In a genuinely outrageous piece of victim blaming, BBC News just blamed Palestinian intransigence in refusing to accept Israeli annexation of the West Bank for the deaths of Palestinian children caused by the Israeli blockade of medical supplies to Gaza.
This is a precise quote from the BBC TV News presenter headline at 10.30am:
“The lives of hundreds of sick Palestinian children are being put at risk because of the latest downturn in relations between their leaders and Israel last month. The Palestinian President said his government was giving up on past peace agreements because of Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank. That decision stopped co-operation on many security and civil matters including medical and travel permits.”
There followed a heart rending piece by BBC Middle East correspondent Yolande Knell featuring Palestinian children in Gaza dying of varous medical conditions and their distraught mothers.
The entire piece very plainly blamed Palestinian officials for the situation.
The BBC did not blame Israel for placing a blockade illegally preventing pharmaceuticals and medical supplies from entering Gaza – the basic reason the children cannot be treated at home.
The BBC did not blame Israel for blockading in illegally the civilian population of Gaza, so that these children cannot freely leave for treatment in Europe without Israeli clearance.
The BBC did not point out that the proposed annexation of the West Bank is illegal, has been condemned by the UN Secretary General and by 95% of the governments of the world, and will precipitate great violence.
No, the BBC blamed the Palestinians.
“Accept the illegal annexation of still more of your land, or small children will die and it will be your fault”.
That is a line the BBC are perfectly happy to push out on behalf of Israel. It is an astonishing moment for the UK state propagandist. It is important we do not ourselves become complacent at this absolutely unacceptable behaviour.
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Palestinian Lives Matter!
Yes they do. Let no-one tell us they don’t. No matter what obfuscations are used to conceal the fact.
The focus on the neck kneeling also helps to distract from the daily abuse of Palestinians in multiple ways by the Israeli State/Army.
For example see Leslie bravery’s frequent postings on the NZ Daliy Blog site: e.g.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2020/02/09/peace-to-prosperity-plan-imposes-total-zionist-control-denies-all-palestinian-human-rights-and-violates-international-law/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2020/06/28/depths-of-iniquity/
There seems no limit to Israeli hutzpah. And the BBC has long since ceased to report on anything with objectivity.
One glimmer of hope is a significant number of Israelis are now opposed to their governments policies regarding Palestinian rights. Sooner or later, they accept they are going to have to live alongside Palestinians as equals. The more resentment and rage they foster before then the harder that will be.
“a significant number of Israelis are now opposed to their governments policies regarding Palestinian rights”
Yes, but sadly the ones opposed are not the ones who get any say in things.
The only time the people get what they ask for is when they’ve been persuaded to ask for what they’re gonna get.
Meaningless twaddle.
good argument – very persuasive
The opposition to annexation (at home and abroad) isn’t because openly declared Zionists oppose the aims of Israel’s leaders. It’s because they fear the Israeli govt is overreaching and is putting too much store by the clumsily destructive Trump being reelected- from a Palestinian perspective an unmitigated disaster (along with proudly, openly Zionist, Kushner). Annexation will also create huge problems for western govts too in terms of how they respond. They imposed sanctions on Russia for the annexation of Crimea, and that was arguably a far more popular move with the population there. At home, Starmer faces his first serious test too,. He took the knee for BLM, as @Franc highlighted, do Palestinian Lives Matter Mr Starmer?
With normally very supportive voices(LFI) in the Labour party calling for sanctions if annexation proceeds, you can see the fears laid bare. Their ultimate fear is how things could develop under a different US administration and the possibility of a future US-led demand for Israel, having annexed swathes of land,making a two-state solution no longer viable, having to make Palestinians full Israeli citizens with full voting rights. Something many believe will tip the population balance and be an existential threat to the ‘Jewish State’.
Come on, you can’t expect too much from Starmer on Palestine. His wife is Jewish. He’s already been off to make his peace with the Board of Deputies (I think it was them). It’s better to concentrate on what Starmer can do for Britain, which is itself in dire need these days.
Point just proven this afternoon with the sacking of Long-Bailey, over a supposedly anti-semitic retweet, which isn’t anti-semitic.
the article in question is not only NOT anti-semitic, it is also factual, something that can be verified very easily.
The BBC report was very careful to put the phrase “anti-semitic conspiracy theory” in quotes
the question remains – how can a shadow cabinet minister be FIRED for re-tweeting a factual news item?
Are some truths illegal now?
“Are some truths illegal now?”
