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.

Pundits On The Iran Deal (video)

I haven't looked/listened to this 84-minute (!) video, dating from last month, regarding the Iran Deal, but I thought I'd draw attention to it for anybody who might wish to do so. The pundits are taking part in an event at London's Frontline Club, which is often egregiously leftist and which often features Jeremy Bowen (and other Beeboid types).

Oh, and talking of Jeremy ("Out of his depth") Bowen, here's his rotten little "in-depth" piece on the current violence in Jerusalem.

Jeremy Bowen's Hero

He's at it yet again, is the BBC's snottily out-of-control "Middle East editor" Jeremy Bowen, displaying that noisome bias (and ignorance) of his, and getting away with it. See also BBC Watch's post  here

Needless to say, this latest outrageous piece of nonsense from Bowen should be vigorously protested, as, once again, he transgresses his employer's rules and regulations.

Some insight into this egregious BBC man's disgraceful penchant for injecting his own bias into what passes in his mind for analysis can perhaps be discerned from the disclosure on Twitter the other week that veteran, now retiring New York Times reporter John Burns is a journalistic hero of his.

Just consider this credo of Burns to which Bowen admiringly drew attention:

Q [to Burns]. How do you manage to not get mad at the injustices man heaps upon other humans? Especially children and women? Does it ever provoke you to take matters into your own hands and get justice, instead of being a neutral observer? — Mani Subramanian; Boston

A [from Burns]. I’ve always felt that passion is a legitimate — an indispensable — tool for a reporter in the face of the malevolent outrages of war.... Bottom line, I have held stubbornly to the belief that the reporter’s duty is not to be neutral in the face of outrage so much as to be fair, the more so when neutrality has the damnable effect of making unequal things appear equal. Identify the villains, and depict them as the satanic killers they often are? Yes, but never at the cost of obscuring the perpetrators’ accounts in justification, however mendacious, of what they have done. [Emphasis added]

For all that, it would be vain to deny that editors have their own bounden trust to save reporters — not infrequently so, in my case — from the excesses of their passion with the cruel but necessary judgment of the blue pencil. You ask if there has ever come a moment to take matters into my own hands? There have been great reporters who have — Ernest Hemingway would never have claimed to have been neutral in the Spanish Civil War, nor even always fair — but ours has not been an age that favors his kind of swashbuckling commitment. In our time, it has become common for young reporters to give as their moral code, indeed as their reason for choosing the profession, that they aim to create a better world. It is a handsome thing, but one that can foster a missionary complex — a hubris, even — that can favor a blindness to inconvenient facts to the advantage of others.

The ABC's newly-appointed Jerusalem correspondent Sophie McNeill openly confesses to being a reporter with that "missionary complex" (as we saw here)  despite the rules and regulations of her employer (Australia's equivalent of the BBC).

Bowen does not appear to aspire to Ms McNeill's level of proudly biased reportage, but neither is he fair.

And as a result he must be counted among the less than scrupulously objective reporters who have helped to kindle public prejudice against Israel.

Pimping Hamas Propaganda: BBC's Bowen Blows Khaled Meshaal's Trumpet

For the BBC's scandalously biased "Middle East editor" Jeremy Bowen, as for other employees of Britain's bloated left-leaning "national broadcaster" including members of Bowen's equally biased team, the Guardian and Ha'aretz are clearly the go-to newspapers for opinion pieces regarding Israel.

Those two newspapers typify, of course, the jaundiced opinions of the Beeboids (as the Biased BBC website terms the Corporation's hacks) themselves.

Bowen, Danahar, Donnison and the rest of the bunch can be relied upon to tweet and bignote (without any countervailing balance) articles in those papers that present Israel in a bad light.

Bowen and his cronies give far too much publicity to Ha'aretz, which is after all a newspaper with a comparably small circulation in its own country, and one widely despised by pro-Israel opinion as a propaganda rag that is helping to undermine and demonise Israel, especially Netanyahu's Israel,  abroad.

The BBC aids and abets that  undermining and demonising  by serving up to viewers, listeners, and, in particular,  Twitter followers, such partisan items as these (eyes, er, left) which appear among Bowen's currently visible tweets.

Not surprisingly, many people who do not share the Beeboids' hostility to Israel, people who believe that the BBC should honour its obligations to present news untainted by political slant,  half-truths, and factual errors, are fuming over its Today radio broadcast in which Khalid Meshaal of the genocidal terrorist group Hamas was allowed by Bowen to get away with propaganda and falsehoods.

See http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32060613

 Thus (and this is not an April Fool's Day "joke"), under the headline 'Hamas leader Meshaal Warns of Israeli "extremism"after elections' we learn from the BBC:

'The political leader of the militant Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas says the results of Israel's elections will further diminish hopes for peace.

Khaled Meshaal told the BBC the victory of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and its right-wing allies meant there would be "more extremism".'

He said Hamas was not looking for any escalation, but would defend itself....

In an interview with BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen in Qatar, Mr Meshaal said attacks on Israel would continue "as long as there is occupation, aggression, war and killing". But he stressed that Hamas was "careful to respect international humanitarian law and to target only military targets.'

 And we also find (same page) "Analysis" from the execrable Bowen (remember this howler from him regarding the Muslim Brotherhood?):

 'Khaled Meshaal looked to be in good health. "Keep fit to keep on resisting," he joked before the interview.

He was noticeably slimmer than when we last met in Damascus, before he relocated to Doha with his staff. For years, President Bashar al-Assad gave Mr Meshaal an HQ and protection. But he said "when we were asked to side with the regime against the will of the people, we refused."

Most of the armed rebels in Syria are, like Hamas, Sunni Muslims. Mr Meshaal rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's accusation that Hamas was the same as the jihadist groups Islamic State and al-Qaeda, condemning them as un-Islamic.

