BBC's notion of even handedness

Travelling a long distance in a car with an old radio when you are outside of London (which I had to do today) is not much fun because essentially it means that there are just two channels where you can get a reasonably consistent quality signal. Those two stations happen to be BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live (so much for consumer choice). Even when they are not talking about Israel, listening to those channels is as close as you can get to aural torture - a bit like being lectured at by a stream of posh academic versions of Ken Livingstone or George Galloway for hour after hour talking about 'social justice'.

But, sadly today they were also giving their spin about the failure of the Middle East  'peace process' as their second news item every 15 minutes. Here is their 'balanced' analysis of the reasons for the failure (and given the number of times I heard this repeated on Radio 5 Live this is pretty much verbatim***):

 "Both sides are being blamed for the failure. Israel refused to release Palestinian prisoners and there was Palestinian anger at Israel's continued settlement building in the occupied territories"

Now there was I thinking before hearing this that the failure might be due to that fact that the Palestinian Authority had

• broken their commitment to recognise the Jewish State
• broken all of their other previous commitments, such as agreeing not to go to UN bodies
• decided to sign a pact with Hamas who are committed not just to Israel's total destruction but to killing every Jew in the world
• decided to sign a pact with Islamic Jihad who actually make the Hamas murderers look moderate
• continued with its antisemitic incitement at all levels of Palestinian society
• continued to glorify - and pay - child murderers for their 'heroic acts' in killing Jews
• etc

But silly me - because apparently the failure of the 'peace process' had nothing to do with any of that. And don't you just love the balance: whereas ONLY Israel has had to make tangible and genuine concessions (already releasing over a thousand convicted terrorists and halting all building in the settlements) the fact that they have

1. not released enough terrorists and 
2. issued a few planning permits for areas like Jerusalem (which were NEVER part of any agreed 'settlement freeze')

are used as the ONLY reasons for the failure. And since the BBC could not think of a single failure by the Palestinians they decided to classify "Palestinian anger" at 2 above as the the only thing the Palestinians can be blamed for.  Just imagine if the creative brain at the BBC who came up with this analysis had been asked to apportion blame for the holocaust. We might then have been told that

"Both the Nazis and the Jews were to blame for the holocaust. The Jews refused to accept legally binding Nazi race laws which declared them as 'subhmans', and there was Nazi anger that Jews continued to want to live"

Sadly the British public is fed the BBC nonsense and not the the kind of excellent analysis like here, here and here about the failure of the 'peace process'.


*** The BBC website says something similar:

Talks between the two sides were already troubled after repeated disagreements over settlement building and the release of prisoners.

8 May 2014 Update: The BBC responds to my formal complaint.

Standard publishes my response to anti-Israel letter

My letter in Evening Standard, 28 April 2014

Following a very interesting and lengthy email exchange with the Letters Editor (which, at some point, I will write about) the Evening Standard has today published an edited version of my response to the ludicrous anti-Israel letter they published last week.

One point I wanted to make that was left out was that, whereas Eade's letter said

Blair "..stood by and watched Israel expand its borders by force"

it would actually have been correct if she had said that

Blair "...stood by and watched Israel SHRINK its borders by force".

since the only example of force being used with respect to changes to Israel's borders was the force used to REMOVE the Jewish residents of Gaza (and several other communities in the West Bank).

Israel covering for some of the worst Palestinian terrorists

In 9 years of blogging about Israel this is one of the most disturbing things I have come across (thanks to FresnoZionism and Israel Hayom).

One of the many Palestinian terrorists now being paid a large monthly stipend by British 'aid' to the Palestinians is a  man called Anwar Ahdush who, in 2006, killed one Jewish man with an axe and then raped and murdered a 9-year Jewish girl Lipaz Himi. As reported by Israel Hayom:

Anwar Ahdush, a resident of the village of Tzurif and a member of Fatah’s Tanzim who had entered Israel illegally, confessed to the crime.

Two days before raping and murdering Himi, Ahdush killed another Jew, David Ben-Hamo, with an axe. When police questioned him for the first time, he said he had committed both acts as “revenge for the suffering of Palestinian mothers,” and added that he had also planned to murder a female soldier and kidnap a bus carrying schoolchildren and steer it down a ravine.

