BBC exposes itself to ridicule in preposterous “analysis” of latest UN report on Israel and Gaza
Alan Dershowitz, the eminent professor of law at Harvard University, has frequently compared Israel’s predicament when faced with the institutions of international law to all white courts in the American south of the 1930s. In cases involving two white people they could be trusted to make a decent fist of a fair trial. In cases involving two black people their insoucience and arrogance would introduce doubt, though a fair trial might still be possible. But pit a white man against a black man and the latter never stood a chance. The result had been pre-ordained by the weight of the prejudices against him.
So it is with Israel in most international institutions, the United Nations in particular. So let us waste no time at all in gracing the latest UN report into Gaza with anything other than the contempt it deserves. Instead, let us focus on how one of the world’s most powerful media outlets has seized upon the report and in so doing has opened a window into the anti-Israeli mindset we are dealing with. For its sheer stupidity, the latest BBC “analysis” on the report is simply astonishing.
Attributed to Tim Franks in Jerusalem, it opens on the BBC website in some style:
“If this report is to matter,” he pants, “it will be for a number of reasons. One is its length. There have been a slew of reports into the war in Gaza. This is the lengthiest, weighing in at 575 pages.”
Did I wake up this morning in a parallel universe? Have I actually just read an “analysis” by the BBC which opens by suggesting that the credibility of a piece of writing is proportional to its length? Ok. So let’s have some fun then. Let’s check out the length of Mein Kempf (615 pages) compared, say, to On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. Sorry John, a quick search on Amazon tells me you’re 428 pages short. Fascism it is then.
I have asked this question a number of times, but I will ask it again: do these people ever stop to think about what they are saying?
But our hero is merely warming to his task:
“There is the man who wrote it,” says Franks somberly and respectfully. “Richard Goldstone is a judge and judicial investigator with an impressive record. The UN Human Rights Council, for whom he wrote this, is also no longer a body which is quite as easy for Israel to dismiss as congenitally biased. The US has recently run for, and been elected to a seat on its council.”
Well yes, since the body in question used to be run by Libya he may be granted that it is not “quite as easy” for Israel to dismiss it. But since it remains dominated by states such as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia the sense in which it is not “quite as easy” to dismiss might reasonably be compared to the sense in which it is not “quite as easy” for a nine year old boy to get the correct answer when asked to multiply three by three as it might have been if asked to add one plus one. You’d still be pretty disappointed if he wasn’t up to the task.
As for Richard Goldstone, he should be judged by the quality of what he has produced. As
Professor Gerald M. Steinberg, the head of NGO Monitor, has put it after a quick review of the report:
“The evidence, as Goldstone stated, was based almost entirely on unverifiable Palestinian claims and publications from politicized pro-Palestinian NGOs – the report cites B’tselem and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights each more than 70 times, Al-Haq allegations get more 30 mentions, and there are many more NGO co-authors.
“Human Rights Watch is referenced 33 times, including the “Rain of Fire” report co-authored by Marc Garlasco. He was HRW’s “senior military expert” (until suspended yesterday after exposure of his Nazi memorabilia fetish), but his analyses are tainted by false claims and speculation masquerading as expertise.”
But not to be deterred, Franks from the BBC, ends his hagiography of Goldstone and his report thus:
“Mr Goldstone has also shown a measure of political astuteness. This is not the first time that Israel, or Palestinian militants, have been accused of war crimes - and in Israel’s case, crimes against humanity as well. But previous allegations have quickly begun to moulder on the shelf. Mr Goldstone recommended that the Security Council require Israel, and the Gaza authorities, to report in six months about its own investigations into the alleged crimes. If they did not come up to scratch, then the International Criminal Court should become involved. Who, said Judge Goldstone, could object to that?”
I’m not sure whether my favourite part of this preposterous piece of garbage from the BBC comes in the first paragraph of the story or the last. But I do like the final sentence which, bouncing off Goldstone, reveals a complete failure ever to have engaged with the other side of the debate.
The BBC, Goldstone and the whole sorry bunch clearly live in a world of their own. I for one want no part of it.
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My book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel has just been published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. It can be purchased at the following link:
Tags: Israel
September 16th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Two more excellent piece about this:
The Moral Inversion of Richard Goldstone by Melanie Phillips
http://tinyurl.com/molftw
UN Human Rights Council Report Distorts Gaza War by Ben Cohen at Z Word (also posted at Harry’s Place)
http://tinyurl.com/noh2ve
September 16th, 2009 at 11:29 am
“Human Rights Watch is referenced 33 times”
Of little surprise given that until recently he was a director of Human Rights Watch.