He seemed to be calibrating his comments on the conflict with Israel to catch the prevailing mood of anger towards Mr Netanyahu in the White House, after his sharp turn to the ultra-nationalist Israeli Right in the last days of the election campaign.

Mr Meshaal called for a sovereign independent Palestinian state and an end to the occupation of land captured in the 1967 Middle East war. So did the White House chief of staff earlier this week.

The Palestinians, he asserted, had shown that they were "flexible, serious and keen to achieve a just and rightful peace".

"But Israel killed the peace process," he added, blaming Mr Netanyahu's outgoing government, along with "extremist forces" in Israel, for the collapse of the US-brokered direct negotiations last year.

"Israeli policies have always been bad, but today the Israeli Right is on the rise, and that produced Netanyahu's victory in the last election. So it is going to get more difficult and we will see more extremism in the Israeli mentality."'

Although Hamas has opposed years of on-off peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, Mr Meshaal said he and the group had agreed to accept the boundaries which existed before the 1967 Middle East war as the basis for those of a future Palestinian state.

Mr Meshaal urged the international community to grant the Palestinians full recognition at the United Nations. He noted Mr Netanyahu's pre-election vow not to allow a Palestinian state, which was criticised by US President Barack Obama.

The Israeli leader has since insisted that he was not rejecting a two-state solution outright, but that he believed it was impossible right now.'

He cited the Palestinians' refusal to recognise Israel as a Jewish state and last year's reconciliation deal between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and Hamas, as well as the rise of Islamist extremism in the region.

Following his re-election, Mr Netanyahu said: "Our hand is held out in peace to our Palestinian neighbours and the people of Israel know that real peace - and our future - will only be assured if Israel is strong."

In his interview, Mr Meshaal dismissed statements by Mr Netanyahu and others in Israel that compared Hamas to jihadist groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

 '"This is an obvious Israeli game," he said. "They are trying to be on the same page as the West and the US administration - that they are together in the 'War on Terror'."'Hamas, he added, was "an active resistance with a just cause, battling the occupier."

 "Others practice violence under the name of jihad, which we condemn. And this is not Islam. Islam encourages its followers to fight those who occupy their land and their sacred places. But Islam does not allow killing innocent people, civilians, or killing based on identity, belief and different views, political or religious."

(The above is also available here)

Prominent among the critics of this disturbing piece of propaganda for and from a genocidal terror organisation is Arnold Roth, whose fifteen-old-daughter Malki fell victim to terrorism in Jerusalem in 2001.

Begins Arnold Roth in an indignant, heartfelt post:

"Jeremy Bowen and his minders at the BBC today provides the sleek arch-terrorist Khaled Meshaal with an invaluable platform (not for the first time) for marketing the jihadist program of his outlawed Hamas terror organization to an international audience, safe from the threat of incisive or even semi-informed questions. Despotic, thuggish 'militant' terrorists world-wide must be green with envy."

 Read the rest of Arnold Roth's post here

And as someone has pointed out privately, Meshaal in this slimy, infuriating interview

"claimed to be following in the footsteps of World War Two resistance movements in Europe. Bowen did not point out that the various resistance movements did not go after the civilian population, the women and children, of the occupying power."

 Update: Don't miss BBC Watch's analysis of this latest outbreak of Bowenitis

Sophie's Choice: "I Wanted To Be A Journalist ... To Make The World A Better Place ... You Knew What Was Happening In Gaza ... There Are No Excuses Any More"

Bibi's Victory: The BBC's Bowen reacts

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia's counterpart to the BBC, and is similarly obliged to adhere to a code of practice prohibiting bias, that code declaring, inter alia:

 "The ABC has a statutory duty to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information is impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism.

 Aiming to equip audiences to make up their own minds is consistent with the public service character of the ABC. A democratic society depends on diverse sources of reliable information and contending opinions. A broadcaster operating under statute with public funds is legitimately expected to contribute in ways that may differ from commercial media, which are free to be partial to private interests."

But, just like its British equivalent, Australia's public broadcaster exhibits a shameless left-liberal bias.

And, disturbingly, the ABC has recently appointed as its Middle East correspondent, based in Jerusalem, Sophie McNeill, a young woman with a, disturbing history of naive and leftwing pro-Palestinian bias, a young woman who is on record as expressing her admiration for John Pilger (it was reading his Hidden Histories which inspired her to enter journalism) for Robert Fisk.

In the following must-watch (or listen to) video, dating to 2011, Ms McNeill tells her interviewer, inter alia:

"If you just try to frame stories from the point of view of the people who are really suffering in a situation, be it in Lebanon, if you re hanging out in a Palestinian refugee camp, [or] in Gaza you re hanging out, you know, at the children’s cancer ward. One of the saddest things I’ve seen in my whole life is spending some time filming in a children’s cancer ward in Gaza. I just think if you just – if you look at a situation and you just – yeah, I guess just try to spend time with the people who are – who really don t have any power and it is hard, you know, for them to have a voice. Then that’s, yeah, that’s the kind of journalism I want to do.... Everyone knew what was happening in Gaza ... you saw all the horrific videos ... a lot of people died ... there are no excuses any more..."

 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISS_Qy1cWm4)

Ahron Shapiro of  the Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) points out (hat tip: Ian):

"Any reporting by an ABC employee, including McNeill, is required to follow the following standards:

4.1 Gather and present news and information with due impartiality.

4.2 Present a diversity of perspectives so that, over time, no significant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented.

 And also

4.4 Do not misrepresent any perspective.

4.5 Do not unduly favour one perspective over another."

In a substantial article, Shapiro traces and analyses historic broadcast after broadcast by Ms McNeill that reveal her pattern of blatant partisanship in reportage concerning the Middle East.

He also draws attention to her apparent pro-Palestinian activism.

For example:

 '[I]n 2013, McNeill, along with prolific pro-Palestinian photographer Richard Wainwright were the only journalists presented to speak at the Human Rights in Palestine Conference at the ANU [Australian National University] ...

