Hurray for Panorama!!
Boo!! to Paul Wood, BBC News reporting on Eden Aberjil’s disgusting Facebook images of her posing with Palestinian prisoners.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10997011)
Here’s why:
A great many young Israeli soldiers have photograph albums quite similar to Eden Aberjil’s ‘The army: the best days of my life’.
The only difference is that they do not post them on Facebook.
That explains her remark that she still did not “understand what was wrong” and the comment of Dr Ishai Menuchin of the Committee Against Torture in Israel that “she is a bad apple, but all the box are bad apples”.
The IDF likes to think of itself as the most ethical army in the world and so condemned the photographs in strident terms. (They are also no fools when it comes to public relations).
For most young conscripts, and young Israelis who have completed their military service, I suspect the reaction will not be outrage but a simple shrug of the shoulders.
Ouch!!
“No fools when it comes to public relations!? you gotta be kidding. But suppose they didn’t condemn it? Can’t win if you are an Israeli.
I’d like to see some of the UK soldiers’ picture albums.
Of course Dr Ishai Menuchim is a totally dispassionate observer. Where’s the evidence for all these sweeping statements? Did they do a survey?
“I suspect”, he says. I suspect that you are an extremely bad journalist, but at least I now have evidence to prove it.
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When I saw that Panorama, one of the BBC’s longest running investigative programmes, was being fronted by Jane Corbin, I was not sure that Israel would get a fair hearing. The last time I saw Ms Corbin in action on this programme was to report on evictions and demolitions in Jerusalem which ultimately failed to deliver a lot of context.
This time Corbin managed to tell the Israeli side for a change and also interviewed key players on the IHH side. The IHH being a Turkish humanitarian organisation that behaved in anything but a humanitarian way and has links to Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda. There are calls for its being proscribed in the USA and Europe.
The programme did an excellent job of piecing together video into a timeline. This was interspersed with interviews of IDF soldiers who actually took part, received injuries and fired on their attackers.
Interviews with the IHH were predictably disingenuous, representing their actions as defensive and claiming the IDF fired first.
The accusation of firing first was, perhaps, the only disappointing feature in this documentary. Jane Corbin said there were conflicting accounts. In other words, she sat journalistically on the fence. She did say, however, the the IDF could not have fired a weapon and rappelled on to the deck at the same time. The IHH claimed that the IDF shot first so their attack with knives, iron bars, captured pistols and, according the the Israelis, another firearm not used in the IDF, was purely defensive.
This claim is demonstrably nonsense. Firstly, if you are standing on a deck waiting for soldiers to come down a rope and they are somehow managing to fire at you, and you are so defenceless, wouldn’t you get the hell out of the way? If you do not have firearms and someone is shooting at you, would you just wait to attack with iron bars and knives? It’s ludicrous.
The IDF admitted that once they had seen there was strong resistance they should have regrouped and considered more carefully their next move. Instead, they decided to land on the deck even though they had already seen that this would meet with violence. This was a blunder and the current enquiry in Israel will surely further reinforce that fact, already admitted by the military. Israeli intelligence as to the nature of the threat failed miserably. The Mavi Marmara was hijacked by about 40 IHH activists and their plans to attack the IDF, clearly shown from their own videos, were unknown to the majority of activists on the ship who were completely innocent of any intentions other than, perhaps, passive resistance; and this was what happened on all the other boats.
The conclusions any sensible person would draw are these: you may not agree with the boarding of the Mavi Marmara, but it was clearly demonstrated that the Israelis were using paintball guns before they landed on deck and that this was their ‘weapon’ of choice as a non-lethal crowd controller. Handguns were only used when the attack on them became lethal.
It is also clear there was considerable confusion and fear amongst the soldiers, some of whom were taken below and one reported that he believed he would be killed. One of the Turkish activists protected him and probably saved his life. In this respect, his actions are praiseworthy. Other activists seem to have tried to treat the injured Israelis.
There was still no explanation of how and when and where the 9 activists were killed. The fact that 50 were also injured demonstrated, to me, that the soldiers, in fear of their lives, with good reason (some had already been bludgeoned, thrown off deck rails, stabbed and even shot) did what any soldier would do, namely use enough force to stop the immediate threat and discourage further attack. One IDF soldier, when asked if he killed anyone, said he shot at his assailants’ legs and this was then reinforced with video of an injured activist with leg wounds.
