Category Archives: anti-Israel

Melanie Phillips has written another open letter, this time to David Cameron. The one she wrote earlier, to Jeremy Hunt about the BBC, must have got lost in the post, so it’s doubtful that she had high hopes of a response to this one by return of post, or indeed ever. It’s a great letter, even if it only reaches readers of the Spectator and the Commentator, and not Prime Minister Cameron himself.
When the Israeli PM visited London the other day, it seems David Cameron told him in no uncertain terms that in order to qualify for our unshakeable support Israel must engage meaningfully with the new Hama-tah /Fat-as coalition. Their refusal to come to the table unless Israel reinstates the settlement freeze is equally unshakeable, so presumably David Cameron thinks this is what Israel must do. This, Melanie points out, amounts to a kind of extortion not unlike a Mafia style protection racket. What a pity we can’t confront David Cameron with a similar ultimatum – unless he engages meaningfully with Melanie Phillips, we’ll withdraw our unshakeable support. But he knows that’s pretty shaky already.

The trouble stems, she feels, from Messrs Cameron and Hague’s lack of interest in the subject, and their consequential reliance upon Foreign Office briefings (think Rowan Laxton) for advice on foreign policy. As they seem to be largely making it up as they go along, they can’t be following it to the letter, although inserting “Britain is a good friend of Israel” into the text must either be a baffler or a double-bluff.
Melanie’s letter puts the case for Israel with eloquence, clarity and passion. She summarises Britain’s appalling historical record of the heartless betrayal of Jews, just in case Mr Cameron is not familiar with it. She makes a powerful comparison between the world’s unanimous condemnation of Islamic terrorism and the Arab world’s determination to annihilate Israel, and asks why the world condemns the former yet encourages the latter, when the motivation behind both is identical.
She implores the PM to understand that caving in so one-sidedly to Arab demands is tantamount to rewarding the aggressor and penalising the victim, and warns him, if nothing else, to think of his own legacy.
I think we all know that to hope the PM would acknowledge the letter, read it even, is fanciful. He will get away with ignoring it because our National Broadcaster has taken it upon itself to muffle the truth about Islam and to demonise Israel. Many people are therefore prepared to overlook what quite a few others are nevertheless beginning to feel uncomfortable about. Meanwhile the BBC is merrily and expensively setting the scene for a re-enactment of the 1930s, when the cavalier downplaying of the significance of what that silly German fellow with the moustache was up to led to the unimaginable events that took place under their very noses. “Peace in our time”, the prime minister is saying, but this time round, there’s no Churchill.

We’ve had many surprises this week. One was seeing Mark Regev in the studio, speaking without constant interruptions and contradictions. We had the usual anti Israel tripe from various talking heads too, endlessly bringing up the illusory obstacle to peace, Netanyahu’s refusal to extend the settlement freeze.
Eventually, Hamas’s mourning of Bin Laden’s assassination, or heroic martyrdom, was mentioned. Even the fact that the Arab Spring might not necessarily presage enlightenment and democracy as we know it was voiced, openly, on the BBC.

However, back to normal this morning with Thought for the Day (1:48:06) The Rev Angela Tilby’s words of wisdom addressed the intractable problem of Israel Palestine. Now that those two naughty boys Hamas and Fatah have made friends, she brayed, peace can happen at last. Doves and Hawks, she purred, are both vital to the process. Hawks, though annoying, must be brought in from the cold. We must not treat this as a playground dispute, she warned, unaware that that was exactly what she was doing.
Her two unconvincing reminders that Israel’s fears were rational stuck out oddly, as though they’d been squeezed into the script as an afterthought, having remembered the need for impartiality just in time. The final bit, about Daniel Barenboim’s Gaza gig and the wonderful peace giving properties of Mozart avoided mentioning the tricky subject of Hamas’s aversion to music.
But this isn’t about Today. Most people take its irrelevance as a given, something like being made to swallow a tonic that is thought to be good for you, but isn’t really.
It’s about the item that followed. Are targeted assassinations acceptable? Does Obama’s recent escapade set a precedent? Geoffrey Robertson QC had been listening to Thought for the Day, because he mentioned it to help his argument that targeted assassinations are never justified. What, he speculated, if Sarah Palin as POTUS decided to assassinate Fidel Castro, or Julian Assange? Or what if some Ayatollahs decided to assassinate Salman Rushdie? (What indeed.)