 [W] hile living in Beirut in 2007, McNeill filed a story with the notorious anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada.

Here, the content of the story she filed, which was about Lebanese mistreatment of Palestinians, was in itself not problematic. What is a problem, however, and what should have given ABC pause when choosing McNeill for her current job, is why McNeill chose to work with a website whose raison d’être is to increase popular support for the elimination of Israel and routinely publishes material justifying Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.

Finally, in 2009 (see here and here) and again in 2013, McNeill initiated online campaigns to raise money for her “dear friend” and Gaza fixer, Raed Al Athamneh. Raising money to help someone you work with through a crisis is not necessarily inappropriate. But for a journalist to adopt the Palestinian narrative in their pitch for donations most certainly is.

For example, she wrote “most of Gaza’s residents are refugees who used to live inside Israel’s borders, but were forced out when the country was created in 1948″.

This revisionist historical narrative that Israel forced out all the refugees – language used by her mentor Pilger – represents an endorsement of the Palestinian narrative that Israel is entirely responsible for the refugee problem, ignores the fact that the vast majority of Palestinians fled and were not forced out and ignores the war that was launched against Israel by the Arab nations and Palestinians who rejected partition.

In this essay, she also made an allegation that Israel “collectively punished” the Palestinians of Gaza, describing the blockade of Gaza as a means of punishing the Strip’s residents who support Hamas. [Emphasis added]

She initiated a fundraising campaign for Raed again in 2013, according to her friend and Australian Gazan Patrick Abboud and an appeal she posted on ABC Triple J Hack’s Facebook page.'

He observes:

"Her reporting does not show a clear record of separating her media career from her activism..

And there is little doubt that her activism continues and influences her reporting in terms of how she frames stories, particularly about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. ...

 What makes this matter even more serious is the fact that the Jerusalem bureau is undergoing changes. While until now there were two ABC Middle East reporters (most recently Hayden Cooper and Matt Brown) as well as some support crew, the ABC says that it is making Jerusalem a Video Journalist bureau later this year. That move, it would appear, would give McNeill substantially more autonomy than previous Middle East correspondents have had.

The onus now lies on O’Neill [sic] to demonstrate that ABC management was not irresponsible in making the appointment – given her self-described dedication to frame stories from the point of view of the people who are “really suffering” (in her lexicon, the Palestinians) – and whether she can possibly fulfil the statutory obligation of an ABC correspondent to present news with due impartiality and to be fair to all perspectives.'

Read Shapiro's entire detailed piece here

And brilliant Aussie columnist Andrew Bolt's characteristically astute piece here

(Hat tip: The amazing bloodhound Ian)

Sophie McNeill will certainly have to be closely watched.

And any episodes of bias robustly protested.

But is it not outrageous that a person with this level of bias came to be appointed by the ABC in the first place?

The BBC's Jeremy Bowen: A Clarification

The BBC's unfit for purpose Middle East editor on his Twitter account:

As "untrue and offensive" as your appalling bias against Israel, including some of your commentary on Bibi Netanyahu's speech to Congress, eh, Jezza?

 On which see Hadar Sela's excellent article (part one) ...

More here and here

Meanwhile, the BBC's former Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar, now based in the United States, shows he's still every bit as capable as the incorrigible Bowen of flaunting his bias in contravention of BBC regulations:

But what, meanwhile, of the man in the White House who boycotted Bibi's speech?

And the woman who walked out before the speech was over?

 So now we know.

The Ongoing Disgrace That Is The BBC's Jeremy Bowen

As this blog has not infrequently noted, the BBC's utterly pedestrian and sometimes frankly absurd "Middle East editor" Jeremy Bowen has made many reports from the Middle East over the years in which his own opinions intrude and which make a mockery of the BBC's obligations, under the terms its Charter, to maintain objectivity in reporting.

Particularly since the unfortunate car explosion in which his Arab driver/stringer was killed a number of years ago at the hands of what Bowen once described in a subsequent interview with the London Daily Telegraph as "trigger-happy Israeli soldiers", Bowen's prejudice against Israel has been all too apparent.

The death of his Arab colleague in an explosion that took place berfore his eyes, shortly after he himself had left the vehicle, was an event that evidently traumatised Bowen, who has referred to the incident bitterly countless times since (as in this video).

In those circumstances, as soon as his emotional involvement became clear, the BBC should have transferred Bowen to some other part of the world.

But it did not, and to add salt to the wounds of aggrieved pro-Israel complainants it inexplicably went on to reward him, despite the banal nature of his "analysis" of regional politics and despite the fact that a complaint against him had been partially upheld, with the post of Middle East editor!

Hadar Sela of BBCWatch (who's certainly having her work cut out for her during the present crisis) has drawn attention here to the fact that Bowen "tries to persuade TV audiences that Hamas does not use human shields".

And now Bowen, in a further thumbing of his nose to the objectivity incumbent upon him and his employer by the terms of the BBC's Charter, has written in that uncompromisingly leftwing journal of opinion, the New Statesman:

"I saw Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, giving an interview to the BBC after Israel had killed more than 60 people in the Gaza district of Shejaiya. He said he regretted the civilian casualties in Gaza but they were the fault of Hamas. Netanyahu said Israel had warned people to get out. Some had taken the advice; others had been prevented from leaving by Hamas.

 I was back in London for my son’s 11th birthday party by the time all those people were killed in Shejaiya. But my impression of Hamas is different from Netanyahu’s. I saw no evidence during my week in Gaza of Israel’s accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields...."

To quote Craig, of the IstheBBCbiased? blog:

'This comes despite Hamas publicly advocating the use of civilians as human shields (something Jeremy Bowen fails to acknowledge). The Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, was caught (by MEMRI) speaking on a local station recently, saying: 

This attests to the character of our noble, jihad-loving people – who defend their rights and their homes with their bare chests and their blood.