Yes, of course. What was dramatic was that the article very clearly wasn’t anti-semitic. The author doesn’t even say that neck-kneeling was what the Israeli police taught, just that the police ware trained by the Israelis.
Fair point.
Ridiculous overreaction from Starmer.
Watch him appoint another right-winger in her place. Totally given up on the Labour party, they’ve somehow got another establishment crony leading the party.
To be fair to Starmer, and I do not agree at all with the conflation of critisicsm of Israel with antisemitism (this wasn’t even that), he had to be seen to do something. Sharpish.
Whether or not he wanted rid of RLB anyway is another matter…
If what ‘Starmer can do for Britain’ means supplication to the Israeli state (and he pretty much has) then count me out please.
Any annexation of land in the West Bank could be a real test.
Read Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy’s tweets. I assume they are made with Starmer’s full approval(?), they are v.hostile to annexation moves.
“At home, Starmer faces his first serious test too,. He took the knee for BLM, as @Franc highlighted, do Palestinian Lives Matter Mr Starmer?
I think the short answer to that is going to be “No”.
Most of the parliamentarians who ushered Starmer in to replace the odious anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn are Blairite Friends of Israel. Please dont delay your bi-annual migration waiting for Starmer to speak up on behalf of the Palestinians.
It’s possible we’re witnessing the last desperate contortions of the Israel lobby in America. A couple of weeks ago AIPAC gave their hired gimps on Congress “permission” to speak up against the annexation of the West Bank on a Zoom call, “just so long as it stays just words and you don’t actually do anything”.
There’s a steady growth in the number of voices willing to break from the AIPAC line in Congress. A. O-C, Ilhan Omar, Tulsi Gabbard, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, … .
Looks like they will be joined by Jamaal Bowman after he trounced Eliot “If I didn’t have a Primary I wouldn’t care” Engel.
The Democratic Party in Congress is of course still packed with AIPAC supplicants. Things can change if the gimps are sufficiently scared of being Primaried by the Progressives (horrible term).
November will tell.
Biden won’t be any better than Trump, if he gets in.
Biden is certainly no friend of Palestine but let’s not get carried away. It wasn’t a Democratic Party, President that recognised the occupation of the Golan Heights as legal, that moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Biden “enjoys” the backing of both AIPAC and J-Street. If Trump recognises annexation of the West Bank, Biden will have to break in one direction. My point being, AIPAC are not the all powerful dictators of Middle Eastern policy they ’till recently were.
No doubt Biden would return the embassy to Tel Aviv and demand the reversal of any annexation of the West bank.
Zionist lobbies never were; the colonial exclave in the Mediterranean has always been a means for American Caesar to enforce compliance domestically as well as dominate the Middle East. The idea that a few zionist antisemites have a stranglehold on US imperial policy is absurd, they are proxies who point fingers where they are required. When did you last hear a zionist damn the Ukrainian fascists, nazis and antisemites?
It’s the BBC what do you expect ? they are the UK Government’s mouthpiece and by association lying scum !
The BBC behaves like Frankie “two hammers” Vigoti explaining the virtues of the local Mafia protection racket. But of course the Mafia had a morality, if not a compassionate one. The BBC behaves entirely as the dishonourable tool it is, a creature of servile expedience. Not uniformly – there are decent people there, mostly unsung techies – but as policy disseminators. Time for another tidal wave of complaints.
The anti-Semitism silencer will be deployed ruthlessly this summer once the annexation begins. Not least by the new Labour leader, who cannot even call Israel’s occupation of the West Bank what it is and is openly in the pay of an Israeli lobby firm.
See what I’m saying! Fires the only leftist in his cabinet because she dared mention that Minneapolis Police are trained by the Israelis. Any opinion on Sir Keir yet, Craig?
That isn’t why he fired her. That’s the cover. He fired her over the back to school row. Yet another egregious example of starmer siding with the government over public health
https://skwawkbox.org/2020/06/25/excl-long-bailey-sacked-after-massive-row-over-schools-return-as-news-emerges-that-starmers-support-for-return-has-seen-infection-rate-double/
Dear Craig,
Thanks for warning us Australians what to expect from our own equally execrable Australian Broadcasting Corporation on its news channels and programs. Canadians and Kiwis are probably also quaking in their boots at how their public broadcasting companies are likely to waste their tax contributions.
In future programs, Aunty ABC’s reporters will be just as genuinely astonished that the Palestinians don’t collude in their ongoing destruction just so a few of their children “accidentally” hit by Israeli attacks can be saved by Israeli largesse, or whatever little of that that the Israeli government or any of its agencies graciously deign to give.