When Judge Dalia Ganot of the Tel Aviv District Court asked Ahdush why he had committed the act, he answered: “Because tomorrow this girl will grow up, be in the army and murder our children.” When he was asked why he trained at shooting, he answered, “Because we are in a state of war.” “A war against a 9-year-old girl?” the judge pressed. “For us, there is no 9 years old or 10 years old,” he answered. The fact that since Ahdush’s arrest his family has been receiving a stipend of NIS 4,000 ($1,100) per month from Fatah is further evidence that the crime was nationalistically motivated. 

Despite spending a lot of time in Israel and despite very closely following all Israeli news I had never heard of these particular crimes. And here is the shocking reason why: the Israeli authorities did not classify Ahdush's crimes as terrorism.

In fact the Israeli authorities often go to extreme lengths to hide the fact that an act of terrorism has taken place. Unless the act is a bombing or a multiple shooting, the Israeli authorities will generally classify attacks on Jews by Arabs as 'criminal activity' and explicitly not an act of terrorism. That is what happened in this case and in many others even though the 'criminal'  is a member of a terrorist organisation and openly states that he committed it as a terrorist act. In such cases the authorities often do not reveal the identities of the attackers and so it is even implied that the attacker could be some random Jewish criminal.  Without the terrorist angle many such crimes are not well reported at all.

To comprehend how or why the Israeli authorities should cover for terrorists you need to understand that a large part of the Israeli judiciary is extremely left-wing and often anti-Zionist. I have personally been in a room with a number of Israeli lawyers almost every one of whom took exactly the same position as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in asserting that 'every Palestinian in an Israeli jail was a political prisoner'. One of these lawyers (who assumed that I was left-wing like everybody else in the room) even told me that 'every Arab in an Israeli prison was framed'.

There are also many left-wing Israelis who feel it is racist to suggest that an Arab who attacks a Jew is doing it because they hate Jews. A very common argument I have heard from Israelis is that these kinds of attacks are no different from when Jews fight each other. Many (mostly left-wing) Israelis are in a state of denial about the extent to which their Arab neighbours - and Muslims in general - hate them because they are Jews. That is why many young Israelis who come to places like London for the first time are genuinely shocked when they come across antisemitism directed against them by Muslims. And even then I have heard many such Israelis argue that this is not really antisemitism, but just loutish behaviour that would have happened against anyone who happened to be passing.

26 Nov 2014 Update: Since writing the above article there have been a number of other such cases that I have reported on this blog such as Shelly Dadon and - just today-  the Shin Bet has finally stated publicly that construction worker Netanel Arami was murdered by terrorists despite the fact that this was obvious to all of us who had followed the case from the start and despite all the previous denials.

Major newspaper finally notices that UK is funding Palestinian terrorists

The fact that a significant proportion of the massive funding that the UK gives to the corrupt Palestinian Authority is used to reward the worst terrorists has been long reported on this (and other blogs) - see e.g. here, here, here, here here and here. It is something I have taken up personally with my MP and the UK Foreign Office. Yet, because it does not easily fit the 'accepted' pro-Palestinian narrative, the main stream media has been determined to stop the British public from knowing about this scandal.

Finally today this story has been noticed by a major newspaper - the Telegraph. Although the Telegraph story does not talk about any of the specific sadistic atrocities carried out by the terrorists rewarded (such as here, here and here) with UK funding, or about the heroes' welcome these animals receive when they are released, it does make very clear the cynicism and corruption of the Palestinian Authority - in particular it highlights the fact that only terrorists (as opposed to other ordinary prisoners) get these special 'welfare payments'.

The fact that Britain has the highest overseas aid budget of any country in the world (as a proportion of GDP) is not at all popular with the British public. Yet every one of the main three parties is committed to at least maintaining the same proportion. So every time any MP (Conservative, LibDem or Labour) is ever challenged on the budget they always parrot out the same nonsense that "reducing the budget will lead to people starving to death in Africa".  Wouldn't it be nice to imagine that one day some brave interviewer might even suggest to one of these MPs that they could reduce the budget by not paying terrorists.