The policy of people confronting the Israeli warplanes with their bare chests in order to protect their homes has proven effective against the occupation… we in Hamas call upon our people to adopt this policy in order to protect the Palestinian homes.

And yet Jeremy Bowen dismisses it all, even after UNRWA found Hamas rockets in two of its Gazan schools, and despite credible reports that some civilians are deliberating ignoring Israel's warnings and that groups of civilians have actually gathered at targeted buildings in order to serve as human shields [see Channel 4's FactCheck blog].

A week in Gaza, and yet Jeremy Bowen "saw no evidence...of Israel’s accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields".

Presumably, the blinkers he was wearing at the time didn't help.'

 And as Hadar Sela has observed (link above):

"BBC licence fee payers pay a lot of money in order to be informed of facts. Hamas’ use of human shields is one of many important facts audiences need to know about in order to be able to reach an understanding of this particular international issue as they are promised in the BBC’s constitutional document. It is bad enough that in over a week of reporting from the Gaza Strip, not one BBC journalist has explained the human shields issue properly to BBC audiences. It is beyond grave when the man in charge of Middle East reporting – not some junior journalist – not only fails to inform, but actively seeks to deny and refute the issue.

Bowen’s inaccurate and partial reports – which increasingly give the impression that he has self-conscripted to the Hamas media campaign – are coming in thick and fast. As long as the BBC continues to allow that, it breaches the public purpose remit which obliges it to “[b]uild a global understanding of international issues” and that is a problem which BBC management should not be allowed to ignore."

Bibi Reminds Al Beeb's Bowen of the Core of the Conflict (video)

With hectoring naivety, the BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen interviews Bibi Netanyahu:

And is reminded of the hard facts.

"The core of the conflict is the persistent Arab refusal decade upon decade ... to  recognise the Jewish State in any boundary" ...

The BBC Not Biased Against Israel, Claims Jeremy Bowen

The BBC's "Middle East editor" Jeremy Bowen has been answering questions on Twitter again.

This time he was gracious enough to hold his hour-long Q&A session yesterday, not (as last time) on a day when observant Jews would be unable to participate.

Question from @24_Humza: Why is there lack of media coverage in regards to Israeli settlement buildings? seems to have disappeared now.
Jeremy answers: It comes in fits and starts. Issue doesn't change much and Middle East busy so settlements can't always be in spotlight. Israel Palestinian conflict still fundamental issue in Middle East and will make many more headlines, as Gaza crisis showed

Question from @cruachan8520: What and where has been your scariest moment?
Jeremy answers: Scariest place ever was Grozny winter of 1994/5. Worst day was when Israelis killed BBC fixer in Lebanon in 2000.

Question from @JackMendel4: Do you think a two-state solution is still a viable option?
Jeremy answers: Two-state solution viable if both sides want it. Hamas and Israeli government showing signs they don't.

And what of Fatah's attitude, given its new logo (seen above)?

Alas, Jezza doesn't tell us.

Here's a corker:

Question from @carolshorenye: BBC reports seem critical of Israel. Does the BBC recognise this bias and want to report more neutrally?
Jeremy answers: I don't think BBC is biased against Israel. Sometimes our reporting makes Israel's supporters uncomfortable

I've drawn the quoted comments above from the selection that the BBC has provided here

On his Twitter account itself we find this message:

Oliver Kamm ‏@OliverKamm@carolshorenye I agree with @BowenBBC. I am a columnist for the Jewish Chronicle. Don't recognise the complaint of anti-Israel bias at BBC.

Mr Kamm, it seems reasonable to point out, leans, like the prevailing ethos of the BBC, very much to the liberal left.  And according to his Wikipedia entry his mother is the sister of a famous former BBC journalist, none other than "the man in the white suit," Martin Bell.

Update: Here's Bowen reliving that "worst day" of his life; that incident introduces that video and there is a great deal about it later in the video:

The BBC's Jeremy Bowen Wrongly Claims That Rocket Attacks From Gaza Have Diminished

Regarding Operation Pillar of Cloud that has successfully targeted for killing the head of Hamas's military wing Ahmed Jabari, the BBC's "Middle East editor" Jeremy Bowen has today claimed on the Corporation's Radio 4 that the number of rocket attacks on Israel out of Gaza has been dwindling.

Not so.

The following graph shows the true picture.  It will be seen that the number of such attacks, which did indeed  diminish in the immediate wake of Operation Cast Lead, are now approaching the levels that pertained on the eve of that action.

"I Did Know It Was Jewish New Year": The BBC's Jeremy Bowen Escapes Jewish Questioners

"Over the past few years I have noticed how religion as a subject has crept into more and more debates and festivals with one exception, the media.

TV festivals in particular have a strange ostrich-like relationship with the subject but the country as a whole doesn't seem to agree. For them it's here in our lives and it needs to be understood, debated and packaged in a way best suited for their changing needs and tastes.

That's the genesis of BBC RE:THINK 2012. It's an attempt to fuse the growing interest in the subject if not necessarily the practise of religion with how it's reported on television, radio and online.....

 Religion and belief in the UK and how we portray it on television and radio is evolving. Old fashioned arguments about broadcast hours twenty years ago or how many ex theology students worked on a show are largely irrelevant to today's audience."

So blogged Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC's controversially-chosen Head of Religion and Ethics, ahead of that event, which took place last week.  He further explained:

"Taking part in and attending BBC RE: THINK 2012 will be other broadcasters, independent producers, journalists, academics, clergy, opinion formers and members of the public. It's a unique opportunity to bring all of us together for the first time.

Across the two days there should be something for everyone. From a must-watch conversation between the Chief Rabbi and Richard Dawkins, festival specials of The Moral Maze and The Big Questions to standing room-only master classes from Bettany Hughes and Jeremy Bowen there should be something for everyone...."

