angry about "how some Czech in England have been mistreated since the referendum". Can we capitalise on EU divisions and carve a great future from the EU? asked Anand. Guess what his answer was: No. "Sadly" not. Though they regret our leaving and love us, they are united against us over Brexit and will make us pay. Woe for us! "And isn't it just typical that, just as we're on our way out, the EU is discussing giving free Interrail passes to all its citizens from the age of their eighteenth birthday", he ended. Woe, woe for us for leaving the EU!

It really is amazing just how much bias From Our Own Correspondent manages to cram into half an hour. 

The return of the Migrant Crisis?

Thursday's first post-Brexit vote edition of From Our Own Correspondent gave us another chance to hear from one of the BBC's most opinionated foreign reporters, their Central Europe correspondent Nick Thorpe (a regular here at ITBB during the 'now-forgotten' migrant crisis).

Here he talked about the "fateful" British vote's effect on Eastern Europe. It's provoked "shock". "anger", "fear" and "insecurity" there.

And he had a personal message for us too:

People in Britain often tell me that Europeans don't like us. My own impression is the opposite. 

Wherever I travel in Eastern Europe people tell me how much they love the British for our idiosyncrasies, our awkwardness, our stubborn pints and unconvertible inches. We're respected for keeping our own currency and resisting the faceless euro. Our diplomats are admired for helping other nations end their wars and our soldiers for doing the job they were given and then going home. 

If that positive image of Britain in Europe were more widely known in the United Kingdom perhaps the result would have been different. 

(Might it? Are you, dear reader, now feeling 'buyer's remorse'? If only you'd known how much they love us!)

And the consequences appear to be wholly negative over there (at least from Nick's account):

The departure of Britain from the UK - if that actually happens - will deprive Eastern Europe of an important ally....For the countries of the Balkans it's a disaster. 

(Now see what you've done!)

At least the following report from India from Sanjoy Majumder gave a less wholly gloomy picture. Though the first half of his report (following an introduction from Kate Adie that began, "No one knows if or when the UK will trigger Article 50...") began negatively too, with "It's a disaster" as the main "refrain" in central Delhi, and lots of talk of "turmoil" and economic concern, it did, however, go on to say that lots of Indians now see opportunities for better business deals, and for much more migration from India  to the UK. Its closing line ran as follows:

"It's not all bad news," says one business leader, with a chuckle. "We may be able to help them out of their crisis".

And then came a story you - like me - won't have heard much of at all during the EU referendum debate. It's the story that many complained at the time was being conveniently 'forgotten about' by the BBC. But now it's back on the BBC, and here's how Kate Adie introduced it:

What with Brexit, political turmoil and terrorist attacks, news of Europe's refugee crisis has dropped off the front pages.

Ah, yes, Kate! "Dropped off the front pages", has it? It's the newspapers' fault, is it? It's not dropped even more markedly off the BBC News website, and the Today headlines, and BBC One's News at Six in recent months too?

She went on to tell us something you might not have known:

On the day of the referendum vote the Italian navy and coastguard said they'd rescued 4,500 migrants during that single Thursday.

It was then back to the kind of report which we haven't heard for many months. 

Freelance reporter Lizzie Porter reported from "a makeshift Afghan village" in Greece, where "increasingly anxious" people claim to have escaped the Taliban and "the so-called" Islamic State. She tells their stories, over sweet dates and tea. She seems to believe them. A little girl inspires her with her energy, but everyone else is depressed. "Don't you people in Europe watch the news?", was a refrain. Her closing words came from 'Habib':

If you saw us now you would not believe we are human beings. Pray for us.

For FOOC's sake!

Today's From Our Own Correspondent began with events in Israel. 

Being FOOC on this subject, impartiality largely went out of the window - especially as the featured correspondent was Yolande Knell.

Here's how Kate Adie introduced the report [with annotations in italics from me]:

The Israeli army has been deploying hundreds of troops across the country to try to combat the worst surge in violence there in months. Yesterday police in Jerusalem shot dead two Palestinians who they say tried to stab Israelis in separate incidents. [Note the ordering of this, placing the emphasis on killings by the Israeli, when the story ought to have focused on the killing of Israeli in horrific terrorist attacks. Note also the emphasis - and it was Kate Adie's emphasis - on "they say" (meaning the Israelis), casting doubt on what the Israelis are saying]. So far this month seven Israelis have been killed in attacks and at least 30 Palestinians have died [the BBC's ghoulish body count returns], including alleged [there's nothing "alleged" about most of them] assailants and several children. The Palestinian Authority president Mahmood Abbas accused Israel of "executing Palestinian children in cold blood" [referring to a false claim by Abbas that a 13-year-old boy had been executed by Israel - even though the boy is still alive] - a remark denounced as "lies" [well, it certainly wasn't true!] and "incitement" by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yolande Knell says the violence is fuelling a sense of panic in Israel and raising fears of a new Palestinian intifada or uprising. 

