AN MP speaks out against the BBC on Israel

Joshua

And, speaking of the Daily Telegraph, here's Peter Hutchinson at that newspaper's website earlier today:

"9.05 Gaza Strip - Israeli aircraft struck targets in the Palestinian territory again on Thursday as fears were raised of a new round of tit-for-tat violence. Israeli bombs killed four Palestinian civilians earlier this week while a bombing in Jerusalem killed a British woman yesterday."

Kishmein Tochas

Like last night's BBC News reports of J'lem bombing - spinning as a response to fatalities from Israeli raids on Gaza, without any reference to these actions following ongoing mortar/missile attacks on Beersheba, Ashdod, etc. from "occupied" Gaza

eeyore

Melanie, first thanks for being a voice of reason in the dark. From out here in Israel, that's very appreciated. Second, I'd like to draw your attention to the following statement in Sky's reporting on the Jerusalem bombing yesterday: "Police said the incident was a "terrorist attack" - Israel's term for a Palestinian strike." (http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Video-Jerusalem-Bus-Bomb-Foreign-Office-Confirms-British-Woman-Killed-In-Israel-Blast/Article/201103415959185). I wonder how such an act would have been called by British police if it happened in London...

Graeme

I always thought that Louise Bagshawe was not suitable to be a conservative MP. Looks like I was wrong. She will indeed find things out about the BBC and Israel if she investigates deeper. Perhaps she will stand up in Parliament all insist on the release of the Balen Report and then the mass dismissal of journalists and senior editors at the BBC.

Stephen Rothbart

Poor Louise Bagshawe. There goes her career for ministerial advancement.

Good for her for trying though.

I think we should stop calling the BBC and the news media anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic.

They take that as a badge of honour now, becasue it's now "cool" to be so.

Since Israel is clearly being singled out on the grounds of it being the only Jewish state by most of her critics, and a cursory reading of the blog replies by those that read the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph will certainly prove that point, I think we should simply label these people and organisations as "racist."

Because that is not so "cool" and yet that is exactly what they are.

Derek Pasquill

I have just read a science fiction novel (Asher - The Technician) which describes the suicide of an advanced alien civilisation.

It is possible that the BBC, the Guardian, the liberal left establishment - including most Tories - are well down the path of a similar, ritual hari kiri.

One wishes perhaps that they weren't so eager to display their moral smugness while engaging in this ludicrous activity.

Bob

It's entertaiment to fill up the the news at 6 o'clock slot

The Palestinians are the star Performers for the BBC so they don't let truth tarnish the reputation of their best storytellers

tom brown

Hear hear! Refuse to pay the license fee, to fund corrupt, dishonest "news" agencies, or overpaid purveyors of cretinuous trash, for that matter.

keep up the good work Melanie!

john

The BBC : The Broadly Brutalised Consensus on Israel.

Forest Fan

This is interesting if true...

http://www.britishmuslimsforisrael.com/BMFI/Welcome.html

Joshua

"The BBC : The Broadly Brutalised Consensus on Israel."

I actually have heard that organisation described as the Belsen Broadcasting Corporation. In actual fact, at least in one sense, nothing could be further from the truth:

Why the BBC ignored the Holocaust

'At the very end of the war, Richard Dimbleby made his historic broadcasts from the concentration camp at Belsen. In the light of the BBC's wartime policy, it comes as no surprise that these broadcasts mention only in passing the Jewish identity of victims, or that Belsen's gas chambers and the sheer numbers of its dead so shocked the BBC newsroom that they refused to use Dimbleby's reports until they had seen them confirmed in newspapers.'

http://tinyurl.com/dzn5t9

The Holocaust: why Auntie stayed mum

'Conclusive proof that the BBC avoided publicising the Holocaust until the war was virtually over comes from Paul Winterton, a wartime News Chronicle Moscow correspondent and BBC contributor. Eight months before Dimbleby walked into Belsen, he accompanied the Red Army into Majdanek, the first Nazi death camp to be liberated. His account survives in the BBC sound archive. Winterton speaks of "the most horrible story I will ever have to tell you" and describes in brutal detail this appalling extermination camp.

Winterton, now in his eighties, recalls the BBC's reaction to his broadcast. "I was given a kind of reprimand. They told me they didn't want this atrocity stuff. They seemed to think it was Russian propaganda."

Eventually, Winterton's dispatch went out in August 1944, but it was heavily edited and broadcast only on the overseas service.

There was an immediate outcry from the United States, demanding a war crimes commission, and Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, the British ambassador in Moscow, telegrammed London to seek clarification. The Foreign Office did its best to bury the story. "The Russians will manage this more effectively than we," one official was minuted as saying. "It may relieve us of unpleasant responsibilities in deciding what are and what are not war crimes," another noted.'

http://tinyurl.com/5s4ry9z

blue_&_white_avenger

Dear "Kishmein Tochas".
I don't mind at all what you write. It's just the minika that you've adopted.
Please go to the nearest ministry office or lawyer for a name change !!!

Louis Berk

Forest Fan

http://www.britishmuslimsforisrael.com/BMFI/Welcome.html

Difficult to decide what it is. There is no way to 'contact' the organisation. We should definitely hold out the hand of friendship if it is for real.

Anne K

Thank you Melanie for bringing Ms Bagshawe MP to our attention. If I was still resident in the UK she'd have my vote.

There was a similar article - also in the Telegraph - a few days ago by Guy Walters: A family is butchered in their beds and the world neither knows nor cares

The trouble with all this distorted reporting and the omitting of reporting of terrorist attacks on Israel si that Israel's response, whether arrests or tank or airforce missiles, seems to come out of the blue and reinforces the "criminal Israel" view of the average uninvolved reader.

Even worse - the average Israeli has no clue as to the biased reporting on Israel in the international media - as you yourself so ably pointed out on Israel TV recently.

MairT

Louis Berk
March 24th, 2011 3:18pm

Forest Fan

http://www.britishmuslimsforisrael.com/BMFI/Welcome.html

Difficult to decide what it is. There is no way to 'contact' the organisation. We should definitely hold out the hand of friendship if it is for real.

There is an email address on the page for further contact. :0)

Hannah

Thank you for speaking out and reminding people that Israel is not a villian. I've paged through your blog, am inpsired by your voice and will continue to read. Please continue to feel supported and to stand up for democracy, freedom and respect.

Merlyn

When I discuss the situation with people, they believe that the Israelis are attacking the Palestinians, as a people
... I then have to point out that the Israeli quarrel is with Hamas, not the Palestinian people, despite the ways in which the Hamas work to brain wash the Palestinians.
It is a finer point that people do not comprehend.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Time for a new UN Resolution equating Anti Zionism with racism, n'est ce pas?

David

One MP? Out of a House of Conmen of 660...well is a start...and it was a woman...again the fairer sex prove they have the biggest balls...if you know what I mean.

Nachman

My daughter who is a nurse dashed off this complaint to the BBC (she asks that you please excuse the spelling she was so angry when she wrote it)
"This wek during a peceful counter demonstartion held outside te SOAS the counter demonstartors were subjected to anti-Semitic insults of the worst type which have been recorded and one student was physically attacked and bitten on the face. Why has the BBC not reported this"
This was the response:
Dear Ms X
I am am looking into the matter you raised below but will need more detail to enable me to chase this with the police.
Please could you tell me exactly when this protest took place?
Many thanks
Jane Mower

My daughter emailed her a link to Richard milett's reprt on the story.
So our public broadcaster is apparently totally unaware of the vicious attack which took place against a pro-Israeli protestor outside the SOAS. I wonder if they would also claim to have no knowledge if the attack had been by and not against a pro-Israeli protestor. Something stinks at at Broadcasting House it is about time Parliament used a fumigator.

Derek BLADES

Stephan Rothbart, in a thankfully brief though unfortunately mistaken comment writes "... Israel is clearly being singled out on the grounds of it being the only Jewish state ..."

That is 100% rubbish, garbage, idiocy, etc. etc. It is also paranoid.

Israel is criticised for its brutal and predatory occupation on the West Bank. End of story.

david elder

'Context'? No context can excuse the act's depravity and the BBC's disinterest in calling it so.

Maybe we Aussies should build a dirty bomb and detonate it by the BBC building. The Poms gave us convict transportation here and Douglas Jardine, so there's a 'context'. So there's no need for the BBC to bestir itself ...

Lucashyde

Louise Berk and all who are interested in holding out the hand of friendship:
BritishMuslimsForIsrael@gmail.com

Neil Turner

I've written to my MP and asked that he support Louise.

Might I suggest all of you do likewise ?

I pointed out that the BBC routinely ignores ordinary people when we complain. Let's keep this story alive and get a result

Adam B.

Blades, Israel is indeed singled out - because it is Jewish. There is no other explanation. I don't expect you to understand - after all, you have on these very blogs laid the blame for antisemitism on Jews themselves.

Consider, if you will, the UN's Human Rights Commission. Until recently, this body included such bastions of human rights as Libya, which, indeed, held the Chair. Without exaggeration, it spends almost nine tenths of its time on condemning Israel. It has never uttered a single word against China and its brutal occupation and suppression of Tibet (let alone the fact tha China executes more people annually than the rest of the world combined). It has nothing to say about the totalitarian police states which surround Israel and wage war against her, nor does it have anything to say about the worst conflicts in the world. Up to 7 million people died in the DRC, in the decade from 1997 - and the UN's HRC did squat. 300,000 wre murdered in the genocide in Darfur (with the connivannce of China and the Arab League). Zilch.

Likewise, the BBC largely ignores the worst human rights violations in the world, yet remains relentlessly and obsessively hateful and biased against the one true democracy of the region - and the one facing an existential threat - Israel.

Rather like you, in fact.

Any thoughts about the Balen report and why it hasn't been released? Is it right that public bodies spend hundreds of thousands in public money in order to keep such information form those of us who have paid for it?

What has the BBC got to hide?

Truthtriumphs

Drek Blades.

"Israel is criticised for its brutal and predatory occupation on the West Bank. End of story".

Funny then, isn't it, that the actual inhabitants of the WB, not their corrupt, lying leaders, are desperate to stay under Israeli jurisdiction, because they're doing rather well there, so well, in fact, that by every yardstick, the standard of living there surpasses that of every Arab state in the region.
So well, that when it was mooted that Arab villages in the vicinity of Jerusalem be returned to the jurisdiction of the PA, there was vigorous opposition from the villagers themselves.

As a rule of thumb, Blades, people run AWAY from oppressive regimes, not towards them.

Your mendacious generalisations about Israel/Jews are fine for the malevolent and gullible, and the malevolently gullible, but the educated and sophisticated will treat them with the ridicule and contempt that they deserve.

Stephen Rothbart

Gosh Derek, and I thought they were being criticised for Israel's brutal and predatory war on Gaza.

Now I am totally confused.

How many Palestinians were killed on the West Bank recently? Not as many as Syrians killed Syrians last night.

You really have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

"End of story" - I doubt it. Nice Christian lady studying the bible blown up in Jerusalem yesterday, no doubt while attempting to invade the West Bank.

Got a smart Alec remark for that, Derek? Your brave Palestinian warriors did you proud, did they? All that trouble just to blow a bomb at a bus station and the only one they managd to kill (so far) was not even an Israeli. Just a gentle Christian Scottish lady.

Libyans killing Libyans, Hamas killing Fatah, Fatah kiling Hamas, Syrians killing Syrians, Egyptians killing Egyptans, Bahrainis killing Bahrainis, Lebanese assassinating Christians and each other, Iranians killing Iranians; such a big choice for you to pick a brutal regime from.

But as usual, you pick the Jew.

According to your favorite source, Wikipedia, paranoia was "also historically used to describe any delusional state."

I think if any one is paranoid it's you.

EDDIE

Although the BBC failed to report this properly, it was mentioned in the House by the Foreign Secretary. The victim was not jewish. In my opinion the BBC has blood on its hands because of the slanted way it reports this conflict

lucien

well done joshua. A sadly neglected part of BBC history which need coverage in the light of its current bias.
Surely it was also the FOs arabaism which caused this.

Merlyn

Neil Turner writes
March 24th, 2011 9:36pm

I've written to my MP and asked that he support Louise.

Might I suggest all of you do likewise ?

I pointed out that the BBC routinely ignores ordinary people when we complain. Let's keep this story alive and get a result

Thank you Neil, I have written to my MP Mike Freer MP. I have written to him before about the context of a BBC panorama program, to which he replied "The BBC has editorial freedom and the Government can not intervene."
However I pointed out that this is a 'News' program, and is expected to be impartial.

I would like to encourage others to bombard their MPs with complaints of this sort.

The voice of reason has to be heard and the voice of terror needs to be subdued.

Emmet Sweeney

The BBC is, of course, not interested in the truth. In fact, it fills very well the role of an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, whose only purpose is to indoctrinate the public in socialist claptrap. How long must the people of Britain supinely pay the license to these bastards?

Dave B

@eeyore
The source for the Sky piece you mention appears to have been Reuters.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/262948/unbelievable-jonah-goldberg

Fergus Pickering

I would have thought that sawing a baby's ehad off was a bit over the top, but doubtless I do not understand the legitimate rage of the peaceful Palestinian people.

Merlyn

I would just like to pass on that I have received a response to my complaint to my MP Mike Freer, who answered that he has already complained to the BBC.
He says ;
it is a very difficult task to define 'impartial' and to describe the terms on which politicians should be able to intervene.
However, The issue is that the BBC portrays itself as above other 'grubby' media and that it is somehow purer and their state broadcaster status conveys an air of 'respectability' it may not deserve. Perhaps removing the BBC from state funding might focus their minds.

I suggested there may well be others writing to their MPs who would lend support to this.

In other words , write to your MPs.

Andrew

I read this article on the Telegraph yesterday and another about the bus bombing.

This is the mention that the Fogel massacre gets in that article:

"Yet the mood at the scene of the attack, where hundreds of ultra-orthodox Jews chanting "death to the Arabs", cried out for retribution – not just for this attack, but also the stabbing of five members of an Israeli settler family, three of them young children, in the West Bank earlier this month."

Samuel Burke

The BBC fathoms new depths of media bias. The saddest thing is of course the Fogel tragedy itself. My prayers and condolences. After that, the next troubling thing in this whole affair is that I am not surprised by it. And when it comes to recruitment, like attract like. What right-thinking, self-respecting graduate would embark upon a career with such a harsh, illiberal views where dissent is not-tolerated, let alone heeded.

