says that one of her correspondents tried sending similarly-worded posts referring to “racist/apartheid Israelis” and “racist/apartheid Palestinians” to a BBC messageboard in order to see which ones were removed.
Since individuals are fallible, and different moderators will be on duty at different times, some inconsistency is to be expected. However there did seem to be a definite bias against Israel in the results.
Interesting isn’t it how the Palestinians’ insistance that every single Jew be removed from the West Bank *isn’t* racist – but Israel’s measures against suicide bomber attacks and the like are….
Surely posts on messageboards which might be perceived by some to be ‘designed specifically to anger, annoy or upset other messageboard users’ are the ones which are worth reading and tend to spark interesting discussion.
That phrase provides more evidence of the BBC’s politically correct obsession than any of the editing, where as usual in the Israeli/Palestinian farce it’s impossible to begin a sentence without receiving hysterical abuse from some faction or another.
Having said that I’m surprised nobody has raised the comparative lack of BBC coverage of the ridiculous Israeli university ban recently which raised questions far beyond the terrorist/apartheid screaming.
Cockney
Amid the tsunami (ooooh am I allowed to use that word still?) of lies, distortions and omissions from the BBC it is possible to miss a few. Then again, if someone had picked up that omission I’m sure someone else would be on hand to defend it 😉
I’d have a hard time defending that one even if my intention was specifically to anger, annoy or upset other messageboard users.
The BBC will always take pride in being criticised by both sides. I think Hitler was criticised by both the Western democracies and teh Soviet Union (when not in alliance with him!). That didn’t make him right and the BBC should stop using that ridiculous defence – what we might call the locutio marrus defence – in support of their own wayward actions (not that I’m saying they’re on a par with Hitler you understand).
“Interesting isn’t it how the Palestinians’ insistance that every single Jew be removed from the West Bank *isn’t* racist – but Israel’s measures against suicide bomber attacks and the like are….”
The Palestinians insistance are based on the religious beliefs of Islam.
(the lands of the Umma can never be allowed to fall into the hands of the infidel)
Hence they are to be avoided to be avoided by the infidel westerners.
My Maronite exiled friends know all about it.
A few years ago the Guardian held a blog. There was a word facility search. At the time i counted 47 instances of the word ZIONAZI and 2 of the word Islamofascist.
I sent an email and was told the word Islamofascist was banned but the 2 had got through.
“The Palestinians insistance are based on the religious beliefs of Islam.
(the lands of the Umma can never be allowed to fall into the hands of the infidel)
Hence they are to be avoided to be avoided by the infidel westerners”
And this makes it all right? Considering that Jewish ‘infidels’ were inhabiting this particular area for over two thousand years before the Moslem conquest, and Christians Infidels for six hundred years I’d say their claim to ownership was a little shakey.
I’m a little bemused by this ‘I was here first’ approach to territorial disputes. Surely on this basis if you turned up with a club and a loincloth claiming to be neanderthal you could take your pick.
Roxanne – The Islamic View is that the Jews who inhabited Israel and from which Christianity comes from, were all “PROTO MUSLIMS”.
Unable to convert to Islam because the “Prophet” was not due to arrive on this planet for another thousand years and his message had not yet been heard, they continued in the Jewish faith.
QED ISRAEL has always been an Islamic country!
The Planet earth was therefore Islamic from the beginning of time (and until the end of time).
Infidels do not “Convert to Islam” they “revert to Islam”.
It is no different with the UK (except that the UK was never part of the UMMA). Those who have not embraced Islam have not yet understood the revelations of the Prophet but they will some day.
Cockney
it is equally valid to quote ” I was here second or third etc”.
Therefore it is who is here now that counts NO?
Cockney, that was my point; if they’re going to play the priority game where does one stop?
It’s something like Islamic philosophical discussions about the created or the uncreated Koran. Does time go in a straight line or does it curve in space, all in a relative way of course?
What does matter is that the Jews have always been prepared to accept Muslim and Christian Arabs in their area and on many occasions were ready to make peace. Arab rejectionists put the spanner to every attempt. BUT YOU’LL NEVER GET ANY KIND OF BACKGROUND OR HISTORY FROM THE TAXPAYERS’ VERY OWN BEEB!
I was shocked by the following
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4544311.stm
in which the author assumes that it is morally reprehensible for Palestinians to cooperate with the Israelis. You may care to check it out.
“I was shocked by the following
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/progr…ent/ 4544311.stm
in which the author assumes that it is morally reprehensible for Palestinians to cooperate with the Israelis. You may care to check it out.”
I have just checked it out. It’s a factual story, dealing with those Arabs who have been assisting the Israelis and have been living under Israeli protection. There is nothing in it that qualifies as a moral judgement of any kind. It tells us that these Arabs are having a hard time from other Arabs, and are always in fear of sudden and brutal retribution. It also tells us they are having a hard time from the Israelis, who seem not to care too much about them, having demolished their football pitch without a word of explanation.
If you think this story contains a moral judgement, tell us how you would re-write it so that all moral judgements are removed
Pat Briody.