I believe that the soldiers went for non-lethal shots, but as they feared being overwhelmed and being killed they used lethal force. Maj Gen (Ret) Giora Eiland, who carried out the IDF investigation, made the remark that, under the circumstances, casualties were low. He didn’t elaborate why, and such remarks don’t play well with international audiences. This was not a well-judged remark, but at least it was honest.
Jane Corbin herself concluded, having seen the remnants of the aid, that the whole flotilla was a political provocation, not a humanitarian one. The Mavi Marmara carried no aid whatsoever (a point not made in the film) and other items were of such little importance to Hamas that they either did not let them through as a form of protest, or they were out-of-date medicines. You can see details of the aid carried by the other boats and what the Israelis did with it on a previous post of mine here.
No doubt apologists from the Free Gaza Movement will simply say that the whole incident would not have happened had it not been for the blockade, the Israelis are liars etc. But I ask you, if the Beeb can’t find anything with which to beat Israel up then maybe the IDF did indeed enter a trap and protected itself from lethal force with lethal force.
Continue reading about Panorama – Death in the Med – credit where credit is due
As predicted the BBC couldn’t keep up the good work for long in their little run of fair play.
Yesterday they ran a headline on the ‘eye-witness’ accounts aboard the flotilla: Witnesses cast doubt on Israel’s convoy raid account”, which was emblazoned across their home page.
Robin Shepherd had it absolutely spot on:
So, members of a virulently anti-Israeli convoy whose friends, colleagues and soul mates launched a violent attack on Israeli soldiers which ended in bloodshed have a different version of events from the Israelis, their sworn enemies? That’s a quotable lesson in BBC propaganda: people whom the average 11 year old could see have a conflict of interest are passed off as objective “eyewitnesses”.
But this is par for the course. And why not when the UN itself treats actors in the conflict who are terrorist organisations (Hamas) as if they were UN members, giving them credence, legitimacy and succour whilst they actively seek to destroy an actual UN member (Israel).
Please read Robin Shepherd’s article, he is at his brilliant best.
Continue reading about BBC reverts to type as predicted: flotilla headline a disgrace
Have you noticed the BBC News website’s reporting of the flotilla incident? It’s so good (relatively speaking) that Israel’s enemies have noticed (see my previous post). They are actually reporting the Israeli side with impartiality – for an example see this from Paul Reynolds
OK, there have been the occasional lapses but overall this is much better – keep it up Auntie. Somehow I don’t think they will.
Continue reading about BBC reports flotilla incident fairly (well more or less)
The appearance of the British National Party’s leader, Nick Griffin, on the BBC”s prime political debating programme, Question Time, last night has for weeks been the subject of extraordinary media focus, heated debate and political demonstration.
The BBC devoted almost the entire programme to questions about the BNP, statements by Nick Griffin and the party’s policies.
Chairman David Dimbleby pressed Griffin on his history of Holocaust denial and Griffin lamely stated that he had changed his mind about it although he couldn’t express his views because of European Law which might lead to his arrest if he were to enter certain European countries. However, he did say that he had changed his mind on the ‘numbers’ after reading about a German radio intercept of 1945! The inadequacy and ludicrousness of this response was not lost on fellow panel members. Clearly Griffin is prepared to have his mind changed (somewhat) by German radio intercepts but not by the testimony and meticulous records of those same Germans, let alone thousands of survivors and other witnesses.
But the BNP is now no longer anti-Semitic, of course, its main scapegoat now is Islam and Muslims. At one time he was heard to say that ‘they’ can stay if ‘they’ accept this is a British and Christian country. How very generous of him. Where does he propose to send millions of British citizens were they not to accept his terms of tenure?
At one extraordinary moment he made a bid to show his pro-Semitic credentials by saying that he and his party supported Israel in Operation Cast Lead against Hamas. Well thanks for that, Mr Griffin’ with friends like you etc,
But isn’t this so typical of neo-Fascists. They delude themselves that by supporting Israel (Jews), who they hate, against Muslims, who they hate even more (only for now whilst it is politically advantageous to scapegoat Muslims), they are demonstrating some sort of moral purity and acceptability by trumping anti-Semitism with Islamaphobia.