Is the BBC irredeemable? If not, what's the solution?

AF

Melanie should be in the House of Lords

Alex Bensky

You're quite right, Fergus Pickering, this is not an example of the legitimate rage of the Palestinian people whose peacefulness and desire for compromise are a byword around the world.

But when people feel frustrated what else can you expect? After all, this is the reason for the outbreaks of Tibetan terrorism around the world and the frequent bombings here and there by Kurdish freedom fighters. And who could forget the worldwide campaign of terror launched by the East Timorese?

George steiner

The decency left is statistically insignificant.

Michael White

Fergus Pickering
March 25th, 2011 10:00am
"...sawing a baby's ehad off was a bit over the top..."

Just a 'bit'?

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Derek Blades: "Israel is criticised for its brutal and predatory occupation on the West Bank. End of story."

That is 100% rubbish, garbage, idiocy, etc. etc. It is also paranoid.

Israel was singled out before the "occupation" - whether you define that as the "settlements" or the state of Israel per se (and you have steadfastly avoided the questions I have put to you about your belief in how real peace can be achieved).
You are disingenuos, nasty piece of work, Blades, and do nothing to advance anyone's understanding of the conflict, the history of the region and the way to achieve peace.

Luckily God pays debts without words...

Bryan B

I had a look at the Reuters article from Dave B's link and when I went back to it an hour ago they has edited it beyond recognition, removing the offending rubbish about the "Palestinian strike.

The article has misleading half-truths such as:

"Over 500 Israeli civilians died in 140 Palestinian suicide bomb attacks from 2000 to 2007."

Even if that statistic is correct it still ignores those Israeli civilians killed in terror attacks such as drive-by shootings and stabbings. It also ignores foreign civilian victims.

In other words, typical uninformed progandist rubbish from Reuters.

Eugene

There was a time when we, dissidents in the Soviet Unions, listened to the BBC. Now it's the biggest peddler of lethal poison around the world.

Victoria

Mel - in all fairness there has been scant coverage on the BBC or Sky of Israeli attacks on Gaza (which has killed a dozen or so, including children playing football) over the past few days either.

So you can HARDLY accuse them of bias.

Victoria

And also - is it likely we'd hear about EVERY domestic murder case over the globe? How often, for example, do we see coverage of murder cases (such as that going in relation to Sian O'Callaghan)in the Jerusalem Post or Haaretz? There has to be boundaries.

Victoria

Forest Fan writes:

"This is interesting if true...

http://www.britishmuslimsforisrael.com/BMFI/Welcome.html"

Shock horror! There ARE Muslims in the world that support Israel! Who thought it could happen?

If most people took the cover from their eyes they'd realise that many Muslims do not agree with terrorism. Of course, many are quick to generalise but too lazy to discover.

Truthtriumphs

Victoria
March 25th, 2011 3:21pm
"Mel - in all fairness there has been scant coverage on the BBC or Sky of Israeli attacks on Gaza (which has killed a dozen or so, including children playing football) over the past few days either.

So you can HARDLY accuse them of bias."

Yes you can!
It's why they won't publish the Balen report, which they commissioned themselves into finding out whether there's anti-Israel bias in their own organisation.
They didn't like the findings, so they spent hundreds of thousands of licence fee money suppressing the publication.

Even you cannot deny the obvious, but, on reflection, you probably will.

Victoria

Adam B. "Israel is indeed singled out - because it is Jewish. There is no other explanation. I don't expect you to understand - after all, you have on these very blogs laid the blame for antisemitism on Jews themselves."

I will second this comment by Derek Blades. Anti-semitism is, in part, created by the Jews. Or more specifically, not by Jews, but by the pro-Israel lobby whose views I don't think represent true Torah values and are more concerned with the ideology of being a 'Jew'.

Shulamit Aloni, an inspirational left-wing Israeli politician said once:

"Well, it's a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic."

In reality I think all but a few unfortunate people are actually against Jews as a religion. However, I rather resent that (as proven on here) one cannot criticise Israel without being labelled 'anti-Jew' or a ‘neo-Nazi’. I have criticised Britain on many accounts, but it does not mean I am against all British people. The notion is simply absurd.

You need to take your head from the sky and come back to the ground. If you love Israel truly, then you’ll acknowledge that eventually they will HAVE to bow to the will of the Palestinians if they want peace and stability. A further moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank would be useful. You cannot go on thinking that Israel has an unshakeable right to exist based on skewed Torah principles without looking at history my friend.

celato

I'd love to see how those people complaining about the BBC's coverage of the Fogel murders would have handled it if they were in charge...

Bearing in mind that there are thousands of other news stories from within the UK and around the globe that day, why does this particular incident stand out? (Remember, folks, we're competing with unimaginable destruction and loss of life in Japan, along with British involvement in Libya's civil war, not to mention a whole host of other crime stories, economic crises, political debates, scientific breakthroughs, celebrity shamings, etc, etc.)

Maybe you'd single out the Fogel murders because they were particularly gruesome. Or because there was a political dimension to them which might lead to further violence in a volatile part of the world...

OK, as gruesome slayings go, it doesn't come near competing with tsunami-scale horrors (and there are dozens of other shocking murder stories scrambling for attention too); so the "political angle" it is. Who are you now going to interview to establish this angle as "fact"?

Keep remembering: this is the BBC - so we can't go rumour-mongering or lending ourselves to partisan point-scoring. Israel's police? They're keeping schtum. Politicians on both sides are giving conflicting interpretations, so they're not much help. Damn, that means all we have left is a murder which might or might not be a terrorist attack for now.

Well, over to you new brooms at the BBC: are you going to feature it at the top of the agenda, somewhere in the middle, as a footnote, ignore it altogether? Wait till there's some new development (like military repercussions from Israel) which sets it firmly in a "political" frame?

Oh, decisions, decisions!

Victoria

And as to your starting comment to Blades:

"Israel is indeed singled out - because it is Jewish. There is no other explanation."

Wrong, actually. Judaism has nothing to do with it. When the State of Israel was created in 1948, the Arabs were effectively banished from their own land, punished for crimes committed by Europeans in WWII that they had no say in.

If you think this analysis is incorrect and you think you can give me a concrete historical analysis of why the Arabs deserved to be banished from their own land rather than integrated with (30,000 from Haifa, for example), I'd be more than happy to consider it.

Ron

Truthtriumphs says,"that the actual inhabitants of the WB, not their corrupt, lying leaders, are desperate to stay under Israeli jurisdiction, because they're doing rather well there, so well, in fact, that by every yardstick, the standard of living there surpasses that of every Arab state in the region.
So well, that when it was mooted that Arab villages in the vicinity of Jerusalem be returned to the jurisdiction of the PA, there was vigorous opposition from the villagers themselves."

Evidence please. In my extensive travels in the West bank everyone wants the occupation to end and wants a free Palestine. Ever been to Palestine to see for yourself what a brutal occupation really means ?

Victoria

Truthtriumphs
March 25th, 2011 3:51pm

Victoria
March 25th, 2011 3:21pm
"Mel - in all fairness there has been scant coverage on the BBC or Sky of Israeli attacks on Gaza (which has killed a dozen or so, including children playing football) over the past few days either.

So you can HARDLY accuse them of bias."

Yes you can!
It's why they won't publish the Balen report, which they commissioned themselves into finding out whether there's anti-Israel bias in their own organisation.
They didn't like the findings, so they spent hundreds of thousands of licence fee money suppressing the publication.

Even you cannot deny the obvious, but, on reflection, you probably will."

No, I do not deny it. They should publish it, otherwise it’s just more censorship of the truth which I have campaigned long and hard for. Not to mention a waste of money. I can see your point.

But your reply, my friend, doesn’t address my claim in that I don’t think the BBC has singled-out Israel. I think it rather likes to restrict its reporting on both Israeli and Palestinian matters because it’s such a contentious issue. And let’s face it, if they came out and actually supported the Palestinians on ANYTHING (let’s say they published a glowing profile of Mahmoud Abbas), they’d be accused of bias, or worse by the pro-Israel lobby. Perhaps if you guys weren’t so defensive of anything good or bad by Israel then people would have the guts to be more objective about both sides. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Victoria: "When the State of Israel was created in 1948, the Arabs were effectively banished from their own land, punished for crimes committed by Europeans in WWII that they had no say in."

You go figure why the UN did such a thing...Jewish conspiracy, I am sure, but what now, Victoria? Israel to commit suicide? Israel to genuflect before the Qutbist Islamists and wipe itself out - ridding the Middle East of the Jew, in the hope that all the other religions whose sole mission is the demise of islam will also be eterminated, wiped off the face of the the Earth so the one, true religion can make Man "free"...?

An "eye for eye", as Uncle Sayid believed...Your faux moslem-liberal crap will not bring peace to this region, nor any other.

Truthtriumphs

Victoria

"But your reply, my friend, doesn’t address my claim in that I don’t think the BBC has singled-out Israel"

But it does!
I'm afraid you are speaking from a position of willful hatred against the Jewish state....remember on a previous post you called Israel a "sick atrocity" etc. etc.

Here is a link to the study by a highly respected British litigation lawyer, Trevor Asserson, who has made a study of this very issue, although I'm sure you're mot in the slightest bit interested.

http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp511.htm

David

As related to you all in another post of mine about the struggle of Jews in Sweden [where many fled to escape brurality during and after WWII] this link below confirms that countries slip into mental illness. After spending the best part of 50 years building a country that resembled heaven on earth the liberal establihment decided they would gamble all by importing 600 000 muslims who have no skills and dont speak Swedish.Thus Sweden is dying at the hands of political correctness...now reffered to as political cowardice....

http://tundratabloids.com/2011/03/swedish-muslim-invite-known-anti-semitic-sheik-to-speak.html

Derek BLADES

Moral compass (as in lost it) and moral relativism (what liberals go in for) have been around for some time but contributors to this blog have recently gone overboard with moral bankruptcy, moral malaise, moral cowardice, moral equivalence, moral degeneracy, moral inversion, moral depravity, not to mention morally degraded and morally addled.

All that these moralists are saying is that their morals are better than the next persons and, more generally, the morality of Israelis is beyond reproach while that of their Arab neighbours is frankly pretty dodgy.

Time to think up a new word to insult each other?

TrueToo

Victoria,

The two Palestinians the BBC referred to as "children" killed playing football were sixteen and seventeeen years old. The murdered Fogels, referred to by the BBC as a "settler family" included a baby and two pre-teen children, singled out for murder because they were Jews. Those young Palestinians were not singled out by the Israelis to be killed but were killed in the course of an attack to forestall the firing of rockets and missiles from Gaza.

Israel has apologised for those deaths. Apparently a shell went astray. The Palestinian Authority has pretended to condemn the Fogel atrocity, having just dedicated a soccer stadium to the leader of the worst terrorist attack in Israel's history, in which thirty-six people were killed, including thirteen children.

The BBC's indifference to the Fogel murders stems from its exteme unwillingness to investigate what lies at the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict: the Palestinian refusal to recognise Israel as a Jewish state - which is the more "moderate" manifestation of the implacable intention to destroy Israel.

Derek BLADES

Victoria

To put the record straight I have never "laid the blame for antisemitism on Jews themselves". I have, like you I think, identified the actions of the Israeli government in the West Bank and Gaza as one of the causes for anti-Israeli - and by extension anti-Jewish -sentiment in the Middle East. I remain astonished that anyone could deny that.

I have noticed that you and Kate come in for particularly nasty attacks on this blog. I hope it is not because you are women. Keep up the good work of bringing a little balance to the debate.

aelle

The BBC's news coverage is clearly totally deficient.

I have searched in vain for any mention at all of Dirar Abu Sisi, an engineer from the Gaza Power Plant who disappeared a month ago while visiting his Ukranian-born wife's home country, to which they were apparently intending to relocate.

This gentleman was next heard of in an Israeli jail, where he continues to be held, without being charged with any offence.
It has been widely reported, but not by the incompetent or possibly prejudiced BBC, that he was forcibly abducted from a train in the Ukraine by uniformed men who seized his passport, interrogated him at length and then flew him to a prison cell in Israel.

The authorities in the Ukraine had no knowledge of this illegal abduction, which reports suggest was carried out by agents of Mossad acting independently.

While the family of Abu Sisi are understandably distressed at the abduction and continued detention of a relative, is it not reasonable to suggest that our national broadcaster should report incidents which clearly reflect officially sanctioned behaviour by the only democratically elected country in the Middle East?

TrueToo

Derek BLADES

But no doubt you would be horrified if anyone dared suggest that Arab terror attacks on Jewish civilians lead to anti-Arab sentiment.

Adam B.

Victoria says the following:

"Anti-semitism is, in part, created by the Jews"

That single sentence tells you all you need to know about Victoria. It is evil beyond belief that the victim of rac hatred is the one accused of promoting it. It is akin to saying that a woman who is raped has herself to blame.

That is not only intellectually falwed, it is morally degenerate.

Furthermore, Victoria calims that the BBc didn't cover the children (16 and 17 years old) tragically killed playing football.Yes they did - it was on prime time 10 0'cclock news last night. And notice how the victims are humanized (playing football) whilst Israeli victims remain statistics devoid of humanity. This is a trick the BBC repeatedly employs.

Victoria is also unable to differentiate between the deliberate premeditated murder of innocents and the tragic deaths of people killed in legitimate acts of self-defence against terror organizations who deliberately ensconce themselves in population centres to act as human shileds. There is no moral equivalency Victoria - and expunging all context from such tragic events is just moral and intellectual laziness.

She also repeats the same tired mantras about the Arabs being "expelled" - despite the fact that, for some inexplicable reason to her, 20% of Israel's population is Arab, whilst the Jewish populations throughout the Arab world, which were sizeable not so long ago, have virtually become extinct. How's that for ethnic cleansing Victoria?

Adam B.

Another gem from Viuctoria - she claimed that most orthodox rabbis were against the settlements. When questioned on this point, she then claimed that she said "many". The direct quote of her saying "most" was provided, and she went quiet.

Victoria, do you withdraw the claim?

Furthermore, you said that an 8 year old Palestinian girl was killed last weeked. You were repeatedly asked for a reference - which you failed to provide. We're still waiting.

I've started wondering whether Victoria isn't a plant to make the pro-Palestinian/ Israel bashing lobby look stupid.

Tilly

Truthtriumphs (and Louise Bagshawe, MP, Daily Mail, Melanie Phillips, etc, etc):

The BBC did not commission the Balen Report to find out whether there was "anti-Israel bias" in its coverage.

