Muslim Brotherhood Calls For Violence – Jeremy Bowen Unavailable For Comment

Thank goodness somebody at the US Embassy in Cairo has a pair:

It was in reply to this, as pointed out by Douglas Murray in the Spectator:

(Screengrab of the US tweet can be seen here. I’ll get to why this is necessary in a minute.)

Isn’t that sweet? One of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Arabic tweets, to which the US Embassy tweet was referring said:

Egyptians rising up in support of the Prophet in front of the American embassy

That’s the caption to the photo of a raging mob from this article on the MB’s official website, Ikwhanonline.  The article itself is a description of the incident, not really an incitement to violence or anything, but it’s revealing of the MB’s real attitude towards the violence nonetheless. I’m sure defenders of the indefensible who are media professional can explain to me how this casual description of violence jibes with their official declaration of sympathy with the US. There was no condemnation until somebody called them on it.

Any offending tweets have been deleted, of course, just like certain Beeboid tweets after they got caught. Notice that, while the MB’s social media staff seem to beavering away most days, sending out tweets practically every hour, sometimes even more often than that, there’s a huge gap of silence between 1:28pm and 11:23pm. Curious. Similarly, there’s an anomalous twelve hour gap of silence on Sept. 12 in the Twitter feed of the MB’s official website. According to Bloomberg, the MB cheekily played innocent when responding to the US Embassy.

CBS News seems to be taking the MB’s side on this one, claiming that, while the US Embassy deleted their tweet, the MB’s own tweets can still be found on their feed. This is obviously not true. But it’s pretty uncool that the US Embassy staff was forced to delete their tweets. This is the same US Embassy which tweeted an apology for the film before the attacks. What a disaster. There’s groveling dhimmitude at the highest levels of the US Government, it seems. The Leftosphere, naturally, is criticizing the US Embassy staff for being childish. I have no idea why nobody else seems to be wondering why there’s a huge gap in the MB’s twitter feed, since the US Embassy in Cairo must have been responding to something a little stronger.

However, MEMRI highlights this article from Aug. 27 by an MB member directly calling for jihad against the usual stock villains, descendents of pigs and dogs, and the US:

Praising The Traits Of The Jihad Fighter

“Fasting [during Ramadan] is one of the most powerful means to educate the human spirit for jihad. Fasting involves a spiritual effort to act in a way contrary to what is accepted, and to completely abandon desires… It also schools the Muslim in patience, resilience, endurance, and sacrifice, which are all traits of the jihad fighter…

Plus there’s a call to liberate Jerusalem. They’re not so innocent as Jeremy Bowen, award-winning BBC Middle East editor, once claimed. Bowen described the Muslim Brotherhood as being “conservative, moderate and non-violent”. Until, that is, he got caught and quickly deleted the word “moderate”. Unfortunately, though, the “non-violent” modifier is still there. This should be enough to cause his removal, but the BBC still views him as their most trusted go-to man on Middle East issues. And they expect you to trust someone who describes the Muslim Brotherhood as moderate and non-violent.

Bowen’s colleague, John Leyne, suggests that this violence could lead to better relations between the US and Egypt. No, seriously.

The filmmaker was removed from his home yesterday – voluntarily, yeah, surrounded by police – for “questioning”. Whatever his real name is, the guy is apparently on probation for a conviction for bank fraud. One requirement of his probation is that he can’t use the internet, or get someone to do something on the internet for him. That’s why the FBI had him brought in. In other words, somebody uploading that trailer to YouTube on his behalf is enough for the President of the US to have somebody investigated and brought in. The man has since been released, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about the people who run US law enforcement right now.

The BBC, which spent a huge amount of energy recently trying to figure out who made this film, has for some bizarre reason censored both the news about this incident, and the news about the twitter stuff. I wonder why?

Again, I fully expect our defenders of the indefensible who are media professional to explain this all to me in detail.

Road to Damascus

Jeremy Bowen’s Islam-friendly reporting seems to have come back to bite him on the bum.