The BBC’s reason for inviting Griffin was that since the BNP now had two MEP’s (including Griffin himself) and a million votes in the European elections, its charter had to be impartial and a BNP member had as much right to an invite as the Green Party or UKIP. But it then chose to atone for a sin it said it had not committed by focusing almost exclusively on Griffin and the BNP, something which has not been the case with other minority parties. So the BNP would be justified in complaining to the BBC about unfair treatment, would it not? Either Griffin is a panel member like all others or he is not. If he is not, then maybe he shouldn’t have been invited in the first place.
Whether the BBC’s biased attack on the BNP has any effect on that party’s standing remains to be seen. I hope there are a million people out there who watched Griffin and who now regret ever voting for him.
The Liberal Democrats might also be given pause to consider that their policy of Proportional Representation in the UK parliament would inevitably lead to candidates such as Griffin gaining a foothold in UK democracy as they have done with a PR system in Europe.
Griffin’s performance was appalling. He showed himself to be an oleaginous, sniggering, cowardly, intellectual midget who had no place on a panel of this calibre.
Continue reading about Nick Griffin – a supporter Israel can do without
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The BBC News website reports :
A member of the Afghan parliament has criticised a Nato air strike on a clinic where a Taliban leader was being treated for his injuries.
The report stresses that NATO checked there were no civilians in the clinic first before they attacked with helicopter gunships.
Amnesty International has called for an investigation. NATO say 12 militants were killed.
I’d like you to compare this incident to the furore that would surround and has surrounded Israeli attacks of a similar nature.
For NATO to say they checked that there were no civilians in the building requires a healthy degree of scepticism.
Clinics like hospitals are protected buildings unless they are being used as a base for military operations or direct attack.
Think Gaza Operation Cast Lead and accusations of war crimes.
But AI are very reasonable when it’s not Israel who are the accused party:
Amnesty International has called for an investigation into the attack, but added that if the Taliban fired first, they had committed a serious violation.
Not quite the point despite AI’s attempt to whitewash NATO. If you were confronted by troops and gunships you might be inclined to fire first too. This does not vindicate the imminent attack on a clinic.
Just replace NATO with Israel and Taliban with Hamas. Now what would you say?
I know what I would say. Proportionality.
Israel is being and was being directly attacked on its own borders by Hamas. This rendered Hamas a legitimate target. If those targeted are responsible for horrendous acts of terrorism and are hiding in a protected facility then, as far as I am aware, Israel waits for them to come out. In Operation Cast Lead hospitals were only fired upon when fired from. The main hospital in Gaza, where the Hamas leadership were using the basement as an operations centre, was not attacked. If Israel was so intent on war crimes and so careless of civilian casualties would they not have targetted Shifa hospital?
Apparently NATO would.
Double standards anyone?
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Nothing could better illustrate the skewed and biased animus of the BBC and much of the world’s media against Israel than Sunday’s story about the eviction of two Palestinian families from buildings in Sheik Jarrah in East Jerusalem.
News From Jerusalem has a scathing article about the misrepresentation and trashy journalism that completely turns the real situation (known as “The Truth”) on its head.
Here’s the BBC article in Question, now headlined as “Israel Condemned over evictions”,
The News from Jerusalem article quotes as follows:
A BBC article entitled, “Palestinians evicted from Jerusalem,” tells of Israeli police who evicted nine Palestinian families living in two houses in “occupied East Jerusalem.”
“Jewish settlers moved into the houses almost immediately. The U.S. has urged Israel to abandon plans for a building project in the area,” reported the British outlet.
An AFP report, “Israel evicts Palestinians from Jerusalem homes,” begins with a scene of intimidating Jews removing peaceful Arabs from their apartments.
“Israeli riot police wielding clubs kicked out two Palestinian families from their homes in occupied east Jerusalem on Sunday, defying international protests over Jewish settlement activity in the area,” reported AFP.
“I was born in this house and so were my children,” Maher Hanoun, one of the evictees, was quoted as stating. “Now we are on the streets. We have become refugees.”