I could go on to transcribe Yolande Knell's extraordinarily biased report, which was much worse, but you can hear it for yourselves just as easily - and you'd be better doing so to get the full effect. 

Just to give you an idea of how bad this was, let me quote two positive tweets about it: 

When you check out their Twitter feed you discover that both Alison and Hugh are obsessive pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel social media activists. 

So if they find Yolande Knell's piece "unbiased" and "balanced" then you'll probably get a sense of just how strongly biased against Israel it actually was.


PS Yolande's new 'explainer' on the significance of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif  receives a fine fisking here (from Nota Sheep). Well worth a read.

I probably should have fisked her FOOC piece, but transcribing it and fisking it would have taken hours. Maybe tomorrow.

"From the decrepit heart of a half-destroyed city in a besieged and blockaded enclave..."

Today's From Our Own Correspondent featured another report from Gaza. 

This one came courtesy of the BBC's Roger Hearing.

Katie Adie's introduction ran as follows: 

It's nearly a year now since Israeli forces launched air and ground attacks on Gaza, in response, they said, to a series a rocket attacks launched from inside the Palestinian territory. More than 2,000 people were killed in the conflict and many homes and business properties in Gaza were damaged or destroyed. Rebuilding started some after a ceasefire was announced last August but progress has been slow. A blockade on the territory, imposed by Israel, has delayed the arrival of construction materials. Roger Hearing has been to see how one business has carried on, despite the difficulties.

We were introduced to a plucky Gazan businessman, Ashraf, who (in Roger Hearing's account) brings joy to the children of Gaza with his wonderful ice creams.

These are giggling children who play amid "the apocalyptic destruction you do see in parts of [Gaza City] from last year's war", children who don't know the kind of "safe normality" usually associated with long beaches and ice creams. 

Ashraf is proud of his shiny Italian gelato machines, but the suspicious Israelis made it hard for him when he tried to import them, thinking they might have "some other more threatening purpose". [Given the amount of weaponry that gets smuggled into Gaza from Iran and other places, who can blame them? - well, Roger Hearing, it seems.]

Some of the parts from those machines probably came through tunnels:

It's likely at least some of the machines were hauled through the tunnels under the border with Egypt, until that smuggling operation was closed down a few months back. Now that's a strange image: young men in pitch darkness sweating to drag huge boxes through rickety holes in the sand, and all so that Gazans could eat fine ice cream.

[If those tunnels had any sinister connotations - Hamas terror attacks, smuggling of missile parts, etc, Roger certainly wasn't saying].

Ashraf's 1950s American-style cafe looks colourful and bright, and he's right to be proud of it, said Roger [jauntily] "but [changing to a much less jaunty voice] grey and grim reality is never far away":

Almost directly opposite, across the road, is the wreckage of an apartment block demolished by an Israeli missile last August.

It took out all the cafe's windows, but [jaunty voice fully resumed] plucky Ashraf's cafe was soon re-opened.

And what about Hamas, "the hardline Islamists who run the Gaza Strip"? Well [jaunty voice continuing], they may ban men from wearing low-slung jeans [how nasty is that?], said Roger, but Ghazi Hamad, deputy foreign minister for Hamas, says Ashraf's American-style ice creams are "very nice" [which makes Ghazi Hamad sound rather nice].

All of this was building toward Roger Hearing's grand peroration, delivered with all the theatricality of a BBC reporter/presenter:

And I have to say - and this is one of the oddest things:  From the decrepit heart of a half-destroyed city in a besieged and blockaded enclave, sometimes described as the biggest open air prison in the world, comes the best ice cream I've ever tasted!

This report was almost a self-caricature of a biased BBC report from Gaza, wasn't it?

"You don't say!"

"You don't say!"

That was my reaction to Kate Adie saying, "The Palestinian territory of Gaza is no stranger to this programme" on today's From Our Own Correspondent. 

She added that Gaza is

...no stranger to conflict either. In recent years, devastating conflicts with Israel have left much of the Strip in ruins, while blockades of its borders have meant shortages of many basic goods, as well as anger, resentment and a sense of isolation. 

Yet another Gaza story followed. Tim Whewell went in pursuit of the only grand piano in (what he called) that "besieged concrete warren on the Mediterranean".

[Except that, in using that analogy, he didn't mention that the tunnels in the warren don't contain rabbits. They contain Hamas terrorists and - until Israel took action against them - a vast horde of rockets].