All those years of Israel-bashing and pro Palestinian propaganda, all that peculiar sucking up to Gaddafi. Now the BBC don’t seem prepared to give his sneakily defensive interpretation of Bashar al-Assad’s desperate struggles, the time of day. (BBC News24) The BBC is squarely on the side of the rebels. Could Jeremy Bowen be the only one at the BBC who suspects, in a ‘better the Devil you know’ Damascene moment, that toppled dictators could really be replaced by something much worse?

All day the outrage at Russia and China’s refusal to support the UN resolution backing an emasculated Arab League peace plan, has been topping the BBC headlines.

There has been a huge, as yet unquantified death toll in Syria, which makes the argument for the stability of Bashar’s murderous regime against the uncertainty of what the rebels might have to offer, (possibly equally murderous) all the weaker.
Melanie Phillips sets out the “utter intrinsic bankruptcy of the UN.”
I don’t recall the BBC questioning the legitimacy of the UN security Council before, but they seem to be hinting at something like that now, in respect of these vetoes. This is obviously because they approved of previous UN resolutions which have, of course, mostly been against Israel.

A great failing of the BBC is that they refuse to see radical Islam as a threat. “They’re just like us,” they always seem to be saying. “Talk to Hamas. Talk to the Taliban”. They wouldn’t entertain the possibility that radical Islam was beyond reason, that the core beliefs in Islam were irreconcilable with our own. At the same time, the group they chose to portray as ‘other’ with a vengeance, were those dastardly Jews in Israel.
Now look what is happening. The Arab Spring has unleashed goodness knows what. Democracy? Freedom? Not on your Nellie.

It must be worth considering the possibility that being controlled by Despots and Tyrants is the only way of keeping a lid on an explosive, unruly, ungovernable, squabbling bunch of religious maniacs whose hatred of each other is only trumped by their hatred of Israel, America and Britain. The intellectuals and idealists who revolted in Tahrir Square have melted away. Now all that’s left is the wild bunch.
So if Jeremy Bowen’s belated reservations about the Arab world’s new-fangled vision of democracy jars with the BBC, they might stop defending his scrupulous impartiality and start treating him as a pariah, as well as the Jews and the Zionists. Wouldn’t that be weird?

Jeremy Bowen’s Bias Revealed: Muslim Brotherhood "Conservative, Moderate and Non-Violent"

Yesterday, As I See It posted a comment in the open thread about how Lyse Doucet gave a report on Radio 5 in which she gently sanitized the Muslim Brotherhood ( I can’t find a link to it right now, but if someone points to it I’ll add it here).  At one point, she apparently slipped up and said that Salafists are “extremists….er…..let me say strict….”  Oops, nearly tanked the Narrative there.  In any case, I was reminded of a post I saw by Jeremy Bowen back in February, where he said that the Muslim Brotherhood are “conservative, moderate and non-violent”.

WTF? I said to myself.  How can  they be both?  By definition one cannot be the other.  Any group calling for Shariah Law cannot be moderate. Yet Bowen saw no problem saying it.  However, somebody had a problem with it, as he stealth-edited it out quickly.  I failed to take a screenshot at the time, assuming News Sniffer would catch it if anything happened, but when I went back the next day, “moderate” had been removed, and News Sniffer had nothing.  So I gave up on it.

Fortunately,  I’ve just remembered the Wayback Machine.  Within a minute, I found this:

Why would he say such a thing?  Somebody pointed it out to him, and he or an astute BBC News Online sub-editor sent it down the memory hole.  Wake me up when a Beeboid says the same thing about the Tea Party movement.

If anyone still had a modicum of trust in Bowen’s reporting, it’s surely shredded to pieces now.  He’s obviously partisan, and not thinking clearly.  Defenders of the indefensible may dismiss this simply because it’s 10 months old, but I fail to see how that makes any difference.  Bowen truly believed it, and clearly meant to sanitize the Muslim Brotherhood so the license fee payers wouldn’t get too worried about them.  He’s not, so why should you be?  I’m sure his superiors at the BBC know all about what he really thinks, and simply don’t care.  Some of them may even agree with him. It’s irresponsible, not to mention delusional.  I’d say it’s impossible to trust his reporting on Egypt any longer. 

