Search Results for: Abdel Bari Atwan

WHO HE?

The Today programme bring on a ‘ringer’ (Last 5 minutes) in the form of Abd Al Bari Atwan, editor of Al Quds Al Arabi  newspaper…from Gaza and who is pretty much an extremist where Israel is concerned….but the BBC don’t mention that when they usher him in to give us his take on the Israeli response to being bombarded by Palestinian rockets…….

He claims there is no military solution….in other words the Israelis must stop their ‘useless’ military measures….very convenient conclusion.

He said that the conclusion is that the only solution is a political settlement.   He claims the Israelis are the only barrier to this having ‘derailed’ the peace talks and have besieged a starving population in Gaza.

He finishes by saying that the Palestinians are right to attack Israel as they were kicked out of their land by the Israelis….which, if you read that correctly, means that there can be no peace until the Israelis are ‘gone’, one way or another.

 

Atwan is famous for saying this…..
Speaking about Iran’s nuclear capability in an interview on Lebanese television in June 2007, Atwan stated:

“If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight.”

He further stated in the case of war, Iran would retaliate against its Arab neighbors, American bases in the Gulf and “Allah willing, it will attack Israel, as well.”

 

What do others have to say about his trustworthiness…..

‘ Yemenite journalist and columnist for the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Munir Al-Mawari, stated: “The Abd Al Bari Atwan [appearing] on CNN is completely different from the Abdel Bari Atwan on the Al Jazeera network or in his Al Quds Al Arabi daily. On CNN, Atwan speaks solemnly and with total composure, presenting rational and balanced views. This is in complete contrast with his fuming appearances on Al Jazeera and in Al Quds Al Arabi, in which he whips up the emotions of multitudes of viewers and readers.”

‘Lior Ben-Dor, a spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in London, said: “The problem is that when addressing the British public, he tends to hide his true opinions and ideology – his support for terror and the murder of civilians. This article reveals Atwan’s real colors, a supporter of fundamentalism and terror, and hence he should be treated accordingly.”

Maybe it is legitimate to have a multitude of voices and opinions in any discussion (save climate change naturally)…but it is only fit and proper that the BBC informs us exactly the nature of those people giving us their ‘honest’ opinion.

Marching Orders

Israel-supporting blogs have been cross posting an account of the manner in which Richard Millett was roughly ejected from yet another of the sinister pro-Palestinian meetings that abound in London institutions.

The organisers objected to the fact that he was filming, but as there were others doing so too, it is more likely that they simply objected to his presence. He makes it his duty to attend these functions, which are, after all, advertised as public meetings, and he is well known for asking difficult questions and ‘disrupting’ the antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric.

The relationship between this incident and the BBC is an indirect one, apart from the fact that one of the speakers who watched this incident take place from his seat on the  platform was our old friend, the BBC’s go-to Middle East talking head, Abdel Bari Atwan.

That, and the fact that the BBC’s biased reporting has fostered a default anti-Israel attitude amongst otherwise well-meaning people who mistakenly think this is a good and righteous principle.

BRASS IN POCKET

Oops.

“The BBC’s font of all knowledge Arab, has been possibly in receipt of Gaddafi gold for the last 3 years. Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of Al Quds newspaper, is often a guest commentator on the BBC sofa. They happily ignore his rabid anti-semitism…..such as telling us that he will dance in the fountains in Trafalgar square if Israel is nuked. Documents have come to light in Libya which suggest he was in the pay of Gaddafi (in Arabic here translated using Microsoft translator)….

http://www.microsofttranslator.com/BV.aspx?ref=IE8Activity&a=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.palpress.co.uk%2Farabic%2F%3Faction%3Ddetail%26id%3D20479

‘One of these documents are stamped secret it contains lists of the honoring of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, the present document contains two names, Khairy Mansour (editorial writer dustour) and Abdul Bari Atwan, the Al-Quds Al-Arabi, published in London, Al-alkzavet is a monthly salary of $ 4,000 dollars paid for them for 3 years extendable and document issued in the year 2008. Document spread with lightning speed and are in circulation and agencies covered some forums even including Arab satellite television channel’

No doubt the BBC will ‘investigate’ and pronounce its horror as it has with the revelation that Britain had ‘relations’ with Gaddafi’s regime in the name of engagement,disarmament and peace”