Sue’s addendum:

Oh Kate. 

“Israel’s blockade of its borders has meant shortages of many basic goods as well as anger, resentment and a sense of isolation.” 

No Kate; I don’t think that is the case. Basics are regularly trucked in by Israel, which, under the circumstances, is generous. The anger and resentment were there all along, and the isolation is the self-inflicted consequence of the Hamas’s rejectionist politics.

Tim Whewell ‘set off” to investigate. I like the sound of that, Tim Whewell setting off to “Investigate.”  Intrepid reporter, fearless and determined, sets forth, on a mission to find a moving story of the pathos -  and the triumph of true grit over adversity.

Whewell’s moving story is unintentionally injected with humour because it  involves a character named Fatty Arafat.  He’s probably called ‘Fati’ but Fatty Arafat has a Fatty Arbuckleness about it, which I like better.  Keep a straight face Tim lad.

A former Russian concert pianist married a Palestinian Doctor and suddenly ‘her music’ was whipped away from her. That’s what you get for marrying a Palestinian and settling down in Gaza. She misses her music.

The musicians of Gaza. Who are they? We’re not told why the music school has to be hidden in an ambulance station. Is music a bit unIslamic?

A charity has paid for a French piano restorer to bring the piano “slowly, lovingly, back to life.” So many ‘l’s for someone with an l-related speech impediment.

“We don’t have shelters underground in Gaza” says the earnest 15 year old piano student. “We just have to run for our lives” Whose fault is that? asks Tim. Only joking. (He didn’t )

Well, there are underground passages in Gaza, but they ain’t for shelter. Does Tim Whewell not know this?

Yes; Chopin and Beethoven fought a lot, and went through a lot too. The noble people of Gaza are like classical composers. Their struggles are exactly the same. Not.

"The revolution was very good for women"

From this morning's From Our Own Correspondent:

Kate Adie: Has the Ayatollah's revolution in 1979 eventually helped Iranian women rather than hindered them?

The answer from FOOC was 'yes', it has helped them.

Here's how Kate Adie introduced the report:

Now, the West tends to view the Khomenei Revolution in Iran in a negative light. It blames his regime for giving birth to an oppressive and conservative clerical rule which even today tolerates no opposition and not much more in the way of free speech. And yet could it be that history will judge him differently? Quite apart from overthrowing the corrupt and brutal regime of the Shah, the revolution introduced education reforms which have been of particular benefit to women. Amy Guttman's been underground in the Iranian capital to see what can be learned about the lot of women in Iran today.

And here's how the BBC publicised it on Twitter:

Did the #Ayatollah's revolution give women of #Iran careers and the men the freedom to do the washing-up? @amyguttman1's been investigating
— BBCFooC (@BBCFooC) February 28, 2015

Again, the answer from FOOC was 'yes'.

Kate Adie throws fireworks at Israel

Before listening to reports about Israel on From Our Own Correspondent I will admit to sometimes experiencing a tightening feeling in my stomach. I had that feeling this morning on hearing that today's FOOC was leading with a piece prompted by the recent troubles in Jerusalem. 

I expected the worst and got it from Kate Adie's introduction:

These have been days of mounting tension in Jerusalem, most of it connected with the Temple Mount or Haram esh-Sharif, a site sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike. Jordan recalled its ambassador to Israel earlier in the week after police used grenades, teargas and rubber bullets to disperse a crowd of stone-throwing Palestinians who'd barricaded themselves inside the site. Muslim worshippers had been angered by a campaign by far-right Jewish nationalists who want to be allowed to pray there. Kevin Connolly says there's no where in the Middle East, or elsewhere, quite as sensitive as this spot in the heart of Jerusalem. 

This, as you can see, placed all the blame on Israel. According to Kate Adie, it was Israeli police who provoked the Palestinian crowd and enraged the Jordanians. According to Kate Adie, it was "far-right Jewish nationalists" who angered the Muslim worshippers. No mention of the incitements to violence from the Palestinian Authority. No mention of the assassination attempt on Rabbi Yehuda Glick. No mention of the two recent murderous attacks by Palestinian terrorists in Jerusalem. No, it's all Israel's fault.

When Kevin Connolly's report finally came it felt like something of a relief after this highly-biased prelude. I'm curious to see what Hadar at BBC Watch makes of it though. 

I did smile, however, at Kevin's gentle mockery of one element of Christian sacred history (Constantine the Great's mother finding a piece of the true cross in Jerusalem), which contrasted with his complete absence of irony when mentioning Mohammed's horse. He didn't even mention its wings. He could have slipped in a little joke about it, couldn't he? - something along the lines of "Islam is very lucky to have a winged horse at the centre of its founding prophet's life. Judaism and Christianity don't have winged horses which, of course, makes them far less credible" perhaps? 