The research was conducted in response to allegations of bias FROM BOTH SIDES in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

I have no more idea than you do of what the findings were; but the longer your nagging goes on, the more I sympathise with the BBC for refusing to publish them.

If the conclusion had been that there was anti-Israel bias (even by a whisker of time or barely-perceptible nuance) you and your gang would become insufferable - demanding as much coverage as YOU saw fit, complaining at every "hard" question (however "soft" in reality), and redoubling your efforts to close the Beeb down if it failed to submit. The Palestinian complainers, meanwhile, would be incandescent and calling the report a "whitewash".

God only knows what your reaction would have been if the report's conclusion was that there had been PRO-Israel bias...

Somehow, I just can't see you taking that lying down. I've got a feeling that even if the finding was of perfect equity to both sides you'd be huffing and puffing and threatening to blow the house down.

So perhaps it is best that the BBC quietly acts on whatever the findings were, sorts out any problems identified, and just lets you seethe - as you're going to do anyway.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Derek Blades: "I have, like you I think, identified the actions of the Israeli government in the West Bank and Gaza as one of the causes for anti-Israeli - and by extension anti-Jewish -sentiment in the Middle East. I remain astonished that anyone could deny that."

At last this schmoe owns up to what too many have been repeating ad nauseam on this blog i.e. that it is NOT only the settlements issue and the Gaza war which has caused not only anti Israel but also anti semitic feeling amongs so many - Arab, moslems, and faux liberals like Blades, Victoria etc.

This lot have by and large been jew haters and Israel haters for years before Israel had anything to do with the West bank and Gaza, not to mention before the state of israel even existed.

The Arab and Moslem world - in general - has been a paradigm of anti semitism. The Jews - didn't you know - are the singular greatest threat to Islam. It is therefore the moslems religious duty to get rid of the Jew threat to the one true faith.

Islam is at war with all other religions and secularism. It's a simple fact. Islam is also at war with itself.

Hopefully it will keep itself more preoccupied with attacking itself than attacking Israel and Jews...

Shiite and Sunni: may God give you both strength to keep up the preoccupation with silencing the other.

Adam B.

Tilly, whatever the Balen report says, it is absurd that the BBC has spent hundreds of thousands on keeping the findings quiet. This is a public body - paid for by us. If you are happy to live in a society where the state broadcaster wants to keep secrets from you (whilst you pay for the privilege), then you and I have very different notions about what a free society entails.

The BBC is institutionally and viscerally hostile to Israel, and has been so for years. Do you realy want a run down of its bias?

Alex Bensky

Actually, Victoria, if the Arabs had accepted the UN's partition plan in 1947 the some total of Arabs displaced in 1948 would have been none. But as usual, among all the peoples of the world only the Arabs are allowed to launch wars, lose wars, and suffer no consequences.

Not all the Arabs left; some stayed and today despite some indubitable problems they enjoy a level of freedom unheard of in the Arab world as a whole. Incidentally, the number of Arabs who left Israel--for various reasons; by no means all were forced out by Israel--is about the same as the number of Jews who left Arab lands after 1948. None of them is in a camp today but somehow bringing this up is considered by the way, not pertinent.

guillaume

Though never a subscriber, I used to buy the Spectator every week during the 80s and 90s. I stopped buying it only because I emigrated from the UK (for personal and sentimental reasons) and it therefore became too expensive. If this and the other blogs signed by Melanie Phillips are indicative of the current readership of the Spectator, I'm very glad I left when I did. The Spectator now seems to be merely a supplement to the Daily Mail.

Emet

Anne K refers to an article by Guy Walters, also in the Telegraph, that makes it clear that the Fogel family massacre was given about the same status by the BBC as it was by other news media in the UK, and globally. Walters bemoans the thin reporting. But, possible breaches in nuclear reactor containment buildings top just about anything, not to mention the rest of the tsunami and earthquake damage. Then, there is Libya, Yemen, Syria and the rest.

In a sense, we already knew the Fogels' story, just not the names or the numbers. The conflict has a settled rhythm. Some violent gesture is made by Palestinians, whether in response, to a recent event or not, and then a violent response by the Israelis. But no surprise, the legitimacy of Israel's presence is completely rejected in the West Bank.

We all caught up on events in due course. The BBC did just fine on this occasion. The Balen report should be released. But the idea that somehow the interpretation of this conflict is susceptible to extensive reassesment, by a large segment of the UK population, is fantasy.

The Fogels should have gone to live in Israel. They would have been welcome there. Bagshawe should have written that.

Merlyn

aelle writes
March 25th, 2011 11:07pm

Merlyn,

Thank you so much for your suggestion that those dissatisfied with the BBC's coverage of world events should write to their MP.

Living as I do in a charming area of North West London, established by Dame Henrietta Barnett and her Oxford educated clergyman husband, but now something of an "occupied territory", it comes as little surprise to me to discover that we share the same MP."

when you write "occupied territory" in quotation marks as you do, it rather gives your bigotry away does it not?

Please feel free to write to whom ever you please, although I think you will find that there is rather more documented evidence [that I have sent him], to support racial hatred towards the Jews coming from the media and the BBC than what you have to offer through your thinly veiled Jew hatred.

Jon_Boy

aelle,

when you refer to north west lonodon as 'occupied territories' do you mean because it is an area where the UK Jewish community lives?

Ron

Truthtriumphs,where is your response ? Where is the evidence that people in the West Bank would rather live under Israeli rule ? Or is your name just another zionist distortion and therefore ironic ?

Tilly

Adam B

I fear your understanding of the Balen case has been skewed by biased reporting.

The BBC did not "spend thousands on keeping it quiet" - the mounting costs were incurred because the man who applied to see the Report refused to accept a ruling that he was not entitled to do so BY LAW.

If you look at the saga in its entirety, you will see that apart from one tribunal's (faulty) interpretation of the Freedom of Information Act (FoI), every court in the land supported the BBC's reason for refusing to publish the findings. It would not have been NECESSARY to go to every court in the land at vast public expense if the applicant, Steven Sugar, had accepted the initial - perfectly correct - ruling against him under the FoI.

Cost out of the way, was the Beeb justified in withholding the Report, EVEN THOUGH the FoI gave specific protection to information of this sort? Surely there was leeway to chuck the Act out of the window on this particular occasion, given the huge clamour to know what the Balen Report contained ...?

I might well have had some sympathy with this argument if it were not for two things - 1. the certainty of negative reaction, WHATEVER Martin Balen's findings might have been (see my post, March 25th, 7.24pm); 2. The BBC's counter-argument that if it had made an exception in this case, it would then have come under intense (perhaps irresistible?) pressure to release all documents relating to the way it covered news.

The FoI exempts the BBC from publishing documents "held for the purposes of journalism" in order to maintain its independence - so that it does NOT become an instrument of State (or, as you wrongly perceive, "the state broadcaster"); it also needs to be independent from commerce, the police, social agencies, charities and a whole host of lobbyists - including those representing Israel and Palestinians. If you think the Beeb is biased now, just imagine how much more difficult it would be to strive for impartiality when every internal decision made, every discussion and review held, was likely to be observed at every turn by pressure-groups determined to influence those debates to their advantage.

As it happens, I do think too much protection is given to certain fields of information under the FoI, but this is not one of them. If you worried more about matters kept from the public gaze about how the country is run and what commercial companies are up to, your energies would be a lot better spent.

And no, I don't want a run-down from you about the BBC's "bias against Israel" - it would be far too selective, one-sided and limited, and wouldn't include any examples of "anti-Palestinian bias" at all. Sorry, Adam, but I just don't think you could be impartial enough!

wonderer

@aelle
March 25th, 2011 11:07pm
'..a charming area of North West London, established by Dame Henrietta Barnett and her Oxford educated clergyman husband, but now something of an "occupied territory"..'

The most charitable response to that allusion is that it demonstrates conclusively the need for the state of Israel to exist.

btw is Tower Hamlets something of an "occupied territory"?

where's_the_beef?

A coincidence that protesters attacked a Jewish owned store in Oxford Street today? I think not. Jewish stores and broken glass; where have we seen that before...?

Mr R

Aelle's comment that hampstead Garden Suburb is an occupied territory is completely offensive and beyond the pale. It does not advance the argument and is a perfect example of hate speech. What it shows is exactly where she stands on anti-Semitism. (Her subsequent "explanation" is ludicrous and laughable. Except it is not funny at all.)

Herzen

Ron
March 26th, 2011 9:52am
If I were given the choice, second class citizen in a first world economy or inhabitant of an impoverished ghetto, I would choose the former. It may not be noble but it is rational.

daniel maris

I think this is getting a bit hysterical. Does the Israeli press report the murder in the UK of say an Asian taxi driver for racist reasons? Does Melanie berate Israel Army Radio for not featuring such news in their headlines?

These murders were foul and horrible, but they don't much impinge on our national well being one way or the other. Everyone already knew that most Palestinians view Jewish settlers on the West Bank with undisguised hatred and that there is a fanatical core who are prepared to undertake horrible murders (as did the IRA in Ireland and England).

Meanwhile, there are very big events going on throughout the Arab world which may make the world a much better place or, alternatively, a much more dangerous place...and people are watching events - which we are now directly involved in through our armed forces.

Tilly

where's-the-beef:

I've seen a great many loony claims of anti-Semitism in these blogs - but yours takes the biscuit.

Top Shop in Oxford Street wasn't damaged because it is a "Jewish store", but because it's part of of a chain accused by protesters against government spending cuts of costing the Exchequer billions in lost tax revenue.

The Arcadia chain is owned by Sir Philip Green, whose Monaco-based wife was paid over a billion in dividends. This was widely reported; hence, the focus on his enterprises.

The fact that Green happens to be Jewish is of no relevance whatsoever. But just in case your paranoia is too deeply rooted to be dislodged by this assurance, other businesses "named and shamed" during the protests have included Boots, Vodaphone, HSBC and Barclays.

Reuven

The gross and consistent distortion of Israel news from the BBC and others has become the norm. This is surely a symptom of a sick society in Britain, if not much of the world. Thanks Melanie for keeping a finger on the pulse.

Grumpy true Zionist

watching events in jordan unfold on my favourite terror network - al jizeera

in the popular vernacular 'i'm loving it'

time to bid farewell to the little hashemite and his trophy palistinian, and open the doors, so that all the brothers and sisters, temporarily residing on the east bank of the jordan river, can now go and join their bretheren in amman etc

this is the only logical outcome for the so called 'west bank', as well as gaza being absorbed into the new 'democratic' egypt

as my section commander would say 'chikchuk'

Adam B.

Tilly, don't be sorry. As one who has exhibited a relentless animosity to the Jewish state on these blogs, I don't expect you to understand.

The BBC has a long history of bias against Israel - namely because most of its journalists are from the left. The information chronicling this sorry tale is freely available for anyone who wishes to dig a little deeper.

I don't believe public bodies like the BBC should be withholding the findings of internal investigations which specifically relate to its impartiality. It is a pity that you do.

Grumpy true Zionist

sorry targeting problem;

should read 'temporarily residing on the WEST bank'

re-calibrating

Tilly

Adam B

Could you (or anyone else) please tell me what you mean by "left" in describing anyone critical of Israel? I genuinely don't know what values, principles, beliefs, etc, you're talking about when this label is applied.

David

Adam B.
March 25th, 2011 7:13pm
Victoria says the following:

"Anti-semitism is, in part, created by the Jews"

Adam...your not getting the proof of Victoria's story about fictional Jews killing fictional palistinian babies because she is nothing more than a lier. Until she has provided the proof of her idiotic little attempt at pulling wool over our eyes she should be banned from this forum. If you tell the lies she does in an attempt to deflect from the grotesque horror of the murder of the Fogel family then she has no right to add anymore opinions...making up lies as she does. As I said before...the Fogels are shat upon with more honesty by Vultures.

Mrs.Josephine Hyde-Hartley

In my view what is being deliberately ignored through this travesty of reporting is not just the human tragedy of this terrible massacre but any semblance of mindfulness about the normal processes of policing and keeping the peace. I understand some internet news web-sites don't allow members of the public to comment about things currently going on through the courts. One wonders if some kind of better regulation should help media organisations and commentators generally including our members of Parliament who, like Melanie on another page in this Spectator site, occasionally seem actually to know something so important it may be of interest to the normal police as they try to do their jobs..But how can we know that this family has been murdered by Arabs, terrorists, nutters or even somebody with a terrible mental illness?

blue_&_white_avenger

Dear Grumpy - 26 6:12 - well done
Anne K: thaks for the Guy Walters link in the Telegraph - I would never otherwise have found this.

As for Victoria, writing about Haifa & its pre-1948 Arab population. I happen to have lived there & I can assure you that your surmise is completely wrong.
Firstly, there was a semi-war going on from the time of the UN vote in 1947, when Kawki's militia from Iraq invaded the country; he was beaten back by the Hagana. But the Arab notables of Haifa & anyone with wealth ttok fright & left pronto for Lebanon, leaving a vacuum in the Arab leadership.
With Hagana's conquest of Haifa, Arabs were given surrender terms; they were begged to stay. But quite suddenly, most bolted - & the Brits provided army lorries to facilitate their evacuation.
Nevertheless, today, there is a sizable Arab population in down-town Haifa with excellent cooperation between the various peoples

Ann

"Israel is criticised for its brutal and predatory occupation on the West Bank. End of story."

Just the usual hysterical distortion from Blades.

celato

David:

If everyone who told lies or relayed stories without evidence was banned from this forum, you'd cut the contributors by at least half - and most of them would be from the pro-Israel camp. Not a good idea.

daniel maris

Adam B,

I think you have a very short memory. Israel was once beloved of the Left. The independence fighters got arms from socialist Czechoslovakia. Stalin was one of the first to recognise the new state. Harold Wilson and other members of the Labour Party were great supporters. The Tory imperialists tended to be pro-Arab. I remember lots of positive stuff about Israel on the BBC from my youth.

However, things move on. Israel is far less secular and socialist than it used to be (the Kibbutz movement has declined and Orthodox Jews have got their hands on goverment).
The late 50s and 60s saw the anti-colonial movement gain ascendancy within the Left and the Palestinians naturally enough have presented Israel as a colonial country.

The Israelis with their settlement policies in the Golan Heights, Sinai, Gaza and the West Bank have played into the hands of the Arabs, Islamists, and the anti-semites.