No Shortcut

The BBC has a dilemma. Their beloved Obama has made a difficult speech. “There is no Shortcut to Peace”

“Let’s be honest: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them,”

Obama said.

“Israel, a small country of less than 8 million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile, persecution, and the fresh memory of knowing that 6 million people were killed simply because of who they were.”

These facts cannot be denied. The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition,” Obama said. “It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two-state solution, with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine.”

The Guardian has decided that Obama is electioneering, and his only reason for sounding pro Israel is our old friend the Jewish Lobby.

Jeremy Bowen agrees:

The president’s speech was as much about the politics of his own re-election bid next year as it was about the politics of making peace.

Read his analysis, and despair.

ANTI-SEMITIC SHILLS FOR GADDAFI

A guest post by Hippiepooter:

If I was an anti-Semitic despot desperately trying to cling to power and I wanted to give an interview with pliant Western journalists to make propaganda, I know that Jeremy Bowen would be at the top of my list.

It came as no surprise to me that Mr Bowen was one of the three journalists that Colonel Gaddafi chose to interview him.

This said, in my cursory viewing of the interview, I would say that Bowen successfully maintained plausible deniability that he was acting as Gaddafi’s shill, if indeed it would be fair to construe that that would possibly be his intention.

In what I heard of his reports thereafter there was nothing that really stood out as that untoward. Until recently. As the ‘madman in the kaftan’ has rallied his forces and appears to be gaining the upper-hand over the rebels despite major defections and allied bombing, there has been a decided shift in the BBC Tripoli Correspondent’s tone of coverage.

On Saturday 16th April the Telegraph online reported Lord General Dannatt expressing the following concerns over Mr Bowen’s reporting:-

“People hang on the words of the BBC in Libya and throughout the Middle East and I do wonder if what he has been saying has been entirely helpful,” says General Lord Dannatt, the former Chief of the General Staff. “Mr Bowen has, of course, every right to report what happens, but when he dwells to such an extent on intangible things — such as how long the operation will take and whether the will is there to see it through — then it sets a tone that could hardly have given heart to members of the rebel forces.”

Round about this time I noticed Bowen refer to Gaddafi’s side as ‘Libya’, although he quickly corrected himself straight away.

Not any more though. Here’s Bowen on 5Live’s Victoria Derbyshire (19/04/11). The interview starts 1:18:10 (my emphases):-

“[…]The Libyans say that they will allow some humanitarian access coming out of Tripoli into places. Uh, I think they have motivation for allowing a certain amount of it, now of course there’s a trade off between what the army here might want and there’s a trade off between what the more political people might want, but you can see from the Libyan point of view there are advantages in allowing humanitarian aid in”

Bowen is clearly self-identifying with Gaddafi. I had to wait some time in to the interview to confirm that by ‘Libya’ he actually meant the Gaddafi regime. The lingua franca of covering this conflict is ‘loyalists’ and ‘rebels’. While Foreign Secretary the Rt Hon Wiliam Hague MP has announced that Her Majesty’s Government no longer recognises the legitimacy of Gaddafi’s regime for the murderous brutality with which he has suppressed his people’s quest for freedom, Bowen clearly wants to confer legitimacy on Gaddafi in the minds of the British public.

Why would Bowen do this? My contention, or supposition, is that he sees there is a very real possibility that if Gaddafi is toppled Libya will have a Government that does not share Bowen’s pathological hatred of Israel. Such a thing for Bowen would be enough to give him a coronary.
If you listen to the whole of the interview you’ll see that overall Bowen does enough to maintain a veneer of impartiality – enough to seduce the unsuspecting listener into trusting him so that he may steer their unsuspecting minds to where he wants them to go. Although you might consider, as I do, that he was deftly trying to rubbish a rebel supplied casualty figure without having any idea what they’d been based on (Some idea here).

One occasion however when Bowen’s facade dropped spectacularly is etched vividly in my mind.

During Gulf War I a cruise missile struck a civilian bunker in Baghdad leaving hundreds dead.

David Dimbleby interviewed Bowen live from Baghdad.

Bowen reported in terms of ‘aren’t we bad, we really need to stop this war as soon as possible’.