Update: The Daily Mail now also has the story, although it includes the bizarre statement: "The salaries are reserved for those ‘resisting the occupation’ of lands the Palestinians regard as rightly theirs but which are part of the Israeli state." and fails to give details of any of the terrorist atrocities.

Blair's speech on the Islamist threat brings out the UK's antisemites

Typical insightful analysis published in the Standard

Tony Blair's speech about the threat of Islamism (which is brilliantly analysed here by Daniel Greenfield) brought the antisemitic Israel haters out in force today on all the radio phone-ins where it was discussed.

The 'quality' of the debate is well summed up by the letter here published in today's London Evening Standard. I have sent the following response to the Standard:

The letter by Jane Eades (Standard, 24 April 2014) says that Blair "..stood by and watched Israel expand its borders by force". Presumably Eades is referring to Israel's attempts to defend itself from unprovoked terrorist rocket attacks from Lebanon in 2005 and Gaza in 2008.  So it seems that, only when it comes to Israel, is 'self-defence" reclassified as 'expanding your borders by force'? But most importantly perhaps Eades can enlighten us as to exactly where are these mysterious border expansions by Israel that apparently took place while Blair was PM?  What did happen during the Blair years, was that Israel withdrew unilaterally from all of the territory it was occupying in Lebanon in 2000 and from the entire Gaza strip in 2005 (with over 5,000 Jewish residents, many who had lived their all their lives, made homeless). Israel also handed over much of the West Bank to Palestinian Authority rule as part of the Oslo accords (1997-2000). But why let simple facts get in the way of Israel hatred (i.e. antisemitism)?

Janet Eades does not seem to have thought this through too well, since she is also implying that Blair should have sent in the RAF to stop Israel defending itself - which does not sit too well with her concern for Blair's military intervention in Iraq. 

Yours

Edgar Davidson

p.s. Please note that if my letter (or a similar response to the Eades letter) is not published then I will be reporting the Standard to the Press Complaints Commission since the letter by Eades contained a demonstrable lie that must be refuted publicly. 

This newspaper has plenty of form when it comes to Israel demonisation (see, e.g. here, here, here, and here).

UPDATE 28 April 2014: The Standard has now published a response by me.

Jewish Chronicle publishes already discredited anti-Israel propaganda story

Discredited anti-Israel propaganda in the JC (click to enlarge)

Two weeks ago the New York Times and Reuters published an anti-Israel propaganda article about restrictions imposed on a marathon runner from Gaza. The story had been pushed by the anti-Zionist NGO "Gisha", whose activities and funding you can read about here.  On 11 April the excellent Elder of Ziyon exposed the lies and bias in the story.

Yet on 18 April the Jewish Chronicle (which could not find room in its 60 pages to mention the Palestinian terrorist attack that took place on Passover Eve three days earlier) managed to find space for Gisha's spokesman Leora Garton to repeat the same propaganda and lies that had already been discredited a week earlier.

It would be wrong to say that the Jewish Chronicle has morphed into an exclusively anti-Israel propaganda organ, because it does still publish occasional features and letters that are supportive of Israel.  Rather, the Jewish Chronicle is increasingly towing the line of the New Israel Fund (NIF) with which it now has a close relationship. The NIF is at best ambivalent about the future of Israel as a Jewish state, but most importantly it funds a large number of anti-Zionist NGOs that are active in the campaign to boycott and delegitimize Israel. Gisha is one such NGO funded by the NIF.

What British Jews are not being told

What you will not find in the JC: Baruch Mizrachi and his family attacked by Palestinian terrorists on their way to a Seder

Baruch Mizrahi, a 47-year-old father of five children living in Modi'in, was driving his family to a Seder last Monday when their car was one of several stopped and fired at by Palestinian terrorists. Baruch was shot dead while his pregnant wife Hadar and 9-year-old son were wounded. Hadar's personal account is here.

