Over & Out

Thanks to the readers and commenters who have supported this blog over the past ten years. Regular readers from the United States and Israel, from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, the Ukraine, Romania,  and many other countries besides, including, intriguingly and flatteringly, a regular visitor from a certain Arab state, I thank you all, and wish you all well. You,  and the State of Israel.

This blog began in June 2010, in the wake of the Mavi Marmara incident and the exponential rise in antisemitism that followed in its wake. I've posted a number of pieces on historical facets of Israel and Zionism, including several pertaining to the origins of the overt anti-Israel bias of the BBC, identifying the late Keith Kyle as the first of that particular tribe.  These historical posts were the ones I particularly enjoyed, and which I feel were the most useful. Some have been reprised on the Jews Down Under website, and others can still be found archived on the Elder of Ziyon blog (sincere thanks to the famed Elder for having invited me to contribute those guest posts).

Having an interest in Jewish-Christian relations, and mindful that if it had not been for a Jew who lived some 2000 years ago there would be no such profession as Christian priest I've exposed the excesses of the Reverend Stephen Sizer, and was the person who took this notorious 9/11 screenshot that went viral (thanks to the UK Jewish News, to whose editor I emailed it after a reporter from the "Voice of Anglo-Jewry", the Jewish Chronicle, had informed me that they had no interest in it!) Shame on you, JC reporter. (You know who you are).

I'm flattered that Gerry Bowler, in his book shown here, cited me in note 55 on page 277: that, I think, was one of my best posts.

It goes without saying that we who love Israel must be ever vigilant regarding the mendacious propaganda of the New Israel Fund and similar groups, the equation of "Islamophobia" with antisemitism, the Islamic antisemitism infiltrating the West, the leftist propaganda of the ABC and the BBC, and the increasing hostility towards  Israel of often unashamedly antisemitic propagandists in academia.

Oh, the stupidities of the Jewish Left, going on, seemingly, for ever! (hat tip: David Singer):

Once, fairly early in my blogging career, I was threatened, via a high-powered lawyer, with a libel suit by an anti-Israel senior academic at a British campus, despite the fact that I had provided links to all the statements I attributed to that particular expatriate Israeli. Intimidated, I removed the post. I doubt the redoubtable David Collier, who has since taken the pro-Israel blogosphere by storm, would have done so.

The campus warfare against Israel is, needless to say, vicious and growing. I've focused from time to time on the appalling anti-Israel propaganda on certain campuses, especially at Swarthmore College, where an assistant professor committed to replacing Israel with a bi-national state teaches peace and conflict studies and takes students on annual propaganda visits to Israel and the disputed territories.

I've regularly posted the articles of Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer, who I know has quite a following.

But my blog has grown stale, and there are more pro-Israel bloggers than when I started, and many of them are far better at the task than I am. So, keen to concentrate instead on historical studies that I've all but neglected., I'm ceasing this blog, and this final day of this month (and foreshadowed changes to the Blogger platform that I don't much like) seems a good time to bring it to a close.

Links to many good blogs can be found on my bloglist, and many notable quotations from various historic and public figures  are on my side bar. I recommend the Canada Free Press for articles by David Singer (who's contributed numerous articles to them over the years, not only of the kind that I have regularly posted on here, as a click on that link will show ) and the highly informative and frequently wryly amusing  Twitter page of historian of Britain's relations with Israel Dr James Vaughan.

David Singer's weekly articles can also be accessed on the antipodean J-Wire service, as here

Am Israel Chai!

Do, please, read this article by the great Melanie Phillips, quoting the equally great and heroic Baroness Deech and Professor David Patterson.

Shalom.

Odious Orla: The Unkindest Cut of All

The execrable Orla Guerin, the BBC's Istanbul-based correspondent, who in her own words "continues to make detours", certainly proved her anti-Israel credentials yet again with her vile gratuitous comment (directly below, in bold font) during the BBC's News at Ten coverage of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau: 

“In Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names, images of the dead. Young soldiers troop in to share the binding tragedy of the Jewish people. 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.”

To quote Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard, inter alia:

"It is difficult – no, it is impossible – to see this as anything other than Ms Guerin’s hatred of Israel spilling over into a desecration of the Holocaust. On this most solemn of occasions, linking the murder of six million Jews with Israeli occupation of the West Bank is simply obscene.

Note that ‘but’ in her final sentence. You Israelis, she is saying, are the bullies now, with your military and your occupation. ‘But’ you have the gall still to think of yourselves as being the persecuted.

Forget the historical illiteracy. Forget the self-righteous sneering. Forget everything about this despicable report except this: Ms Guerin represents the perfect distillation of the phenomenon which obsesses over Israel, the only sanctuary in the world for Jews, and does not merely decry the Jews having the right to such sanctuary – and thus, in the context of the Holocaust, the right to exist – but which turns the murder of six million Jews into an act of which it is the Jews who should somehow feel ashamed. It is the Jews, in other words, who do not live up to the memory of the Holocaust.

This attitude – never explicit, of course – is all around us. It provides the context for Labour antisemitism, for the bias of newspapers like the Guardian, and for rising antisemitism generally.

It is to the BBC’s eternal shame that it allows such a piece to be broadcast." [Emphasis added here and below]

 Gideon Falter, head of  Campaign Against Antisemitism, observes:  

“The BBC is supposed to inform the British public, not feed them propaganda. Few could imagine perverting what is supposed to be an educational piece about the Holocaust to instead fuel the very antisemitism that such education is supposed to prevent, but that is what the BBC has done. It was utterly appalling to watch Orla Guerin hijack a segment dedicated to remembering six million murdered Jews, and instead use it as a vehicle to desecrate the memory of the Holocaust with her hatred of the Jewish state. Ms Guerin and the BBC editors who allowed this to be aired must be made to face the consequences of this sick act, which is why we are now making an official complaint and will take the matter to Ofcom if necessary.”

All who are disgusted by Orla Guerin's  remarks are encouraged to complain to the BBC: see here for details.

Needless to say, there is much condemnation of Guerin from outraged Jews and non-Jews on social media.

These tweets typify the thrust:

But this one can't be beaten for cut and thrust!

BBC Bias: Where is the Board of Deputies?

Al Beeb's wonky alibi: that both sides accuse them of bias

'The BBC openly admits it is a leftist monoculture where right leaning thought is unwelcome (and unlikely to be hired). Driven by a passion for “woke” social engineering, it has lost most of its credibility hard won over many decades. I disagree strongly with being legally forced to pay for its monstrous overpaid bureaucracy and unwanted propaganda. Let it fund itself from the market and if it fails, it is no loss. It has ceased to be a credible voice for the UK and its programming has moved from exemplary to dire in a generation.'

So states, and it's spot-on, one of the numerous respondents to an apologia for the BBC written recently on Linked In by BBC newsreader and presenter Huw Edwards. 