A master-class from Jeremy Bowen?  In a conference concerned with religion?

A talk entitled "Rethinking the Arab Spring" in a conference concerned with what Britons believe?

Nobody would be cynical enough to suggest that this was an opportunity for Bowen to plug the book he's just written on the so-called Arab Spring.

And nobody would be cynical enough to suggest that despite Al Beeb's bend-over-backwards attempts at inclusiveness and accommodation of all sorts of minority groups a much-touted-by-the-BBC question and answer session on Twitter regarding the Middle East with the pally title "Ask Jeremy" took place on the first day of Rosh Hashana in order to evade pesky Jewish questioners:

If you want to ask me anything about the Middle East or my BBC job I'll be live tweeting answers between 1600-1700 GMT today.

Well, nobody except the guy who tweeted:

"Why are you holding this on Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days in Jewish calendar? So Jews can't participate?" 

prompting the following exchange with Bowen:

"not trying to avoid qs from religious Jews. agree timing could be better. will be doing this again."

 "So did you know today was Rosh Hashanah"

"yes I did know it was Jewish New Year. And I also know it doesn't stop quite a few Jews using social media"

"Not most. So you knew it was Rosh Hashanah but went ahead anyway. What will BBC Trust think? Would you hold one during Ramadan?"

Another pesky bloke had the temerity to enquire ahead of time

"why was the Balen report not published?"

 but his question would appear to have been overlooked.

Evidently, Bowen (either blissfully unaware or dismissive of expert warnings that Iran's top leaders believe that strife and chaos is necessary for the coming of the Twelfth Imam) takes a phlegmatic view of the prospect of a nuclear Iran.

For the man who, as this post reminds us, described the Muslim Brotherhood as being "conservative, moderate and non-violent" until 'he got caught and quickly deleted the word “moderate”,' responded to the question "Could the West live with a Nuclear Iran?":

"West lived with nuclear Soviet Union. Would deterrence work with Iran? Quite likely. Iranians are rational actors. But deterrence works both ways. Nuclear Iran would be strengthened, and so would its allies. One reason why Israel so worried."

Some of the rest of Bowen's profundities may be read here

But that's a poor substitute for his Twitter page

Meanwhile ...

All the news deemed suitable for licence-payers to know.

Half the story all of the time.

Obscuring or omitting facts that fail to fit the editorial agenda.

That's the BBC for you.

True to form, it appears to have "forgotten" to report this not insignificant event in London at the weekend, though Sky News and other media outlets did so.

And note the way the BBC  in its list of most popular stories viewed on its website categorises  this statement by Romney as a "gaffe" ("Romney taped in Middle East gaffe")

Yet More Bowen Arrows For Israel From Yet More BBC Quivers?

Middle East editor Bowen, at present on "book-writing leave"

Last week was quite a week for apologies by the BBC.  Having a complaints procedure that occurs entirely in-house, the arrogant "national broadcaster" with the "stand and deliver" method of funding rarely upholds complaints. The favoured method of dealing with allegations of bias from members of the public is for the flunkey responsible to issue to the hapless complainant the verbal equivalent of the two-fingered salute. 

But following a complaint by Conservative MP Louise Mensch, outgoing Director-General Mark Thompson has admitted that the Corporation erred in its lack of coverage of the Itamar massacre, blaming the concurrent big stories (the strife in Libya and the Japanese tsunami) for the deficiency:

"News editors were under a lot of pressure.  Having said that, it was certainly an atrocity which should have been covered across our news bulletins that day."

Meanwhile, a former BBC television news editor, Aziz Rashid, head of the BBC's Regional and Local Programmes in England's north-west, who axed Radio Manchester's Jewish show without bothering to consult Jewish communal leaders, has apologised to a delegation of the latter for the curt way in which he dealt with complaints from Jewish listeners, aghast at the disappearance of the radio slot.

But this is Al Beeb we're talking about.  And so, despite the sorries, the tsorres remains.

Now, the BBC Trust  has made public the findings of a generally favourable, indeed in some respects adulatory, report of the Corporation's coverage of the so-called Arab Spring, and the Al Beeb website is not slow to pass the news on.

(Funny that Al Beeb trumpets the findings of this, the Mortimer Report  –  Edward Mortimer is described as "Middle East expert and former UN Director of Communications"  – yet is so cagey about the contents of the Balen Report, huh?  Gee, that Balen Report must have harsh things to say about Al Beeb's attitude to Israel.)

Regarding the BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen (who, incidentally, tweeted last week that he's on "book-writing leave") the Mortimer Report makes recommendations that should concern all who have impartial reporting and the interests of Israel at heart.

To quote Ben Dowell in The Guardian:

'The BBC has promised to review the workload of its Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, following a BBC Trust report urging that he be encouraged to "travel a little less".

Bowen, who has been in the post for seven years, is taking too many foreign trips and needs to be centrally located where he can lend his expertise to the BBC's strategic thinking about its coverage of the region, a report by former UN director of communications Edward Mortimer concluded.

Mortimer's report into the accuracy and impartiality of the BBC's coverage of the Arab spring, published on Monday, urged executives to limit Bowen's travel "so that he would have more time to share his insight and provide them with overall strategic guidance"....

The report concluded: "There is clearly a tension here, or a gap not easily bridged between the role of an inspired leader on the ground who has a huge patch to cover and does it superlatively well, and the role of people running the news machine back at base who continually have to make choices in terms of people, resources and audience engagement, and who perhaps cannot always get the advice they need, at the moment when they need it, from an expert who is out in the field."....

In its written response BBC management said it will "review the balance " of Bowen's work and the "emphasis we place on his strategic guidance" and hinted that it may limit his work on documentary features.

"We also conclude that there are dangers in releasing key broadcasters, such as the Middle East editor, to work on current affairs documentaries in the middle of a major story," the BBC added.