But NFJ reveals
The home was originally Jewish, but its Jewish occupants were chased out during countrywide anti-Jewish Arab riots in 1929. Arabs then squatted on the property, with one family, the Hejazi family, becoming the de facto occupants despite never having purchased the property.
Even though documentation proves the complex is owned by Jews and that Arabs have been squatting on it illegally for almost a century, Jewish groups still legally re-purchased the property from the Hejazi family. Following pressure from the Palestinian Authority, however, the family later denied selling the complex back to the Jews despite documentation and other evidence showing the sale went through.
Israel’s court system, not exactly a friend of Jewish “settlers,” twice ruled now the property undoubtedly belongs to Jews.
This is not made clear by the BBC. Let’s just repeat this. The land was owned by Jews until 1929. The Arabs who live their never compensated the original owners. Despite this, the land was RE-PURCHASED. Yes, money was paid for the property but despite evidence to the contrary the family living there denied it! Presumably under pressure from the PA and out of fear that they had sold property to Jews, which is a capital offence in the Palestinian Authority.
The family were given weeks to move out, but didn’t.
But here’s the crunch:
The construction project at the center of attention, a hotel financed by Miami Beach philanthropist Irving Moskowitz, is located just meters from Israel’s national police headquarters and other government ministries. It is a few blocks from the country’s prestigious Hebrew University, underscoring the centrality of the Jewish real estate being condemned by the U.S.
Moskowitz’s housing project, legally purchased, formerly was the house of the infamous mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who spent the war years in Berlin as a close ally of Adolf Hitler, aiding and abetting the Nazi extermination of Jews.
Al-Husseini was also linked to the 1929 massacre of Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron and to other acts of incitement that resulted in death and destruction in what was then called Palestine. Some Palestinians have expressed a desire to preserve the building as a tribute to Husseini.
Did the Israeli authorities try to rehouse the families involved? I don’t know. But, presumably they and their PA backers were more intent on making political capital against Israel because they knew how the eviction would appear, and they were certainly right.
Once again Israel is vilified even though the Supreme Court, internationally recognised as an independent judiciary, found in favour of the Jewish groups who legally purchased the property. This is completely glossed over by the BBC who thus imply that the Supreme Court is an instrument of Israeli State oppression of the Palestinians when nothing could be further from the truth.
The US condemnation is as ignorant as it is malign and disingenuous.
Continue reading about BBC et alia misleading on Jerusalem evictions
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On Saturday the BBC reported that a “makeshift” hospital in what is supposed to be a civilian safe zone has been hit by the Sri Lankan army killing 91 Tamil civilians and injured another 87.
The Sri Lankan army has put the blame on the Tamil Tigers saying that they had carried out suicide attacks and insisted that they had stopped their heavy bombardment some days before.
It was doctors at the hospital who claimed that the Sri Lankan army had bombed the hospital. You would think they would know the difference between a suicide bomb and an artillery shell.
But in the interests of the fair reporting standards that the BBC is so keen to tell us it upholds the reporter offers this word of warning:
Journalists are not allowed near the conflict zone, so the conflicting accounts cannot be independently verified.
I would point out to the BBC that during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s military action against Hamas in December and January, no such statement ever appeared on the BBC News website or TV broadcasts. The BBC, and its viewers, were asked to swallow whole reports from just one side of the conflict, coming through UNWRA which, in turn, received all their information directly from Hamas. This lead, for example, to the misreporting by UNWRA head John Ging of the supposed attack on a UN school where 41 people were reported to have been killed. Later, Ging had to concede that no such incident had taken place and about a dozen people had been killed outside the school, the majority of whom were combatants.
But the BBC STILL REPORTS THIS INCIDENT AS IF IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. and adds a pathetic “Update” at the end:
In February 2009, the United Nations said that a clerical error had led it to report that Israeli mortars had struck a UN-run school in Jabaliya, Gaza, on 6 January killing about 40 people. Maxwell Gaylord, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Jerusalem, said that the Israeli Defense Force mortars fell in the street near the compound, and not on the compound itself. He said that the UN “would like to clarify that the shelling and all of the fatalities took place outside and not inside the school”.