To quote Craig, who co-runs that splendid site, Is the BBC Biased?:

'All I'll say about it in advance is:

- that Huw obviously isn't a happy bunny.

- that in Paragraph 1 Huw puts on his tin foil hat and pushes a conspiracy theory that most criticisms of the BBC over bias are part of some malign attempt to "cause chaos and confusion" and "undermine trust in institutions" rather than being manifestations of genuine anger by large numbers of licence-fee-paying (and non-licence-fee-paying) individuals. He sounds slightly hysterical and silly, don't you think?

- that Huw's tone of chippy complacency might not be the best way of winning the argument.

- that Huw seems oblivious to the point that it's actually groupthink arising from the BBC's narrow recruitment processes which is the main problem (similar backgrounds, similar outlooks); indeed, he maintains the remarkable proposition that the BBC consists  "of all backgrounds...and outlooks", which is demonstrably untrue.

- that the 'complaints from both/all sides' argument doesn't hold water, never mind how many times it's repeated by BBC supporters. Some sides may be right, others not.

- that the BBC's rage against "the social media age" is becoming ever more strident.'

There are many reasons to despise the BBC's news and current affairs output: its disgraceful flouting of its Charter and its Producers' Guidelines, which obligate it to be impartial and objective in its reportage and commentary; its smun self-congratulatory assumption that it provides the best in journalism (despite frequent lapses nowadays into dodgy grammar like the one seen in this screenshot: even not-so-young Beeboids seem to have dispensed with correct plurals); its growing obsession with jumping on anti-white and anti-male bandwagons in its choice of "news" items; its reflection of Guardianista-type concerns in its online pages; its choice of the leftist Guardian, alone of newspapers, as a vehicle in which to advertise job vacancies; its frequent anti-Israel slant.

One of the respondents to Huw Edwards' rant is none other than fellow Beeboid David Waddell, who echoes an old but discredited BBC standby:

In the lead up to Christmas, the BBC, its in-house tolerance for its own overt anti-Israel bias originating with pro-CAABU presenter Keith Kyle back in the 1960s as I show here,  has been indulging its devious habit of cramming its Yuletide content full of brazenly biased stories concerning Israel and the Palestinian Arabs Palestinians.

Some of these articles are gratuitous pieces of planted anti-Israel propaganda thinly disguised as objective news reports; others are ostensibly newsworthy items too aggressively pimped and too abundantly laced with anti-Israel propaganda to smack of objective reportage.

We haven't yet, as far as I'm aware, had a repeat of Al Beeb's much-hyped stories about Palestinian shepherds and wise men (that it has in the past had a habit of carrying along with The Guardian, no coincidence apparent).

But, that may be to come, and very shortly. 

Meanwhile, for instance, on BBC Newsround, aimed at youthful audiences, we've recently had this arboreal extravaganza, in which no less than three Palestinian Christmas trees (in Bethlehem, in Gaza, and in Ramallah) were given starring roles in a post that featured a total of just seven "around the world".  Another of the BBC's features aiming to turn youngsters against Israel, of course.

Both BBCWatch (see its post here, in the aftermath of its original, after which Al Beeb increased the total number of trees from seven to eleven!)  and David Collier highlighted that grotesque piece, most ably.

And then there was this, Barbara Plett Usher's report from a Christian Palestinian village, the supposed sanctuary of St Barbara, which as well as making a dishonestly phrased swipe at Israel happily glossed over the reasons for the diminution of the Christian minority in region; BBCWatch has the report's measure here and concludes:

'it is interesting to see that Barbara Plett Usher chose to highlight that vague and context-free story from over seventeen years ago in what was billed as a report about a Christian feast day while ignoring the fact that a church in the same village was vandalised just months ago.'

(As Barbara Plett, Usher, whose late husband Graham was an anti-Israel journalist-activist, notoriously cried for the old rogue Arafat when he was on his deathbed, of course.)

The BBC's penchant for liaising with the leftist Israel-bashing group B'Tselem for stories and for opinions regarding developments in Israel can be seen in this beat-up.

And now we have this:

'A manger scene by British artist Banksy has appeared at a hotel in Bethlehem in the West Bank.

Dubbed the "Scar of Bethlehem", the work shows Jesus's manger by Israel's separation barrier, which appears to have been pierced by a blast, creating the shape of a star.

On Instagram, the artist said the work was a "modified Nativity".

Israel says the barrier is needed to prevent terror attacks. Palestinians say it is a device to grab land.

The International Court of Justice has called it illegal.

Banksy's work is in Bethlehem's Walled Off hotel, which is itself a collaboration between the hotel's owners and the artist.

Hotel manager Wissam Salsaa said Banksy had used the Christmas story to show how Palestinians in the West Bank were living.

"It is a great way to bring up the story of Bethlehem, the Christmas story, in a different way - to make people think more," he said....'

BBCWatch does yeoman service in exposing the arrogant Corporation's frequent antipathy towards the unbiased truth regarding the Israel-Arab conflict.  But what of the official communal leadership of British Jewry?

Where, one wonders, is the Board of Deputies of British Jews in all of this?  Do they protest BBC bias as strenuously as they should? Or are they content to see public opinion influenced by Israel's foes? 

It is not pro-Israel bias that critics of the BBC's Middle East coverage seek.  It is scrupulous objectivity that they expect on the part of the licence-funded national broadcaster.

"Simply Bullets to Be Fired From an Arab Gun"

At an Oxford Union debate on 17 January on the motion  "This House Believes The Arab World Has Failed The Palestinian People", that's how Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of Britain's forces in Iraq and Afghanistan,  aptly characterised the plight of the so-called Palestinians, pawns in their fellow Arabs' rejectionist stance towards Israel.

Watch the colonel's speech here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74pPdr5A4wk

The introduction to the motion noted:

"Arab support for a Palestinian state has long been assumed. However, the denial of citizenship to 4.6 million exiled Palestinians, combined with greater Israeli-Arab collaboration, has led some to question their commitment. Are these incidents isolated, or symptomatic of an Arab world that has failed the people of Palestine?"

 Apart from Colonel Kemp speakers "in proposition" were, in the Union's words:

'Mudar Zahran - Palestinian-Jordanian Secretary General of the Jordanian Opposition Coalition.  He has advocated for Jordan to be the Palestinian state' 

and

'Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad - President and co-founder of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, an Islamic libertarian organisation which counters distortions and misconceptions about Islamic beliefs and practice'

On the opposing side:

'Lowkey - British-Iraqi rapper and activist known for his politically charged music, including Long Live Palestine.  He is a Patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Ghada Karmi - Palestinian doctor, journalist and academic at the University of Exeter, she fled Jerusalem with her family in 1948

Kito de Boer - Former Dutch diplomat, he served as Head of Mission of the Quartet from 2015 to 2017, an international organisation which mediates between Israelis and Palestinians' 

 For the entire proceedings go to the Oxford Union's YouTube channel.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPnf2Az-95w

Not the least interesting aspect of this video, of Mudar Zahran's impassioned speech, comprising a characteristically robust defence of Israel, is the antisemitism expressed in so many of the comments below it on the site.