"While this undoubtedly enriched the BBC's output of the Arab spring as a whole, it mean that for a period daily news editors had less contact with his expertise and guidance of the coverage than they would otherwise have had."....'

Read the rest by Dowell  here
The Mortimer Report is available here

Not Just a Funny Old Lady: Ancient Prejudices Indoctrinating the Young

There she was, right on time, an hour before noon, when the supermarket was beginning to get busy for the day.  From across the car park I recognised her instantly, a small elderly figure with grey pudding-basin hair.  Rain or shine, she and  a coven of offsiders (one of similar vintage) meet weekly in a local campus canteen, where they sit with coffee cups abutting a great wad of Palestine Solidarity Campaign and BDS literature (destined for saturating the tables when the place fills up with students), and confer in low conspiratorial tones.

Presumably they get together like that to plan their next anti-Israel initiative - a concert or three, Rod Cox's exhibition of propaganda from Gaza (at which, thanks to a series of tough questions that the wily bloke refused to answer, I was revealed as a supporter of the Zionist Entity and  treated accordingly),  a mock-up apartheid wall obstructing pedestrians, imitation IDF checkpoints in the town centre entailing the harassment of passers-by, twinning the town with Gaza ... these have all been tried.

This weekend (and all next week) it's back to the more routine business of trying to cajole shoppers into boycotting Israeli goods (not just "settlement goods"), and a press release to that effect was duly printed in the local paper, which happily gives this Israel-loathing coven publicity but rarely if ever has deigned to print letters in support of Israel.

Anyway, there she was, zippily starting off the Boycott Week, darting back and forth for all her 65-and-then-some years with the agility and appearance of a little grey bird, her eyes bright with misplaced zeal as she buttonholed shoppers (including me), thrust leaflets comparing Israel to "apartheid South Africa" into their hands, and demanded that they refrain from purchasing the potatoes and peppers from Israel. 

I seldom shop in that particular supermarket (its prices are higher than its rivals in town) but as a result of her alerting me to the Zionist produce inside, in I strode, and out I soon came, to show her proudly my generous helping of Israeli red peppers (and sweet and delicious they've proved, too, even if they are nearly double the price of their admittedly shorter and thinner Spanish equivalents in the El Cheapo store).

Seeing her energised, almost youthful, with the lust of Israel-bashing made me snap.  "This is my response to antisemites!" I told her as I passed, jabbing long peppers suggestively upwards into the air.

An innocent expression pervaded her worn features.  "How can I be an antisemite? The Palestinians are semites"  she responded sweetly in an obviously well-used answer. (Yeah, whatever.)

There are lots of old ladies like her in the Israel-delegitimising movement worldwide.  I particularly abhor them because they are of a generation that in childhood saw the horrific newsreels of the liberated death camps, and which knows full well the extent of Nazi horrors against the Jewish People and yet would deny Israel, tiny sliver-like Israel, the right to self-defence and of the Jewish People to self-determination.

Some such women are naive pacifists.  Yet like the local "Peace Network", led by an octogenarian who wears a funny floppy hat with a CND badge affixed to it, they obsess about one world troublespot  to the exclusion of all others, and in their repeated calls for Israel to end the siege on Gaza they forget that Israel withdrew from Gaza only to be rewarded with rocketfire from the barbarians of Hamas. 

Some, I have no doubt, are cloaking an innate antisemitism in the "respectable" mantle of anti-Zionism.

Some in the BDS (I call it Boycott Derangement Syndrome) movement are prepared to commit something akin to vandalism, such is the extent of their fanaticism.  Look at the mess this activist in Wales has made outside a Tesco store, upsetting a trolley deliberately packed with Israeli goods from inside and smearing the contents over the foyer.

Some of them, like the "Raging Grannies" in Massachusetts or our local "peace choir" (whose repertoire consists almost entirely of songs and carols denouncing Israel) make fools of themselves, demonstrating in public with literal song and dance.

Others betray an ignorance of the history of "Palestine" that is staggering, and of course entirely to the detriment of the Jews.

As Professor Barry Rubin has warned regarding Helen Thomas, about whom I've posted twice in recent days, ridicule cannot deny the fact that their views are working their poison.

'It's amazing how bad the public discussion of issues is nowadays. Here's a tiny example. Helen Thomas was fired for her anti-Jewish statements and was recently interviewed in Playboy where she made more such remarks that are--correctly--being interpreted as antisemitic.

But why does Thomas hate Israel so much, a hatred that spills over into antisemitism? I haven't seen a single person who's gotten it right. She's no neo-Nazi or nut case. Thomas is of Lebanese descent, albeit Christian, and basically views herself on this issue at least as an Arab. The important factor is not her eccentricity but her typicality.

What Thomas is doing, then, and has done for many years, is to express ideas common in the Arabic-speaking world which are becoming increasingly common in the West. That's why she's significant and that's where she's coming from. Her blend of anti-Zionism and antisemitism--using traditional anti-Jewish themes, sometimes applied to Israel and at times to all Jews--is just like what exists in a high percentage of households in the Arabic-speaking and Muslim-majority worlds.

We're not talking about a funny old lady but about a worldview held by millions of people in a lot of countries, by revolutionary Islamists and terrorists, and by a growing number of people on Western college campuses and in elite circles. This is not some joke but rather a "craziness" that kills and shapes the fate of whole nations and continents.' http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/03/two-helen-thomas-farces-what-she-says.html

The pity of it is that this poison, helped, needless to say, by the prejudices of the mainstream media, which kindles the enmity towards Israel in some individuals and of course reinforces it in them and others, has spread even to Jewish youth.  Blogger Edgar Davidson recently mentioned how it has infected the Orthodox school in London which his daughter attends (http://edgar1981.blogspot.com/2011/02/anti-israel-indoctrination-in-uk.html) and around the same time the Jewish Chronicle (25 February 2011) reported that many Jewish teenagers in Manchester had "begun to acknowledge arguments that questioned the moral validity of Israel's creation as a state".