Some “clerical error”! It doesn’t even mention the fact that only 12, not 40 had been killed, and it only mentions obliquely the IDF investigation which actually names most of the fatalities and identifies them as know Hamas combatants.
Why does the BBC not just withdraw completely this lie. The report is still there with the headline “‘Stray mortar’ hit UN Gaza school” and a photograph of an injured child being carried from an ambulance, presumably to a hospital even though we now know that NO CHILDREN WERE INJURED IN THE SCHOOL.
So why does the BBC continue to post a lie or, to be generous, an erroneous report which appeared to have the authority of the UN and which the UN corrected later? The UN report was so credible that, according to the BBC, even the IDF at first believed it and produced the “stray mortar” story. But:
The [Israeli] statement was made anonymously to the media because the investigation had not yet been made public by the military
So this wasn’t even the official IDF position at the time but suited the BBC’s biased viewpoint, so they printed it.
The BBC report continues:
The dropping of the defence that Hamas mortars had come from within the school compound may cause some embarrassment to Israel in what has been a high profile incident.
The initial “human shield” claim was made forcefully after the killings by the military, politicians and many supporters of Israel.
“Hamas cynically uses civilians as human shields,” the military said in its initial statement, and later it went as far as naming two well-known Hamas militants among those killed at the school.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev called the incident “a very extreme example of how Hamas operates”.
It is not clear what credibility the change of position will be given by observers.
The last sentence says it all really: the Israeli government was not to be believed. It was Israel who were the war criminals, Israel who breached every rule of warfare and Hamas who were the victims. This is in marked contrast to the BBC’s Sri Lanka report where it emphasises that story cannot be verified.
The IDF has clearly shown that Hamas not only used Human Shield policies but operated in cynical violation and total disdain of international law throughout the conflict. Yet the BBC still sees fit to perpetuate its own misreporting and offer a dismal and ineffective rider.
Continue reading about Gaza and Sri Lanka: The BBC News Double Standard
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Continuing the saga of the BBC’s ever-shifting headline on the story of an Israeli Arab who drove at three policeman protecting those demolishing the home of Hussam Dwayat (the July 2008 bulldozer attacker who killed three and injured 40 and was shot dead) – see my previous posts here and here .
The driver was shot dead by the police.
Headline No 1. Palestinian killed in demolition (no he was not!)
Headline No 2. Police kill Palestinian motorist (whilst attempting a 3-point turn, no doubt)
And now, No 3. Palestinian ‘attacker’ shot dead
Note the quote marks. This warns us that someone who drives directly at and injures three policeman may not be an attacker but is so characterised by Israelis. This is because he only “injur(ed) them lightly”.
As I previously wrote, given the history of suicide attacks within Israel, how can the police take any chances with someone driving straight at them with a lethal weapon, namely a half-ton car. This is not Kensington High Street. But the BBC, in its attempt to be ‘fair’ describes terrorists as ‘militants’ and people driving directly at security forces as ‘attackers’.
They have no such scruples when they use terms such as ‘occupation’ (without quotation marks), of course.
And let us not forget that by the time this latest and considerably more accurate headline reaches the BBC’s pages, it has already ceased to be current news and is confined to the archive. It’s the earlier headlines that have already made their nasty little innuendos and have now conveniently disappeared to cover the BBC’s previous ‘bias’.
Continue reading about BBC’s third attempt at a ‘truthful’ headline
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On the BBC news site home there is a link which reads:
Palestinian killed in demolition
What?! My reaction was – “Oh no”, they’ve demolished a house with someone inside it and killed them.
But no. Nothing of the sort.
Israeli police have shot dead a Palestinian motorist in East Jerusalem who drove at them while they were carrying out a home demolition.
Ahh! So a potentially lethal attack on Israeli police is turned into a headline which clearly states that someone was killed as a result of the demolition.
The demolition in question was that of the house of Hussam Dwayat who killed 3 people in a bulldozer attack in Jerusalem in July 2008.
Now, whatever you think about house demolitions, it is clear that the BBC headline writer has seriously skewed the truth. Anyone who is not bothered to read the story will just think it’s another Israeli atrocity story.
I have complained to the BBC. I await their response.
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