Complicity in Israel-Bashing Jamboree


Does the Media Aid Israel? Does Amnesty Aid Humanity? Does the BBC Aid Amnesty?
To comply with its charter the BBC needs to convince the world that its coverage of the Middle East is impartial, but you need only glance at certain BBC employees to spot a commonality that belies any such claim. Former BBC Middle East correspondent Alan Hart is a conspiracy nut whose anti-Israel fanaticism crosses the line between rationality and hyper mania. He flimsily camouflages this by producing a faux BBC chat show called ‘Hart of the Matter,’ with a rogues gallery of career anti Zionists as guests. He parted company with the BBC a while ago, but there’s also Tim Llewellyn who worked for the BBC for ten years and knows all about propaganda. At the 2004 book launch of ‘Bad news From Israel’, Mr Llewellyn exposed the tricks used by the cunning Israelis to dupe the BBC into promoting the case for Israel.

“The Israelis appear in studios wearing suits. They’ve learned all sorts of tricks. They are wizards at communication; [….]He added that the tone of complaints against those giving the Palestinian viewpoint was “vituperative, pestering and controlling.”

‘Bad News From Israel’ is a rich source of material from which BBC spokespersons tediously produce morsels to attest to the BBC’s impartiality. (the antidote is Stephanie Gutmann’s The Other War)
Author Greg Philo and his colleague Llewellyn use the technique, much cherished by Arabs, of attributing your own most malevolent inner thoughts, suspicions and shortcomings to your enemy.
To employ one anti-Israel polemicist as Middle East correspondent seems careless; two appears more than mere coincidence. Yet more still …… looks positively purposeful.

When the Arab uprisings began to make the headlines, one of the experts on the BBC’s speed dial was kindly grandfather Kamal Helbawy, spokesman for the Islamist group Jeremy Bowen calls moderate, the Muslim Brotherhood. Moderate in comparison to something in his own head no doubt. Meanwhile, Bowen, himself a man with attitude, has temporarily forsaken his Palestinian pals to support Gaddafi, and Jon Donnison is following in Alan “I’m telling your story” Johnston’s well trodden footsteps, like a kidnap waiting to happen. So Is Wyre Davies. Yasmin Alabhai Brown is on the BBC so often that she acts as if she owns the place. She and Mehdi Hasan are incessantly called upon to review the newspapers. Why?
Abdel Bari Atwan’s eyes bulge constantly from our screens. Thought for the Day regular Oliver McTernan runs Forward Thinking.

“Have a look through Harry’s Place archives and you’ll understand very quickly that this is merely a euphemism for “we support Hamas”.

I could go on, but I won’t.
Tim Llewellyn is consumed by his hatred of Israel. He’s beside himself, a man possessed. He and Mr Philo are continually beavering away alongside other Israel-haters, spreading the word. Amnesty International has unequivocally aligned itself with the Islamists. In the UK the BBC, the rest of the MSM, and probably the global social media network have convinced the majority of the idiocracy that taking an anti Israel stance is cool.
Occasionally the BBC administers Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips to take the bitter taste away, but that’s just a drop in the bucket of balance. Next time a human rights report from Amnesty headlines a BBC news bulletin, remember the BBC’s charter.
Because of the BBC, Zionism is a pejorative, and the very word Israel has come to embody evil. Heedless that they’re recreating 1930s Germany, the BBC carries on regardless.

Questions and Answers

Last night’s Any Questions panel spoke for multiculturalism, women, and the Arab Spring. The solitary male member, if you’ll excuse the expression, was Jehangir Malik OBE, UK Director of Islamic Relief, who was roped in to opine on behalf of the Arab World.

The panellists still spoke elegiacally of the Arab Spring, which, for them still heralds the dawning of a new age of enlightenment. It’s just as if they’d never heard of the disconcerting rise of Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, or listened to any of the creeping doubts that are beginning to emerge everywhere but in their own consciousness. They seem a bit like the befuddled fugitive who hasn’t discovered that the war he’s been hiding from for the last decade ended years ago.

In this vein, they expressed undiluted optimism over the Arab Spring, and deep joy at the diversity and multiculturalism in the UK.

The thing that was omitted from the discourse was, of course, Islam.

Diversity is undoubtedly beneficial. I myself am diverse. Variety is the spice of life, and variegated skin-colour, racial origin, a multiplicity of traditions and customs are all jolly good ingredients when added to the mix in correct, proportional measure.

