Daphne Anson: Shan't Learn, Can't Learn: The BBC's Jon Donnison

Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East. (From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Sunday, 31 August 2014

Shan't Learn, Can't Learn: The BBC's Jon Donnison

Yesterday: another biased Donnison tweet; more in similar vein today

He really is a piece of work, the BBC's Jon Donnison.

One of the most perceptibly and persistently biased of all the BBC's Middle East correspondents, he has countless times been shown up for the egregiously prejudiced and under-informed reporter that he is by the incisive and knowledgeable Hadar Sela of BBC Watch.

But instead of taking Ms Sela's well-founded criticisms to heart and attempting to rectify his prejudiced reportage so that it reflects the objective approach incumbent upon him and his colleagues by the BBC Charter, he has chosen not to learn from his mistakes and instead has taken to making childish jibes about his tenacious Israeli critic that says far more about him than about her:

Indeed, Al Beeb's former Gaza correspondent, who was sent back there from Sydney to cover Operation Protective Edge, seems never to have quite come to terms with his new billet here in Australia.

Among his numerous tweets (some of them of puerile schoolboy standard that not only let him down, but also, I should have thought, the BBC) are many regarding Gaza and Israel; no prizes for guessing the comparative twists. Indeed, a sticky post on his Twitter page big-notes the photos he took when last there; you can guess their thrust.

Too many of his reports from and comments about Australia are flippant and shallow.

Yesterday he tweeted this, which I suspect reveals as much about Donnison's attitude as the Somali man's:

Donnison seems to have made little effort to delve deeply into Australia's history and politics, preferring, it would appear, to rely on gleanings from left-wing sources including leftists with Twitter accounts.

His latest piece is a typically superficial and partisan one about Australia's "stop the boats" policy, by which illegal mainly economic migrants wanting to jump the established immigration queue fall victim to international people traffickers, and which in typical leftist style he interprets as the unconscionable response of a heartless government backed by racist people. (I wonder whether he realises that the long defunct "White Australia Policy" to which he refers in the article originated less in racism than in the fear that uncurbed migration from South-East Asia was inexorably driving down workingmen's wages.) And, true to form, he manages to make Gaza and the Gazans a feature of the piece.

Twitter, indeed, appears to encourage lazy journalism, and lazy journalism is what many of Donnison's critics consider a failing of his: witness, for instance, this.

It seems a given that BBC staff scan and cite the Guardian and Ha'aretz for news of Israel, to the virtual exclusion of centrist and (perish the thought!) rightwing media (except to disdain or mock the latter's content). Preferring leftist sources, which in Australia's case means the Fairfax Press and not Murdoch 's News Corp is, evidently in almost every Beeboid's DNA.

Donnison's recent dismissive tweet about the article in Ha'aretz on antisemitism in Australia by former Australian Jewish News editor Dan Goldberg which originally appeared in the latter paper is a probable example of Donnison's mindset.

Goldberg had opened the article thus

"Australia is not afflicted by the same degree of anti-Semitism reportedly sweeping Europe, but there is a “palpable level of concern” among Jews here following a spike in anti-Semitic incidents since the Gaza war broke out seven weeks ago, some Australian academics warn...."

and it took care not to accentuate the problem.

It did, though, observe, inter alia:

'There have also been several physical assaults on Jews here, but the torrent of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic abuse has come from the sewers of social media.

“There has been a seismic shift,” said Prof. Mark Baker, director of the Jewish center at Melbourne’s Monash University. “It’s as though the images that we once viewed on television have popped out of the computer screen and landed in our bedrooms.

“People feel as though they are living inside the experience of ISIS beheadings, anti-Israel demonstrations and the Gaza Israel war,” he told Haaretz.

“Everyone is talking about this incessantly, fearing that the world is no longer recognizable, and living in fear of an impending catastrophe. The community is in a tailspin and looking for answers.”

Prof. Danny Ben-Moshe, another Melbourne-based academic who analyzes anti-Semitism, agreed there had been a shift within Australian Jewry but stopped short of describing it as “seismic.”'