In years gone by a terrorist attack like this, committed on Passover eve, would have been a major news story (interestingly the attack by a KKK member in Kansas City against Jewish institutions on the same day did get quite a lot of news coverage once the media had checked that the shooter was not a Muslim***). While we would expect the BBC to give minimal attention to the story***** at least the Jewish Press would have made it front page news. However, since the Jewish Chronicle has morphed into a Guardian-BBC persona, stories of Palestinian terrorism no longer fit its Israel narrative. Therefore, consistent with its coverage of Israel over the last 3 years, the JC was unable to find any room in its 60 pages this week (18 April) to cover the attack on the Mizrachi family at all (even though it did find room to cover the Kansas City attack). It did, however, find plenty of room to publish a ludicrous propaganda piece by an anti-Israel NGO (without informing its readers of the nature of the NGO).

While on the subject of what British Jews are not being told it is worth noting that the Jewish Press in the UK has been just as insistent as the rest of the media on covering up the backgrounds of the 'Palestinian prisoners' who Israel was forced to release for no good reason. One of them - Issa Abda Rabbo was in the Palestinian news again this week talking about how he was unable to properly continue his stamp collecting while he was imprisoned by Israel. This is the scumbag (welcomed back as a hero by Palestinian President Mahmod Abbas)  whose own words (interviewed on Palestinian News TV) about how he murdered two Israeli hikers are worth repeating:

Issa Abd Rabbo “...An Israeli car approached, with two in it. I said, here’s a chance and I don’t want to return empty-handed. They left the car… and walked towards the valley, and sat down under a pine tree. I went down to them. Of course I was masked and was carrying a rifle. He asked me: Are you a guard here? I told him: ‘No, I’m in my home.’ I told him: ‘You are not allowed here. This is our land and our country. You stole it and occupied our land and I’m going to act against you.’

They were surprised by what I told them. I tied them up of course and then sentenced them to death by shooting, in the name of the revolution. I shot them, one bullet each, and went [hiding] in the mountains… I went to my aunt and told her: ‘We have avenged Muhammad’s blood.’”

Host: “She is the mother of Martyr Muhammad Abd Rabbo.”

Issa Abd Rabbo: “I told her: ‘Instead of one, we got two.’ She cried out in joy.”

***This comment really is not flippant. Even though most US stations were reporting immediately that the gunman had targeted two Jewish institutions, Sky News was only reporting a 'shooting at two community centres' in Kansas City. Only when, several hours later, the suspected gunman was named as a former KKK member did Sky suddenly change its headline to add the word "Jewish" before community centres.

*****As reported on BBC Watch, the BBC did not cover the story at all - not even on its Middle East News web site, while the Guardian covered the story in its own usual way.

On believing Arab claims of 'war crimes'

One of the reasons why Western governments and the entire Western media continue to regard the Palestinians as 'victims of Israeli aggression' is because they accept the complete lies told them by Palestinians 'on the ground'. This is something I have documented extensively over the years on this blog, and it is why the Guidelines here are not entirely satirical.

Westerners do not understand the central role of 'taqqiya' in Islam, whereby the Koran allows (and even encourages) Muslims to lie in order to 'defeat the kuffars'. But, thanks to the recent case of Tim Burton of Liberty GB Radio, at least the subject is being discussed**.  And in the Telegraph today ("Al-Sweady: revealing the battlefield lies that scar for ever") we discover the extent to which the horrific war-crimes claims made by Iraqi terrorists and their the families against British troops in Iraq were the same type of lies - taqiyya - as used routinely against Israel:

The Iraqis not only claimed they had been beaten and tortured but also denied having taken part in the attack or of being members of the insurgency.
They told the inquiry they were innocent bystanders – farmers tending their fields, or students out reading their books. One insisted he was only in the area in order to buy yogurt for a wedding – despite the fact this would have entailed a nine-mile round trip from his home and no food supplies were found on or near him.
The claims were further undermined by evidence that many of the prisoners and the dead had been dressed in black, the colour of the Mahdi Army, followers of Muqtada Al-Sadr, who were taking part in an uprising at the time.
Indeed the names of the former detainees, along with the insurgent militia platoons to which they belonged, were later found on a document produced in Iraq.
Phil Shiner, of PIL, admitted that if this document had been disclosed sooner, it is unlikely his clients would have been awarded aid by the Legal Services Commission.
It has now emerged that a solicitor with Leigh Day, which represents the Iraqis at the High Court, shredded the original English translation of this document once the inquiry had learnt of its existence and the day before it was due to be collected in August last year. 