Gil

To Tilly@5.42:

Dear Tilly, Ann Summers in Soho was also attacked. So now we have two shops identified with Jewish ownership. Please pull your head out of the sand.

And regarding your comparison with Boots, Vodaphone. More propaganda. Philip Green was singled out in caricatures in the last demonstration.

Gil

Victoria, what's the point you ar making about the Arabs of Haifa in '48? As you probably know (but prefer to gloss over), the mayor of Haifa at that time pleaded with the Arabs of Haifa who had lived in peaceful co-existence with their Jewish neighbours NOT to leave the city. Yet, exhorted by the leaders of the Arab states they did leave. Those that remained, carried on living in peaceful co-existence with the Jews.

Mark2

Tilly You say

"If you think the Beeb is biased now, just imagine how much more difficult it would be to strive for impartiality when every internal decision made, every discussion and review held, was likely to be observed at every turn by pressure-groups determined to influence those debates to their advantage."

This a bit disingenuous is it not? No one has suggested that every paper etc should be released. The BBC itself comissioned a report on a matter of public interest - the way it reported on news relating to a particular part of the world. It is hardly surrprising that there is pressure for the report to be released. Indeed I cannot see any reason why all such reports as a matter of principle should not be be released. The impartiality of the BBC is said to be something it prides itself on. If so surely it should release any general report it commissions into any such queztion as a matter of course. How otherwie do we the public know how it is fullfilling it remit? I am by the way well aware of "floodgates" principle to which you appeal here but as someone with some FoI exerience I can assure you it isn't generally a winning argument.

You add:

"I have no more idea than you do of what the findings were; but the longer your nagging goes on, the more I sympathise with the BBC for refusing to publish them."

Do you also then lack sympathy then with those who fought long and hard for inquiries etc in the cases of Watergate, the Iraq inquiry, Bloody Sunday and I was going to add the Dreyfus case but suspect I know your answer to that!

Mark2

Daniel

I agree that Adam B is less than fair on the left's record towards Israel. However your arguments are rather flawed. Arab regimes in the 50's and 60's made similar appeals to socialism that have now turned to dust. And the Arab world has almost certainly become even less secular in the interim than Israel. For all the power you attribute to Israel's religious parties a gay person say, would have a better life (any life!) in Israel than almost any Arab country. Can you imagine a Gay Pride march in any other middle eastern country than Israel?

The real problem with the left and Israel is its hatred of the US (and so of any of its allies) along with the left's shameless and ultimately self defeating alliance with Islam which is its answer to the indifference towards it of the indigenous (mainly white) working class. The rise of groups like the BNP and EDL is the result but the left (I should in all fairness say perhaps only a significant part of it) is too ideollogically disorientated to see it.

Truthtriumphs

Aelle.

"I am writing forthwith to ask him to enquire why the BBC have chosen to ignore the scandalous abduction and imprisonment without charge of a Palestinian engineer by agents of the Israeli government acting in contravention of all international laws outside their own territory".

Believe it or not, it's what countries do to protect their citizens from terrorism, and quite right too.
You evidently, prefer the law of the jungle, whereby terrorists are free to carry out wholesale murder.
There was very good reason why Israel acted as she did, and all right-thinking people should support her.
I suppose, by extrapolation, you disapprove of Israel's abduction of Eichmann in the 60s.
I love it how armchair socialists like you, living in the safe and rarified atmosphere of the Hampstead Garden Suburb, like to moralise as to how those living with wolves at the doorstep, should conduct their lives.

Adam B.

Daniel, what you say is true (such a period is before my time - so I don't remember it!) but ultimately, it is irrelevant. For the past 30 - 40 years, the obsessive Israel bashing we have been witnessing in parts of the West has been overwhelmingly from the left. And the left's early support (for example, Stalin's) was pretty short lived, once the Communist bloc realized Israel was not going to join their tyrannical authoritarian club. It wasn't long before the Communist bloc was spouting the same "anti-Zionist" propaganda we now see from certain segments of western opinion formers.

artcohn

"Lord Patten". Isn't that Chris Patten, who as EU representative for Israel/Palestine affairs showed horrific prejudice against Israel.

Jeanne

Dear Melani,
at last somebody began to write the truth about situation in Israel. Usually if Israel attaks Gaza in respons to 40-50 or more missiles from Gaza to Israel we usually can read in the newspaper all over the world only about israely cruel attack but never about missiles from Gaza.
My English is limites otherwise I could give you many examples of jornalists' preconception to Israel.
I am very grateful to you for your articles about last events in Israel.Jeanne Goncharova

Ron

Herzen,I appreciate your comment but the point I was making is that people like Truthtriumphs make statements about things they know nothing of and produce no evidence when pressed.
I have spent more than a year of my life in the West Bank and the 'terrorists' there are some of the settlers and the IDF. How many people who contribute to blogs such as this one know, for example, that some Palestinian schoolchildren in the South Hebron hills have a military escort for part of their journey to school each day because they are regularly attacked by violent settlers, some from the US, France etc, who are stealing land. The IDF protect these settlers and rarely uphold the law.
The Palestinians there just want to live their lives peaceably and want the occupation to end.I have never heard any Palestinian say they would like to live under an Israeli government.

Freddo

Something else that the BBC failed to report:
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/33411

Though they're normally very much in favour of marches.

Ed

Mark2:

" For all the power you attribute to Israel's religious parties a gay person say, would have a better life (any life!) in Israel than almost any Arab country."

Really?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/03/gay-shooting-tel-aviv

JOHN ROOSEVELT

A word from the venerable ROBIN SHEPHERD to Tilly and all those who feel Israel is fairyl reported on by the BBC:

"Malicious BBC anti-Israel bias shows up again after Jerusalem bombing"

Now this is not the kind of instance of BBC bias to have you performing a karate kick at your TV set. But in its way, it tells you a lot about the propagandistic mindset that rules the BBC newsroom. After yesterday’s bomb attack in Jerusalem — such attacks are always carried out by “militants”, according to the BBC, not “terrorists” — a line of vital context is introduced in the reporting to tell readers that bomb attacks are much less common than they used to be.

“Jerusalem suffered a spate of bus bombings by militants between 2000 and 2004, but attacks had stopped in recent years,” the report said. What? They just “stopped”? Like yesterday afternoon it “stopped” raining? An act of God, perhaps? As fully paid up opponents of the security barrier and of pretty well every other security measure taken by Israel in recent years the BBC knows full well what it is doing here.

It was clearly necessary to tell readers that it has been quite some time since anyone has carried out an attack. But for an anti-Zionist outfit like the BBC, this poses a problem. Everyone who follows the story knows that Israel has taken radical steps to prevent terror attacks and that such self-defensive operations are always referred to by the BBC as themselves functioning as a “root cause” of terrorism.

For an objective and unbiased news organisation it would be compulsory to point out that Israel has taken such steps and that, therefore, it is now incredibly difficult to mount terror attacks though, of course, no security system is foolproof. But this doesn’t quite fit the narrative, does it? So the BBC simply omits all mention of the matter leaving the reader in a state of blissful ignorance.

As I say, nothing to get overly excited about. But a nasty and malicious piece of reporting nonetheless."

One wonders if Tilly believes any bad press or, indeed, bias, defamation...anything to denigrate Israel - is not justifiable. After all, he feels, does he not, that Israel is ilegitimate per se..i.e in terms of moral law, if not some other form of it.

..which really underscores why debating him, Victoria, Blades, Celato on events or specific issues regarding the conflict, is otiose.

Once you buy into the politics of slaughter; apologise for a regime like Iran; give scant regard to how Islamism has defined this conflict and not secular nationalism and some romanic form of 19th century Western liberalism; once you accuse an Israel of being equivalant to Apartheid South Africa or a Nazi Germany - the terms of the debate have already descended into the quagmire of deranged nonsense.

This conflict is one predominantly between Islam and the Jew...and if it weren't the Jew, it would be the Christian or secularist. Nationalism, in this context, is very different to the nationalism which this motley ideological crew - from left to extreme right - seem to be upholding.

Similarly, the role of Islam in the current "Spring" of the Arab "awakening" is romantically discounted by those who would pillory Israel. It is the liberal revolution..the people yearning to be "free"...and no distinction is made between the different notions of "freedom" - be they Qutbist or that of Locke or J.S. Mill...

The Iran-Iraq war is never mentioned in the analyses of Israel's behaviour. A recent conflict in the region between two Moslem states - caused by a mere boarder dispute. Over a million young men dead. Both regimes remained in power after the slaughter stopped.
Not even worthy of a mention by Tillys of this world - so sensitive to the injustices of the region(at the very least)....tells us nothing about the nature of the influences on the behaviour of people of the region.....Indeed.

Saddam had no compunction after he took his young men into glorious battle with his fellow moslem, of murdering 100,000 Kurds. Asssad had no compunction in killing, they say, more than 40,000 at Hama. The Algerian Armed Islamic Group responsible for over 100,000.00 deaths of the impure, the infidel.. in a 5 year period; King Hussein killed betwen 10-40,000.00 Palestinians in , what, 3 weeks (Black September)?..the Islamists in Kashmir responsible for over 35000.00 deaths..the Taliban...NONE of this warrants so much as a flick of the head by the Derek Blades of this world - no doubt because this kind of mind thinks that the victims brought it on themselves..

...but..maybe not...maybe that phenomenon is the exclusive domain of the venal Jew Israeli..a phenomenon that shoves all this slaughter off the table because it takes the cake for venality - monopolises the energies of those who only care for 'justice" ....and the relevance of influences which permited such slaughter now also off the table..yes, to keep that table free of distractions for what is the most heinous of people and policies - the Jew and what the Jew does to the Palestinian.

..but wait up! The Palestinian has NOTHING to do with these slaughtering devils...!! You Zionist piglets can't find an excuse for your venality that easily!...but oh yes they do and oh yes you can.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to name two groups, are key players in the conflict, and are steeped in the ethical culture that informs the politics of slaughter. The influence of Islamism throughout the Middle East - never unconnected to this culture - is all pervasive.

The politics of slaughter ensures that only slaughter defines the outcome of this conflict. Even without this particular conflict, the politics of slaughter will persist and slaughter will continue. So, Hamas WILL continue, now or in the future to work towards the slaughter of its secular opponents a taste of which we have already been treated to with its putsch in Gaza ("you know the anthem: "throw the Fatah man from the roof! Then your country will be free!" - I think that was Borat who sung it, no?). Hizbollah likewise; the Ayatollahs for sure; the shiites and sunnis throughout the Arab world, for sure; the so-called rebels in Libya - without any doubt whatsoever...Slaughter is as much a hallmark of Islam as supposed "piety". In fact, for many influential Islamists one is a sine qua non for the other....and, whichever way you spin it, the anti Zionists - like NATO and the US in Libya - whatever one thinks of their intervention - are for sure under the illusion that our liberal values can somehow be exported to the Islamic world. It is a tragic misunderstanding and miscalculation, since we end up merely aiding and abetting the politics of slaughter...almost inevitably the outcome in Egypt and Libya (watch this space).

So, where does that leave us with the Tillys et al and those look to them to lead us towards the light? It leaves us without any solution to the conflict in the Middle East whasoever ..nor any hope of one...nor any discussion which can help guide us towards any form of meanigful peace.

Even if Israel retruns to the Green line....the Politics of Slaughter will hijack the peace agenda. Even if Israel moves back the UN Partition boarders...the Politics of Slaughter will hijack the Peace agenda..Even if Israel allows 5 million so-called refugees to come and live within the Green Line or the UN Partition Lines..the Politics of Slaughter will be the main aim of the Islamists who rule the Palestinian peace agenda....and, lastly, even if Israel says: That's it, folks! We've had it! We're doing away with our state and going back to being wondering Jews...the politics of slaughter will hold sway and the Islamists will go for them.

I say, to hell with the Islamists and the Tillys. Israel, and the rank opportunists who define the policies of Europe and US these days.. Stay strong. Make sure your nuclear arsenal is huge and effective. Make sure you carry on winning the Nobel prizes...and ruling the financial world. In short:KEEP UP THE CONSPIRACY, FOR GOD's SAKE!

Ann

"The Israelis with their settlement policies in the Golan Heights, Sinai, Gaza and the West Bank have played into the hands of the Arabs, Islamists, and the anti-semites"

Or the shorter version: antisemitism is the fault of the Jews.

Anyone who still buys the idiotic lines that the settlements are 'illegal', should really read this article by Howard Grief: "Legal Rights and Title of Sovereignty of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel and Palestine under International Law". Here is the link - I hope it gets through:
http://llphfreedom.blogspot.com/2011/02/essay-by-howard-grief-legal-rights-and.html
It sets out in detail the illegality of any attempts to deny Jews the right to sovereignty, never mind settlement, anywhere in the absurdly misnamed 'occupied territories'.

The sane social democrat left (and the deranged, murderous USSR too, for reasons of pure Realpolitik, of course) did support Israel in the very early days. But today's deranged 'left', in reality a collection of racists and fascist sympathisers, hates Israel with a pathological venom, because it is a negation of, and a bulwark against, the racist and fascist world.

Ann

"If everyone who told lies or relayed stories without evidence was banned from this forum, you'd cut the contributors by at least half - and most of them would be from the pro-Israel camp."

Really? What about the non-stop liars who tell us that Israel is an 'Apartheid state' and that the settlements are 'illegal'?
Next!

Adam B.

Truthtriumphs, what do you expect from someone who calls an area of London where many Jews live "occupied territory"?

The mask slipped for aelle.

Tilly

Gil

Your egocentricity is astounding. Scores of businesses were targeted during a demonstration about TAXATION issues - some owned by Jews, some by Brits, others by Americans, some by multinational corporations, etc, etc. Yet there you sit, quivering with rage that the protesters should have the infernal gall - the BIGOTRY! - to include well-known, immensely profitable chains which happen to be Jewish-owned.

What do you want? Each Anne Summers shop to carry a Star of David logo so that everyone will know that criticising them is out of bounds - anti-Semitic, disgustingly racist? "Go throw paint at the shop next door, you anarchists," a helpful policeman advises, "that one's owned by gentiles!"

I strongly suspect that even if not a single Jewish-owned store had been in the frame you'd be chewing yourself to bits over the possibility that the HSBC was only targeted because a Jewish bloke you know works in the bank's Glasgow branch.