Meanwhile,on Twitter, no less than three recent tweets by the, the BBC's former Gaza correspondent, the outrageously partisan (we all know on which side) Jon Donnison, suggest Jonno Donno has been hard hit by the comparatively early death of radical comedian Jeremy Hardy.

I mean no disrespect to the late Mr Hardy by suggesting that the fact he starred in a vicious documentary demonising the IDF may have particularly endeared him to the nakedly leftist BBC hack.

London Israel-Haters: "Many BBC Employees Came to Congratulate Us"

To readers of this blog, and more generally, Sandra Watfa is probably the best-known public face of the anti-Israel Inminds group. 

Her uncompromising sentiments are encapsulated, inter alia, in this recent post:

On 30 November Inminds projected a slide show onto the walls of the BBC's Broadcasting House in London, protesting the holding of the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest in Israel.

Yes. Arch-BDSer Alex Seymour (aka Seymour Alexander) was, as usual, on hand to record the event  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHiA4MaPBfQ)  'Nearly 150 Artists, including Eurovision winners, judges and broadcasters have all supported the Palestinian call to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 if held in Israel' Inminds itself reports, and goes on to quote its chairman, Abbas Ali, as saying 'It's unacceptable that something as culturally prestigious as the iconic Eurovision Song Contest, which is meant to bring people together through music, is handed over to an apartheid regime ... We are here to ask the BBC to serve its licence payers by taking a moral stand against racism, and pull out of next years Eurovision if its held in Israel.'  It reports, too, that


'The projection lasted over an hour during which time many passers by and BBC employees came to congratulate us for voicing their own concerns of how inappropriate it would be for the Eurovision to be hosted by Israel, and shameful for the BBC to support it.'  [Emphasis added]

Simon's Workwear: Shameless BBC

Earlier this week BBC Watch, that wonderfully expert and indefatigable recorder of the BBC's inaccuracies and sins of omission and commission in its reportage and "analysis" of Israel-related topics, turned its attention to "The Mediterranean", a four-part series presented by Simon Reeve.

From the post we learn that Reeve said, for example:

“I crossed one of the world’s most heavily fortified borders. So this is a long walk through a cage – a caged passageway that takes us from the very modern, pretty wealthy state of Israel to the much poorer and densely packed Gaza Strip. I’ve never been through a border quite like this. It is extraordinary in every possible sense and – my God – you look across here…look at the barrier that encircles Gaza. It’s a very forbidding, foreboding place to walk towards, quite frankly. There’s a…there’s a dehumanisation of the people who live here. The whole process makes you feel like you’re entering the cage of the wild animals.”

Furthermore, for instance:

'Simon Reeve ended his visit to the Gaza Strip by telling viewers of this film – categorised in the credits as a “current affairs production” – that:

Reeve: “The situation here is utterly shocking and maddening.”

Significantly, BBC Two audiences heard nothing whatsoever about Hamas’ agenda of destroying the Jewish state – or whether or not Reeve finds that and the terrorism against Israeli civilians which aims to bring that agenda about “utterly shocking and maddening”.

Clearly impartiality and accuracy were not at the forefront of priorities for the makers of this context-lite (especially in comparison to Reeve’s previous efforts to explain the Cyprus conflict) segment of Simon Reeve’s film.'

See the entire post here

Reeve is one of those easy-mannered and visually appealing 30/40-something presenters nowadays ubiquitous on television documentaries.

He sports just enough stubble to appear cool, and not enough to seem slovenly. 

Oh, and his favourite item of neckwear is the keffiyeh.  Which is leftist Israel-hating circles makes him very cool indeed.

Here he is, presenting "The Greeks", broadcast a couple of years ago on BBC2.

 More recent examples:

The Left, needless to say, since the garment suits its own purpose, does not accuse westerners wearing the keffiyeh of "cultural appropriation", one of its newish buzz phrases. 

Nor, it seems, does the BBC feel anything is amiss when one of their presenters wears this, the propagandistic uniform of the anti-Israel movement, on assignment and on camera.

Shameless Simon.

Shameless BBC.

The BBC's Adams's Apple's Not Far from Parental Tree

Courtesy of the BBC's diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams, a video report on those uniquely hereditary refugees, the Palestinian Arabs Palestinians, now into the fourth generation of refugee status.

Of course, their fellow-Arabs could have absorbed the "first generation" that left Eretz Israel in 1948-49, but preferred to use these unfortunate people as pawns in their rejectionist struggle against the Zionist Entity.

Paul Adams skims over such essentials, in a report that is essentially context-free.

More polished than Bowen and Donnison, and I dare say more intelligent, he nevertheless descends into propaganda, in contravention of the Corporation's Charter.
 

Lack of context is rather a hallmark of Mr Adams's reportage on Israel and the Palestinian Arabs Palestinians, as Hadar Sela of BBCWatch so ably pointed out here and here

So please bear in mind the following, as I noted in a comment on the first of those BBC Watch posts cited above (emphasis added):

'Paul’s father was Michael Adams, foundation director of CAABU. Below is an extract from what I wrote about him in one of my blog posts re the BBC-pro-Arab nexus, in which I identified Keith Kyle as the first openly anti-Israel BBC journalist:

Shortly after Israel’s stunning victory [1967], the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) was set up in London in order to coordinate Arab and pro-Arab opinion in the UK…. Funded by Arab governments, CAABU could afford a secretariat, and its director was Michael Adams, who had worked for the BBC early in his career but had later joined the Guardian. It was owing to his articles in that paper that a columnist in the Jewish Chronicle (30 June 1967) observed: “It is with a sinking feeling and eventually turning stomach that one examines the Guardian each morning.” (That writer would certainly vomit daily if he read the Guardian nowadays!)

One of CAABU’s first actions had been to send Adams, while he was still employed by the Guardian, on a funded trip to the Middle East, from whence he sent a series of articles biased against Israel. The Guardian had printed them without explaining that they had been subsidised by Arab money. There was also a despatch from Cairo which talked of the “forcible expulsion across the burning desert of Palestinian Arabs to Gaza”. In fact, those deportees were members of the Palestine Liberation Army and a threat to Israel’s security, as the Guardian grudgingly acknowledged the next day. Adams also used the offensive term “final solution” to describe Israeli policy.

It was shortly after this that Adams became CAABU’s director…

The BBC’s Keith Kyle was not slow to identify openly with CAABU. He was a keynote speaker at one of its first major rallies….

[In 1969] on the BBC’s Panorama, Michael Adams spewed out vitriol about “nation-wide and even world-wide Jewish pressure” – in other words, a certain lobby.