The piece strongly suggests that the author does not like the “collaborators.” A moral judgement on his part not in keeping with the BBC’s stated policy of neutrality.
Nearly all references to Israel(is) are negative, including referring to it as “the Jewish state.” Of particular note is tacking the adjective “hostile” ahead of the Israeli soldiers guarding the villagers. At this point the veracity of the article becomes suspect and I’d like to know the real story behind the soccer pitch.
The kicker comes at the end when Butcher describes the actions of a Palestinain lynch mob as “Old Testament style brutality.” Why invoke the Hebrew Scriptures to describe the actions of Muslims? He then reinforces this with a false Old Testament reference 2 paragraphs later. Given the overall tone this becomes the closest I have seen the BBC get to straight anti-Semitism.
This piece has deservedly attracted a fair amount of attention from the BBC critirati.
Brad Brzezinski writes:
“Nearly all references to Israel(is) are negative, including referring to it as “the Jewish state.””
By “the Jewish state”, did the BBC correspondent mean something different from what Theodor Herzl meant by it? How powerful a microscope do we need in order to spot the difference, and how mad would you have to be to build such a microscope in the first place? This charge is so obscure that I find it unanswerable. But it might possibly be the kind of thing Woody Allen was satirizing in one of his films where a character claims to find something sinister in a question like “Dchoo eat yet?”
“Of particular note is tacking the adjective “hostile” ahead of the Israeli soldiers guarding the villagers.”
That’s of particular note, is it? I mean, coming just before a description of an Arab woman stabbing the lifeless corpse of a collaborator and plucking his eyes out? Well, watch out for those “hostile” Israelis, then! They’ll execute your football pitches and pluck out your goal-posts. But the correspondent’s use of the term “hostile” seems to depend for its justification upon the truth or otherwise of something else he said: “The problem is that not many Jewish Israelis want Arab collaborators moving in next door”. If that’s true, “hostile” is fair comment. Otherwise it’s bias. So, what do you think? Is it true?
“The kicker comes at the end when Butcher describes the actions of a Palestinain lynch mob as “Old Testament style brutality.” Why invoke the Hebrew Scriptures to describe the actions of Muslims?”
Well, if you’re determined to interpret the phrase as anti-semitic, you’re left with the whole sentence meaning “the Muslims are as bad as the Jews, if not worse”. Fair enough, but it doesn’t help you much in the claim that the slant of the piece is not even-handed between the Arabs and the Israelis, does it? Having your cake and eating it is the metaphor that springs to mind here.
As someone born into the Catholic faith, I do not find my ears pricking up when I hear Stalin’s Great Terror described as an Inquisition, because over the centuries the term has become so disconnected from its origins that the connection can only be re-made by consciously thinking about it. Four hundred years ago when the scriptures were translated into English, Protestant Christians spent too much time reading the Old Testament and not enough time reading the New. Nobody knows why, but it’s a fact. As a result, the language, the imagery, the narrative events of that book have become embedded in our language and cannot be prised out of it. Thus we talk of “a famine of biblical proportions”, “an eye for an eye”, “a Daniel come to judgement”, and other such turns of phrase, being either direct quotes from the Bible or references to its contents. Referring to societies where offenders are subject to immediate and violent retribution, rather than being tagged or given community service, we are quite likely to refer to “Old Testament-style brutality”. This is no more a reference, disparaging or otherwise, to the Jews than it was when William Golding was described as “looking more like an Old Testament prophet than an author”. It is a description intended to evoke images of an ancient time where ancient codes applied. It might be true these days that biblical references are used incorrectly, with only a vague knowledge of the actual meaning of the original, but that’s a result of the rather approximate nature of modern education. Very few people read the bible any more. It’s all hand-me-down stuff.
But, whether used accurately or inaccurately, the language of the Bible has been so heavily appropriated by Protestant Christianity over the past four centuries, and has so infected the language of common discourse, that any specific association with Judaism is all but buried. People who do not know this are people who are badly in need of an education – and Melanie Phillips is one of them, apparently.
In the context of the BBC article, using the term “Old Testament-style” in reference to events in the deserts of the Middle East is such an obvious thing to do that it could be called standard “verbal association” journalism. And the subsequent reference to the “sins of the fathers” (again, applied to Arabs, not Jews) would come under the heading of “extending the allusion”. Melanie Phillips, on the other hand, sees it as a reference to Jewish guilt for the Crucifixion, an interpretation which might be a symptom of her own approximate education, since the source pre-dates the Crucifixion by several centuries. But then, if you habitually shine your lamp at peculiar angles, you’re bound to start seeing dogs’ heads on the wall.
I suggest that all of this is worse than a waste of time – it’s positively counter-productive. To sound alarms about anti-semitism where it doesn’t exist is to encourage a habit of disbelief amongst the general populace, where real examples of anti-semitism will be disregarded along with the fake examples. Shooting at shadows is a good way of wasting your ammunition. Why not conserve it until a real target hoves into view?