“The collective well-being of Australian Jewry has been adversely affected,” Ben-Moshe told Haaretz. “Jews are neither as free nor as safe as they were prior to this war.” ....'

And it concluded:

'Zeddy Lawrence, the editor of the Australian Jewish News, agreed there was a “palpable sense of concern” within the Jewish community, but did not go as far to suggest the community is in a tailspin.

“There have only been a few isolated anti-Semitic incidents,” he said. “But seeing what has happened in Europe obviously heightens fears of a backlash against the community here.”

In the wake of the incident on Jewish pupils on a school bus in Sydney, Dr. Dvir Abramovich, chairman of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission, wrote earlier this month: “There are alarming developments and chilling signs that are making the Jewish community here less comfortable, less confident and very worried that the flames of anti-Semitism are burning more furiously at home.” '

I suspect the mention of the media, which invoked memories of the disgraceful Mike Carlton article in the Fairfax Press and its accompanying odious cartoon (above, right) prompted Donnison's dismissive attitude, because it wouldn't do for a Beeboid to concede antisemitism on the part of fellow journalistic leftists indulging in a spot of Israel-bashing, now, would it?

Chuck the chutzpah, Jonno!

Indeed, I seem to recall that Carlton or someone of his ilk gleefully retweeted this example (right) of what passes for Donnisonian wisdom.

And I've a hunch that a piece by a Muslim editor on his community's concern about increasing "Islamophobia" in Australia would not have been so cavalierly treated.

That's no alibi for you, Jonno

Still, knowing how fond Donnison and his fellow lefties are of the Fairfax Press, I trust they will tweet the link to this article that appears in today's Sydney Morning Herald, by an Israeli living in Australia, Dana Amir:

'....Two weeks ago in this paper, an anonymous Israeli declared shame in her citizenship. I'm proud that she has the right to do this, and can do so safely, both here and in Israel. However, her anonymity was insulting. Australia and Israel is not Gaza or Nazi Germany. Israelis and Australian Jews can, and do, criticise Israel.

Although I'm sad that it has been forced to do so, I'm really proud that Israel has invested billions of dollars on bomb shelters and air-raid sirens and radars to detect incoming rockets and missiles to shoot down those rockets, all in the name of protecting its people.

I'm proud that I could do my small part in protecting other Israelis by serving in the army. The army consists of people just like you and me; people who would prefer to start their adult life earlier, but understand the importance of defending their country. That said, I hated the idea of fighting Palestinians.

For, whether we like it or not – or they like it or not – Israelis and Palestinians share a homeland. We could fight each other for another few generations, or we could divide the land so both sides have a state. I'm proud that successive Israeli governments, buoyed by majority opinion, have been willing to do just that. We have engaged in peace talks, we have made offers. I know there are Palestinians who also want to stop fighting. I don't know how many, because their media remain full of calls for Israel's destruction, many of their politicians describe Jews as sub-human and their leaders keep turning down Israeli peace offers.

But I know peaceful Palestinians exist, and exist in significant numbers....

What I also know is that Hamas hates me – not because I'm an Israeli, but because I'm a Jew. I know that Hamas sees itself as being in an inter-generational war with my people. That is why it launches rockets and digs tunnels to provoke fighting with Israel. Not because it thinks it will win, but because it thinks that, after another 10, hundred, thousand such rounds of conflict, the Jews will find somewhere else to live.

Well, we won't. And while I'm proud that the Israeli army does what it must to protect Israelis, it breaks my heart when innocent Palestinians die. I believe that their deaths are the result of Hamas's unbelievably cynical tactics, and I'm proud of the lengths to which Israel goes to prevent Palestinian casualties...."

Read Dana Amir's entire article here

2 comments:

Nathan of Plaza1 September 2014 at 09:47
There's one time when Jonny Boy's balanced - when he's on his cycle!
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'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'
Rod Liddle (2018)

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.
If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself.
Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.
[L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying...
Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016)

The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.
95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.
Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.
Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.
There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance.
The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016)

The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian)

Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.
Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us. Eric Hoffer (1968)

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...
The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...
friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves. Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

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