Prior to this, I had read or heard reports that the allies suspected that Saddam Hussein was sending control and command communication signals from civilian bunkers in the hope of causing the very tragedy that had just occurred to leave the US Coalition discredited and strengthen calls for the war to end. I was heartened when David Dimbleby asked Mr Bowen:-

“But Jeremy, what were they doing there?”

Bowen exploded. Face contorted with rage he shouted: ‘They were trying to protect themselves from the bombs that the Americans are dropping on Baghdad!’

Bowen was livid that Dimbleby had got in the way of him promoting Saddam Hussein propaganda. There is no anti-Semitic tyrant that Bowen will not shill for.

Unfortunately, Mr Dimbleby chose not to pursue the matter further, apparently wishing to avoid any further unseemliness from his deranged colleague.

As all the experts have told us, imposing a no fly zone on Gaddafi is an act of war. We are at war with Gaddafi. If Jeremy Bowen keeps heading the way he’s going he risks supplying enough grounds to the security services to place him under formal investigation for aiding and abetting the Queen’s enemies at time of war. Given that Her Majesty’s Government has stretched Her already overstretched armed forces still further with the much needed action against Gaddafi to stop him massacring his own people for seeking freedom, not to mention the unfinished business of WPC Yvonne Fletcher and Lockerbie that must rightly underlie our action, it might be hoped that if Mr Bowen does take that ill-advised step too far, the P45s awaiting our heroic servicemen upon their return may be cushioned somewhat by the long overdue spectacle of HMG taking action against Treason. Hopefully, our Prime Minister would not feel the need to ask Shami Chakrabati’s permission to do this, or is our country so far into its death throes that this might not be such an absurd notion? Treachery, seek it out.
********************Hippiepooter

Unexpected Aberration?

Nick Cohen wrote: “……….. Jeremy Bowen is blinking at his cameraman in Tripoli, like some startled, uncomprehending mammal who has been shaken by the convulsions around him from a hibernation that has lasted for most of his career.”
He’s still blinking. Caught in the headlights in Tripoli, I think he has suddenly woken up! He’s telling us that the rebels in Libya might not be all they’re cracked up to be. And despite all our efforts, Gaddafi. Aint. Bovvered.
Meanwhile Orla Geurin has gone to the intensive care department of a hospital to emote about civilian casualties inflicted by Gaddafi’s army. I’m always suspicious of broadcasts from hospital wards, especially those direct from intensive care. While the BBC is trying to get us onside in the war against Gaddafi, Bowen is warning us that we should give some consideration to the ‘better the devil you know’ theory.
Now I see that General Lord Dannatt doesn’t think this kind of thing is ‘helpful.’
Just to be clear, I’m ambivalent about our involvement in Libya. But that is neither here nor there. When the BBC is overtly campaigning for something I automatically become suspicious.
Is this really me, or have I metamorphosed into someone else. …. because I’m wondering if Jeremy Bowen has suddenly ‘grown a pair’?

Being Partial

Attacking Israel with malice aforethought is one of this country’s favourite pastimes. From grave political misrepresentation emanating from MPs and broadcasters, to gossip and urban myth perpetuated by press, television, journalists and chatterati.

For example, a misdiagnosis of the PaliLeaks revelations is firmly embedded in public consciousness.

Despite being filtered through sources with infamously anti-Israel agendas – the Guardian and Al-Jazeera – the consensus is that the Palestinian negotiators were weak, cravenly offering everything to the swaggering intransigent Israelis.
This interpretation sabotages the PA, the peace process and damages Israel’s image even further, if that is conceivable. Without taking the trouble to ask themselves cui bono, who benefits, they adopt this theory and stick with it. Go Figga.

Swallowing this interpretation has a prerequisite., which boils down to believing that Israel is simply wrong. Wrong to defend itself, wrong to be Jewish and wrong to be in Muslim Lands.

Imagine, if you will, that Israel’s deputy foreign minister was a nice chap. Imagine that he applauded what the Egyptian people have been striving for. Imagine, as if your imagination was huge and boundless, that this man was Danny Ayalon, and you saw that he was good, and fair, and personable, and without a nasty foreign accent. Then suspend your disbelief, and with a gigantic effort imagine that John Humphrys didn’t interrupt this, this, this…silver-tongued trickster. This is getting too much.
Snap! You’re back in the room.