It quoted a 17-year-old at Manchester Grammar School thus:

 "I've always thought Israel has a right to exist.  But it is hard when there is so much anti-Israel news and a lot of people I go to school with are quite strongly anti-Israel."

Said an 18-year-old at the city's Jewish day school, King David School:

"In my year there are quite a lot of us brought up in left-leaning families but they don't talk about their views because the school is completely Zionist."

This inculcation of anti-Israel prejudices among the young is the sobering reality which faces us today.  And it's mainly because of what they've learned from their elders, who like many a "funny old lady" have been influenced by what the Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh characterised last year as ignorant international journalists:

“They don’t speak Arabic or Hebrew, they don’t know the history and they are often very biased. They don’t want to report the corruption and violence within Palestinian society because it doesn’t fit their narrative of good Palestinians and bad Israelis.” http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/journalist-says-only-truth-will-set-palestine-free/story-e6frg6z6-1225866997079

(He named no names, but I reckon that's as good a nutshell description of Al Beeb's Jeremy Bowen as any, any that are printable, that is, which we're likely to find!)

Delegitimising Israel by Delegitimising Scripture

In 2002 the BBC’s execrably biased-against-Israel Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen, though neither historian, theologian nor archaeologist, was trotted out to present an Al Beeb documentary on Moses,who of course was the great Lawgiver of the Jewish People.

Bowen was true to his and Al Beeb’s agenda-laden form.

He loftily pronounced the biblical account of Moses and the Exodus to be “a fanciful tale ... the stuff of fairy tales”.

“If the Hebrews were never in Egypt then perhaps the whole epic was fiction, made up to give the Jewish people a history and a destiny,” he declared. And he scoffingly dismissed what he called “the religious justification of the State of Israel” – Moses’ “burning bush” encounter with the Almighty.

As the London-based Israeli journalist Douglas Davis observes of that documentary, in an essay entitled “Hatred in the Air: The BBC, Israel and Antisemitism” that appears in the book A New Antisemitism? Debating Judeophobia in 21st-Century Britain (2003):

“I have no problem with a documentary that suggests scientific explanations for seemingly miraculous events in the Jewish story, but I do object when I suspect that the purpose of the investigation is to delegitimize the basis of Judaism and to undermine the claim of the Jewish people to national expression in even a part of its ancestral home. ...[I]t is inconceivable that the BBC would devote an hour-long prime-time documentary to a critical investigation that served to delegitimize the Prophet Muhammed and undermine the basic tenets of Islam.”

Now, the BBC seems set on the delegitimising-Israel-through-undermining-Judaism course once again.

Aaqil Ahmed, a Muslim who to many Christians' astonishment and indeed consternation was appointed Head of BBC’s Religion and Ethics department a couple of years ago, commissioned Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou, an atheist university lecturer in theology and religion at Exeter University (for whom also see http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-bible-a-history/articles/abrahams-inheritance), to present a three-part series “that seeks to de-construct and sceptically critique the Holy Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity”.

Have a look at the presentation on King David, replete with much modern Israeli imagery, including a certain wall, beside which the presenter strides, and you’ll see what I mean: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8383956/Bibles-Buried-Secrets-BBC-Two-review.html

And please be sure to look at David Vance’s fine post on the Biased BBC website, which in discussing the Stavrakopoulou series shows how the BBC manages to decry the Bible as a fount of male chauvinism and to excoriate sexism in Christianity while treating the misogyny of the Quran and of Islam in a manner that I can only describe as respectful, if not reverential. http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/03/loving-religion-of-peace-loathing.html

The comment by Max on the following thread is of interest too: http://cifwatch.com/2011/03/15/in-the-arab-world-but-not-of-it-glaring-omission-underlines-the-anti-israel-bias-of-the-bbc/#comments

Negative Reports Bring Negative Results. Yet, “Impartiality – something that interests me greatly” says the BBC’s Middle East editor!

A member of an Israeli medical team in Sri Lanka

The BBC World Service asked people in 27 countries their opinion of 16 nations: “Please tell me if you think each of the following countries is having a mainly positive or mainly negative influence in the world?”

The 27 countries from which answers came were: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.

The 16 nations selected for appraisal naturally included the one that’s subject to Al Beeb’s scrutiny night and day, year-in, year-out, and here, in descending order of popularity, are the results: Germany, UK, Japan, Canada, France, USA, Brazil, China, South Africa, India, South Korea, Russia, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran.

To quote the pollsters: “While overall views of Israel have not moved substantially over the past year, there have been significant increases in negative views of the country among Americans (negatives rising from 31% to 41%) and Britons (from 50%  to 66%)” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/05_03_11_bbcws_country_poll.pdf

Yep, folks, the demonization of Israel in which the BBC is a master, both at home and abroad, is doing its nefarious work.

Imagine how different things could be – if the BBC (and other influential media outlets) would carry reports on the technological and medical breakthroughs that happen in Israel, and on the humanitarian initiatives that the world so rarely gets to see. There are no lack of videos in the latter area alone: http://www.youtube.com/user/IsraelMFA#g/c/DC43001A3FBF67DA

Meanwhile, a video has recently surfaced, in which Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen, whose slanted reports and biased commentaries on the BBC News website (where they can, of course, be read all over the world) have undoubtedly had an impact on the public attitudes leading to the poll results –  has expressed his interest in impartiality, to which as a BBC reporter he has "to cleave" (but doesn't)!

I venture to suggest that Jezza has not half as much interest in "impartiality" as do hapless BBC licence-payers, who wonder how it is that Al Beeb’s Middle East editor can get away with flouting impartiality rules again and again, and how it is that he (and Al Beeb’s College of Journalism cronies) are permitted by their employer to regularly appear before the Frontline Club, a brazenly leftist journalistic outfit.