The rise of Web2.0, i.e. social, media over the past 20 years, in conjunction with the rise of digital-advertising based entities such as Google and Facebook, has had a profound effect on the “news media”, i.e. ideological warfare, business.
1. As Noam Chomsky, Armand Mattelart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Mattelart), the Glasgow Media Group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Media_Group), Media Lens (https://www.medialens.org/), John Pilger (http://johnpilger.com/) and many others have spent decades documenting, the news media are nothing more than ideological supports of the capitalist State.
2. Precisely for this reason, the press was only “free” for those with a printing press and a licence to print (and even then, copies of ‘licentious’ publications could be seized and pulped), TV was only “free” for those with a TV studio and a licence to transmit, and ditto radio. In other words, where sources of “news” were limited they were strictly regulated because the population had no choice but to use them.
3. Web2.0 was probably initially thought by those in power to represent the same non-threat as universal suffrage turned out to be, i.e. just as women and other previously-disenfranchised groups proved to be just as amenable to capitalist ideology as men (why wouldn’t they be?), so the massive dilution of sources would overwhelm any real danger to the system from ‘cranks’, who could shout for all they were worth from the sidelines and occupy in the popular imagination, when they were even noticed at all, the same position as those who, in a previous generation, patrolled Oxford Street carrying “The end in nigh” placards.
4. It didn’t work out that way, however. As, simultaneously, advertising was sucked away from the traditional media, threatening their financial survival and therefore their vital narrative-creating ideological role, and the first truly free-speech era of Web2.0 proved more dangerous than at first thought, the former pivoted to an opinion- rather than news-provision model that would guarantee a solid subscriber base behind a paywall (the NYT added 300,000 subscribers in its first quarter after DT’s election by becoming a Never-Trumper “organ”, a trend that continued and one followed by others such as the Washington Post and the Guardian), and the latter increasingly came under attack from the censorship tactics isolated by Chomsky 40+ years previously as operating in the traditional media when they were the only sources of “news”: outright no-platforming, a restriction on the ‘acceptable’ sources of facts/news, a restriction on the ‘acceptable’ range of opinion to be aired, the sieving of the ‘experts’ to be called upon to comment on current/world affairs according to the ‘ideological soundness’, etc.
5. In a flip-flop reminiscent of the “Left’s” Damascene conversion re the NSA, CIA and the FBI as now “defenders of civil liberties” because elements within them have attempted a soft coup against DT (https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/12/removing-a-u-s-president-without-an-election/), the “agenda-free”, “quality” media (traditional and Web2.0) have ignored – and where they have not ignored, justified and supported (https://www.breitbart.com/search/?s=google+censorship#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=google%20censorship&gsc.page=1) – this attack on free speech and doubled-down on their distortions of what the “alternative media” constitute.
6. The result? A situation that Chomsky could only have dreamed of in his heyday: a large majority of the population disbelieving the truth of what the read, see and hear in the MSM. One unfortunate downside, a product of his anarchist rather than Communist foundation: Chomsky himself has fallen for the “Trump is a fascist” trope. His time has passed.
I fear so.
Where are the sanctions against Israel? Where is the public tearing up of the Balfour Declaration? Where are the “Palestinian Lives Matter” demonstrations?
Essentially Washington backs Israel, at the UN few will oppose the US due the fear of sanctions and increased tariffs on trading, then theres the $10 billion dollars or there about that the USA pumps into the UN coffers on an annual basis. For those reasons few want to rock the boat.
Has Corbyn apologised yet?
For his glasses being on squint?
By now, I think, most of the educated class (sorry for the awful expression) know the BBC is just the most stinking mix of shit and poison.
What isn’t criticised enough, I think, is The Guardian.
Take, for instance, this article: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/25/britain-beyond-lockdown-can-we-become-cleaner-coronavirus
This kind of feel-good junk for the middle classes is pretty much a daily bread.
In this case, it should have been absolutely clear to the fool who wrote this that nothing is going to get cleaner and things are only to get a hell of a lot dirtier with the Conservatives (or some bogus Labour party) in power.
Perhaps it was clear to the fool, but the expectations to reflect a narrative of ‘everything is dandy’ are just so overpowering that the fool has his mouth completely gagged in this regard.
Just an incidental example of how the stench of The Guardian has worsened exponentially over the years. What kind of absolute asshole do you need to be to be chief editor at an institution like this?
Marmite at 13:36 June 25-good post and link regarding the Guardian.
I’ve surprised myself in recommending two things I thought I’d never would:
(1) The Mail on Sunday
(2) Jonathan Sumption
But in this link, he accuses the British government of being dysfunctional and useless on Covid.