But political correctness ignores the essential truth, which is that the benefits immigration might bring to the UK must outweigh and not overwhelm the very things that make it an attractive destination. There comes a point where those who ‘flock’ from far and wide to partake, begin to resemble tourists who, by sheer numbers, wreck the beauty and tranquility of the tourist attractions they visit, robbing them of their attractiveness in the process. Before people recognise what is happening, too many are profiting from the status quo, so don’t want to admit there’s a problem.

The Islamic faith may well be beneficial in potentially volatile Islamic regimes which are kept on an even keel by people we consider tyrants and despots. They control populations by fear, as do religious leaders who stunt the imagination by persuading vulnerable people that this life is a mere preparation for the next.

Refusing to get to grips with the fact that a functioning democratic society requires the population to be reasonably free from constraints that interfere with the ability to think, is a huge handicap. That’s what political correctness does to us. It won’t permit open discussion, and explains the puzzling tyranny of the P.C. edict, which proclaims ” to be good, one must be non-judgmental.” That leads to moral equivalence, which in turn might explain the frequent appearance on our screens, courtesy of the BBC, of Abdel al-Bari Atwan. Mr. Atwan has been endorsing last week’s attacks near Eilat in which Israelis were murdered.

‘The Eilat operation, as I see it, corrected the course of the Arab revolutions and refocused them on the most dangerous disease, namely the Israeli tyranny. This disease is the cause of all the defects that have afflicted the region for the past 65 years…’

CiFWatch, the watchdog website that monitors the Guardian’s increasingly overt antisemitism, is concerned about Atwan’s frequent contributions to Comment is Free. The Guardian represents the intelligentsia, many of whom have travelled so far to the left that they’ve gone right round the back and out the other side, having picked up radical Islam along the way, like a burr on your woolly jumper. How did that happen? It’s inexplicable to many of us, and apparently to them. At least, I haven’t heard a convincing explanation so far.

The BBC’s fondness for hiring Abdel al-Bari Atwan is clear. He’s never off our screens. Opining on this and that, his eyes bulging preternaturally, he’s regarded as an authority on all things Arab. Springs, Uprisings, and Resistance? Ask Abdel. His speciality is demonising Israel and fantasising about it being nuked.

Is he impartial? Is he sane? Are his prejudices balanced on the air, in the short term or the long term, by opposing views? Are his views given undue respect and credibility?

Why does the BBC give inflammatory, racist, antisemitic and warmongering individuals the oxygen of publicity on programmes like Dateline or Newsnight? We know the BBC is mischievous and likes a bit of a barney for the ratings. But this is serious. They might want to try and make sparks fly, but sparks have a habit of getting out of control if they’re given free rein.

Any Questions? Here’s one. Does the panel think the BBC is after a conflagration?

A caller has phoned in to Any Answers to self-flagellate over our colonial past, and has invented a new despot named ‘Dugaffi.” I despair.

Amnesty Again

Remember that meeting hosted by Amnesty? The one entitled Complicity in Oppression, Does the Media Aid Israel?
I mentioned the speakers, ex BBC Tim Llewellyn and the BBC’s resident Israel-bashing buddy, bulgy-eyed Abdul Bari (call me Barry) Atwan, Greg Philo and Victoria Brittain. Here’s Richard Millett’s review of what sounds like quite a night.
They brought up such tired old clichés – as though the audience hadn’t heard them a million times before. “But Hamas was democratically elected” “All political parties are completely and utterly dominated by the you-know-what lobby” etc. etc.
“The BBC waits in fear of phone calls from the Israelis” – I recall that laughable quote from Peter Oborne’s ridiculous television programme about the Jewish lobby.

Poor old ”Barry” Atwan complains that he’s not on the BBC enough. They seem to have dropped him on one occasion in favour of the likes of PM Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. (Jewish Lobby again.) Tim Llewellyn has gone off his rocker. He feels sorry for poor Jeremy Bowen, who’s obviously so constrained by the Zionists at the BBC. He’s not completely mad though. One thing he said sounds rather sane. “………… the BBC didn’t properly address his complaints. He referred to one response from the BBC as a “tendentious piece of garbage”.
Haha.
The BBC is busy celebrating Amnesty’s 50th anniversary. BBC News 24 just interviewed one of its representatives, Dr. Champa Patel, most ingratiatingly. Apparently Dr. Patel works within the anti-racism and community development sector.
Physician, heal thyself.