In one of his platform appearances Adams – foreshadowing the avoidance by Al Beeb and the Guardian of the T-word – rhetorically enquired why the British press referred to “Arab terrorists”: ‘I can’t remember calling members of the resistance in Nazi-occupied France “terrorists”‘, he continued. (In 1999 his son, the BBC’s Middle East correspondent Paul Adams, used the prescribed Al Beeb term “Islamic militants” of suicide bombers. It was Paul Adams, when diplomatic correspondent, who in 2007 appeared to admit to BBC bias when he described Alan Johnston’s job as “to bring us day after day reports of the Palestinian predicament in the Gaza Strip”.)’

"But What if the Strangers ... Want to Turn Your Own Country into Egypt? "

To sign go HERE

Last evening I stumbled online across lovely footage from "the Swinging Sixties".  Specifically it shows scenes of London in the summer of 1967.  Glimpses of Carnaby Street fashions, and the Portobello market, Biba, and much more. Bouffant-haired girls in their summer dresses, groovy guys with Beatles haircuts ...

The footage has attracted many views, together with innumerable comments.  The general theme, from both older commenters and people who were not even born in the 1960s, is the way in which Britain has changed since that decade.

Yes, some  remark how great it is to see people actually looking where they are going rather than being glued to mobile phones, while others remark how better dressed people seemed to be back then, and how slim.

But by far the prevailing nostalgia focused on the comparative homogeneity of the population, and a strong Islamophobic thread weaves through the comments.

Shocking to behold, though not numerous, are comments blaming population diversity and mass immigration on "Jews" and "Zionist Jews", with one avowedly "Asian" commenter joining in the antisemitism, and somebody adding obscenely that "the Jews" won the Second World War.

I felt like asking why, since mass Islamic migration, with what it portends at the ballot box and elsewhere, is hardly in the interests of Zionists and Jews, would any Jew want to encourage, much less engineer, it.  But then I figured that conspiracy theorists are incorrigible and best left alone.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKaDoR1qfKc

Why encourage it, indeed?  There are plenty of Jews who realise that mass Muslim immigration is not in their interests, nor in those of the wider society. However,  Melanie Phillips, in an article concerning Israel's new Nationality Law, wrote, inter alia, a few days ago:

'Two utterly fundamental and seismic issues are threatening to tear apart Britain, Europe and America. They are mass immigration and national identity.

The majority of Jews in Britain and America are warmly disposed towards the former and terrified of the latter. They have got it precisely the wrong way round. 

Diaspora Jews have a Pavlovian response to immigration. This is entirely understandable: the vast majority, myself included, are the descendants of immigrants and refugees.

Jews are also commanded in the Torah not to wrong or oppress a stranger “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” But what if the strangers in question want to turn your own country into Egypt? 

For what’s happening today is not so much immigration as the mass movement of peoples from global south to north. 

If unchecked, this will transform the developed world, overwhelm its public infrastructure, and forever alter the culture and identity of its constituent nations.

.... Society has to pull together in pursuit of a common project or else it will disintegrate into warring tribes. That common project — based on a shared history, language, religion, institutions and traditions — is called a nation....'  [Emphasis added]

 The real unease here is surely over Israel asserting its national identity at all, just as most British Jews are uneasy about Britain asserting its own national identity.

But without it, democracy and political freedom in the West will die. And without their own acknowledgement that they are themselves a nation, diaspora Jews will also fade away.

The Jewish world will merely consist instead of the State of Israel — the one place where Judaism’s defining and indissoluble connection between the people, the religion and the land to form the Jewish nation really does have meaning.'

Meanwhile, for Spain as a new stepping stone for mass migration to Europe see here

Glitzy in Gaza

What the biased western media doesn't let us see!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbH1nJf9ye0

Tom Gross has more here

Fare for Babes & Sucklings

In the USA this kiddies' book seems to be a popular stocking filler.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=GOolfjdEr5Y

And in France, kiddies are being told in the current edition of the monthly Youpi magazine, aimed at five-to-eight year-olds, that:

"There are 197 countries, like France, Algeria or Germany. There are a few more, but not all other countries in the world agree that they are real countries (for example the State of Israel or North Korea)."

As reported here:

'Francis Kalifat, the president-elect of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF), the umbrella organization for Jewish organisations in France, condemned the magazine for questioning Israel's existence. "To say that Israel is not a 'true state' is a grave lie in the face of history ... Israel's existence is an internationally recognized truth."

"Israel has been recognized as a sovereign state since 1948 and by the United Nations since 1949," he said. In an interview with i24 News, he accused the magazine of "targeting its youngest readers" in its delegitimization of the State of Israel.

Kalifat said that he had written to publisher Bayer calling on the magazine to "produce an article in the next issue to explain what Israel is, so as to accurately inform" its young readers that Israel exists.

Serge Dehan, the president of B'nei B'rith France, also condemned the magazine for "banishing Israel from the nations" of the world. He accused the magazine of "conditioning children to hate Israel."'

Bigger kids, meanwhile, are being fed the constant fiction in which the BBC and its cohorts specialise.  Stuff like this and this.

"We Need to Support Jeremy Corbyn — Back Him All the Way..."

Outside Wembley Stadium in London on 20 August, Israel haters familiar and not so familiar appear in this by no means uninteresting footage by video-maker and staunch BDSer Alex Seymour/Seymour Alexander, according to whom (we don't see them, unfortunately) pro-Israel passers-by made their feelings known.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWEpdgp9fZE

There's the loquacious Irishman who constantly campaigns to have Israel thrown out of Fifa (the campaign literature has now been translated into several languages, we hear him say.

There's the rather plummy-voiced grey-haired lady who's a ubiquitous sidekick to Sandra Watfa (the lady seen on many a Seymour video who inveighs against Israel at countless demos in London including, this year, the Al Quds Day excrescence).  Here outside the stadium Sandra's sidekick is seen handing out leaflets to football fans arriving for the game.

Another familiar Israel-hater is the little lady of Jewish origin whose "Israel is an apartheid state" spiel in front of Seymour's lens includes a plaintive charge that "The media seem to focus on how wonderful Israel is".  (Ever watched the BBC, darling?)*

A young woman in sun glasses tells Seymour that she has been "a life-long supporter of Palestine," that "Unfortunately they [those pesky Zionists] have a lot of support, a lot of power ... a lot of lobbying, a lot of power" and asserts that, to turn the tide, "We need to support Jeremy Corbyn — back him all the way ..."

But my favourite scene in the video comes when Seymour asks a darkly handsome young man in a keffiyah, who's expressed appreciation of the demo, "Where are you from?"  

"I'm from Gaza" the smiling young man replies.

"You managed to get out?" 

"Yah!" the Gazan readily assures Seymour.  He'll be returning home in a month's time.