Here comes Jeremy Bowen. He couldn’t believe it either. “Of course you’re getting a partial view” he spluttered, because he hadn’t got a leg to stand on.

Imagine! Jeremy Bowen accusing someone of having a partial view!
Laugh?
No, not really. Jeremy Bowen simply believes Israel is wrong. Wrong to defend itself, wrong to be Jewish and wrong to exist.

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD TO RECORD "KISSES FOR ME"?


Sometimes, when I hear Jeremy Al Bowen talking about “the Brotherhood” I wonder if he has in fact mistaken the Egypt based bunch of Jew-Hating Islamic supremacists for the Eurovision winning Brit group of the 1970’s? I listened aghast to an interview with Bowen on Today this morning (7.50am) with Bowen once again sanitising the Brotherhood to such a degree that one could hardly imagine any downside from such a “conservative” group of kindly men. The BBC is doing all it can to portray what is going on in Egypt as a wonderful example of spontaneous people power, democracy in action. It seems entirely unconcerned about the vicious anti-Semitism that characterises the Brotherhood.  How odd.

A Smirk Too Far

I’m sure B-BBC regulars trawl roughly the same blogs, and I often recognise familiar monikers on comments pages.
Grant wonders about the BBC’s lack of interest in Tunisia now that their uprising is old hat. I’d say it was a bit premature to hold it up as some sort of role model for the rest of the Arab World, though. Elder of Ziyoners will know what I mean.
Hat Tip to Hippiepooter for linking to this interesting thread from Harry’s Place.
I actually saw Jeremy Bowen say those words, and he had a distinct smirk on his face as he said them.
The Muslim Brotherhood is certainly not moderate, and as we already know, the BBC interprets *conservative* in its own unique way, but non violent? Pull the other one.

“A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt told the Arabic-language Iranian news network Al-Alam on Monday that he would like to see the Egyptian people prepare for war against Israel.”

All BBC reporters seem to have taken to referring to Hezbollah and Hamas as “Regarded by Israel as a terrorist organisation.” (But not by anyone else, impliedly.) Soon they’ll be applying it to Al Qaeda. I think they would like to see the British people prepare, not only for a war against Israel, but also for a losing battle against Islam.

THAT MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD MOMENT….

As we have been commenting for the past several days, “ace” BBC correspondent Jeremy Bowen has been going out of his way to allay any fears the British public may have concerning the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood should Mubarak fall in Egypt. The question is – WHY would Bowen (and his employer) seek to convey this impression? Well, here is one suggestion..

“The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the main reasons why official Israel seems to support Mubarak so keenly. It is considered the most popular political movement in Egypt, and its position regarding the peace treaty with Israel is clear: They want it revoked immediately. “Democracy is something beautiful,” said Eli Shaked, who was Israel’s ambassador to Cairo from 2003 to 2005 “Nevertheless, it is very much in the interests of Israel, the United States and Europe that Mubarak remains in power.”

“If regime change occurs in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood would take the helm, and that would have incalculable consequences for the region,” says Shaked. What Israel fears more than a — somewhat unlikely — armed conflict with Egypt is an alliance between an Islamist regime in Cairo and Hamas, which considers itself an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. An Egyptian regime that opened the border with Gaza for arms deliveries would pose a serious danger to Israel. Shaked considers the West’s demands for more openness and democracy in Egypt to be a fatal mistake. “It is an illusion to believe that the dictator Mubarak could be replaced by a democracy,” he says. “Egypt is still not capable of democracy,” he adds, pointing out that the illiteracy rate is over 20 percent, to give just one example. The Muslim Brotherhood is the only real alternative, he opines, which would have devastating consequences for the West. “They will not change their anti-Western attitude when they come to power. That has not happened (with Islamist movements) anywhere: neither in Sudan, Iran nor Afghanistan.”

Israel’s threat is Al Bowen’s opportunity? Surely not….