Surprised the Mail published it.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8443747/LORD-JONATHAN-SUMPTION-people-no-idea-theyre-doing.html
I think The Mail simply knows that middle-class loyalty to the Tories is unshakeable, and that it is preferable (and now very safe, with the election long behind, and no more Labour opposition to speak of) to maintain appearances of being unbiased.
No amount of criticism in the press is going to change the country’s slavish allegiance to Toryism and the ideology of ‘it’s the economy, stupid’.
Human beings ultimately don’t value any more the eighteenth-century ideals of freedom and equality, or rather, they now prefer to be part of an idiotic High-Street-shopping and BMW-driving chain-gang, addicted like so many coke-snorting fools to the ideas of growth and consumption.
What an absurd overreaction to a piece about the declining oil industry and jobs in Aberdeen. You have a talent for reading into an article what is not there. The question mark might be a clue.
You are quite right. It wasn’t a reaction to the specifics of that article so much as a reaction to the endlessly foolish headlines that we see in The Guardian. Take a glance yourself. You will see that there is a pattern at the moment of ‘learning from mistakes’, ‘the world being better after Coronavirus,’ ‘a brighter future for all’, ‘black lives do matter after all’. Middle class stupidity on every page. Barf, barf, barf.
I suppose you’d rather endless prophesies of doom.
Why suppose that? You want fairy dust from the hands of the Norm-
Fairy?
Given the BBC’s long record as the PTB media office, I am genuinely baffled that so many people still read/listen to/watch it.
The problem is that if we stop watching, we don’t have any sense of what everyone else is thinking or believing, and might as well be in a bubble talking to ourselves, rather than trying to help one another with all the disabusing that is so urgently necessary.
Marmite
Why would the BBC be a guide to what people are thinking? Propaganda is for telling people what they’re allowed to say not for convincing them of anything. When you watch it you become an unconscious carrier of its message. Instead you should talk directly to people about what they think.
It’s like the old Soviet joke: “Why are capitalist countries on the edge of the precipice?” Answer: “So they can get a better view of us down here!” In other words, people watch the BBC to see what kind of wreck it’s turning into.
The New York Times by the Palestinian academic, Professor Edward Said, is still of relevance.
( https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/10/magazine/the-one-state-solution.html)
The difficulty, of course, is that Israel and the US are law-makers unto themselves, regardless of what International Law mandates.
Over time there will be the unavoidable demographic impact of the Palestinian presence and this shall compel political change coupled with the now obvious and evident shift on the Palestinian/Israeli question within international public opinion.
Either it didn’t used to be this bad or I was very naive and unaware of the propaganda they were forcing on us. Nowadays, at least, we have access to the internet to confirm the facts of any given situation. The problem is that most of us (and I include myself) are too lazy to fact check what passes for news these days..
“Either it didn’t used to be this bad or I was very naive and unaware of the propaganda they were forcing on us.”
I think that it has always been just as bad. I cringe at myself when I remember arguing that there was no way Tony Blair’s government could be lying about something so important as WMD. Oh how wrong was I? Indeed, I remember watching the beginning of the first gulf war on TV in 1990 and after watching 10 minutes of yellow-orange explosions in the night sky over Baghdad, getting bored with it, wondering when Iraq was going to retaliate, for my entertainment. Needless to say, I am embarassed by my own gullability.
I do think that it has always been this bad if not worse. Thankfully, for now, we have the internet and alternative outlets such as Craig’s blog to help.
“The problem is that most of us (and I include myself) are too lazy to fact check what passes for news these days”
This is an issue but there is also so much to fact check that I don’t think any one individual has the time to do so. Thanks again to Craig and other such blogs.
I don’t know how to push back against this. I find in discussions with others, family, friends and work colleagues, that they just are either not interested or so invested in their MSM knowledge that they refuse to entertain the possibile authenticity of other information. People want information about what is going on in the world in easily ingested and digestable chunks. The MSM provides this.
There was more dissent on TradBBC which made the contrast with COMbbc, the simulacrum of a public broadcaster after Thatchler’s Gleichschaltung all the more glaring. Since the mid-80s, the pretence of impartiality has eroded to the point that the only way to resist is to say “Fcuck it Dude, let’s go bowling”.
That said, I re-watched Ideal this week, six series of bliss and one of disappointment. “Weren’t it scrummeh?”