 (Not the answer to the Israel-haters' prayers, eh, undermining as it does the "Gaza is a prison" trope that's part and parcel of their bag of tricks.)

*Talking of the BBC, see BBC Watch here for the despicable claim of BBC World Service correspondent Max Pearson that ".... Just the phrase ‘tension in the Middle East’ has become shorthand for referencing the decades of mistrust between Jews and Arabs following the creation of the State of Israel, carved – as it was – out of land which had belonged to the Palestinians...."

"A Sensitive Topic For Many Muslims": The BBC Hits A New Low

Is there no limit to the depths to which the BBC will sink in its biased reportage concerning Israel?

On its news site currently is a story, that sounds more of a propagandistic beat-up, about Muslim schoolgirls from a Berlin school being "racially abused" on a visit to Holocaust memorials in Poland.

For the BBC, as for much of the Left, the "victimisation" of Muslims, real or imagined, is a topic worthy of the maximum exposure, for Muslims, it seems, are "the new Jews".

Thus the BBC's salivating over the theme that "German Muslim schoolgirls who went on a visit to Holocaust memorials in eastern Poland say they were racially abused by locals during their trip" is almost palpable.

Gratuitous attacks on anyone, irrespective of race or creed, are unconscionable and despicable.

But what the blazes does the following statement have to do with the report in question?

"The Holocaust is a sensitive topic for many Muslims because Jewish survivors settled in British mandate Palestine, on land which later became part of the state of Israel"

Not for the BBC, so far as I'm aware, frank reportage about Muslim antisemitism as seen in the many Al Quds Day hate-fests in European cities, including London (as I have mentioned in several recent posts) and Berlin (see below the new demographics where once the jackboot strutted):

Yep.  There they teach hatred of Israel young:

Just as they do in Dublin:

Jeremy Bowen's "Get Out of Jail" Card

The BBC's woeful "Middle East editor" Jeremy Bowen, he of the shoddy reportage ("BBC’s ME editor advances his own partisan narrative in summing up of Trump visit") who offers "analysis" so pedestrian as to be already bleedingly obvious to anyone with an IQ above room temperature, is marking 25 years reporting from the Middle East for Al Beeb.

To mark this milestone, BBC Radio 4 has been broadcasting a series of talks of his regarding his reminiscences, under the encompassing title "Our Man in the Middle East".  It's in ten parts, and I must admit that, when I saw the title of Part Nine, "A Blunt Instrument," the thought occurred to me that it might be referring to Jezza's brain.

Predictably, the series is being hyped on Twitter, where BBC reporters just love to spin their personal prejudices and big-note on Twitter and elsewhere the (subjective) books they have written arising out of their already nicely-paid employment (nice work if you can get it, eh?)

How different from the now far-off days when the BBC was a byword for integrity and for objective reportage, when reporters realised that they were not news in themselves and did not behave like stars or prima donnas, and when, in consequence, the Corporation was deservedly respected and admired.

"Conflicts in the Middle East have deep roots and a lot of history.  Fighters in every war on every side de-humanise their enemies.  They regard them as something less than living and breathing people who can feel love and fear and happiness.  That way it's much easier to kill."

So intones Jezza at the conclusion to this instalment in his series, Part 10, entitled "The Nearness of Death".

In so doing he's implied that the IDF (about which the heroic Colonel Richard Kemp, with his characterisation of it as an eminently moral and humane force, is far more trustworthy than the pathetic Bowen's malevolent take) is on a par with the bloodthirsty warped Islamic fighters who maim, torture and slaughter for the thrill of it.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnRV2RPct1c

In the instalment Jezza, with a softly softly approach as far as Hezbollah is concerned ("a highly effective gueriila force") laments that Lebanese "civilians have suffered disproportionately at the hands of Israel" and warms to that theme for some time.

The instalment, you see, concerns the sad and unfortunate accidental killing by an Israeli tank crew on 23 May 2000 of Bowen's Lebanese driver and fixer, of whom he was very fond.  The driver was in the car when it was shelled, Bowen having got out to do some filming: "I'll feel guilty until my last day that we stopped to film ..."

For Jezza's ignorance see HERE

Bowen has spoken and written of this episode many times.  It undoubtedly traumatised him and for that he merits pity, as, of course, does the blameless driver who lost his life.

But, as I've pointed out before, when the BBC found that the incident had had such a devastating emotional impact on Bowen, leading in consequence to an obvious contempt and loathing of Israeli policy, it should have plucked him out of the Middle East into another zone for reportage.

The incident has left Bowen with an unshakeable residue of bitterness and prejudice towards Israel, and the fact that the BBC allowed him to continue in the region, let alone (given all the controversy that his biased reporting has engendered, not to mention his very weak analytical powers) appoint him "Middle East editor" defies commonsense and compromises journalistic standards.

From that standpoint the culpability for Bowen's evinced prejudice is as much that of the higher echelons of the Corporation as it is his.

But as we know only too well, the BBC habitually falls back on a mantra-like answer to those who protest its unbalanced reportage, its sins of omission and commission, as far as Israel is concerned: namely, that as the pro-Palestinian side also accuses them of bias (towards, in the sense of in favouring, Israel) the BBC is satisfied that it gets things "just about right".

That is, so to speak, Al Beeb's (and Jezza's and Jon Donnison's and Yolande Knell's and the rest of the agenda-driven pack's) "get out of jail" card.

Here's an example of that card, one of a number of messages beamed onto BBC headquarters in London recently as part of an initiative by Israel-demonising activists.

But, as that message, like others, shows, the difference between the pro-Israel and the anti-Israel sides in their respective protestations to the BBC is that we want Al Beeb always to be scrupulously fair in its reportage and commentary, favouring neither one side nor the other, as its Charter and Producers' Guidelines mandate, whereas the protesting Israel-haters want it adopt an editorial line that invariably undermines and de-legitimises Israel.

How the News We Watch Can Shape The Way We Think: BDSer Jake's BBC Take (video)

The London Times of 25 July 1994 carried an article by the BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson entitled "When reporters act on their consciences".  Unfortunately, I don't have a copy in front of me now, but from memory the springboard for the article was a recent broadcast in which BBC television reporter (later newsreader) George Alagiah abandoned objectivity to advocate for a particular cause, so outraged was he at what he was seeing around him.

Simpson evidently understood and approved, and foreshadowed more instances of the kind.

Nowadays, of course, the intrusion of BBC reporters' own sympathies and prejudices into their reportage has become, if not commonplace, then certainly a matter for concern, as indeed is the case regarding certain broadcasters on the ABC, Australia's answer to the BBC, its Middle East correspondent Sophie McNeill having before her controversial appointment made no secret of the fact that she considers herself an activist as well as a journalist. 