As for caricatures of Philip Green - he is a famous figure, someone people can put a FACE to, unlike "Lloyds TSB" or "Boots". Did you not notice during the Gulf War demonstrations that grotesque Tony Blair and George Bush cartoons and masks were doing a roaring trade? Or maybe they just didn't register on your radar because the only thing you can conceive of as inspiring such denigrating images is "the Jews".

Believe it or not, people do have more urgent, immediate concerns about the world than the solitary one which so obsesses you.

reen

for Melanie Phillips
your interview on Israel Television was brilliant.we need you on our hasbara team.Thank you.

David

Norway chips in on the Jew hate fest growing in neighboring Sweden....Leftists say 'lets bomb Israel'...

http://tundratabloids.com/2011/03/norway-socialist-left-party-to-vote-on-motion-calling-for-bombing-israel-if-it-acts-against-hamas-in-gaza.html

David

reen
March 27th, 2011 12:32pm
for Melanie Phillips
your interview on Israel Television was brilliant.we need you on our hasbara team.Thank you.

How about a link...

Okey

Tilly,
The empirical evidence refutes your assertion that people have more urgent things to think about than the Jews: just look at the time, hot air, money and other resources that the UN and all its agencies spend each day on baselessly and unjustly vilifying the Jewish nation-state; just add up all the hours of radio and TV time and all the miles of newspaper items denigrating the Jewish nation-state. And that's just for starters.
The whole world is indeed obsessed by a state no larger than Wales, which has been hounded and harassed, vilified and militarily attacked; its citizens, even babies, blown up, hacked to pieces, shot, stoned , incinerated in a deliberate, calculated targeted manner (no collateral damage here.)

gareth

First Ben Brogan and now Louise - let's hope more people in the media/government start speaking out and fighting for justice instead of claiming expenses and taking the path of least resistance.

Mark2

Ed

Your article by a not exactly pro Israely Guardian journalist is about a fatal shooting at a gay club in Israel. It incldues the following:

"The prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu; the president, Shimon Peres; the leader of the Labour party, Ehud Barak; and the leader of the opposition, Tzipi Livni, all voiced their condemnations and condolences, and spoke of the importance of equality, freedom and tolerance.

Those prompt responses say a lot about the influence the gay community in Israel has gained in recent years. The arrival of the first openly gay MK, Nitzan Horovitz (Meretz), in parliament after the last general election; the gay parade in Tel Aviv, which attracts national and international attention; and the struggle to keep a gay parade in Jerusalem have added many friends, and many foes, to the activist movement. The fact that the daughter of the previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, Dana, is openly gay, has drawn some further attention to the community."

You are aware I take it, that by contrast the Iranian leadership for example, deny even the existence off homosexuality on their soil? I am not saying there is no intolerance in Israel (as there is in the UK) - merely that there is a lot less than elsewhere in the ME. But you probably knew that already. What did you think your post would prove I wonder?

YG

Now, compare BBC covering of Israel to the covering of the mass murders of Assad in Syria.
The BBC calls it "Protests", not uprising. The BBC quotes the Syrian spokes women to a great extent and it looks like the BBC is supportive of Assad "Reforms".
If this is not bias towards a "loved by the left" dictator compared to the obsession with the free and democratic Israel ...

Tilly

Mark2

You say you can't see any reason why "all such" reports as Balen's should not be released as a "matter of principle".

The document at issue was commissioned as part of an internal review, so the remit would have to include any report produced by a news editor (say) on the way (again, for eg) this week's TUC demo was covered. Not only would the logistics of coverage be seen as a matter of "public interest" to peaceful marchers angry at the Beeb's "undue focus" on peripheral violence, but also to anarchists unhappy at the "priority" given to police accounts, and police unhappy at being "portrayed" as heavy-handed.

On the face of it, fair enough - why shouldn't the public know that the news editor had concluded the coverage was pretty balanced and impartial all round ... but there was one aspect which worried him. A torrent of complaints had been received about the BBC's
failure to interview a single Jew about what the complainants regarded as "anti-Semitic targeting" of Philip Green's chain of shops. It had to be admitted - this was an angle which had been neglected.

"But," his memo concludes, "the journalists on the ground all assure me that there was no evidence of anti-Semitism, so I reckon we have two options: ignore the buggers or let a couple of them sound off just to get them off our backs."

(This is an INTERNAL review document, bear in mind, so the language is bound to be rather informal.)

Other documents of "public interest" now start to fly around Broadcasting House in response. One journalist insists the anti-Semitism angle is "utter crap" and she'll resign if the Beeb panders to such outrageous pressure; a producer reckons he could just about squeeze in forty seconds for a Jewish interviewee balanced by forty seconds from an anarchist denying any anti-Semitic motive; the head of news adjudicates that the complaints on this occasion should be ignored, but in future journalists should be "ultra-sensitive to possible Jewish dimensions" in every single news story they are assigned.

Problem solved internally.

Externally, however, an enormous storm is about to be unleashed...

You say, Mark2, that the "floodgates" principle doesn't apply but why should such internal reports and the memoranda which inform them NOT be released following each major incident over which there are differences of opinion?

In my view it would be disastrous to open that tap. On an internal level, freely- expressed exchanges of ideas are what produce altered calibrations in fairness and balance - not constant reference to wildly conflicting (and often ill-informed) "interested parties" clamouring outside.

Your equation with public inquiries into matters such as Watergate, Iraq, Bloody Sunday and (yes!) Dreyfus is, I think, a spurious one, but I don't have time to go into that right now.

Just one final thought, though: There is nothing to stop pro-Israelis and/or pro-Palestinians from commissioning and publishing their own research into "BBC bias". If, on the basis of THIS research clear grounds for a public inquiry are established, all well and good - I'd give it my full support.

Augustus

And then there's 'evidence man'
Ron. There's plenty of evidence that Palestinian Arabs who live in occupied areas have stated they want to stay in Israel, rather than in a Palestinian state. East Jerusalem for a start. Perhaps that's because Arabs have more rights that in
neigbouring Arab countries: female voting rights, religious minority rights, homo rights.
Even they apparently don't want to actually live under Sharia law if they can chose not to.

Stephen Rothbart

Daniel Maris, March 26th 15.49, you're quite correct.

The IDF nor Israeli broadcasting do not report a muder of a taxi driver in the UK, nor a taxi driver in France, Germany or Spain.

I would be delighted if the world would stop reporting on every death in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but sadly, they do not.

Two Hamas people were killed today by Israeli jets, and on BBC World it was the number 3 or 4 news item after Libya and Japan and Syria.

It is the world's obsession with Israel and the way the mdeia and especially the BBC is constantly reporting events about it that irks us to leap to Israel's defence.

Go to any article in the newspapers and read the bloggers' views on anything that happens in the Middle East with Israel. Hundreds of people reply, endlessly listing Israel's influence in anything bad that happens.

And it does not matter if Israel is not involved. Iran, Libya, Egypt, eventually someone will bring Israel in to the subject and blame her for being behind it all, or just say well "that might be bad but boy! Look at how the Israelis treat the Palestinians, even if that as no relevane to the subject in hand. People are just obsessed with Israel.

UN votes Libya head of the Human Rights Commission. Outrage around the world? No. Nothing.

As John Roosevelt and others have itemised many times, massacres have happend all over the Middle East, and in Africa.

What did Libya led HRC do about that? Nothing. What did the "we are all Hezbollah/Hamas now" rent a mob do about that? Nothing.

For that matter what did our local team of Victoria, Blades, Herzen (pace Tibet - Herzen)et al do about that? They never say.

It's just Israel that excites them and the BBC.

I would be very glad if Israel fell completely off the radar with the BBC and they never mentioned another death in the region again.

But it won't stop and neither will its biased coverage of events, espeially now Patten is in charge.

Ann

"Believe it or not, people do have more urgent, immediate concerns about the world than the solitary one which so obsesses you"

You wouldn't think so, judging by Tilly's obsessive Israel-bashing and demonisation.

"One journalist insists the anti-Semitism angle is "utter crap" and she'll resign if the Beeb panders to such outrageous pressure"

Which would be a win-win outcome. Why should I fund such an idiot?

"There is nothing to stop pro-Israelis and/or pro-Palestinians from commissioning and publishing their own research into "BBC bias""

Predictable deflection and denial. WE own the BBC, it's supposed to serve US (although in its mega-hubris and corruption it imagines it's t'other way around - remind anyone of Assad, Gaddafi, Chavez and co.?), WE paid for the report, it's OUR property, and it's absurd to demand that we pay for another one.

Tilly

Okey

Show me your "empirical evidence" for all those hours and miles devoted to vilifying Israel and I'm prepared to be convinced that the UN, its agencies, and the media are obsessed. Show me any evidence whatsoever of obsession about Israel among ordinary British people (such as the 250,000 taking part in the TUC demo) and I'll drop dead with astonishment.

Among the reasons you might consider that the world ISN'T perpetually agonising about Israel's uniquely horrific condition is that for two solid years, virtually nothing has been happening there.

Compare the appalling picture you paint with these statements, made shortly after the Jerusalem bus bombing:

"We will act vigorously, responsibly and prudently to maintain the quiet and security that have prevailed here over the past two years" - Netanyahu.

"This is a safe city, despite today's events. I would say to people in other countries, Jerusalem is still one of the safest cities in the world. Come and visit us" - Mayor of Jerusalem.

Why on earth should Joe Bloggs who's just lost his job and can't pay the gas bill be losing sleep over that?

daniel maris

Stephen Rothbart,

So you are arguing against Melanie that such isolated deaths should be ignored?

Fair enough.

I think the deaths of Arabs at Israeli hands in Gaza are slightly different in that they
are definitely signs of cross border action, which we are interested in as a possible harbinger of war, whereas action within the occupied territories does not have the same import.

But on the general point, I agree with you. There is an obsessive interest in Israel and its doings in what is after all a local land dispute, not unlike many around the globe.

However, I think we have to accept that Israel's dispute is of greater import for us than say Papua/Irian Jaya or even the Spratling Islands dispute. It does centre on that part of the world from whihc we get a lot of oil and gas; we have sentimental ties with the area through religion and empire; and we have been forced to take an interest in it through terrorist action.

To sum up I think there is an element of obsessive anti-semitism and sheer journalistic laziness but it is not the whole story.

On the murder of the Fogels I would be inclined to ignore it in the UK media unless and until it became the occasion of wider military activity.

Why is there murder more intrinsically important to most UK people than the murder of say Mexicans in the drug wars over on that continent?

Tilly

Ann

Brilliantly thought through. The BBC employs one of its own staff to produce a report on a matter of contention - and THAT'S the one you're counting on to prove your case. "It's absurd to demand that we pay for another one", sez you ...

... Unless, of course, you don't like the findings, in which case your (unresearched) allegations of bias aren't supported. "This just proves how TOTALLY biased the BBC is," you'd be howling.

If you genuinely wanted to know the truth of the matter, you would be urging an INDEPENDENT investigation; as things stand, you appear only to want an opportunity to vent your spleen at the BBC's inability to see the world through your unfocused - and highly biased - spectacles.

Ron

Truthtriumphs, I am getting bored waiting for your evidence that Palestinians in the West Bank would prefer to live under Israeli rule.

AY

Victoria celato Tilly etc.
I mean - anti-Israeli bloggers here.

Here are several simple questions to you - for people just to know exactly who you are.

(and if you don't answer - well, that is an answer, too.)

1) do you support existence of Jewish state in Palestine
2) is it right to say that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter
3) do you think 9/11 was work of CIA/Mossad
4) do you support introduction of Sharia in the UK
5) do you think criticism of Koran is permissible
6) should apostasy from Islam be punishable
7) should homosexuality be punishable
8) should women have same rights with men
9) should non-muslims have same rights as muslims

Gil

Tilly, I've just read your deranged comment in response to mine. I've discounted most of it of course because you have form here. Why on earth should 'anarchists' attack Ann Summers? Has there been a suggestion that they are avoiding tax? Unles, the thugs were really Islamists who saw it as an attempt to strike an icon of secularism and having a Jewish connection to boot!
And don't give me that rubbish about Green's 'high profile'. That does not excuse disgusting caricatures of the man, something we did not see with regard to other organisations.

Truthtriumphs

Ron
March 25th, 2011 4:07pm

Truthtriumphs says,"that the actual inhabitants of the WB, not their corrupt, lying leaders, are desperate to stay under Israeli jurisdiction, because they're doing rather well there, so well, in fact, that by every yardstick, the standard of living there surpasses that of every Arab state in the region.
So well, that when it was mooted that Arab villages in the vicinity of Jerusalem be returned to the jurisdiction of the PA, there was vigorous opposition from the villagers themselves."

"Evidence please. In my extensive travels in the West bank everyone wants the occupation to end and wants a free Palestine. Ever been to Palestine to see for yourself what a brutal occupation really means ?"

Here's your evidence:---
Friday, November 23, 2001 -- Six weeks after the attempted assassination of the mukhtar of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Bahir, Zohair Hamdan, the outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority, vowed yesterday that he will continue his struggle for peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews.

"If anything the attempt on my life has only strengthened my view, and has made me more determined than ever to fight for my beliefs," said the 48-year-old Hamdan.
This was in response to the suggestion that this village should come under the jurisdiction of the PA, instead of Israel.
The mukhtar collected 10,000 signatures of opposition from the villagers, and for that there was an attempt on his life.

There have been incidents very recently, when, again, it was mooted that some Arab villages in the Jerusalem district should
come under PA contol.
Again the villagers vehemently objected, saying they preferred the rule of law of Israel to the corruption of the PA.

Perhaps YOU should give evidence of your assertion that the Palestinians want to be free...yes they do, but not in the way you would have us believe.
There is no "brutal occupation".
The Israelis keep out of the population centres.
What they do do, is to ensure that the militant Palestinians
are not "free" to enter Israel to commit murder and mayhem, as in the days of the appalling suicide bombings in Israeli pizza parlours and discos.

And btw, why was no Palestinian state offered to the Palestinians between 1948 and 1967, when the Jordanians, Syrians and Egyptians, ruled the WB, the Golan and Gaza respectively?
Or, indeed, ever.
Why was there no concern for Palestinian"freedom" then?

Ccharly

GOOD WORK Melanie Phillips SOMEBODY HAS TO TELL THE TRUTH

Adam B.

Tilly, I know a BBC foreign correspondent who has expressed antisemitic views to me.

You carry on believing what you like about this organization.

Adam B.