Look here as Goldstone defends Human Rights Watch:
http://maurice-ostroff.tripod.com/id92.html
September 16th, 2009 at 11:39 am
“Let’s check out the length of Mein Kempf (615 pages)”
Similarly, the Gettysburg Address should no longer be considered an important speech as it is only 272 words long.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Its like banging your head against a brick wall, only with more dire consequences!
The left will swallow this whole, terrorists around the world will feel their hatred of israel is justified, and the people of Israel will feel even more isolated from the outside world.
And what will be the end result? Those who meam harm to innocent civilians (ie. hamas, hesbullah et al) will feel empowered by the report. They will know that regarldess of what they do, the UN will have their back.
There is nothing here to entice Hamas to join those of us in the civilised world because there are no consequences for their actions.
Mailman
September 16th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Just last evening I was watching BBC World News diligently in our living room. (Unrelated: I wanted to see the BBC’s report/interviews tonight so badly after Goldstone’s “report” came out, that I asked my parents to let me dominate the programme in our home tonight so as not to miss anything.)
I wasn’t disappointed a tiny bit!
21:18-22 CET. Hungary, Budapest
A relatively short report by Jeremy Bowen from Jeruslaem - it was the usual subtle manipulation technique and all that comes with it. OK, it was crap, but I didn’t expect anything else. What came after shocked me…
The so-called anchorwoman is Kirsty Lang. I “know” her for a long time, because on the 21:00 panel she leads the news. I also knew that one time, around the Chirac era around 2002 was the Sunday Times’s nespaper Paris correspondent.
Enough of the dribble, to the point:
Mark Regev IL gov. spokesman was the interviewee - Lang almost immediately attacked and ferociously so. I’ve NEVER seen anything like it in my 31 years. She didn’t let to focus on Prof. Chinkin’s rogueness [one of the four persons on the "Fact-finding mission"] and other aspects of the fraudulent case. Lang was close to SCREAMING at Mr. Regev, and shrieking.
She barely let him elaborate on the points of Regev, interrupting him constantly from the very beginning and trying to contain him on anything which could have shown IL’s position in a favourable light. The best part of all this, is that in spite of this ferocious, totally unprofessional, really, quasi-Stalinist type of behaviour Regev managed to persevere. I was a witness to all of this. He eventually, though with lots of efforts, could gain the upper hand and came on top. He WON. Lang was reeling with anger - and it was showing. She muttered very silently at the end “Maaark Ree-geev……. Thaaank you…” with barely discernable voice. I am not kidding.
Man, this British media has as much crediblity as Pravda in the 50s. THE KING IS NAKED!
Gábor Fränkl
Postgraduate student part-time MSc,
QMUL, Dept. of Politics,
Public Policy Studies
2009-11
September 16th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Gábor Fränkl’s extremely interesting post above reminded me of a piece Melanie Phillips wrote back in 2004 (sorry to quote in full but I found it impossible to provide extracts and still retain the sense of it):
“A report in Haaretz explains how Lithuania is slowly trying to come to terms with its role in the Holocaust. It is a new and difficult concept for people who are more accustomed to thinking of the Soviet Union as the tyrants who enslaved them, a complex history which acts as a barrier to proper recognition of the genocide of the Jews and the part Lithuania played in it.
And then, for British readers, comes the punch in the cultural solar plexus:
‘Toleikis is very worried about the rise of anti-Semitism in Lithuania. He was among the first to sign a petition against the editor-in-chief of the widely distributed newspaper Respublika, Vitas Tomkus, who published anti-Semitic articles in the paper. Toleikis believes the current anti-Semitism is mainly based on hatred of Israel. “In Lithuania, a lot of anti-Israeli articles are published in which only one side of the conflict is presented,” he says. “Our journalists see the reports on Israel on the BBC and CNN, and some of them are pro-Palestinian. We are already accustomed to reports in which Palestinians are seen crying or reports about a child who was shot down and killed by mistake by a helicopter. In the pictures that are supposed to present the Israeli side, all we see is tanks bursting into Palestinian villages. We don’t see funerals of Jews here. Many Lithuanians are saying to themselves, why are they blaming us? After all, they’re socking it to the Palestinians now.” ‘
So the BBC, by fomenting hatred of Israel through its malevolent and distorted reporting, is actively encouraging a revival of Jew-hatred in Lithuania, of all places — part of the site of the Holocaust against the Jews — and providing its inhabitants with the means to exculpate their nation of blame by telling themselves that it is the Jews who are the real Nazis. A moral universe away from Lord Reith’s direction to inform and educate, the BBC’s wicked reporting is resulting in nothing less than Holocaust denial — in the very graveyard itself of the Jewish people.”
http://tinyurl.com/p9tq3j
Having regard to this piece by Ms. Phillips, I wonder just how much anti-Semitism in Hungary was fomented by that interview conducted by Kirsty Lang for the BBC, and how much anti-Semitism all across Europe is fomented in all those other interviews conducted by BBC journalists. It seems horrifying, at least to me, that in these nations where anti-Semitism has had such terrible consequences that the BBC is busy fanning the flames of all these old hatreds, and at a time when they have already re-emerged with such virulence. From an article in the Jerusalem Post dated Sep 6, 2009:
Rioters invade Budapest’s Jewish Ghetto
“A crowd of 500 demonstrators, including neo-Nazis and skinheads, rampaged in Budapest’s Jewish district.”