The following 12-minute video dates to 2014.  It features Jake Lynch, the BDS-happy associate professor who heads the so-called Peace and Conflict Centre at the University of Sydney.  In his discussion of his background as a BBC presenter he refers to how "peace journalism" informed his broadcasts, how he steered interviews in order to incorporate it, how the BBC effectively allowed him to take the line he chose, and how useful a tool it is in shaping audience responses to international conflicts.

The video provides an insight into former anti-Apartheid (the real apartheid, in South Africa) activist Lynch's anti-Israel bias and is an indicator of the BBC's leftist bias, and lack of concern for the objectivity incumbent upon it by its Charter and Producers' Guidelines.  (The academic Boycott of Israel, incidentally, raises its ugly head at 9:23).

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33abvpH5L3c)

No Sounding the Knell of BBC Reporter's Bias

Hallel Yaffa Ariel

In an egregiously one-sided feature (that's her hallmark, as shown time and time again by BBC Watch and other BBC monitoring sites) the BBC's Yolande Knell begins:

"For retired West Bank farmer Issa Hamed, the idea that Jewish settlements are destroying a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is a no-brainer" 

and goes on to push the Palestinian narrative in what should properly be known, as it always used to be, as the Arab-Israeli conflict, for several paragraphs.

In the course of these, Knell described (en passant, without naming) tragic Hallel Yaffa Ariel, the 13-year-old stabbed to death, by an evil teenager bent on mayhem against Jews and since praised as a shahid, while sleeping in her bedroom in Kiryat Arba, as "an American-Israeli girl".

 The fact that Hallel held American citizenship is of interest to Americans and their newspapers, and that is perfectly understandable (as seen here) but Knell's reference to it is, judging from her past form, in all likelihood merely gratuitous.

 Other BBC reports referred to Hallel as "Israeli".   The suspicion must be that Knell, in her snide propagandistic fashion, was deliberately emphasising the "settler" status of the young victim of Palestinian Arab terror in a sort of "well, what do you expect?" frame of mind. A frame of mind that would seek, though not to condone this frame of mind, then at least to excuse it in some sense as tit-for-tat ...

Of course, Binyamin Netanyahu has a response to that Knellian-type frame of mind, declaring:  

One mother ...

"In the 24 hours before the publication of the Quartet report, Palestinian terrorists stabbed and shot innocent Israelis three times, leaving two dead and others wounded. Today a young father was killed and his wife and children injured when their car was riddled with gunfire. Yesterday a 13 year-old Israeli girl was stabbed to death while she slept in her bed. Not only did the Palestinian Authority fail to condemn this gruesome murder, it referred to the murderer as a “martyr” in official media.

... and another

Palestinian praise for murderers today inspires those who will strike tomorrow. This response reflects the moral bankruptcy of the Palestinian leadership and leaves little doubt about its true intentions.

Israel therefore welcomes the Quartet’s recognition of the centrality of Palestinian incitement and violence to the perpetuation of the conflict. This culture of hatred poisons minds and destroys lives and stands as the single greatest obstacle to progress towards peace.

The report unfortunately says nothing about the payments made by the Palestinian leadership to terrorists and their families. The graver the violence, the greater the payment. This Palestinian practice must stop.

Israel shares the Quartet’s historical commitment to advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace through direct, bilateral negotiations without preconditions.

In previous agreements, Israel and the Palestinians committed to discuss every difficult issue exclusively through direct, bilateral negotiations. Nevertheless, the record shows a history of repeated Palestinian rejection of offers to negotiate and compromise from Israeli governments across the political spectrum. Israel cannot negotiate peace with itself.

Israel also notes the Quartet’s concern about the military buildup in Gaza and the threat posed by Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization, to both Israeli and Palestinian lives.

We regret the failure of the Quartet to address the real core of the conflict: the persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people in any boundaries.

The report also perpetuates the myth that Israeli construction in the West Bank is an obstacle to peace. When Israel froze settlements, it did not get peace. When Israel uprooted every settlement in Gaza, it did not get peace. It got war.

It is troubling that the Quartet appears to have adopted the position that the presence of Jews living in the West Bank somehow prevents reaching a two-state solution. The presence of nearly 1.8 million Arabs in Israel isn’t a barrier to peace; it is a testament to our pluralism and commitment to equality.

Israel rejects any attempt to draw moral equivalence between construction and terrorism. So too do we reject the parallels suggested between the campaign of Palestinian terrorism and the violence of marginal elements in Israeli society. The former is lauded by the Palestinian leadership. The latter is utterly condemned and rejected by Israelis across the board.

 Israel will continue to strive for a genuine, negotiated peace based on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s vision of two states for two peoples. While the report includes numerous factual and policy assertions with which we take issue, Israel will discuss with the Quartet envoys ways to explore moving toward this end."

A pertinent post from Edgar Davidson here See also here
 And here

Meanwhile, for this Muslim lady, all praise

Twice is a Coincidence: BBC boob boobs again

If he does it a third time, however ...

Yes, I'm talking about the BBC's Chris Rogers, who's on record as making light of the antisemitism he was supposed to be reporting about by clowning around.

To quote the Daily Mail a couple of years ago:

'A BBC journalist was filmed giving a Nazi salute and goose stepping while filming a documentary about anti-Semitic football fans in Poland and Ukraine.

Chris Rogers was caught marching with one finger under his nose, as crew reportedly looked on.

The BBC Panorama documentary Euro 2012: Stadiums of Hate, was filmed two years ago ahead of the tournament in Poland and Ukraine - but details of the gaffe have only just come to light.

Mr Rogers ... admitted that he displayed a 'lack of judgment'.

He said: 'I fully accept that some of my behaviour, which was intended as a joke, was deeply inappropriate particularly given the seriousness of what we were filming.

"I apologised and was strongly reprimanded by the BBC. I might have displayed a lack of judgement but none of this detracts from the serious football racism exposed in the programme."'

And now Mr Rogers has demonstrated questionable behaviour again.

To quote London's giveaway rival to the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish News:

'The BBC has apologised after one of its radio presenters said on-air that Israel “hasn't really worked out” as a country.

BBC Radio London host Chris Rogers was hosting a phone-in on Tuesday about the refugee crisis when a caller asked: “Why can’t they put a load of them (refugees) in Africa?”

The presenter replied: “Is just dumping families from all over the world, with lots of different cultures and reasons for fleeing - is just dumping them in a new state, if we do Israel all over again, is that really the answer?

“I mean, Israel arguably hasn't really worked out, has it?”

A Board of Deputies spokesman called on Mr Rogers to clarify or apologise for remarks which he said were “off-hand, politically-loaded” and “most unfortunate”.

In response, a spokeswoman for the BBC explained that “Chris Rogers was trying to challenge the caller's point by finding a historical comparison and in the heat of a live programme discussion he picked the example of Israel.

“He accepts that his words might have implied criticism of the creation of the state of Israel which was not his intention. BBC Radio London apologises if any listener was offended.”...'

Funny how he just happened to pull Israel out of thin air though, innit.