Burbling away

I feel a bit like the BBC at the moment: All I can talk about is Nelson Mandela. So here's another post on the same subject.

Tomorrow will see extensive coverage of the great man's funeral on  BBC One, the BBC News Channel, the BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4 and 5Live and, frankly, it's even getting too much for the BBC's Kate Adie.

DB at Biased BBC has transcribed part of an interview she gave to the BBC World Service: 

Paul Henley: Kate how are you taking to the Mandela coverage that has been pretty much across all the airwaves for the past week?

Kate Adie: It’s not been “pretty much” across it, it HAS been across and it’s been an example of eventism in television. Hours and hours of, as it were, a camera placed staring with no great reason for it to be there.

Paul Henley: But it’s the death of a world figure who perhaps inspires more people across the planet than any body else.

Kate Adie: Indeed, but that doesn’t mean you spend hours staring at nothing and with people burbling away. There is a fascination amongst the media with big events. They’re a kind of modern drama and they’re unscripted and they go on forever. And at times I think they do a disservice to the actual central figure in the sense that they turn it into this long-running soap opera and it devalues it. And certainly with Mandela what you have is an extraordinary life and when it comes to the end of it suddenly the media turns into this quasi-religious fascinated-by-individual-grief monster which in a way does not reflect well on the man and his particularly simple approach to life.

Couldn't agree more, Kate!

One of our own

From Our Own Correspondent is supposed to be amusing and off beat. It’s the correspondent’s personal take on a subject, in contrast to their real job, eagle-eyed reporting of newsworthy incidents, which crop up wherever he/she is deployed. Listeners hope and trust they can depend on him/her to enlighten and educate us, after having witnessed, on our behalf, all manner of happenings in strange lands and faraway places. 

Sometimes an episode is quirky, and sometimes informative and entertaining as well. But the personal take is nearly always pure BBC, especially when it comes to matters Middle East.

Take this fellow Andreas Gebauer, an assistant editor at the BBC world service. Not much on Google about Andreas, apart from a dispute about BBC pay.  

“... if the BBC has to pay Future Media and Technology staff in line with the market to secure services like the iPlayer, “why does it follow that [Thompson], as the DG, needs to be paid more than anybody else? There are plenty of football clubs who pay less than their star players.” 

At some stage he was joint signatory to a letter to the staff magazine ‘Ariel’.  

  “And in the BBC World Service, three of the six newsroom editors who wrote a pained letter to staff mag Ariel in February about fighting the cuts have decided enough is enough. Andrew Maywood, Andreas Gebauer and Peter Miles are all thoughtful and committed journalists.  It's very sad that they feel it's time to move on.” 

Yet here he is, still at the BBC, with a From Our Own Correspondent about the Middle East. 

He must have thought it was appropriate to compare Israel’s security fence with the Berlin wall. I’m sure he knows why the Berlin wall was built, but I think it’s fair to say he is not so well informed about Israel’s Security barrier. He must have simply absorbed the BBC’s default Israel-bashing assumptions.

I have a piece of the Berlin wall somewhere (don’t we all) in a jiffy bag. Some German friends sent it to me as a present. Maybe one day we’ll all have a bit of ‘Apartheid wall” amongst our memorabilia, and if we do it will be because the Palestinians have stopped encouraging each other to blow themselves up near Israelis, or creep into Israeli bedrooms and hack people to pieces. 

But that’s a long way off, and Andreas Gebauer will have to be very patient because it’s going to need more than a warm handshake between two wise and courageous politicians, as per his remedy for solving the Israel Palestine conflict.

In this odd FOOC he manages to cover nearly all the anti-Israel ‘tropes’ and insinuations, one by one.

I transcribed the whole thing so that I could clarify the words that made me uneasy. It took quite a while, but when I’d finished it the computer froze. There was nothing else to do but shut it down and lose unsaved work - which was as bad as I feared it would be. That’ll teach me. 

 But I am not one to have a massive fit when that happens, only a tiny one. I got back on my horse and I can tell you that this time I’m ‘saving’ every other word.

   

Let’s start by asking if there is really any similarity between the Berlin Wall and Israel’s wall. I mean, why were they built? There is a similarity of course in that they’re walls.

Kate Adie takes the BBC line. She isn’t convinced that Israel’s wall was really built to stop Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians, but she is obliged to tell us that “Israel says” that this is so. No doubt she suspects it was built to inconvenience and humiliate Palestinians and steal their land. 

