We’ve had many surprises this week. One was seeing Mark Regev in the studio, speaking without constant interruptions and contradictions. We had the usual anti Israel tripe from various talking heads too, endlessly bringing up the illusory obstacle to peace, Netanyahu’s refusal to extend the settlement freeze. Eventually, Hamas’s mourning of Bin Laden’s assassination, or heroic martyrdom, was mentioned. Even the fact that the Arab Spring might not necessarily presage enlightenment and democracy as we know it was voiced, openly, on the BBC. However, back to normal this morning with Thought for the Day (1:48:06) The Rev Angela Tilby’s words of wisdom addressed the intractable problem of Israel Palestine. Now that those two naughty boys Hamas and Fatah have made friends, she brayed, peace can happen at last. Doves and Hawks, she purred, are both vital to the process. Hawks, though annoying, must be brought in from the cold. We must not treat this as a playground dispute, she warned, unaware that that was exactly what she was doing. Her two unconvincing reminders that Israel’s fears were rational stuck out oddly, as though they’d been squeezed into the script as an afterthought, having remembered the need for impartiality just in time. The final bit, about Daniel Barenboim’s Gaza gig and the wonderful peace giving properties of Mozart avoided mentioning the tricky subject of Hamas’s aversion to music. But this isn’t about Today. Most people take its irrelevance as a given, something like being made to swallow a tonic that is thought to be good for you, but isn’t really. It’s about the item that followed. Are targeted assassinations acceptable? Does Obama’s recent escapade set a precedent? Geoffrey Robertson QC had been listening to Thought for the Day, because he mentioned it to help his argument that targeted assassinations are never justified. What, he speculated, if Sarah Palin as POTUS decided to assassinate Fidel Castro, or Julian Assange? Or what if some Ayatollahs decided to assassinate Salman Rushdie? (What indeed.) Danny Yatom, former Head of Mossad was on the line. “ Danny Yatom”, says Sarah Montague, authoritatively, “You think it’s better to kill them that remove them alive. “ “No” he replies from some echoing Zionist den, “It’s better to capture alive and obtain intelligence, but we are at war, and in that case, if you don’t shoot, you are shot.” So our human rights lawyer can’t see the difference between random hypothetical murders of people that a head of state might disapprove of and Israel’s intelligence-led targeted assassinations of terrorists in pre-emptive self-defence in. a. state. of. war. The USA should have got Daniel Barenboim to play Al Qaeda some lovely Mozart instead. If comments on Twitter are anything to go by, Richard Bacon was an extremely inept and very biased host on last night's Young Voters' Question Time. This will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog who already know that he is simply incapable of being impartial and shouldn't be covering politics at all, either on BBC TV or radio. One audience member even tweeted that Bacon said openly that he was going to vote "yes" in the AV referendum. Quality impartial BBC journalism, that. Click on the images to view just some of last night's Twitter commentary. No, not THAT one! I mean Mohammed el Baradei. Did you catch this interviewwith this snake oil salesman this morning. As he points out, he doesn't hate America, just its policies. He doesn't hate Israel, he just wants equality for Palestinians. Lovely guy and a nice reception from the BBC. Nice to see the BBC giving yet another "Thought for the Day" Slot to Abdal Hakim Murad, Muslim chaplain at the University of Cambridge. Abdal gets a lot of platforms which is curious given the tiny % of the UK population Islam constitutes. Then again, remind me who is head of BBC "Religious Programming"? No Bias here for sure. Have Your Say, 2001: Can state assassinations be justified? 
Targeted Serenading
>> THURSDAY, MAY 05, 2011
Young Voters' Question Time
>> WEDNESDAY, MAY 04, 2011
LOVING MOHAMMED
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY...
Bin Laden's Death: Illegal Assassination or Legitimate Target? Depends On Who's President.....
>> MONDAY, MAY 02, 2011
US President George Bush has told the CIA to find and destroy Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network. The president has given the agency the green light to do "whatever is necessary" - which could include an assassination attempt - and has given it £700 million in funding to carry out the mission. The operation will include the CIA working with commandos and other military units to act immediately on intelligence uncovered by American spies about enemy targets. Should the CIA have been given the go ahead to assassinate Bin Laden? Can such actions ever be justified?
Have Your Say, 2011: Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden dead: Your reaction BBC News website readers in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been sharing their views on the death of al-Qaeda's founder and leader, Osama Bin Laden. Osama Bin Laden evaded the forces of the US and its allies for almost a decade, despite a $25m bounty on his head.
Enough said. UPDATE May 3: Der Spiegel asks the question the BBC has curiously stopped asking: Was Bin Laden's Killing Legal?
Thursday, 5 May 2011
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