Ron, here is evidence you asked for. Hardly tallies with your boast that you no Palestinian wants to live in Israel, does it?

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4013000,00.html

Truthtriumphs

Victoria.
"In reality I think all but a few unfortunate people are actually against Jews as a religion. However, I rather resent that (as proven on here) one cannot criticise Israel without being labelled 'anti-Jew' or a ‘neo-Nazi’. I have criticised Britain on many accounts, but it does not mean I am against all British people. The notion is simply absurd".

Really!
Martin luther King didn't think so...here's what he had to say to your type of person.
"Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism"
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
". . . You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely 'anti-Zionist.' And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--this is God's own truth.
"Antisemitism, the hatred of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind. In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionist is inherently antisemitic, and ever will be so.
"Why is this? You know that Zionism is nothing less than the dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning to live in their own land. The Jewish people, the Scriptures tell us, once enjoyed a flourishing Commonwealth in the Holy Land. From this they were expelled by the Roman tyrant, the same Romans who cruelly murdered Our Lord. Driven from their homeland, their nation in ashes, forced to wander the globe, the Jewish people time and again suffered the lash of whichever tyrant happened to rule over them.
How easy it should be, for anyone who holds dear this inalienable right of all mankind, to understand and support the right of the Jewish People to live in their ancient Land of Israel. All men of good will exult in the fulfilment of God's promise, that his People should return in joy to rebuild their plundered land.
This is Zionism, nothing more, nothing less.
And what is anti-Zionist? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the Globe. It is discrimination against Jews, my friend, because they are Jews. In short, it is antisemitism.
The antisemite rejoices at any opportunity to vent his malice. The times have made it unpopular, in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews. This being the case, the antisemite must constantly seek new forms and forums for his poison. How he must revel in the new masquerade! He does not hate the Jews, he is just 'anti-Zionist'!

Let my words echo in the depths of your soul: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--make no mistake about it."

And spare us the rubbish that he wouldn't approve of Israel today.... he made his comments AFTER Israel's victory in 1967.
From M.L. King Jr., "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend.

Okey

Tilly, the only reason that there was a temporary hiatus in Arab terrorism successes against Israel was the effectiveness of Israel's defences, including the checkpoints.
Netanyahu's government, however, succumbed to the pressure of 'the enlightened western democracies" to remove those checkpoints. Thus he facilitated the resumption of Arab "palestinian" terrorism.
Get off your high horse and learn the facts. Don't expect others to do the work for you, or are you a socialist like that parasite, Karl Marx ?
Don't think that if Israel goes under others will not.

Terry in Oz

This isn't new. Ordinary Germans swallowed and wallowed in nazi propaganda against the Jews before WW2, and during WW2. Nice to know that having won WW2 the BBC has bagged the antisemitic spoils and now preaches Jew hatred on behalf of a generation of Germans who can't get away with it in their own country nowadays.

Sub contracted antisemitism (oops, should that be the more PC 'antizionism'?) on behalf of modern nazism. Well done Patten - I bet that's a nice little earner!!

When europe eventually succumbs to islamofascist rule, I do hope Patten seeks snactuary in Israel. And I do hope Israel refuses to let him in.

Stephen Rothbart

Daniel Maris, I think your email demonstrates you are confused. You seem to share the same bias as the BBC. You think a death in Gaza is more newsworthy than a death in the occupied territories or in Israel.

So the death of a Palestinian killed in a retalitory action against rocket attacks or attempts to kidnap or kill Israeli soldiers, whether that person was a Hamas terroroist or an unfotunate victim of collatral damamage, such as we see in Afghanistan or Iraq and now probably in Libya, is more newsworthy than a bunch of people entering the home of a Jewish family and sawing off the head of a baby.

That seems to be your position.

And if the BBC does decide to put the death of the Jewish family and ignore the details in case it "damages" their own perception of Palestinian victimhood, then dress it up with as many extenuating and often irrelevant circumstances as possible.

If this is truly your position, then you should apply for a job at the Beeb, and if not, the Guardian. You are all made for each other.

My position is not that BBC must report on anything to do with Israel if they do not wish to. But they do wish to, and it always from one side of the same coin.

So, no, I am absolutely with Melanie Phillips on this point.

Sure there are many things about Israel and about some Israelis in the Knesset that I would like to change.

What citizen of any country feels any different about their own leaders and citizens, even those not at war?

But as we are now seeing from the turmoil going on in the Middle East, there have been far, far worse abuses against Palestinians and against minorities inside almost every Arab country in the Middle East than those carried out by the Israelis against Palestinians, and until now they have been mostly ignored.

Of course it is much easier to be a journalist if your reporting is done from Israel, where there is a free press, nice hotels, and little chance of being kidnapped, beatne up or raped, like we are seeing in Libya or Egypt. And of you go to Gaza, of course Hamas will treat you well, as long as you report the news they want you to report, so I can see why focusing only on Israel is attractive.

But is it good journalism?

You seem to think it is, and I do not.

celato

AY:

I'll set the ball rolling (hopefully) with your questionnaire, but just a word of caution first on how you interpret the results:

The only options you give are "Yes"/"No"/"Don't know" answers. There are, however, at least three which I'd ask for clarification on in a face-to-face interview and quite a few that require more detailed responses than you invite if you really want to know what people are "thinking".

It would also be interesting to put the same questions to pro-Israel correspondents and see how they compare.

So, as long as you appreciate that what you mean may not always coincide with my understanding of a question, here goes:

Q1 - Yes
Q2 -Yes
Q3 - No
Q4 - No
Q5 - Yes
Q6 - No
Q7 -No
Q8- Yes
Q9 - Yes

Thomas

Truthtriumphs,
"why was no Palestinian state offered to the Palestinians between 1948 and 1967, when the Jordanians, Syrians and Egyptians, ruled the WB, the Golan and Gaza respectively?"

Here's a curious thing. When Jordan's parliament incorporated the West Bank into Jordan, it did so, it said, "without prejudicing the final settlement of Palestine's just case within the sphere of national aspirations, inter-Arab cooperation and international justice." That is, it acknowledged the Palestinians' right to self-determination. (Not that the incorporation into Jordan wasn't, rightly, opposed by everyone except Britain and Pakistan.)

Egypt acted more properly. It administered Gaza as "an inseparable part of the land of Palestine". Palestinian law remained in force. Court judgements were issued "in the name of the people of Palestine." The constitution of 1962 was to be in force *until a permanent constitution for the State of Palestine is promulgated."

Another of your little propaganda sound-bites turns out to be not quite true.

And please stop quoting Martin Luther King as if the quote settles the matter.

Tilly

AY

Sorry to give longer answers to your questions than maybe you're expecting but a lot of the arguments people have here are on matters of detail rather than "broad" issues/moral positions.

1. Yes - within internationally recognised borders.
2. Yes. (Also that one person's soldier may be seen by another person as a "state terrorist" in certain circumstances).
3. No.
4. No. (If, however, all you're referring to is the UK tribunal system, which both Jews and Muslims currently utilise to deal with minor civil cases, I think the same freedoms and restrictions on remit should apply all round. Personally, I'd like to see the whole system scrapped.)
5. Yes - as long as "criticism" doesn't extend to inciting violence/hatred/discrimination, etc, in contravention of the law. (Same applies to all other religious works.)
6. No - People should be free to follow whatever religion they like or reject religion altogether. (Not quite sure, though, if apostasy includes breaking some tenet of faith and being excommunicated as a "punishment" - for eg, Roman Catholics who divorce. I guess religious bodies are entitled to make their club rules and condemn members who don't stick to those rules to imaginary fiery furnaces...)
7. No.
8. Yes - MORE rights if anything, but that's just me speaking as a woman!
9. Yes - Muslims are entitled to exactly the same human rights as non-Muslims.

Hope this helps. Cheers,
Tilly

Tilly

Okey

1. I wasn't offering you an explanation of WHY Israel might have been so quiet during the past two years - only a reason for its not being uppermost in most people's minds.

2. Could you please identify exactly which aspects of socialism/Marxism have a bearing on negative perceptions of Israel. I've asked this question before of other contributors, but no-one seems willing or able to answer.

Truthtriumphs

Thomas .

The name "Palestina" is a Latin word.

The Roman name based on the Hebrew Biblical name of the ancient "Philistines" -- "Plishtim" in Hebrew. The translation of this name to English is: "invaders". The Philistines arrived from the Mediterranean islands near Greece and invaded the land about 4000 years ago . The Philistines are extinct since approximately 2000 years ago, and have no ancestral or historical relationship to Arabs. Before 1917, during the 400-years rule of the Ottoman empire, the Ottomans did not call the Holy Land "Palestina". The British decided to renew this ancient name and called the land "Palestine". The local Arabs never called themselves "Palestinians", not even during the British mandate. Both Arab and British leaders referred to them only as "Arabs". For example: The Hope-Simpson report[15] published by the British in 1930, contains the phrase "the number of Palestinian unemployed, whether Arab, Jew or other...". "Palestinian" was used only as an adjective in reference to the location and also included Jews. The Arab inhabitants were always referred to as "Arabs". The word "palestinians" does not appear anywhere in this report. "Palestinian Arabs", "Palestinian Jews", and "Palestinian Christians" were common terms. But, "Palestinians", as a noun, before 1948, was not yet invented.
Historically, a "Falestinian" people never existed. The fact is that the Arabs, who now try to call themselves by the English name "Palestinians" Even Arab leaders and historians have admitted that a "Palestinian" people never existed. For example:

In 1937, the Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul Hadi told the Peel Commission: "There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented. Palestine is alien to us."
In 1946, Princeton's Arab professor of Middle East history, Philip Hitti, told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry: "It's common knowledge, there is no such thing as Palestine in history."

In their propaganda, the Arabs who now call themselves "Palestinians" consistently demand that Israel and the world recognize their "pre-1948" rights. That's about 60 years ago. Mysteriously, they are never willing to add another 60 years to their "historical" claims on the Holy Land. They know very well that doing so will send them back to where they came from - Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Years ago, during negotiations with the, so-called, "Palestinians", a Israeli negotiator proposed to revise a mention of their claim of "pre-1948" rights and replace it with "pre-1917". The "Palestinians" vehemently opposed. Now we know why.

In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, an executive member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), said in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw: "The 'Palestinian people' does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel."
Joseph Farah, an Arab-American journalist, writes: "The truth is that Palestine is no more real than Never-Never Land. Palestine has never existed as an autonomous entity."
Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist acknowledged the lie he was fighting for: “Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian? ... we considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians. They removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag.”
The Syrian dictator Hafez Assad said: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, there is no Palestinian entity".
Dr. Azmi Bishara, a notable leader of the Arabs in Israel, who fought against the Israeli "occupation", said in a TV interview: "There is no Palestinian nation. It's a colonial invention. When were there any Palestinians?"

Enough for you, or do you need more proof to stop you with your ridiculous inventions?

Tilly

Gil

Leave aside the violence on the fringes of that demonstration and a relatively simple message comes through: If the government devoted itself to closing tax loopholes for big commercial chains and corporations, billions of pounds would pour into the Exchequer and this money could then be spent on preserving services and jobs.

Anne Summers is just ONE business enterprise among hundreds which takes advantage of loopholes to maximise its profits and dividends to shareholders; as such, it is no more or less a target of wrath than any other.

The fact that a hooligan minority chose to express this wrath by smashing windows, spraying paint, etc, had nothing to do with the ETHNICITY of the businesses en route - just their big-name visibility. So, along with Anne Summers' windows being smashed, so were those of the Ritz hotel, the HSBC bank and Topshop; other enterprises (owned by a multitude of non-Jewish proprietors) were damaged by paint, stones, bottles and ammonia-filled lightbulbs.

On the matter of Philip Green's caricature: was this really any more offensive than a profusion of placards picturing David Cameron and Nick Clegg, boldly captioned "Wanker"? Maybe you were just so focused on spurious signs of anti-Semitism you didn't spot them ...

Mark2

Tilly
You say that as

”The document at issue was commissioned as part of an internal review… the remit would have to include any report produced by a news editor (say)”

Yes, the remit would, but that need not be published itself other than as part of the report if necessary. The rule could be that only the report itself be published leaving other papers to FoI rules – this also answers your floodgates point. It would be for the FoI regime (the Commissioner etc) to determine what else needed to be released.
Much of the rest of your post (e.g. your reference to the Saturday Demo.) relates to particular incidents – not to courses of dealing over a long period and so is not really relevant to the kind of inquiry/ report we are considering.

You continue

“In my view it would be disastrous to open that tap. On an internal level, freely- expressed exchanges of ideas are what produce altered calibrations in fairness and balance - not constant reference to wildly conflicting (and often ill-informed) "interested parties" clamouring outside.”

Well - OK until you recall that the BBC itself prides itself on its objectivity. If it won’t produce a report it commissioned itself into precisely that question what are people to think? It’s the BBC’s own reputation at stake. The BBC should be in a position to assure most people that as against the “ill informed”, “wildly conflicting” and what have you, it is doing its job. If it has a report available with which it can do so it should produce that report. If the report does not show what it ought to then the BBC can always apologise and promise to do better next time.

You conclude

“Your equation with public inquiries into matters such as Watergate, Iraq, Bloody Sunday and (yes!) Dreyfus is, I think, a spurious one, but I don't have time to go into that right now.”
Well I don’t want to detain you but just to be clear, you said you felt the more the report was requested the less the BBC should be inclined to provide it. I am merely pointing out that all the examples I gave inquires were resisted for a long time and had the principle you enunciated been followed in these other cases injustice would have been done. I agree the cases I cite are far more serious, but that puts the Balen report in a context in which the BBCs refusal to publish seems even more senseless – not less.

Thomas

Truthtriumphs
March 28th, 2011 12:35pm
Um...I quoted you the evidence that Egypt and even Jordan recognized Palestine and the West Bank and Gaza as parts of Palestine even in teh period from 1948067. I quoted them in response to your routine trite jibe.

Your lecture on the Philistines was certainly ...interesting. I like the way inhabitants in these lands become "extinct" when required, or non-existent. The evidence is that populations stay put. (Look at the evidence of the succession of invasions of Britain.) The succession of invaders of Palestine/Israel down to and including the Arabs would have had little use for the land without peasants to farm it.

I don't know what you think you prove by this little lecture in pseudo-history.

Tilly

Adam B

I know a Sun journalist who's a staunch old-style Labour supporter. One swallow does not make a summer, unfortunately ... and neither does one bigoted BBC penguin provide evidence of winter.