Here’s her intro:

“Israel today released 26 Palestinian prisoners as part of a deal connected to the latest Palestinian Peace talks between the two sides. The Israeli Prime Minister has been telling his parliament he’s making a real effort to secure a peace deal with the Palestinians. Precisely what’s being discussed isn’t being revealed. The Palestinians are known to be concerned about the 400 mile long separation barrier Israel has built in the West Bank, to protect, it says, attacks being launched against its citizens. Seeing it has reminded Andreas Gebauer of another wall, the one that divided Berlin, and his native Germany.”

Andreas Gebauer soon gives us 'wall imagery'.  It’s like a verbal Steve Bell cartoon, with a bit of Banksy thrown in, but with an even higher wall. Palestinian suffering is alluded to with a  graphic tale of a sadistic border guard who made Andreas wait in the heat till he had to vomit. But that was the other wall. 

To follow, the ubiquitous contrast between Palestinian poverty and Israeli wealth, symbolising material inequality, the haves and the have-nots, and the reflexive, implicit condemnation of the Israelis, when the Palestinians' hardships are primarily the fault of the corrupt Palestinian leadership, both factions. This caricature echoes Peter Kosminsky’s anti-Israel fiction, The Promise. At the time it was feted as a carefully researched, scrupulously impartial, historically accurate representation, which misled listeners who mistakenly hoped and trusted him to enlighten and educate them, after claiming to have witnessed, on their behalf, all manner of happenings in a strange and faraway place. The opposite was the case, and the fact that Kosminsky has been busy rubbing shoulders with anti-Israel campaigners ever since totally demolishes his claims of impartiality. But the horses have bolted.

These tiresomely familiar Israel-denigrating insinuations are followed in rapid succession by ‘the water issue’, ‘settlements’ ‘expansionism’ (the ‘Israelification’ of Palestine)  and obliquely, ‘ethnic cleansing.’

The truth about all these issues can be examined in detail by anyone who cares to research them, but who, apart from a “Zionist”, can be arsed? 

Yolande Knell made no attempt to conceal her personal identification with the Palestinian cause in this ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ from 2011. She boasts of a friendship with a high profile Palestinian activist, confident that the listeners wouldn’t see that as problematic. She assumes they’d agree that the stereotypical Jew is ‘over familiar’ -  “swaggering” as Jeremy Bowen might say.

She recounts her ‘mischievous’ urge to express her Palestinian friends’ preference for the Arabic word Al Quds, just to insult the young Jewish passenger in the neighbouring seat who preferred the Israeli word Yerushalayim, and  implies that his little sister was badly behaved, while she was at it.

  

Her piece was all about the sinister sounding Judaisation of Jerusalem, on the theme that Israel’s expansionist aspirations threaten the Palestinians’ struggle for statehood. Everyone - any fule kno - that place names on signage are commonly doubled-up - in areas of Great Britain, particularly Wales, sometimes in Cornwall and even in multicultural Londonistan. 

“Land may be at the heart of the P/I conflict” she opines, erroneously. (Palestinian rejectionism is at its heart) Leaving that aside, land issues must be dealt with if the two-state solution is ever to come to pass.

Israel’s enemies have a compulsive habit of attributing their own ludicrous malevolence to others, and erasing traces of Jewish identity is exactly what Arab Muslims persistently do themselves.

“The biggest problems arise in East Jerusalem - which was occupied by Israel in 1967 and is still a mainly Arab area - although Jewish settlers are fast moving in, taking over Palestinian homes.” Says Yolande.

Palestinians and the Israeli Left feel that chucking Palestinians out of homes they’ve lived in for many years is very wrong, and they sincerely believe, (when applied exclusively to Palestinians) the fact that they’re tenants who won’t/don’t pay their rent is beside the point.

The Israeli courts have deemed that breaching the terms of their tenancies justifies their eviction.  It is accepted that legally the rightful property owners, pre-dating 1948, are Jews, despite Palestinian claims that some of the deeds are forged. 

For what it’s worth I think taking that line weakens the argument against the  Palestinians’ ‘right of return’, at least for Palestinians whose families owned houses in pre 1948 East Jerusalem,  if not for their descendants.

But the scenarios are not quite parallel. They differ because, a.) the Palestinians deliberately violated conditional tenancy agreements, and non payment of rents is a valid reason for legal eviction everywhere. 

and 2.) The Palestinians who vacated their pre 1948 properties did so while fleeing from of the Arabs’ intended annihilation of Israel, an act of aggression which failed. Losers weepers. 

Whatever land swaps and concessions are negotiated, Yolande Knell’s distaste for the Jews of Al Quds is pretty obvious. It’s all seen through the BBC’s particular prism 

Suddenly, a glimmer of balance. Andreas mentions Israel’s 1.6 million Arabs! 

