Knell's Toll

Knell's Toll

>> SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Yolande Knell has taken sides. In Knell’s eyes, and in the eyes of most of the BBC’s Middle East staff, Israel’s existence automatically places it in the wrong. An unpleasant article in the Independent by Christina Patterson drifted into stormy waters not so long ago because it characterised London’s Jews as boorish freaks. She managed to dig herself even deeper in a follow-up article entitled “How I was smeared as an antisemite”. Well, I’ve had a look at Yolande Knell’s output, and as far as impartiality is concerned, she also sails close to the wind. But she represents the BBC, which Patterson does not. Every one of Knell’s pieces is angled from the Palestinian / Arab perspective. For example on 26th August, a vehicle for showcasing the tally of militants killed by Israel appeared, entitled “Militant Groups in Gaza Agree to a second Israel Truce’. On 8th September, ‘Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood faces fresh political fight’arrived. It portrays the Muslim Brotherhood as a relatively moderate group who have disavowed violence, and whose banner reads: “Freedom and Justice Party” On 15th September along came “West bank residents split on Palestinian Statehood bid.” The split is echoed in the article’s two contrasting halves. The first predicts the paradise that will emerge from the forthcoming transformation, ‘when the international community will recognise our rights.’ “In the city it is easy to imagine what a future Palestinian state might look like. Palestinian police officers direct traffic on the newly cleaned streets and the shops and restaurants are packed. It lends a sense of relative prosperity and security.” Yolande Knell has turned into Maeve Binchy! In part two, the mood changes. She descends sharply into misery memoir mode and the rhetoric is ramped up to full death-Knell. “It is hard to imagine a Palestinian state here. "We're under occupation until now and you speak about a state?" says Zayd, a Beduin. "The Israeli army is everywhere here and the settlers are everywhere - they're armed and they cause a lot of problems and you speak about a state?" Unadulterated pathos and bitterness, with an undercurrent of belligerence. Orla, eat your heart out. Now for the Patterson parallel. When she composed her ‘Judaisation of Jerusalem’ (Israel-Palestinian conflict writ large etc) article on August 17th, Yolande Knell didn’t feel any need to conceal her aversion to Jews. Her assumption was clear. Empathy with the Palestinian cause is a given, therefore entirely outside the scope of the impartiality conundrum. She took it for granted that the reader would accept that the stereotypical Jew is ‘over familiar’ - “swaggering” Jeremy Bowen might say. Her friendship with a high-profile Palestinian activist seems almost a boast, as does her mischievous urge to ridicule her young Jewish fellow-passenger’s preference for using the Hebrew name for Jerusalem by expressing her personal preference for the Arabic one. “Land may be at the heart of the P/I conflict” she opines, ignoring what everyone knows deep down, but chooses to ignore, that really, Palestinian rejectionism is at its heart. The possibility that signage in Jerusalem will display “the transliterations of Hebrew names of cities”, the 'Judaisation of Jerusalem’ hints, for Knell and her friends, at a cunning plan which threatens the Palestinians’ struggle. After Benjamin Netanyahu’s terrific speech at the UN, where he compares the incongruity of this concept with the ‘Americanisation of Washington’, I needn’t elaborate on the ignorance and bias inherent Knell's piece. Drawing attention to place-names brings to mind the Palestinians’ deeply unpleasant habit of naming their streets and towns after terrorists, but such things don’t interest Knell. She recounts the conjecture posited by her friend Huda, the ‘well-known, energetic Palestinian activist’, that the Israelis are erasing all traces of Palestinian identity. Israel’s opponents frequently project their own foibles and conspiracy theories onto their enemy; the more ludicrous and malevolent the better. And as erasing traces of Jewish history and identity is exactly what Arab historians and archaeologists persist in doing themselves, Huda’s theory looks like a choice example of that psychological condition. “The biggest problems arise in East Jerusalem - which was occupied by Israel in 1967 and is still a mainly Arab area - although Jewish settlers are fast moving in, taking over Palestinian homes”. Knell slips that in almost casually, though she must be well aware that ‘taking over Palestinian homes’ is an incendiary statement, undoubtedly phrased, deliberately, to cause outrage, especially as she doesn’t explain how the occupation came about in 1967, and leaves the unwary reader with the impression that it was a random act of aggression by an expansionist, land-grabbing thieving entity. Which may well be what she herself believes. So, if the BBC’s reporters are allowed to be as overtly anti Israel as Mr. Bowen and Ms. Knell, where are the overtly pro Israel ones? The impartiality in their genes evaporated and left the building long ago.