Gil

Tilly, if there is a problem with companies using loopholes not to pay taxes, then this is a matter for Parliament and the courts. There is no excuse for mindful vandalism.

Otherwise everyone can just use violence in adoption of their pet hate/bugbear.

Tilly

Gil

Vandalism in pursuit of political goals isn't acceptable - glad we can at least agree on that!

Dan

Can someone please send the Balen Report to Wikileaks?

Tobias

Thank You

Adam B.

Thomas, who writes so admiringly about Jordan and its attitude to the Palestinians, seems to have forgoptten that this wonderful country massacred 70,000 Palestinians in one month (black September) and expelled thousands more.

Of course he has no problem either with Jordan's illegal occupation of Judea and Samaria, when the Arab Legion marched in, expelling every Jew they came across, whilst laying siege to Jerusalem to starve out the Jewish population. When Jordan occupied the Old City of Jerusalem, they then systematically dynamited every ancient synagogue and vandalised the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

there wre no calls for a Palestinian state at that time, and Jerusalem is so important to the Arab world that during that 20 year period when the Jordanians occupied it, not one Arab leader went to see it.

So you can cut the condescension Thomas.

celato

Truthtriumphs

Like it or not, you are stuck with a few million people who think of THEMSELVES as a nation. For whatever reasons, and via who-knows-what twists and turns of history, they perceive themselves to have a distinct shared identity - language, cultural heritage, attachment to land, and so forth.

To deny their "existence" is a bit like arguing that Jews have nothing in common beyond a set of religious beliefs and certain quirky lifestyle rituals accompanying those beliefs.

As you know very well, a great many Jews don't even buy into the religious bit; they have become so thoroughly integrated into multi-various societies that they no longer speak a common language, describe themselves as "English" or "French" or "American", and aren't even recognisable as a physical type. Yet for some mysterious reason (to outsiders) there has been a strong enough tug towards national bonding and autonomy to result in the state of Israel.

Why not accept, then, that a similar chemistry operates for other "displaced" persons in the world?

I suspect that one of the reasons you find it so difficult to acknowledge the Palestinians' identity is an inability to see Arabs as anything but an ethnically cohesive unit. They may live on separate parcels of land, but to you a "Jordanian" is essentially identical to a "Syrian", or "Lebanese", or "Iranian" and there is no real reason why they shouldn't all salute the same flag apart from the logistics of administration over a large geographical area.

That was very much the attitude western colonialists had towards "Africans" - chopping brutally straight lines across well-established national groupings - with disastrous results.

The sooner you start seeing Palestinians as a people with aspirations no less compelling than those which drive Zionists, the sooner you will invest them with enough humanity to consider the prospect of a peaceful settlement.

Nigel Hammond

Carry on Louise Bagshawe. We need more MPs like you.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Celato: "Why not accept, then, that a similar chemistry operates for other "displaced" persons in the world?"

Israel has accepted the Palestinians' right to statehood. It's official.

Now, over to those who see this as a license to slit the throats of 3 month old babies....

Perhaps you can be their consultant, Celato..I can't wait.

Okey

Tilly, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher are but 3 examples of people who, by ancestry, but in no other respect, were Jews, but whose antisemitic, racist fulminations have influenced generations of both lumpenproletarians and lumpenintellectuals.
Today their ideological heirs' anti-Zionism is an affront to civilisation. They are allied with the most reactionary barbaric forces the globe has seen since the Nazis.

dogsoldjah

I am a bigot!

I am bigoted against bigotry!

And I am sick and tired of listening to the endless bickering between people that should know better.

Please stop for a moment and listen to yourselves. All of you!

Stop fighting each other. Forgive the past. Forget the grudges, the bitterness, the hatred and start to work together for a better future for all of us.

Our anger should be reserved for those that choose violence over peace, regardless of their religion, creed or nationality.

Whether Arab or Jew, the human suffering is the same!

Open your eyes. Stop emphasizing the differences between yourselves and acknowledge the similarities instead.

The killing on all sides must stop!

Carol Jones

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me

Let us update this:

First they came for the "settlers" and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a "settler".

Then they came for the Jews around the world and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for Christians, non-believers and infidels and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a non-believer.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me

Thomas

Adam B.
March 28th, 2011 6:45pm
And you appear to have picked up your debating skills such as they are in the rarified atmosphere of the yellow press: never let the fact that your opponent didn't say something stop you condemning him for it in the strongest possible terms.

Carol Jones

What I find frightening is the amount of lies and propaganda being spouted by the Palestinians-remember Jenin, Al Dura and the latest one IDF stealing Palestinian's organs for organ donation is all being lapped up by the Muslim brotherhood around the world. They feel angry that their brothers are being so ill treated when it is all lies. The Palestinian Propaganda machine needs to be stopped if there is any hope of a lasting peace.

Bernard

The non-coverage was indeed disgusting - the BBC has been consumed by the eternal student virus. Unfrotunately, am I reckon quite a few feel the same, I find it impossible to trust their news now. It's peppered with, let's face it, an anti-semitic,ideaology.

Bobby

Im sure the story said a Palestinian was "accused" so am I right to say that they don't know for sure if it really was a Palestinian.

Bobajot

What I think is a hoot is the idea that people in general care about Jews or Israelis one way or the other. Same goes for Palestinians. Get real no amount of Israeli propaganda spin or other methods is going to make people love Israelis. Same applies to Palestinians. Same also applies to most other nation states. That's the bottom line they are irrelevant to most people in the UK. Why should the BBC report stuff that has no relevance to the vast majority of licence payers.It does but like the Sunday papers most of the content is unread. Pity this MP isn't devoting her time to problems facing UK citizens rather than some murder(horrific or otherwise) happening in a war zone we have no combatants in.

Grumpy true Zionist

see that Baron Bodissey over at 'The Gates of Vienna' has given a hat-tip to Melanie, and also posted a video, where M engages with that 'lump of meat with eyes in it' - clare short

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Dogsoljah: "Forgive the past. Forget the grudges, the bitterness, the hatred and start to work together for a better future for all of us.

Our anger should be reserved for those that choose violence over peace, regardless of their religion, creed or nationality.

Whether Arab or Jew, the human suffering is the same!

Open your eyes. Stop emphasizing the differences between yourselves and acknowledge the similarities instead.

The killing on all sides must stop!"

You seem to forget that it is Israel which maintains its door open to negotiations despite the fact that the Palestinians will not even recognise its right to exist as a Jewish state.

The killing is real. Stop your condescending, patronising finger waiving.

AY

celato, tilly

thanks for your answers.
frankly, I am puzzled.

for the exception of the Q2, your opinions don't represent any deviation from
civilized way of thinking.

it looks like you are really Westerners,
not Islamists in disguise playing the doll game of "exemplary dhimmis".

look, the issue of Israel is quite singular but its significance unnaturally exaggerated.
your anti-Israeli sentiments were planted in your minds.. not without plan.
well, to trace roots of your prejudice isn't my business.. but you do have it.

Israel tried both socialism and capitalism - orders that have, in different ways but both, a potential to suppress humanity and freedom.
But the same idiocies are implemented in the UK - where cruel Dickensian capitalism coexists now with
the grotesque Soviet-style champagne nomenclature, and post-Soviet oligarchy elements as surplus.

my main concern is that if complemented by demography, tribal savagery and intellectual darkness of Islam,
system might not hold it, it might collapse under weight of all these parasites.

what is positive in Israel is that they don't hold any illusions on positivity of Islam in communal life.
they have soft apartheid system re Arab/Muslims because this is dictated by realism.
Otherwise they won't survive.

And on Israeli self-defense and "injustices" they spread - c'mon.
Certainly it is disturbing to see some unpleasant types not willing to accept harms they desrve.
But it is your distorted view of them is root of your offense.

anyway, I admit i never read your arguments on Israel, just scroll them.
but maybe I'll read when you write on other issues.

Sarah

"Why is there murder more intrinsically important to most UK people than the murder of say Mexicans in the drug wars over on that continent?"

Probably because horrific individualized brutal murders of innocent children, aged 3 months, 3 years and 11 years, are more newsworthy for their rarity and the way they bespeak the sheer hatred of the killers.

As for the comment that antiSemitism is the fault of the Jews -- well, that's akin to saying rape is the fault of the woman. After all, if women didn't have vaginas, men wouldn't rape them, would they? Idiots.

As to the question about how-do-we-know-who-did-the-butchery of the Fogels? First, the fence alarm went off, and after the murders footsteps from the murder site left the village by way of the fence to the Arab village on the other side of the valley; second, because the Palestinians cheered and handed out treats and extolled the killers as "heroes"; third, because the Palestnian Authority arrested two Islamic Jihad members for complicity. Motive and opportunity, plus applause. Go figure.

dogsoldjah

JOHN ROOSEVELT;

"You seem to forget that it is Israel which maintains its door open to negotiations despite the fact that the Palestinians will not even recognise its right to exist as a Jewish state.

The killing is real. Stop your condescending, patronising finger waiving."

Your lack of reason, your anger and hatred are exactly the type of attitude on both sides that keeps conflict alive...

You sadden me!

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Dogsoldjah: "Your lack of reason, your anger and hatred are exactly the type of attitude on both sides that keeps conflict alive...

You sadden me!"

Let's hope I sadden you a little less than the killers of 3 month old babies...

..but I wonder..

and what "lack of reason"???

Ed

It's funny, there's a section on the BBC website called 'Israel and the PalestinIans'. The top stores?

1) Jerusalem bus bomb
2) Story on the current situation referring to the bus bomb, death of Palestinians in Gaza, rockets from Gaza and the murdered family (that's 3 from Israel's perspective, 1 from the Palestinians).
3) The manhunt for the Fogel's.

Hardly a pro-Palestinian bias there is there?

Leonie

Melanie, please read this report which featured a few days ago in Israeli English-speaking newspaper Ynetnews:

Setter jailed for assaulting Palestinian teen
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4048471,00.html

Given that most settler criminal activities go completely unpunished, I'm relieved to see that this thug has actually been imprisoned. But having said that, look at the facts in this case - a 28 year old Israeli settler adbucts and tortures a Palestinian teenager and leaves him lying naked, tied up and unconscious in a field. He is now being sentenced to a measly 18 months in prison. Do you call this justice? In any regular democracy, you'd expect a minimum 10 year sentence with minimum non-parole period of at least 5 years. And I know exactly what kind of sentence would be meted out to a Palestinian found guilty of the same crimes.

Can we expect an outcry from you about this travesty? Think I know what the answer is to that one already.

Steve

Ed,

"Hardly a pro-Palestinian bias there is there?"

Of course a British woman being murdered by the terrorists this time - and only a British woman at that; no Jew deaths to ignore or gloat over this time - along with a British MP publicly compoaining about bias couldn't possibly have anything to do with this sudden change of editorial policy could it? No that would just be cynical, wouldn't it?

Tilly

AY

All of us, I guess, have a mental picture of the people we're arguing with long-distance and perhaps one of the reasons things descend into insult is this:

We feel very strongly about a particular issue (to keep it neutral, let's say foxhunting) and then make a whole lot of assumptions based on that one item. Eg: You support hunting = you like killing animals for sport = you are a bully = you pick on the weak = you don't care about poor people = you despise people from the Third World = you are a racist ...

When we actually get to meet a foxhunter that line of thinking may turn out to be true, but just as likely he/she is a sensitive soul (on everything except where foxes are concerned), devoting themselves to running a soup kitchen for asylum-seekers!

That isn't to say we won't continue to argue bitterly on the issue which divides us - and if it's ALL we ever talk about, might well come to blows at some point.

Hardly likely over something so peripheral to daily life as chasing foxes; but entrenchments over an on-going lethal conflict (eg, Israel-Palestine) do greatly increase the chances of becoming outright enemies.

It's interesting that you light on Q2 - one man's terrorist being another man's freedom fighter - as being the big bone of contention. I think your analysis is spot-on.

My main grouse with the Zionist camp in these blogs is the refusal of most to acknowledge any motive behind Palestinian violence other than "Jew hatred" - portraying it as the mindless activity of inhuman, immoral barbarians.

They (and you?) genuinely believe this and I suspect a lot of it comes down to lazy-minded, habitual (sometimes cynical) application of the "terrorist" label. It's a label which informs us only that the person concerned wishes to terrify - not WHY - and so we can easily leap to the conclusion that there IS no reason = it's utterly irrational = insane = psychopathic = mindlessly hateful.

"Freedom fighter" by contrast forces us to consider that there is a motive other than insanely wanting to terrify. We may not agree that the fighter deserves liberty, or condemn the methods he uses to achieve it - but these are all things that can ultimately be resolved by dealing in negotiable commodities: a measure of "freedom" in return for whatever the fighter offers or concedes.

In the Middle East context I find it particularly aggravating when Zionists insist on applying the "terrorist" label to Palestinians - for two main reasons apart from what I've already said:

1. Zionists were themselves labelled in just the same spurious way during their battles to found a Jewish state. "One man's terrorist, another man's Zionist" was a perfectly valid observation to make then; so why is this distinction any less valid with reference to Palestinians today? There is a very nasty smell of hypocrisy, I fear ...

2. The label allows Israel always to define both its aggression and self-defence as "military" in contrast to the activities of Palestinians whose violence is cast in the frame of an illegitimate, undisciplined "rabble". This might be fair enough if the Palestinians belonged to a state with an internationally-recognised army of its own, yet still chose to fight in the way they currently do; but they don't have an army - not even a fully autonomous police force. So no matter how justified Palestinians might be in their various confrontations with Israel, it's always seen as "dirty" fighting - simply because they don't HAVE the weaponry and soldiery to fight in a "military" way.

None of this lets Palestinians who deliberately target civilians off the moral hook, but it does offer an explanation of why so many taking an Israel-critical stance here insist on viewing the military as EQUALLY immoral when they inflict civilian deaths. Soldiers have a choice - no less than suicide-bombers - about the targets they pick. The "military" way is to bomb a residential area in order to disable Hamas; the "terrorist" way is to bomb a cafe to destabilise a regime. Both (to my mind) are treating civilians as expendable canon-fodder.

If Israel's military atrocities attract more condemnatory attention overall than Palestinian ones, it's simply, I'm afraid, a reflection of their comparative frequency and destructive scale.

Leonie

Melanie:

I've just noticed this in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's report on the Zvi Struck case:

"Implementation of the sentence will be delayed while an appeal is filed, according to reports".