Meanwhile, a very welcome development Down Under:

http://honestreporting.com/honestreporting-australia/

 (hat tip: Ian)

"[O]n the Left Today What is in Jeopardy is Support ... for the Concept of Israel" (includes video)

Coincidentally during "Israel Apartheid Week" (see David Collier's brilliant post here) the House of Lords has been debating the Middle East, and some of the speeches have been notable for their resounding support for Israel.

Look, for example, at this offering, from Labour life peer Lord Livermore, a former party strategist and quite obviously not a Corbynista:

'My Lords, I wish to use the short time available to argue for a better understanding of Israel. This task is urgent because we see now a disturbing resurgence of anti-Zionism that is bordering on the antisemitic, particularly, I regret to say, in sections of the left in British politics.

  Israel is not of course above criticism. It is right that where necessary we should be critical of Israeli policy, conduct and behaviour. \

Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel

But too often this legitimate criticism of specific actions taken by Israel obscures the reality of Israel. When this reality is not heard, it creates a space for those with uglier motivations to build support for grotesque analogies between Israel and apartheid South Africa or even Nazi Germany.

I fear that on the left today what is in jeopardy is support not just for the conduct of Israel but for the concept of Israel. We see senior figures praising as friends those who are committed to the violent destruction of the Jewish homeland.

 Indeed, we now have the perverse situation where people who consider themselves to be progressive oppose Israel in the belief that they are standing up for liberal values and human rights, but in doing so side with totalitarian Islamist regimes that abuse human rights and prohibit basic liberties.

I believe that it is the duty of progressives to stop the slide from opposition to specific policies of Israel towards opposition to the very existence of Israel. I want us to make the progressive case for a country where women have the right to vote, dress as they wish and say what they wish in a region where, too often, they are segregated and subjugated; for a country that is committed to the free practice of religion for all in a region where religious minorities are frequently suppressed and persecuted; for a country where gay people are not discriminated against, tortured, detained or executed, as they are almost everywhere else in the region; and for a country with a free press, freedom of expression, an independent judiciary and strong trade unions, all lacking in almost all neighbouring countries. 

 There is nothing progressive about siding with those who oppose the very values that we as a society strive to represent, and there is nothing progressive about seeking to extinguish a beacon of democracy, modernity and pluralism in the Middle East.' 
[Emphasis added above and below]

Conservative life peer Lord Grade, who's Jewish, said; inter alia:

'Just yesterday, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, who is in her place this evening, and other noble Lords spoke with eloquence and passion on the intimidating environment in our scholarly communities which is suppressing constructive discussion on the Middle East. The vicious approach to debate, or rather to the stifling of debate, taken by some—for example, those who violently disrupted an Israeli speaker at King’s College, London, last month—does nothing to foster greater understanding of the Middle East in the UK; quite the contrary.

 The KCL Action Palestine society, which spearheaded the disruption of KCL’s Israel society event, is a committed supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The BDS movement continually smears the only democratic state in the region by comparing Israel to the apartheid South African regime of yesteryear. This is as intellectually bankrupt as it is dishonest: it is almost like comparing BDS to the National Socialist Party in pre-war Germany. Let us be clear that the overarching aim of this particular movement is to quash constructive dialogue and end any hope of a viable two-state solution.

To achieve its ends, in recent years BDS has engineered votes to boycott Israel at some of our top universities, which really should know better. In recent months, students at the School of Oriental and African Studies voted overwhelmingly to boycott Israel, and only last week the co-chair of the Oxford University Labour Club, Alex Chalmers, while lamenting that much of the student left has“some kind of problem with Jews”, resigned in the light of the club’s decision to support Israel Apartheid Week at the university this week.

Elsewhere, the movement has been particularly successful in galvanising support for BDS against Israel in the UK’s influential culture and entertainment sectors, culminating in a letter last year signed by 1,000 artists indicating support for a boycott of Israel. Interestingly, Professor Stephen Hawking publicly boycotted one academic event in Israel. It is perhaps worth noting that his extraordinary speech-generation device’s most important component is a silicon chip that was designed in Israel. A leading commentator writing about the professor’s decision asked whether the solution to this problem would be for Professor Hawking to boycott himself.

While advocacy for supporting boycotts represents a disturbing trend in any sector, the prominence and success of the movement in areas which should thrive on free expression is particularly distressing. Last year, more than 300 professors committed themselves to boycotting Israel. Campuses should be at the forefront of charting a way towards the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not spaces to further entrench differences and incite hostility and, dare I say it, bigotry.

Parliament is at the heart of the academic issue. There is a blatant double standard here, which we as legislators have not addressed. There is evidence that we permit the funding of some educational departments by authoritarian states with abhorrent track records on human rights and free expression, yet UK institutions are somehow at the forefront of calls to ban Israeli academics and students on the basis of their nationality and, probably, their religion. The connection between the funding of universities by vehemently anti-Israel regimes, the constraining of free expression and referenda to ban Israelis must be exposed. While we in this place advocate free expression and a two-state solution, elsewhere, we permit the clandestine manipulation of research and teaching on the Middle East to the opposite effect.

Let me now, at last, be more positive. I was especially pleased to learn just last week of the Government’s follow-through on their commitment to prevent public authorities, such as local councils and universities, boycotting products from Israel. The statement by Cabinet Office Minister Matt Hancock in Israel was welcome news for all those who cherish free speech.

I am also encouraged to see Israel’s linkages with Britain grow with unabated rapidity in recent years. In science and technology, one of the UK’s leading country priorities is Israel. The development of the UK Israel Tech Hub, the Britain Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership, and a top-level UK-Israel Life Sciences Council bring together millions of pounds in funding and some of the world’s brightest minds to collaborate on a number of fronts, including heart disease prevention, regenerative stem cell research and battling multiple sclerosis. UK-Israel partnerships are currently producing world-leading innovations in nanotechnology, agriscience, neuroscience and many other specialist subjects.

In the real commercial world, away from some of the bigoted posturing of academe, trade between Israel and Britain is supporting much-needed manufacturing jobs here at home. For example, Rolls Royce has recently won a contract to supply jet engines to Israel’s state airline, El Al—El Al, by the way, is the only airline for which you do not buy a ticket but give a donation. Perhaps some of those academics who parade their prejudices without any sense of responsibility would like to see what the employees of Rolls Royce might say to them about working with Israel. Business and trade is flourishing between Israel and Britain. In the past 10 years, bilateral trade has increased by 60% to over £3 billion per annum. As many as 300 Israeli companies operate in the UK, and it remains a principal destination for capital and market growth opportunities for Israeli entrepreneurs.

Crucially, in the arts sector, last year we celebrated 20 years of the British Israeli Arts Training Scheme. Funded by the British Council and the Government of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Culture and Sport, the programme provides advice and short-term grants, as well as longer-term programmes.