ET,
The reason that there was no retaliation from Iraqi forces in 2003 (and maybe it was the same in 1990), was because Cisco and other US tech companies sabotaged (totally disabled) all the Iraqi forms of defense prior to the US offensive. So, when the US said it would be “shock and awe”, they knew they would be ambushing a completely defenseless country. The USA – home of the brave.
The BBC sickens me
The disgusting BBC has long been a cheerleader for Isarael’s Zionist, rascist policies. Not only in its partisan editorials and output such as From Our Own Correspondent, but even in the way it conducts its interviews on its news programs. So they’d get that truly reactionary Mark Regev, then spokesman for the Israeli government (now Israel’s ambassador to the UK) who’s first language is English virtually uninterrupted time on, for example, ‘Today’ then, in the fake attempt at balance, half the time to a Palestinian spokesman, not a native English speaker with continual interruptions, finally giving Regev the only comeback.
Nothing has changed and neither will it.
I used to believe that the BBC should be funded by direct taxation and that it was an institution that should be protected. I now feel that it shouldn’t get a penny of tax payers’ money and if that results in it folding, so be it.
The unspeakably awful Board of Trustees reflecting the ‘great and the good’ but no element of democratic selection, should be forced to get jobs for a living and scattered to the four winds, so useless are they.
As a Christian I pray for peace for Israel and Palestine. They are not, however, equals in conflict. The theft of Palestinian land by illegal settlers, the aggression of those illegals and the Israeli military against the Palestinians is unequalled. I believe that When I pray I need to give action to my prayers. So, I have prepared a petition to the United Nations to act to protect the Palestinian people and their territory from Israeli annexation and ongoing oppression. Please sign my petition and make it go viral! https://www.change.org/Petition-to-UN-to-protect-Palestine-from-Israeli-annexation-and-aggression
The BBC’s timing of this latest propaganda piece by Knell matches her piece last year on the BBC website. On the pretext of it being an ‘explainer’ it actually propagandizes the Trump/Kushner plan for the so called ‘annexation’. What evil.
Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ falls flat in West Bank
By Yolande Knell
BBC News, Ramallah
25 June 2019
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-48743663
Knell also has history on the airbrushing of Israel’s crimes. Here is Amena Saleem of the PSC writing on EI about one of Knell’s reports in 2014.
‘No mention of Israeli attacks
What Knell failed to do in the original article was to give even one mention of Israel’s own frequent breaches of the agreement, despite the fact that two days after signing the truce Israeli forces killed a young Palestinian in Khan Younis. Between 22 November 2012 and 7 July this year, the date Israel’s latest assault on Gaza began, Israel violated the ceasefire far more frequently than Palestinians and with far more lethal effect. Out of Israel’s 191 violations, ten percent resulted in death and 42 percent in injuries or detentions; while out of the 75 Palestinian violations, just four percent resulted in injuries and none in death.
During the first three months of the ceasefire alone, four Palestinians were killed and 91 were injured in Israeli attacks in Gaza. During the same period, not one rocket was fired from Gaza.’
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/amena-saleem/bbc-backs-report-omitted-killings-palestinians-during-gaza-truce
Jeremy Bowen used to report from the region as the BBC’s Middle East Editor and with humanity. He is back in the UK currently receiving treatment for bowel cancer,
@ Mary
Jeremy Bowen had a local? minder/translator who was killed by the Israelis, whilst reporting from Lebanon. The Israelis later said that they were returning incoming fire. Bowen disagreed with their version of events.
The BBC once had a series of programmes which showed lesser known military campaigns. One of these, called, ” A Date with Bevin ” on ” Jewish insurgency in Palestine and a plot to assassinate Britain’s foreign secretary Ernest Bevin “.
Firstly, I was astonished, why had I never heard of this before? Most schoolchildren know about the Gunpowder plot, to blow up the houses of parliament, why not the more recent plot, by Jewish insurgents?
Secondly, having bookmarked this BBC information, it was later tagged by Google, on my phone, saying ……
” Your IP address and user agent are shared with Google……. to detect and address abuse.
The Radio 4 series was called Document.
Franc – “Firstly, I was astonished, why had I never heard of this before? Most schoolchildren know about the Gunpowder plot, to blow up the houses of parliament, why not the more recent plot, by Jewish insurgents?”
At the end of WWII, the main priority of MI5 was the threat of terrorism from the Middle East, specifically from the 2 main “Jewish (or Zionist)” terrorist groups – the Irgun and the Stern gang. These groups thought Britain was blocking the creation of an independent Jewish state, which legitimized the use of violence against British targets.