But wait. “They were allowed to stay in 1948?” Allowed to?  By whom, Andreas? 

He seems to assume that the Israelis see the wall as a permanent substitute for ‘making peace’ and  concludes with some of his special, Berlin-wall-like, somewhat patronising advice: Israel! Knock down that ugly wall, and all will be well. 

Here’s my transcript:

“The story of walls and the promised land begins three and a half millenia ago, Joshua and the Israelites having escaped the pharaohs chariots have crossed the Jordan to take possession of Canaan, in their way is what claims to be the oldest city in the world, Jericho, surrounded by the mightiest wall; but it crumbles within days after the Israelites kept walking around it blowing trumpets of rams’ horns. 
Now a new wall has gone up in Canaan. It snakes its way across hills, follows motorways, hugs buildings, cuts through roads and farms. In the hilly countryside it stands out, an ever present reminder of the unresolved Middle East problem. Of course I knew it would bring back memories of the Berlin wall, which I’d first seen as a young boy.

When you stand next to it, as I did east of Jerusalem, the similarities are erie. The same prefabricated slabs, the same watchtowers. Even the graffiti; some angry, some witty. Only - this wall seems to be much higher. Eight meters I later find out, more than twice as high as the Berlin wall.

To most Palestinians, it’s impenetrable. Not only to would-be attackers, but also to the mass of Palestinians looking for work. The few Palestinians that are allowed to cross it may have to wait for up to four hours at a checkpoint. Again, childhood memories of Berlin come back, especially an incident when East German border guards let us wait outside in our car for two and a half hours in the blazing summer sun, until I was sick from heat stroke and vomited all over their lovely checkpoint. It felt good to see a border guard having to come across with bucket and broom to clean up the mess.

Three years later people in divided Germany felt envious of Israel when its forces reunited divided Jerusalem, while their own wall seemed to be there forever. But they were wrong. Against all expectations, it came down, and Berlin and Germany were one again. So, much bigger was their surprise when a few years later they saw a new wall go up just east of Jerusalem, not dividing the city, but keeping out its Palestinian hinterland.

The Israeli economy may be doing well, but that Palestinian hinterland is clearly suffering. Bethlehem, just a few miles from Jerusalem shows all signs of massive unemployment, stagnation and squalor. On the hill opposite, sheltered by the wall and overlooking the countryside like a modern medieval castle sits Har Homa, one of the many Israeli settlements that have sprung up east of Jerusalem. They look well built in their gleaming white concrete, their rooves not cluttered up with black water tanks like those of the Palestinian houses. Unlike the settlements most Palestinian towns and villages receive water for only a few hours a day. When you travel through the West Bank, you can’t help feeling that most of it has already been incorporated into Israel. The road numbers are Israeli, the bathing complex on the Dead Sea is Israeli, the Qumran Caves where centuries old Jewish scrolls were found form part of an Israeli national park. The road along the River Jordan, with an electrified fence facing the neighbouring Kingdom of Jordan is dotted with small Israeli settlements. The only Arab presence is a derelict barracks, vacated by the Jordanian army when it left in a hurry in 1967. And yet there is a huge Arab presence even in Israel proper. Head north to Galilee  and you encounter numerous Arab villages and towns, the minarets of their mosques and the steeples of their churches shining proudly in the sun. Their residents, now more than one point six million were allowed to stay after 1948, even given Israeli citizenship. The wall makes a reappearance on the way back to the airport, next to the motorway leading from Galilee to Tel Aviv, behind it the Palestinian town of Tu Karem(?)

To the right, in the distance, the high rise blocks along the Israeli coastline.

This is the point where Israel proper is barely ten miles wide, no distance for a good enemy army. Yet whether the wall is the answer to Israel’s undoubted security needs is questionable. Walls may, for a while, bring relief to a symptom, they don’t solve the problem itself.

The Berlin wall certainly saved East Germany from economic collapse, but it didn’t rescue it in the long run, creating hardship and huge resentment in the process. Similarly, Israel’s security barrier is unlikely to be the long term answer. It’s a blot on the landscape, and doesn’t help Israel’s image. What’s required now are two wise and courageous politicians to emerge on both sides, and fortunate circumstances. We may have to wait for a while, but so did the people of Berlin.

Ode to Joy?

Several news outlets have printed an article by Darko Bandic and Dusan Stojanovic of the the Associated Press entitled Little joy in Croatia as it enters the EU. 

The article says that support for EU membership is at 60%, which is not as high as might be expected. Ten years ago, when the country first sought entry to the EU that figure stood at 85%. Moreover, even that 60% figure masks the fact than only 49% of Croatians believe their country will gain benefit from membership. The reporters give voice to the fears of the 51% who don't share that optimism, though they balance that will more optimistic voices (albeit only cautious optimistism).