Danny Yatom, former Head of Mossad was on the line. “ Danny Yatom”, says Sarah Montague, authoritatively, “You think it’s better to kill them that remove them alive. “ “No” he replies from some echoing Zionist den, “It’s better to capture alive and obtain intelligence, but we are at war, and in that case, if you don’t shoot, you are shot.”
So our human rights lawyer can’t see the difference between random hypothetical murders of people that a head of state might disapprove of and Israel’s intelligence-led targeted assassinations of terrorists in pre-emptive self-defence in. a. state. of. war.
The USA should have got Daniel Barenboim to play Al Qaeda some lovely Mozart instead.

When something bad happens to Jews or Israelis the BBC reacts with indifference or worse. The reporting of two recent incidents (or non-reporting of one of them) contrast sharply with the BBC’s treatment of similar incidents, which, when they concern Palestinians or Muslims, cause cataclysmic BBC eruptions.

Incident 1, the burning of the Torah in Corfu, was mentioned on the Open Thread with a link to Ray Cook’s blog, but ignored by the BBC. Burning Korans make quite a splash, don’t they? (H/T Demon 1001)

The second incident is described sensitively by blogger Oy Va Goy. It concerns the shooting of some religious Jews, killing one and seriously injuring others, and was at least reported by the BBC, though they dwelled on certain things which almost seemed as though they intended to justify the actions of the Palestinian police perpetrators.
When I switched on the radio this morning I caught the end of a news bulletin. They seemed to be saying that the dead and injured Jews were in a Palestinian controlled area without permission. That’s all. Did anyone else hear that news bulletin?

A Website called “We Are For Israel” is shocked that the BBC refers to the late Vittorio Arrigoni as a peace campaigner. H/T Daphne Anson.
This may seem like a trivial matter. For one thing, he was, in a way, a peace campaigner, that is if you define peace as a Middle East without Jews.
The BBC may or may not be aware of Mr Arrigoni’s reputation, but to take even the slightest interest in his murder at the hands of Ultra Islamist Salafist terrorists is to know that he was not popular in the pro Israel blogosphere.
Any news outlet that pretends it hasn’t noticed that the interweb has been ablaze with obituaries detailing the exact nature of his ‘peace campaigning’ must be blind.
However, when you take into consideration that Ken O’Keefe, the deranged cartoon baddie who became a spokesman for flotillas was repeatedly invited to disgorge his bile on the BBC, well what can you expect? He was even given a whole Hardtalk. I’m all in favour of giving ridiculous people a platform on Hardtalk – I’m sure Sarah Montague deserves every minute of it – (joke) But giving Ken, or Kenneth as he is respectfully entitled here, the credibility of appearing on what is meant to be a serious vehicle for debate beggars belief.
The whole point is that the BBC has lowered our expectations to such an extent that we have to assume that they have abandoned reason, and we must learn to live with it.
So we have every right to complain when the BBC describes this person as a peace campaigner, but we know that nobody at the BBC will see that there’s anything for us to make a fuss about.

As a member of the Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport, I imagine Louise Bagshawe bumps into Jeremy Hunt quite a lot.

I was wondering, since she has taken an interest in the BBC’s bias against Israel, whether she had drawn Mr. Hunt’s attention to Melanie Phillips’s open letter about the very same subject!

According to the Jewish Chronicle, the BBC has backed down over their lack of coverage of the murder of the Fogel family. As it happens, the BBC’s report concerning the arrest of the perpetrators belatedly describes the crime in the detail it neglected to include at the time.

If the Jewish Chronicle is merely going by Helen Boaden’s mealy-mouthed statement, I’d say the term ‘backing down’ is wishful thinking.

Louise Bagshawe was not satisfied, I was not satisfied, and no doubt the thousands of people who wrote messages of support to Ms Bagshawe were not satisfied. So BBC, please could you come clean and admit your “lack of evenhandedness” as your genetic proclivities
urge you to do.

Ah, that sweet Jane Corbyn. Have a look at THIS video!

Here is an excellent site that also details the BBC’s antipathy towards Israel – recommended and worth a visit! Trevor Asserson should be congratulated for his meticulous work on this!

“The bbcwatch Reports demonstrate how the BBC consistently fails to adhere to its legal obligations to produce impartial and accurate reporting. Our systematic, objective and rigorous research points to the firm conclusion that the BBC frequently displays marked and consistent pro-Palestinian bias in their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Their inability to report on this subject in an impartial way raises questions over their ability to report on all other politically sensitive issues.”