MI5 received a stream of reports about Zionist plans for attacks in Palestine and in Britain itself, including alleged plans to assassinate Bevin (regarded as the main obstacle to a Jewish state) and PM Atlee himself. (The Stern gang killed the Guinness heir Lord Moyne in Cairo in 1944 and the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the British HQ in Palestine, in 1946, killing 91 people).
(The leader of the Irgun was Menachem Begin. The leader of the Stern gang was Yitzhak Shamir. Both later became Israeli prime ministers).
Other Zionist terrorist activities in 1946-47 included bombing the British embassy in Rome, sabotage attacks on British military transportation routes in Germany, planting a bomb at the Colonial Club in central London (which only caused injuries) and a female agent leaving an “enormous” bomb at the Colonial Office in Whitehall (which failed to go off), as well as sending death threats to politicians and others. In addition, 21 letter bombs were posted (from Italy) in 1947, one for each member of the British cabinet. None were successful, often as a result of sheer luck (Sir Anthony Eden carried his letter bomb around with him for a whole day, thinking it was something that could wait till evening, and only realized what it was when the police warned him of possible attacks).
It should be added that MI5 received valuable reports about these matters from Jewish informants who opposed the terrorist tactics.
For further details on this and other topics, see Empire of Secrets by Calder Walton (2013), an establishment author who based much of his book on recently declassified British documents.
Thanks for the book link. Political zionism is at root a terrorist organisation. Should be proscribed throughout human civilisation.
Not “Jewish insurgents”, zionist antisemite terrorists.
That show is here. The entire series looks interesting.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0076z8r
It is utterly disgraceful how we an entire state (Israel) can get away with racist murder, by action and in action!
Keep up the good work in exposing the injustices Craig. God bless the victims.
I can’t see anything wrong with that quote. I don’t see any implication that the Palestinians are to blame.
Why was there no blame of Israel for refusing to allow medicines and medical equipment to pass? That is grossly illegal.
Tom 74,
In relation to this quote:-
” “The lives of hundreds of sick Palestinian children are being put at risk because of the latest downturn in relations between their leaders and Israel last month. The Palestinian President said his government was giving up on past peace agreements because of Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank. That decision stopped co-operation on many security and civil matters including medical and travel permits.”
Can we divide the three sentences into three parts:-
1. “The lives of hundreds of sick Palestinian children are being put at risk because of the latest downturn in relations between their leaders and Israel last month.”
So – I) What in the first place caused the plight of that which the Palestinians face where they are compelled to live? That is the question.
2. ” The Palestinian President said his government was giving up on past peace agreements because of Israeli plans to annex parts of the
West Bank.”
So – I) As an occupying power does Israel under international law have obligations which are owed towards the Palestinian people; or
ii) Is it that the provision of medicines, doctors, the right to travel to obtain medical care and overall health care must be conditional
upon the Palestinians being supplicants to the dictates of the policies of Israel?
3. ” That decision stopped co-operation on many security and civil matters including medical and travel permits.”
So – I) To get to the BBC conclusion above, surely isn’t it that the BBC would have to leap-frog and totally ignore the obligations imposed
under International Law upon Israel as the occupying power?
BUT – YOU STATE – ” I can’t see anything wrong with that quote.”
AND THEN GO ON TO CONCLUDE:- ” I don’t see any implication that the Palestinians are to blame.” Cf. “That decision stopped co-operation on many security and civil matters including medical and travel permits.”
WHOSE DECISION? THE PALESTINIAN ONE – RIGHT? SO DOES THE BBC NOT APPRORIATE BLAME?
Out of the EU the UK is largely a world irrelevance – so BBC bias matters less and less. On Palestine the US has a UN veto so even the UK’s special status there matters little. We can all make our own individual BDS contribution – I won’t buy anything Israeli.
It has now been ruled legal to encourage others to Boycott, Divest and Sanction, BDS
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/06/12/europes-top-human-rights-court-overturns-french-conviction-of-bds-activists/
or Times of Israel report on CEDH (~ Court European Droit Hommes) ECHR
https://fr.timesofisrael.com/pour-la-cedh-la-france-a-viole-la-liberte-dexpression-dactivistes-du-bds/
The BBC has been a mouthpiece for Government for many years. Any coverage of anything that shows dissent to the West is either ommitted or blatenly lied about. If you want to find out what western Governments are up to or hiding, I suggest you watch Russia Today (RT UK). Not because i’m a Russia supporter (anyone with a brain can filter out Russian propaganda easily) but it is in their intrest to show the failings of Western Governments and they do. Others can be accessed online rather than listen to the bias of the BBC. Check it out.