It is obvious that the case should never have been brought against the British soldiers (whose lives have been ruined). Yet, the British government was not only willing to accept the lies at face value, but also gave millions of pounds in legal aid to the Iraqi terrorists and their families. If you can imagine this scenario repeated several times every day then that is the reality of what Israel faces, and explains why the useful idiots in the West continue to ignore the daily atrocities carried out by Palestinians, while believing the exact opposite - that the Palestinians are the victims.

**When Fiyaz Mughal used his UK Government funded 'tell MAMA' organisation to report "Islamaphobic attacks" in the UK,  Burton tweeted that Fiyal Mughal was “a mendacious grievance-mongering taqiyya-artist”. Incredibly the West Midlands Police charged Burton with racially aggravated harassment. Fortunately, when the case came to Court the role taqiyya was fully explained and the judge threw out the case against Burton. However, in one of the most ludicrous acts of dhimmitude imaginable the discredited Mughal continues to be feted by Britain's official Jews, with the new announcement that the CST will work ever more closely with him and his bogus group.

Foreign Office responds to my Warsi questions

Following the reports here and here about unelected Baroness Warsi's Islam dominated "Freedom of Religion or Belief" Group I asked the Foreign Office two questions. While I give them credit for responding within 24 hours, the responses simply confirm that Warsi and the entire Foreign Office clearly see their primary function as appeasement and outreach to Muslims and Arabs:

Qu 1: Why has Baroness Warsi appointed as her Adviser on the UK's Freedom of Religion or Belief group group none other than the Swiss Muslim Brotherhood poster boy Tariq Ramadan, the antisemite who in 2006 was banned from the US because of his links to terrorism?

FO Response: "Members of the Freedom of Religion and Belief group were chosen for their expertise in the field and for their ability to challenge conventional thinking on the subject. They include a broad membership from groups including Human Rights Watch and Liberty. When developing policy its best practise to take account of a wide range of views, but Government policy is ultimately decided by ministers. Professor Tariq Ramadan is a distinguished academic who is Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at St Antony's College, Oxford University. He has written and taught extensively on issues relating to Islam, and therefore has plenty of relevant experience to bring to the group.

Qu 2: Why was Arabic, especially, chosen for the UK's Freedom of Religion or Belief group website? [the website is in three languages: English, Urdo and Arabic]

FO Response: "We translate news articles into the local languages for the audiences we are trying to reach."

And also note that (contrary to the response to question 1) as I showed here, the members of the committee do NOT represent a 'wide range of views' at all. They represent Islam, anti-Zionism, and leftist radicalism (and, basically nothing else). And one of the first recommendations that will be made by this committee - and adopted by the Government - will be that blogs like mine will be investigated and closed down for 'promoting Islamophobia'.

Update Feb 2015: It appears Warsi has enabled far more widespread Islamic infiltration into key parts of the government than I ever imagined.

Update: Warsi's "Equality" Group is packed with Muslims and/or Israel haters

Following on from my earlier article I have done some checks on all the members of Warsi's "Freedom of Religion or Belief" Group. It turns out that Tariq Ramadan, the Muslim Brotherhood poster boy and antisemite who in 2006 was banned from the US because of his links to terrorism is by no means an exceptional choice. Of the 15 members of the group (including Warsi) NINE are either focused solely on Islamic interests and/or have a very clear anti-Israel bias. Since the 'Policy' of the Group is stated as "Promoting human rights internationally" and the topics covered are: "Equality, rights and citizenship, Foreign affairs and International aid and development", this is a curious bunch to have chosen. So who are these people who, on behalf of Great Britain, are going to promote equality and defend our human rights? Step forward:

• Baroness Warsi (Chair), unelected Muslim supremacist in Cabinet who seeks to criminalise all criticism of Islam 
• Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss-born Muslim Brotherhood poster boy and antisemite
• Waqar Azmi: Chairman of "Remembering Srebrenica" (i.e. focused solely on Muslim victimhood)
• Ed Husain: the so-called "ex-Islamist" whose views on Israel put him very firmly in the Islamist camp
• Malcolm D. Evans (Professor of Public International Law): the very same Malcolm Evans who is an 'expert' on the anti-Israel "Public Committee against Torture in Israel"
• Mashood Baderin Nigerian-born Professor at the notoriously anti-Israel  SOAS, University of London whose specialist subject is Islamic Law
• Kate Allen: the anti-Israel goon who is UK Director of Amnesty International - an anti-Israel and genuinely antisemitic organisation (see more here).
• Shami Chakrabarti: the ludicrous Director of Liberty- a woman who has never met an Islamic terrorist she would not defend to the hilt and yet who is amazingly quiet when it comes to defending the rights of those who do not fit her world-view of politics.
• David Mepham UK Director of the anti-Israel organisation Human Rights Watch

The token Jew on the Group is Trevor Pears, of the Pears Foundation which (although funding some worthy causes) also funded the pro-Hamas organisation Forward Thinking and now funds the Israel Boycott movement. 

The following have no obvious pro-Islam or anti-Israel slant (but note that all conform to a leftist worldview):

• Joel Edwards:  Jamaican-born International Director of Micah Challenge which describes itself as "a global coalition of Christians holding governments to account for their pledge to halve extreme poverty by 2015"
• Tom Gallagher Professor of Ethnic Conflict & Peace University of Bradford 
• Edward Kessler Executive Director of Woolf Institute which describes itself as a "global leader in the academic study of relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims"

That leaves just two members who might actually contribute something relevant:

• Mervyn Thomas Chief Executive Christian Solidarity Worldwide 
• Andrew Copson Chief Executive British Humanist Association 

Update: Foreign Office responds to my questions

Baroness Warsi: pushing the Islamist agenda (also now in Arabic at UK taxpayers' expense)

Screenshot of Home Page for Warsi's "Freedom of Religion" Group. It is provided in 3 languages English, ARABIC and URDU

I have reported many times (see, e.g.here, here and here) about the antics of Baroness Warsi, the unelected Muslim supremacist in Cabinet. The problem is that David Cameron has still not worked out that Warsi's only real objective as 'Minister for Faith and Communities' is to criminalise all criticism of Islam and to bolster the presence of Islamic extremists in the UK. Now comes the story (see the report here) that Warsi has appointed as her Adviser none other than the Muslim Brotherhood poster boy Tariq Ramadan, the antisemite who in 2006 was banned from the US because of his links to terrorism. As you can see from the Government website he (along with several others well known for their pro-Islam, anti-Israel views) is also on Warsi's "Freedom of Religion or Belief" group. In case there was any doubt at all about which religion would be given most favoured treatment by this group, note that the wesbite is presented in two other languages as well as English: ARABIC and URDU (at taxpayers' expense of course). I'd love to hear the reason why Arabic, especially, was chosen for the UK's Freedom of Religion or Belief group. And while Muslims and Islamist apologists dominate the Committee there is no representative for Hindus, Sikhs, Catholics, Buddhists etc, while the token Jew heads an organisation that has funded groups that support Hamas and promote a boycott of Israel.

Don't forget that Warsi is also Foreign Office Minister, where again, curiously, all of her efforts seem to be dedicated to Islamic causes namely 1) ensuring billions of pounds in UK aid is sent to her chums in Islamic countries (especially Pakistan but also to terrorists in the Palestinian Authority) ; and 2)  demonising Israel (her latest contribution to this was to praise obsessive Israel-hater Jenny Tonge for her Israel 'expertise').

IMPORTANT UPDATES TO THIS STORY: Warsi's Group is packed with Muslims and/or Israel haters
Update 2: Foreign Office responds to my questions