It doesn't take much imagination to figure where this is leading. This criminal will probably never see the inside of a prison cell at all.

Awaiting your outcry Melanie. Or is it that some are more equal than others?

AY

Tilly

"Israel's military atrocities"

There are army rules, that anyone could read. War crimes are condemned, forbidden, and violators are persecuted.

And not in the last turn, because of bad influence on discipline. Army becoming a criminal gang, looses fighting capability.
So, if someting suspicious happens, it is always investigated.

Hamas doesn't investigate rocket attacks and suicide bombings against civilians. It conducts it.

Oh and on Q2 - yes I reckon this phrase is clear case of moral relativism, giving a carte blanche to monsters, to populate our world.

Whose "men"'s freedom fighter was the one, who murdered 3 months old baby by stubbing her through the skull. Just who are these "men" calling him freedom fighter? Please.

Gil

Tilly, give it a rest. Hamas blow themselves up not becuase they want to 'destabilise a regime' but because they want to murder as many Israelis and non-Israelis as possible. In other words they are a death cult.Please educate yourself about their antisemitism.

As to the Israeli Army in Gaza: Please educate yourself by reading what Col. Richard Kemp of the British Army had to say on the matter.

The Israeli Army made strenuous efforts to minimise civilian casualties in Gaza. Indeed there were some horrific incidents which the Israelis should investigate. Meanwhile, the US and this country kill and maim left right and centre in Afghanistan and the world says nothing.

The Jews are an easy target, Tilly, they come ready packaged to be the eternal scapegoat.

Leonie

Melanie:

And now we see this:
Jewish settlers 'kill Palestinian girl'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-130282/Jewish-settlers-kill-Palestinian-girl.html

Where is your outcry about these rogue settlers? What pressure are you going to apply to the Israeli government to do something - urgently?

daniel maris

I think it's reasonable to conclude from this discussion:

1. The pro-Zionist expansion lobby here have no explanation for why Israeli media doesn't focus on similar atrocities in far flung places. Not one has come up for an explanatino for that, even thought they think the UK media should focus on the Fogel atrocity.

2. There is an issue about what news items from IPG (Israel/Palestine/Gaza) get or should get publicity in the UK media.

Some seem to feel there should be balanced reporting - so every murderous death (well maybe not every murderous death, perhaps just politically motivated ones) should be reported wherever in IPG it occurs.

Then there are those who say none should be reported in the UK media as it is just a local land dispute, not different from say Indonesia v Papua.

Then there is the view I put forward that for the UK, we are more interested in Israel's cross border actions because they are more likely to lead to generalised warfare which might then impact our lives. That is my view.

3. Various reasons are put forward for why we should support the settlement movement on the West Bank: geo-political, legal, religious etc. and try to use the Fogel case as a shroud to wave in the faces of those, like myself, who think that the settlement policy is wrong. Not that ALL Jewish settlement is wrong, but the policy is wrong. I would like to see some settlement guaranteed by a final peace agreement, just as there should be some return of Arab refugee descendants. But using the Fogels as a tactic in this argument is pretty despicable. Either the settlement policy is wise and justified or it is not. The Fogel case is essentially irrelevant one way or the other.

AY

Leonie -

just googled info on your post.

That happened in 2002.
Girl was killed occasionally, by stray bullet, during disturbances after Arab attack on funeral of Israeli soldier killed earlier in the ambush.

So if somebody wants broader context - then google what happened with these children, in different times

Matan and Noam Ohayon (aged 5 and 4)

Einat Haran (aged 4)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shalhevet_Pass

and also look for children here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sbarro_restaurant_suicide_bombing

and here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphinarium_bombing

and here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Jerusalem_yeshiva_attack

All these children were intentionally targeted.

Derek BLADES

@ AY

Yesh Din is an Israeli NGO. To quote from their web-site “[Our] activities focus on the extent of Israel's implementation of its duty to protect the Palestinian civilians under its armed forces' occupation.”

After reviewing the outcome of more than 600 cases of alleged violence against Palestinians in the occupied territories it concludes that:

“The percentage of failed investigations is exceptionally high in the case of investigations into offenses of violence against Palestinians and damage to their property. 78 percent of violence cases and 93 percent of cases of damage to property were closed on grounds that suggest that those investigations have failed.”

Settler brutality towards Palestinians and the Israeli government’s failure to properly investigate and prosecute those guilty lead me to conclude that the whole settler enterprise can correctly be described as terrorism. Or perhaps you regard the settlers as “resistance fighters”?

Okey

Leonie, Tilly and all you other anti-Zionist ragers, you know very well that every society has its criminal element.
The difference, however, between Israel and its Arab enemies is that in Israel the criminals are an aberration, while in the Arab war against the Jews, criminal behaviour is the norm.
And it is glorified and rewarded and extolled-- it is celebrated publicly; public sites are named after Arab criminals; Arab schoolchildren are taught that crime is a virtue; Arab mothers are zealous to despatch their children on criminal missions etc etc.
Get over it, anti-Zionists. If Israel goes down, so will others too.
No more Holocausts on the cheap.

pterodactyl

Derek Pasquill March 24th, 2011 11:re Western suicide: "...One wishes perhaps that they weren't so eager to display their moral smugness while engaging in this ludicrous activity"

I believe that as the sinking boat finally starts to submerge (our civilisation), these people who sank their own boat will have faces full of contentment and smiles even as they too drown. Hate is a very powerful motive.

truth triumphs 2

Truth triumphs asked me to deliver the following message to various posters here - you know who you are:

I'm away skiing - I'll deal with you when i'm back

C.Gee

daniel maris:
Newspaper and TV news coverage is becoming less important. Information from every nook and cranny of the world pours onto the internet. If people do not trust the selections - or slant - of old media, they can go elsewhere. A lot of people like the selections and slant of old media. Pointing out the selections and slants of the BBC is valid, because so many people rely on the BBC and quote its reporting, commentary and documentaries as authoritatively factual.
“Then there is the view I put forward that for the UK, we are more interested in Israel's cross border actions because they are more likely to lead to generalised warfare which might then impact our lives. That is my view.”

Selections of what to cover are partially determined according to editorial judgement of what readers and viewers will be interested in. Many editors know that scaring the readers is a good way of keeping them interested, but the idea that Israel’s cross border actions “are more likely” to lead to “generalised warfare which might impact [readers’] lives”, shows that you are already the victim - by choice, no doubt - of a prolonged, persistent, pernicious implementation of editorial slant. Hence the polls which show a majority of Britons placing Israel among the top few “most dangerous” countries.

“I would like to see some settlement guaranteed by a final peace agreement, just as there should be some return of Arab refugee descendants. But using the Fogels as a tactic in this argument is pretty despicable. Either the settlement policy is wise and justified or it is not. The Fogel case is essentially irrelevant one way or the other.”

But is not settlement a cross-border action of Israel? Does it not show how dangerous Israel is? The BBC and many here would like to see the murder of the Fogels in the context of Israel’s dangerousness, just as they see Israeli military actions in the same context. That’s fair. Of course, therefore, the Fogel murder is relevant to the extent that it can be used to show how dangerous Israel is. But only up to that point. As you say, uncontrovertibly, when it comes to discussions of population swaps, dead people are quite irrelevant. And flapping the Fogels in your face when there are borders to be decided is poor taste. I hope that you are not too discomfited. (The poster called Tilly was very upset by it - felt quite unwell, sick to her stomach.)

With your refined sense of propriety, and fear of being impacted by an Israel-induced war, you have the necessary compass points for navigation of tricky political waters. Bon voyage.

AY

One hundreds and fifty dozen-th time, Derek BLADES

One man's terrorist is another man's fellow terrorist.
Period.

And these "settlers" aren't all that bad. To call them terrorists is definitely, an exaggeration. They even sometimes save Arab children. Without giving up their "settlementship", what a paradoxical Jews.
(You won't like it, so don't open this link)

http://quitenormal.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/same-settlers-who-suffered-massacre-at-itamar-rush-to-save-life-of-arab-baby-parents-name-baby-jude/

David, Thailand

I couldn't for a moment imagine why the BBC might wish to be unbiased.

About time it was disbanded or at least made to fend for itself, but I guess that's like urging the British public to grow a backbone.

aelle

Truthtriumphs

So a Jordanian passport holder travelling by train in a European country can be violently abducted, forced to surrender his passport, flown to a prison in Israel, interrogated, imprisoned and held for six weeks without charge, and your response is :
" Believe it or not, it's what countries do to protect their citizens from terrorism, and quite right too. "

I do,indeed, believe there are countries that sanction violent,illegal,even lethal actions - as with Alexander Litvinenko in London and Mahmoud al Mabhouh in Dubai.

Unlike you, I do not find this right. When private people act in this way we call them criminals. When sovereign states act in this way they are no better.

You then, laughably, suggest that I
" evidently prefer the law of the jungle..", when it is precisely the application of the law of the jungle by the Israeli establishment that I am protesting.

What I am in favour of is the rule of law, which in the case of Abu Sisi, has been blatantly disregarded.

In a further irrational leap you "suppose,by extrapolation" that I disapprove of Israel's abduction of Eichmann. This ludicrous reductio ad absurdum and transparent attempt to smear a critic hardly merits attention. Suffice it to say that there is no similarity whatsoever between the justified apprehension of a recognised war criminal and the abduction and continued imprisonment of an engineer and father of six who was apparently planning to emigrate from Gaza to the Ukraine with his Ukrainian wife. Except of course for the nationality of the abductors.

You go on to speak of the "good reason" for the Israeli action.

Since official gagging orders were in place when you wrote I can only presume that you have privileged access to information not in the public domain. Or you have a touching and absolute faith in every action of the government of the State of Israel. Perhaps you should change your questionable nom de plume to Professor Pangloss.

For my part I think a healthy democracy should be very wary when governments, and particularly the military and secret service, act without regard to the law and human rights. Nazi Germany began life as a democracy and we have seen where that ended.

A final correction: I am neither a socialist, nor yet, sadly, confined to an armchair.

And, since you imply that, unlike me, you live somewhat closer to Hebron than to Hendon, I would ask you to consider that what you refer to as " the wolves at the doorstep " are not in fact wild animals. They are ,rather, fellow human beings who were actually living peacefully, if rather modestly, on the very land on which you chose to construct your home and doorstep.

And when, today, some tragically behave worse than animals, I wonder if you could think of anything that has happened to them over the last few generations that, while not justifying, might, at least in part, explain their anger and hatred.

Sadly, when people perceive they are regarded and treated as animals they will act accordingly.

C.Gee

“Sadly, when people perceive they are regarded and treated as animals they will act accordingly.”

This is a behaviorist fallacy. Let’s examine some others:

When Arab terrorists are treated like statesmen, they will act accordingly.

When Jews are treated as inhuman or sub-human or superhuman, they will act accordingly.

When Arab nations are regarded as civilized polities, worthy to make international law, they behave accordingly.

Sheila

Only wish I could write as eloquently and pointedly as you! Your Jerusalem taxi driver (Nissim) told me to read some of your artilcles - I'm a Christian from the States who loves and supports Isreal. I would like to link your blog to my FaceBook...would that be permissible?? Shalom and best regards,

jason levyJ

As a Jew born in the UK it sickens me that I have to pay for a tv license to enable them to continue to show blatant bias against Israel. What can be done?

Jason Levy

As a Jewish born Brit I am appalled at the BBC and their bias reporting. However the fact that by law I am required to pay for a license every year to enable their clear Anti-Semetic nonsense equally sickens me. What can be done?

JOHN ROOSEVELT

C Gee: "With your refined sense of propriety, and fear of being impacted by an Israel-induced war, you have the necessary compass points for navigation of tricky political waters. Bon voyage."

Pure Mozart.....

Daniel Marais: RIP

Adam B.

Jason Levy, it is an appalling situation - paying for anti-Jewish propaganda. The only thing you can do is complain to the BBC (and escalate the complaints when they receive the inevitable initial brushoff - which is a joke, as the BBC sits in judgment of itself) and write to your MP. Also, campaign for scrapping the licence fee - and boycott BBC "news".

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Bobajot: "Why should the BBC report stuff that has no relevance to the vast majority of licence payers."

You mean, like what's happening in Benghazi, for example? Mmm..Benghazi_Bethnal Green: spot the connection!

daniel maris

John Roosevelt -

If C Gee's comment was Mozart then I am Daniel Barenboim rather than Maris.

As it is, his final para. was about as comprehensible as Schoenberg played backwards.

But C Gee's comments would certainly do a woodwind section proud.

The main point here - those complaining about BBC lack of reporting on the Fogel case - is that no one has explained why the Israeli media don't report on all horrible atrocity murders around the world e.g in Tibet, Mexico and so on. Why don't they?

Does Melanie think they should? And should be abused and subject to opprobrium if they don't?

Kathy

Melanie,

I just listened to an interview you did on Jan. 8 that was posted on Walid Shoebat's web page and I was so inspired by you that I had to write. You were so elegant and truthful about what is going on in the world when it comes to the Arabs and the Israeli's. You truly see things as they are and I applaud your courage to speak up about these things when it could adversely affect your job and relationships with those who disagree. We need more courageous people like you who are not afraid to stand up and speak the truth among a world that does not take kindly to truth. Thank you for what you are doing for the Israeli people and for the world.

John Bruce

Mel, the thing I can't understand is why do you continue to make large amounts of money by working for an organisation which is so blatently antisemitic?

Surely someone with your views would want nothing to do with people who try so hard to delegitimize Israel?

For the life of me, I can't work it out.

Truthtriumphs

Thomas
March 28th, 2011 11:23am
Truthtriumphs,
"why was no Palestinian state offered to the Palestinians between 1948 and 1967, when the Jordanians, Syrians and Egyptians, ruled the WB, the Golan and Gaza respectively?"

"Here's a curious thing. When Jordan's parliament incorporated the West Bank into Jordan, it did so, it said, "without prejudicing the final settlement of Palestine's just case within the sphere of national aspirations, inter-Arab cooperation and international justice." That is, it acknowledged the Palestinians' right to self-determination.
Another of your little propaganda sound-bites turns out to be not quite true".

So you think that the Jordanians'acknowledgement of the "Pals right to self detemination" is the same as giving them a state.
Why didn't they give them the state, instead of stealing it from them?
Instead, what they gave them was Black September, when they killed some 10,000 plus of them, and expelled many thousands more.
Under the circumstances, your interpretation is somewhat quaint.