In this video Jezza interviews the execrable anti-Israel, anti-Western reporter Robert Fisk, of The Independent newspaper, to whom he makes the above comment. He also tells Fisk that he considers him “a great reporter of what goes on there” ( the Middle East). Fortunately, these comments – the one so risible, the other so partisan – occur towards the beginning of the video, which contains much wind-baggery from Fisk (who's plugging a book he wrote) and Fisk's inevitable mockery of the roles of Britain and the United States in the Middle East as well as his equally inevitable denunciations of Israel. 

And if you’re in masochistic mood and would like to see an interview with Jezza himself at the Frontline Club, you’re in luck: http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/blog/2009/09/reflections-with-jeremy-bowen.shtml

None So Blind As Those Who Won't See

Courtesy: Edgar Davidson blog (see text)

The BBC (you know by now how much I love Al Beeb, don’t you?!) has kept shtum about all sorts of developments in the Middle East that suggest that not all within the protest movement is sweetness and light.

On its execrably left-leaning CoJo (College of Journalism) website – which I advise all concerned about Al Beeb’s anti-Western, anti-Israel bias to keep an eye on regularly – it carries, for example, a piece by a suitably tame Israeli about the brutal attack on CBS reporter Lara Logan by a Muslim mob in Cairo, a piece which omits the rather salient fact that the mob yelled “Jew! Jew!” and focuses instead on the “ugly media reactions” in the West that display male chauvinism towards working women in conflict zones and Islamophobia.

Here’s a snippet:

‘Debbie Schlussel, the ultra-conservative columnist and commentator, claimed in her blog:

"Lara Logan was among the chief cheerleaders of this 'revolution' by animals. Now she knows what Islamic revolution is really all about."

She added:

"So sad, too bad, Lara. No-one told her to go there. She knew the risks. And she should have known what Islam is all about. Now she knows ... How fitting that Lara Logan was 'liberated' by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the 'liberation'."

For Al Beeb that kind of talk won’t do at all.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/blog/2011/02/february-11th-the-day-egypts.shtml

Courtesy: Edgar Davidson blog (see text)

Nor will any hint of antisemitism among the protesters – as captured in the composite photos I've reproduced here – they were put together by Edgar Davidson and I took the liberty of copying them from recent posts on his admirable blog (http://www.edgar1981.blogspot.com/)

And, as I’ve said more than once, neither will any suggestion that the Muslim Brotherhood, is in fact (despite the blatherings of Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen and his acolytes) a dangerous Jihadist organisation.

All of which brings me to Professor Barry Rubin’s post on his blog entitled “Muslim Brotherhood's New Campaign: Seize Control of Egypt's Islamic Institutions”.

 He writes:

 ‘MEMRI has pointed out the opening of a Muslim Brotherhood campaign to replace Egypt's current clerical hierarchy with its own people. If that happens...you can imagine.. Once Islamists are in place making the "official" decisions on what constitutes proper Islam, an Islamist state cannot be far away.

.... Knowing that control over Islam was vital to maintaining control of the country, the Egyptian regime (like nationalist regimes elsewhere) set out to build a systematic structure for doing so. The head of the al-Azhar Islamic university, the chief qadi, the clerics of different mosques, are government-appointed. Sermons are government-approved. A ministry in charge of awqaf (religious foundations) and religion supervises all of this and hands out the money. And the government also decides which clerics appear on television and radio, or even have their own programs.

Over the last decade or so, the "official" clerics have been radicalized, and they support terrorism against Israel. Yet there is still a huge gap between those who accepted the rule by Mubarak's regime and those who demand an Islamist regime. They hate the Brotherhood and the Brotherhood hates them.

Now, if all of these official clerics are declared to be corrupt instruments of the old regime and are thrown out of office, the Brotherhood will control "Islam" in Egypt. Equally important, they will control a vast amount of patronage and money. Every cleric will have to get along with them or be unemployed. They could authorize which mosques could open. They would control religious education.

If the Brotherhood is a participant in government, even as a junior member of a coalition, its highest priority will be the religious affairs ministry. To call this dangerous is an understatement.

So we should watch carefully this battle over who governs Islam in Egypt.

To save you a click, here is what Muhammad Zoghbi of the Brotherhood says:

"Al-Azhar was subjected to...the politicization of the positions of the sheikh of Al-Azhar and the mufti of Egypt, as well as the position of the minister of religious endowments. These positions must be filled through elections. By no means should these officials be appointed by the president....

Therefore I say to the 'sons' of Al-Azhar: Let us all join the campaign, led by Sheik Khaled Al-Gindi, until we liberate Al-Azhar, just like Egypt was liberated....The president of Egypt must be subordinate to Al-Azhar and respect it....

Therefore, I say to the sheikh of Al-Azhar...resign immediately.... The mufti and the minister of religious endowments should step down, leaving their positions to God-fearing imams...."

"God-fearing" imams means Muslim Brotherhood cadre. The president of Egypt "must be subordinate" to al-Azhar means an Islamist state. This strategy also suggests that the Brotherhood is recognizing that it will not choose Egypt's next president – who is more likely to be the nationalist Amr Moussa – so it must start building an independent base of support outside of the government's and president's control for its long march toward Islamism at a later date.'

Barry Rubin, in another post entitled “The Turkish Camouflage Model: Arab Radicals Learn How to Hide Your Islamism,” draws attention to a pertinent passage from Newsweek magazine (http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/27/an-islamist-makeover.html)

“As revolutions across the Mideast bring religious parties within sight of real political power, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is becoming the region’s go-to man for Islamist leaders looking for a makeover.”

Adds the professor:

“In other words, be an Islamist but pretend you aren't. The fact that Erdogan is an ally of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah is not a good sign for those who follow what might be better called the Turkish Camouflage-Your-Extremism Model.”

http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/03/muslim-brotherhoods-new-campaign-seize.html
http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/03/turkish-camouflage-model-arab-radicals.html