GlobalPost.com notes something similar:

Fireworks will light up the skies over Zagreb and other Croatian towns as part of the celebrations, but for many of the country's 4.2 million inhabitants, membership of the EU has lost its sparkle.

The poll it quotes paints an even less enthusiastic picture:

Recent surveys show that support for Croatia's EU entry is now just above 50 percent, while only one of seven Croatians wants fireworks and concerts to celebrate EU membership.

The Daily Telegraph similarly reports on "the doubts and apprehension of many over the decision to become the bloc's 28th member, particularly at a time of deep economic and political tensions within the EU". 

Its polling data suggests still less support for EU membership:

At a referendum in January last year, 66 per cent of votes cast were in favour - but as turnout was just 43 per cent, only a minority of Croats actually voted to join.

The latest polls show that less than half of Croats now favour joining the EU, with support at around 45 per cent.

I've been reading about this sort of thing for a few weeks now, so I was a little surprised to find the BBC's Kate Adie heralding a report from Mick Webb of (freelance writer for The Independent and former BBC editor) on this morning's From Our Own Correspondent with these words:

The European Union may not have had the best press in some member countries recently but in Croatia it seems there is enthusiasm at the prospect of joining the Euro club...Mick Webb tells us that Croatians are hoping that becoming part of the European family will help them deal with such matters as high unemployment and an economy languishing in recession.

...which, indeed, turned out to be the positive picture Mick Webb painted in his report of the feelings of Croatians towards membership of the EU, with a strong preponderance of hopeful voices being heard. 

Now, I believe the BBC still has a problem with pro-EU bias and I think this is another piece of evidence for that. ("The European family" indeed!) FOOC seems more enthusiastic about the benefits of Croatia's EU membership than the Croatian people themselves.  

Knell Keeps the Ball Rolling During Lull in Israel-Related Activities

Nothing much happening in Israel/Gaza at the minute, apart from a momentary flurry of interest when it looked as though the action in Syria was about to overflow into the Golan. Of course Syria isn’t Israel, therefore of relatively minor interest to the BBC, but lest the Israel-bashing audience gets bored and drifts away, in the noble spirit of the keepy uppie, Yolande Knell ferrets out some human interest stories about Gaza. She’s only making sure the plight of the Palestinians stays fresh in our minds, and that Israel’s bogey-man image doesn’t fade.

Introducing Knell’s upcoming tale of fortitude, long-suffering and cheerful inventiveness by the citizens of Gaza in the face of gratuitous Israeli aggression, Kate Adie primes the listener. She picks up a sledgehammer with which to drive the message home.

“At the zoo donkeys are painted as zebras. It’s an example of How the people of Gaza get creative to overcome adversity.”

“ Thousands of Palestinians marched from Gaza City close to the Israeli border the other day to demand the liberation of East Jerusalem, which was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.”

 The latter message-laden sentence bears no relation whatsoever to Yolande’s tale.

“Israel continues to impose sanctions on Gaza. Over the past decade more than a dozen of its citizens have been killed in rocket or mortar attacks launched from this Palestinian territory. The blockade limits the movement of goods in and out of the strip. Yolande Knell has been finding out how Gazans get by." 

Blink and you’ll miss it, but that was your ‘balance’. “More than a dozen Israelis were killed over one measly decade? “Hmm, less than one per year” thinks the listener.   

Yolande Knell:

“It took more than three hours for Khalil’s fast food order to arrive. But he didn’t mind. When he was handed his bucket of golden fried chicken in a carrier bag bearing the familiar KFC logo, it was still warm, and he savored the smell.”

Yolande’s strategy is to give a name to the subject, so the audience can more easily picture him and identify with his plight. The picture is of a normal guy, "Khalil", jus’ like any other normal guy who eats greasy crap.

“Workers for the delivery company Yamamah, Arabic for ‘carrier pigeon’ had picked up dozens of orders from a KFC branch in Egypt’s North Sinai, about 50 miles away, but they had to make the risky journey through a smuggling tunnel under the border to bring them into the Gaza Strip.”

Intrepid start-up enterprise whose go-getting entrepreneurs use their ingenuity where lesser beings only despair? Bunch of Hamas-appointed racketeers profiteering? Who knows.

“Not long afterwards, special deliveries came to a halt. Hamas, the Islamist group that governs the Palestinian territory raised questions about food safety, and clearly weren’t happy with the image of Gaza that was being sent around the world.”

Nice to know that image-conscious Islamists ‘really care’. Never fear, Yolande is here to fix the image thing. 