Fostering connections between Palestinians and Israelis and between Britain and Israel is laying fertile ground from which peace may one day grow. It is in this endeavour that government can be a leading champion. Most important of all, in my view, in the search for peace in the Middle East are the many unreported collaborations where Jews and Arabs are working together on the ground. The Valley of Peace initiative promotes economic co-operation between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians based in the Arava valley. Regional economic collaborations like this are critically important, as an economically viable Palestine is a necessary condition for a peaceful resolution. I could also highlight the Israeli-Palestinian Science Organization, which facilitates co-operation, dialogue and interaction between Israeli and Palestinian scholars and scientists. Initiatives such as these are where grass-roots activists and professional leaders are doing the lion’s share of the work to increase understanding and work towards peace.

However, I feel that in order for us to create a society where co-existence can truly thrive, we need to focus on those who will be the future leaders: the children. How can Israelis and Arabs find common ground if they cannot talk to each other? In Israel, Jewish and Arab children attend separate schools, which creates space for fear, stereotypes and inequalities to grow. These children, who might even be neighbours, grow up in two parallel worlds that rarely interact. In order to change this reality, parents and community members in Be’er Sheva have played an active role in developing a future based on equality and respect for their children and their community through the founding of the Hagar Association, Jewish-Arab Education for Equality, an organisation dedicated to creating a shared society and co-existence between Jewish and Arab residents of Israel’s Negev. It is a centre for joint community initiatives which are completely bilingual in Hebrew and Arabic. There are sport activities that encourage Israeli and Arab children to aspire to be the next Lionel Messi.

We need understanding and discussion, and I hope that this debate will encourage that more than boycotts.'

Baroness Deech, who's also Jewish, and has of course been the target of a nasty little dig by Roger Waters for it, was her usual excellent self:

'My Lords, to my mind, this is a debate centring on disinformation, the deliberate spreading of inaccurate information in order to cover up the truth or to mislead public opinion. Our main sources of information about the Middle East are the media and teaching at universities. Journalists are exceptionally brave purveyors of information, but to a large extent they can go only where it is safe and they can send accurate dispatches only from that region where permitted to do so. Scores of journalists have died or been imprisoned there, and their reports are censored by the majority of countries in the Middle East, without the reader necessarily knowing.

Reporting from the area is bedevilled by the failure to use the right words—for example, not saying the word “terrorist”—and consequent downplaying of the violence. There is disproportionate coverage of Israel, and nothing is ever reported about the Palestinians’ way of life or their diaspora, save for victimhood. Opinion is disguised as news—for example, Tim Willcox of the BBC, at a Charlie Hebdo rally, saying to a Jewish demonstrator:

“Many critics of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well”.

There is a lack of context; there has never been an East Jerusalem, except during the Jordanian occupation period of 1948-67. There is selective omission—for example, the headlines proclaiming that a Palestinian has been killed, when in fact he was brought down after murdering Israeli civilians in the street. That is why it is so important that complaints about the media inaccuracies are handled by independent arbiters, and the BBC has to reform its complaints system.

Our universities have accepted money from various repressive Arab regimes—money directed almost exclusively at teaching Middle Eastern studies and putting in place curricula and professors subscribing to that point of view. An example is the Islamic Centre at Oxford, which has received £75 million from Saudi Arabia and other such regimes. The same is true of nearly every professorial post in this subject. I hope that the Minister will announce an inquiry into the foreign funding of our universities and that university donations are to be made public.'

Lib Dem life peer Lord Palmer of Childs Hill said:

My Lords, the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Grade, is how to increase understanding of the Middle East. I am just back from an all-party Peers’ visit to Israel and the West Bank. We met Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Rivlin, who were far more positive than we had been led to believe. Does the Minister believe that the Israelis are prepared to come to the negotiating table without preconditions?

We also went to Ramallah to lunch with leading Palestinians. I must say that our meeting with them was profoundly disappointing, to the extent that they ended by blaming the British for the lack of a Palestinian state, ignoring completely the fact that prior to 1967 it was well within the powers of Jordan and Egypt, who respectively controlled the West Bank and Gaza, to have created a state of Palestine when there were no Israeli settlers in those areas. Can the Minister say whether the UK Government are making efforts to move the Palestinians out of past gripes and to think positively about what is achievable, and also ask them whether they will come to the negotiating table without preconditions?

We received a frightening presentation on the radicalisation of Palestinian youth in schools and in sport. It must say something when Palestinian sporting events are named after so-called martyrs who killed Israelis. Have the UK Government any views on how to stop this education of hate?

We also visited the town of Sderot and the moshav Netiv HaAsara, right on the border with Gaza. The people there live in and out of bomb shelters, which has saved lives but has caused great trauma particularly for the kids, who know of no life without shelters and safe rooms at home and in school. Have the UK Government views on why this life of trauma receives so little publicity in this country?'

Even Conservative "wet" Lord Patten, chancellor of the University of Oxford, no friend to Israel either before or during his headship of the BBC Trust, appeared (more or less) conciliatory.  (Too bad he never hauled Bowen, Donnison, and the rest of the Israel-demonising BBC pack over the coals; words are cheap.)

'The lightning conductor and fulcrum of Middle Eastern misunderstanding since the late 1940s has been the state of Israel with its polyglot and talented population. Understanding the Middle East today, almost 70 years on, must begin at home in the United Kingdom, which has a particular historical role as the colonial power in Palestine during the run-up to the creation of Israel in 1948. We have not managed so far, despite best efforts, to be at all successful in eradicating antisemitism at home in the United Kingdom and thus cannot be sure of our standing in getting greater understanding of Israel, which feels under deadly threat just as some Palestinians feel the same.

Only this month we had, as my noble friend Lord Grade said in his notable speech, seen a particularly nasty outbreak of antisemitism among the members of one particular political club in Oxford, its co-chairman resigning as he thought some of its members had “poisonous” attitudes made intolerant statements and had,“some kind of problem with Jews”.

That 70 years on these attitudes prevail in what should be a bastion of liberalism and tolerance is completely shameful, so robust action must be taken where and when reason is missing. I thus congratulate very warmly the Government on their stand against local authorities who now wish to boycott Israeli goods as their own little contribution to Middle Eastern understanding—nowhere else, just Israeli goods. I want my local authority to deal with flood prevention and potholes rather than developing their own foreign policy in direct contravention of the rules of the World Trade Organisation with the sole aim of undermining and delegitimising one state and one state only in the Middle East—the state of Israel.

I say all that not as a Jew but as a Roman Catholic. There are a lot of my lot in Jerusalem and I want them to stay there. I am extremely grateful to the Government of Israel for protecting them and for making it possible for Roman Catholics and other Christians to be in Jerusalem and not to be cleansed and cleared out, as they have been in so many other parts of the Middle East.'

For more see here (citing Hansard House of Lords Debate, 23 February 2016)