She didn't describe the lad she claims sat next to her on a flight from Heathrow to Israel by the stereotype "pushy Jew", but there seems little doubt that that is what she meant by snidely describing the lad as "over-familiar":
'The increasingly heated dispute over place names in Israel underlies a much greater political struggle, the BBC's Yolande Knell explains from Jerusalem.
"Where are you going?" asked the friendly, but slightly over-familiar, Jewish-Israeli boy sitting next to me on the plane from London.
"I work in Jerusalem," I replied.
His smile instantly turned to a scowl. "It's not Jerusalem," he said. "It's Yerushalayim".
"That's in Hebrew, but in English we say Jerusalem," I protested and I was about to add - somewhat mischievously - that my Palestinian friends refer to it as "al-Quds" - the Arabic name for the city.
But at that point, the boy's little sister spilled orange juice over his lap. Our conversation was cut short.'Not much demonstrated knowledge, let alone comprehension or sympathy, in the rest of Knell's report for the integral importance of Jerusalem, founded by King David, to Judaism and to Jewish history. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14515035
What a worthy recruit to Jezza Bowen's team!
Next time she talks to one of her "Palestinian friends", she might ask them how many times Jerusalem - pardonnez-moi, Al Quds - is mentioned in the Koran, and then compare that figure to the number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.
See also the end of this post, regarding Lifta: http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/05/history-men-truth-versus-falsehood.html
And my Catholic friends call it DERRY not LONDONDERRY, touche.
ReplyDelete[Another] good one, Steve!
ReplyDeleteSteve, Derry was always Derry before it was called Londonderry! But Jerusalem has never ever been called al qods! The Arabs made up the name in 1967.
ReplyDeleteThanks Daphne for the uncovering of another dead-beat from al beeb: Yolande "death" Knell.
They are all cast in Bowen's image by the seem of it, Juniper!
ReplyDeleteI wonder how old the child was? Teen-age boys are not generally friendly to strangers ...unless Miss Knell is pretty? Primary age boys, especially the brighter ones, do have a tendency to correct adults. I have come across children of other faiths who assume that Christian must be totally ignorant of any other faith, even though I am an RE teacher! Muslims, Sikhs and even Jews have been surprised to discover that I know than they do - but they were children. It's what children do. It's quite wrong of her to use a child to make a political point.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ian - very interesting points!
ReplyDeleteI could not care less if Ms. Knell calls the place Jerusalem, Yerushalaim or Al-Quds for that matter; the whole report is a typical BBC beat-up.
ReplyDeleteThe fact of the matter is that it was “Yerushalaim” long before it was anything else and it is particularly true when we talk about the old city, the only Yerushalaim in King David’s days. Jews always called it “Yerushalaim”.
Another fact the BBC conveniently loose is that Jerusalem is mentioned in the Bible 656 time but not a single time in the Koran.
Ms. Knell seems to take exception to Israel sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem just because the old city was occupied in the 1967 war (after Israel was attacked). Yet when the Jordanian Legion occupied the old city in 1948, expelled all the Jews and held it for 19 years we heard nothing from the BBC and their ilk; nor did we hear anything about the West Bank and the Gaza Strip being “Palestinian land” or Jerusalem being the capital of “Palestine” because these lands were held by Jordan and Egypt and the term “Palestinians” that describe the Arabs of Palestine was yet to be invented.
Very many thanks, Jacob!
ReplyDelete