No Shortcut

>> THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

The BBC has a dilemma. Their beloved Obama has made a difficult speech.“There is no Shortcut to Peace”

"Let’s be honest: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them,"

Obama said.

"Israel, a small country of less than 8 million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile, persecution, and the fresh memory of knowing that 6 million people were killed simply because of who they were." These facts cannot be denied. The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition," Obama said. "It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two-state solution, with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine."

The Guardian has decided that Obama is electioneering, and his only reason for sounding pro Israel is our old friend the Jewish Lobby. Jeremy Bowen agrees:

The president's speech was as much about the politics of his own re-election bid next year as it was about the politics of making peace.

Read his analysis, and despair.

The BBC Continues To Lie About History And Censor Calls For Ethnic Cleansing

>> TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

Apologies for the lengthy title, but there are two issues here which need to be covered, and I'm combining them into one post. First, the BBC's continued attempts to lie and rewrite history. Q&A: Palestinian statehood bid at the UN Most people here will know exactly what's coming, and I know this has been covered here many times before, but it's even more important to call the BBC out on it now because of the looming UN fight over creating a State of Palestine. For the benefit of those who don't know the BBC's bias about the "West Bank", here's the map they use to explain history to the public: Notice on the left, the BBC is claiming that there was such a thing as the West Bank (i.e. Palestinian) Territory before the 1967 war. They've just erased a chunk of Jordan from history. As we all know, that was part of Jordan at the time, a country at war with Israel. Why else would Israel have invaded? This map indoctrinates the public with PLO propaganda, that Israel invaded sovereign Palestinian territory. Your license fee is being used to promote false history and anti-Israel propaganda. Reality, on the other hand, is not Israeli propaganda. This map of Jordan -from a non-partisan source - and environs showing the borders during part of the 1967 war in question is fact, not fiction: Notice the clear border lines of Jordan encompass the area about which the BBC is lying. Yes, I am accusing BBC News Online of telling a lie. I don't care what some Beeboids personally believe about nasty old Israel's land grab or the plight of the poor Palestinians or anything else. This is historical fact, and the BBC is lying about it. How can there be an honest Q&A about the topic when one of the answers is a lie? Until they remove that first map and replace it with an honest one, my accusation will stand. Needless to say, this propaganda demonizes Israel in the minds of the public. Most people are seriously uninformed about the facts of Israel and 1967 and the "Palestinian Territories". When one tries to explain the facts to get past the emotions, one is then accused of spouting Israeli propaganda. This is how the BBC's editorial policy and style guide is blatantly biased, causing them to demonize Israel at every opportunity, although the BBC disputes this.

Read more »

The Prophet Carter

>> FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

Octogenarian Jimmy Carter was given a lovely long spot on Today, with James Naughtie questioning him deferentially about his particular version of the Israeli Palestinian situation and his support for the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN security Council. They both forgot to mention the Palestinians’ continual refusal to recognise Israel or to renounce violence, and Jimmy Carter made, at length, a number of factually incorrect statements about settlements and various other things. His prediction that a bid would succeed at the General Assembly, if not at the UN Security Council, was announced as if it was a great insight on his behalf. Perhaps he didn’t hear Jeremy Bowen stating something which we all know, namely that there’s “a built-in pro Palestinian majority, and no veto, at the General Assembly.” Some of his remarks indicate that he thinks Palestine is already an independent state, so why does the BBC bother to broadcast his bonkers views on the forthcoming Palestinian bid for statehood? Update. Melanie Phillips is wondering if the British government is about to vote for a Palestinian state.