I’ve ended up with five satellite dishes on my home – one is for BBC, to listen to news about Blair sacking Rebecca Long-Bailey today;
one is for other EU channels, Turkish, a whole French freesat service & all the nice free Saudi movies. How UK population’s credibility survives with either BBC or Sky news, I dunno!
I’m surprised you could get planning permission.
I’d re-tune and re-orientate the one that tells you Blair sacked Long-Bailey.
The “heart rending piece by BBC Middle East correspondent Yolande Knell featuring Palestinian children in Gaza dying of varous medical conditions and their distraught mothers” was obviously something that would have been very damaging to Israel if it were to go out without the “proper preamble”. Thus the blaming of the victim had to be enforced into the minds of the viewers first.
Thanks Craig for speaking out. How anybody can pay the BBC licence fee and be a member of the Labour Party is beyond me. It’s significant that many Israelis hold dual citizenship. There was never going to be a two state solution. Israel will never agree to give Palestinians their land back or give them equal rights in a new Israel Palestine. There is no International Law or semblance of it. But the day will come when Chaos envelops us all and then don’t ring your hands.
The BBC has lost its credibility completely. I know very few people now who can even turn on the BBC news, let alone listen to its drivel for more than a few seconds.
It wont be long before its scrapped and made to stand on its own two feet ( which will last about 5 seconds )
BBC is so out of touch with ordinary people its not funny, and most ordinary people know that what Israel is doing is just plain wrong, of course it helps that its Trumps plan, which turns people off immediately. Its a certainty that he is supporting this crap so that the Israeli lobby groups will fund his next election campaign.
Its time for a complete block on Israeli products being exported into Europe, and a ban on exporting anything to Israel. Give it another 10 years and maybe the political class will wake up to the disgust felt by most ordinary folks.
Totally agreed.
Big Pharma Starmer has just sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey for agreeing with Maxine Peake that the IDF trained US police forces in the kind of prisoner restraining moves that led to the death of George Floyd. Apparently it is anti-semitic to even suggest Israeli forces would do anything like that to Palestinians, let alone train others to do so.
Once again ‘new’ Labour shows its ugly zionist face.
Apparently it was Starmer’s support for the recklessly rushed re-opening of schools which really marked her for the chop. She re-tweeted data suggesting covid-19 outbreaks in schools have doubled to 44 since the limited re-admittance began. It certainly proves Maxine Peake’s observation that Starmer is a Labour leader for non left wingers only. Long-Bailey’s fig-leaf appointment lasted just long enough to confuse the issue, but now he is revealed as Red Tory through and through.
For me there are two main threads on this blog site which concern me the most. The first is the securing the safe release from goal of Julian Assange, the second was the Alex Salmond affair and how it will eventually play out to secure him the justice I believe he deserves in view of the conspiracy led against him. I can now add a third equally serious concern which is for Mr Murray himself in the act of vindictiveness he now faces in due course as a result of his support for Mr Salmond.
Returning to Sir Keir Starmer’s summary dismissal of his shadow education minister it doesn’t surprise me about anything he does or conducts himself. Some little time ago I naïvely thought I might turn his thoughts once again to Mr Assange’s predicament in HMP Belmarsh in view of his interview with the Huffington Post where he implied Judge Baraitser was doing a good job and should be left to get on with it. I await his response to my letter still and that of his recently appointed shadow home secretary.
I think the term Red Tory is totally apt when it comes to describing Sir Keir Starmer.
Long-Bailey even called herself a Zionist when she was applying for the leadership job. And now she gets thrown under the bus as an antisemite – just for linking to an interview containing a minor criticism of Israel. Israel is guilty of far worse crimes than neck kneeling every day, regardless of whether that is officially a tactic of its security forces.
This is the actual interview.
Maxine Peake: ‘People who couldn’t vote Labour because of Corbyn? They voted Tory as far as I’m concerned’
The star of ‘Shameless’ and ‘Silk’ talks to Alexandra Pollard about her new film ‘Fanny Lye Deliver’d’, the government’s shambolic handling of coronavirus and why she believes we should rid ourselves of capitalism
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/maxine-peake-interview-labour-corbyn-keir-starmer-black-lives-matter-a9583206.html
Long-Bailey had referenced (in a tweet) an interview one of her constituents gave to the Independent.
The crime here is that, in the interview, included the words “The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.”
It’s absolutely true that US police have been advised in aggressive techniques by Israel.