“Most of the 1.6 million people living here endure daily hardship and receive food rations from International agencies, their struggles largely caused by border restrictions that were tightened by Israel and Egypt in 2007, when Hamas, which refuses to recognise Israel, took control here.

Good Grief! Can we leave it there or need we mention the truck loads of supplies that trundle into Gaza from Israel, day in day out, or for the nth time explain why the restrictions are necessary? 

When you habitually gloss over the genocidal aspirations of Hamas and omit to mention that it is a terrorist group that considers all Israelis to be legitimate targets, does Hamas’s refusal to recognise Israel seem a very big deal? Singling out merely the refusal to recognise Israel from the bran tub of other incriminating aspirations embedded in Hamas’s policies makes a mockery of explaining why there has to be border restrictions. 

“The young entrepreneurs who founded Yamamah took the KFC setback in their stride.”

‘Keep calm and carry on’ is very likely their motto. Knell picks up her trowel once again:

“Over the last three years they’ve built a business that specialises in providing services that overcome the difficulties of everyday life in Gaza. On the streets of Gaza City the firm’s motorcycle couriers whizz past. They deliver anything from gas canisters to bank statements as there’s no local postal service.

“Business here is risky, but we try to think in a different way,” Yamamah’s owner Khalil Franji(?) told me. “The situation forces us to be inventive.” 

I’m assuming the Khalil whose situation forces him to be inventive is not the one with the KFC. 

“This small coastal strip of just 140 square miles has seen two fierce conflicts with Israel in less than five years."

Size isn’t everything to be sure, but Yolande doesn’t say how many square miles Israel is, or Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon or Syria, and since it’s common knowledge that the fierce conflicts she mentions were both ignited by activities from within Gaza, one might ask: if you don’t like it, why start it?  

While border restrictions have been reduced, there are still regular power cuts and a ban on most exports. This constricts industry and unemployment is high, at around 30%. “

Rumor has it that the power cuts are self-inflicted, but perhaps Knell hasn’t heard yet.

“Yet, from the  donkeys painted as zebras at a run-down zoo, to the classic cars repaired for everyday use, Gaza specialises in tales of creativity in overcoming adversity.”

Donkeys painted as zebras, eh? “amusing,” thinks the listener reflectively. “those damned Israelis, blockading zebras  - out of pure malice,” he mutters knowingly to himself.

“The glittering Mediterranean sea is clearly visible from Beit Lahia, so it’s something of a surprise to find Ayad Allated(?) here in a large plastic tent checking on some half million fish that he hatches each year, in pools. “The idea for my fish farm came after the Israeli naval blockade, because of the limits on fishermen,” Ayad explains. “At first people in Gaza didn’t know about freshwater fish, but now every household’s tasted it.” Ayad recently began experimenting with a system known as aquaponics and has herbs and vegetables sprouting from pipes fed by the waste water from his fish.  He’s also helping the UN agency train local families to keep fish on their rooftops and grow crops. But not all

examples of Gazan ingenuity have a practical purpose.”

 Is propaganda impractical?

“When I met the relatives of Mohammad Barakat(?) this week I recognised them immediately.

Recently they starred on a comic video that he shot on his mobile phone. Gaza Gangnam style was yet another parody of the south Korean musical hit popularised on social media. I contrast to the fancy lifestyles in Gangnam in Seoul, Mohammad showed Gazans resorting to donkeys when their cars ran out of fuel, and football being played in a field partly obliterated in an Israeli airstrike. “Some people outside think we just fight in Gaza, but that’s not true” Mohammad says.”We wanted to show how we live here, but in a fun way."

Eat your heart out Charlie Chaplin. The pathos; we smile through our tears.

 Next up: a Pallywood mobile phone production set amongst the rubble of former Palestinian homes randomly obliterated in an Israeli airstrike. “Is this the way to Amarillo”, starring balaclava-clad  Hamas fighters doin’ that elbow-waggin’ walk  with  Khaled Meshaal as Peter Kaye.

“And now Gaza has a new hero when it comes to changing perceptions.

A 23 year old singer from the Khan Younis refugee camp is through to the final stages of Arab Idol, the regional version of the Pop Idol TV contest. The story goes that he got stuck at Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt and arrived late at the place in Cairo where the auditions were being held. The doors were shut. He called his mum, who told him to jump over the wall. Once inside another contender heard him singing in a corridor and gave him his own audition slot. With his posters plastered across Gaza, whether he wins or not, his experience is being seen as another triumph during tough times.”

A heart-warming tale. Please pass the sick-bucket, Khalil.

In case the sledgehammer hasn’t driven the message in quite hard enough, the moral is Gazans are just like you, Mr and Mrs BBC audience. They love KFC, reality TV, and hate the Jooos.