They also train police to keep firing at a body until there is no movement whatsoever, which is why people (often black, as it happens) end up being shot 30 or 40 times – whether they are armed and present a danger or not.
https://progressive.org/dispatches/us-police-trained-by-israel-communities-of-color-paying-price-shahshahani-cohen-191007/
Just recently the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, hoped that Israel would heed the UN and not annex parts of the West Bank. Doing so would surely undermine the two-state solution I think, Israel plans to annex 30% of the West Bank, and at present under International law (500,000 homes have been built within it in settlements to house Israelis) Israeli settlements are illegal in the West Bank.
Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in 1967, but it has never formally claimed the land, annexing the West Bank will surely cause a full scale outbreak of violence towards Israel in the region. The Palestinians need the West Bank lands as part of the two-solution, without it there’s no hope for them. If Trump gets reelected and pushes for the annexation in his and Netanyahu’s preposterous plan, they’ll be much bloodshed, here’s hoping Trump loses to Biden, though will Biden kowtow to the powerful business folk and bodies of a certain persuasion, in Washington who’ll want the plan carried out, we’ll just have to wait and see.
As for the state propaganda machine the BBC, they cannot be trusted to report news in a neutral fashion.
Even the mildest mention of the truth in a BBC report on Israel can bring down the wrath of the Israel lobby on to a BBC reporter. When Orla Guerin said this in reporting on Holocaust memorial day:-
“The state of Israel is now a regional power. For decades it has occupied Palestinian territories. But some here will always see their nation through the prism of persecution and survival.”
The JC piled on referring to “Ms Guerin’s hatred of Israel ” which of course requires no evidence.
https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/the-bbc-has-shamed-itself-with-orla-guerin-s-holocaust-report-1.495792
The CAA decided that mentioning the facts of Israel’s occupation was fuelling antisemitism and referred to the IHRA definition citing that “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is antisemitic.
https://antisemitism.uk/caa-complains-to-bbc-and-will-go-to-ofcom-over-orla-guerins-desecration-of-the-holocaust-on-bbc-primetime-news/
Orla Guerin knows about Israeli occupation of the West Bank having been shot at by the IDF when reporting from the West Bank.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/apr/03/israel.bbc
The JC is following the AIPAC manual. Committed critics of Israel are left mainly alone. Anyone who ventures mild and nuanced criticism gets the full attack dog treatment. Careers are damaged, jobs are lost, academic grants are denied. Pour encourager les autres.
Not forgetting the existence of CAMERA, permanently on watch like a guard dog, for any criticism of the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’. Ha!
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/CAMERA
The BBC is controlled by elements who have Israel’s interests above UK national interests. Take for example its coverage of the so-called pandemic as well as the lockdown. It looks like the entire MSM of the western world are the real enemies of the people. The elected legislatures do not fare better! From where I am standing, there seems to be a very powerful clique (call it the Deep State) who are the dictating the agenda.
The Christian Church and Christian organisations are constantly in the press in a negative light. They might not like it, but the criticism directed at them is NOT politicised (unless I am mistaken), and that criticism is NOT deflected on racial grounds, so as to divert attention from various crimes and abuses, let alone to justify genocides, landgrabs, mass-murder, etc..
Can someone please explain to me why The Board of Deputies of British Jews thinks that Jewish people should be above the law, untouchable, irreproachable, just on the basis of race? (Oops, have I now said something unintentionally anti-semitic?)
Pity for humanity when the wool can be pulled over the eyes so easily, with a one-word accusation: ‘anti-semitic’.
If I was Jewish, I’d be very ashamed about the decades of abuse flung at critics and detractors of all of Israel’s outrageous crimes, and ethics would probably compel me to denounce such farcical organisations as The Board of Deputies of British Jews. But I suppose I’d be just one muffled voice in the crowd, and ostracised, and then resigned.
I thought the mark of a grown-up was to know when you are wrong, to be able to accept criticism, and apologise. Flinging accusations at Rebecca or Ken or Jeremy just seems the most childish barbarity.
There is a difference between zionists and jewish I think.
I know a lot of jewish people who do not believe what Israel is doing in their name is correct.
It is also an extremely sick situation, showing up all sorts of twisted priorities, when Starmer is more focused on this, at a time when well over 65 000 people in the country have died because of healthcare defunding. Apparently, we are all able to accept mass death on our doorstep before we can tolerate criticism of the Israeli state.
I don’t know of any other state in the world that is so thoroughly exempt from criticism, and isn’t that just a little odd?
Excellent article. The BBC is the British Bias Corporation and we have to pay for this shabby reporting as license fee payers.
BBC will never criticise Israel as it is too scared like most.
Well done Craig Murray for having the spine to stand up for justice and true information.