“The rioters invaded the heart of the traditional Jewish Ghetto District, started a small fire, tore down signs and shouted threatening anti-Semitic vitriol. The attacks were witnessed by families of foreign Jews visiting the district for the current Budapest Jewish Cultural Festival.
One British tourist trying to argue with the rioters at the edge of the ghetto had to be rescued by police when he was verbally abused and physically assaulted by a gang of 20 attackers. A policeman who tried to break up a confrontation not far from there was knocked to the ground and kicked, as was a woman displaying a Gay Pride T-shirt while standing alone at a tram stop.”
http://tinyurl.com/lksbcj
September 16th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
You have to hand it to Mr Regev, what ever he is paid, it aint merely enough because of all the sh1t he has to put up with!
Gabor, you know what is truly galling? Not ONCE have I ever seen a so called reporter from al beeb carrying on in exactly the same fashion when dealing with someone like hamas of hesbullah. No, the disgusting behaviour is saved exclusively for Israel.
Mailman
September 17th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Spot on.
September 17th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Joshua,
A couple of points to ponder about for all of us!
First, I am in general an optimist by nature and here I must tell you that I firmly believe that people are not generally stupid, like often we imagine them to be. In this case many reasonable and neutral people watching the interview could well see the bitter parody what was going on during this “interview”. I don’tthink anyone could have turned an anti-Semite just because of this incident. On the contrary! The BBC with this kind of line just lays itself open to ridicule and contemp and many see this for what it is.
On the Budapest “Ghetto” riot, let me tell you that JPost and others have manipulated a bit themselves unfortunately. There is absolutely NO Jewish ghetto in Bp now, and very few Jews live in the VI., VII. and VII. districts of the capital. A couple of hundred neo-Nazis turned up to provoke and cause trouble. They turn up every single year and try to disrupt Gay Pride. This year they turned on the synagogue out of sheer desperation. Finally: yes, the Hungarian society is gravely homophobic in general but not to the point of resorting to any violence or such action.
September 18th, 2009 at 11:27 am
“I don’tthink anyone could have turned an anti-Semite just because of this incident.”
Trying to guess at the exact origins of any kind of racism is a fiendishly difficult job. Many racists will have taken it in with their mother’s milk, others will have been corrupted by society and culture, for some it will be a result of idiosyncratic disposition and experience. Whatever the cause (often a multiplicity of causes despite what I have written above), I don’t believe that people suddenly wake up one morning and discover that they hate Jews. On the contrary, it is a gradual process, a process that eats away bit by bit at their decency. And it is reports like this that are responsible for chipping away at the edifice, for contributing to the process. Of course, and perhaps more significantly, such reports serve to justify the anti-Semitism of many people and to legitimise feelings that otherwise would have remained quiescent. Most importantly, at least to my way of thinking, they also serve to both embed and strengthen anti-Semitism at a societal level.
“On the Budapest “Ghetto” riot, let me tell you that JPost and others have manipulated a bit themselves unfortunately.”
Thank you for putting us right on that score. However, there is no gainsaying the fact that anti-Semitism is a prominent feature in Hungarian life, and, having regard to what I write above, reports such as this obviously won’t help matters.
There are, as you know, countless reports that I could cite in evidence of my charge about Hungarian anti-Semitism, but this excellent piece by the redoubtable Karl Pfeifer, the veteran anti-fascist, will do as well as any:
The Return of Hungarian Anti-Semitism
http://tinyurl.com/m7232b
September 18th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
To given another indication of how widespread anti-Semitism is in Europe, especially of the anti-Zionist variety, here’s this article that was just posted at Haaretz:
Report: ‘Dutch Facebook’ rife with anti-Semitism, blood libel
1) “Dutch social media sites are rife with anti-Semitism linked to Israel, according to a new report compiled by Dutch and Israeli monitors who study online discussions.”
2) “On Hyves - the most popular social network in Netherlands with nine million Dutch members - the team documented calls to “murder all Jews” and for Adolf Hitler “to finish off his job.”
The report says that moderators on Hyves, often described as “the Dutch Facebook,” take no action to stop the posting of inflammatory anti-Semitic content on its pages.”
3) “The research team, led by Yochanan Visser, a Dutch Israeli living in the West Bank settlement of Efrat and members of two pro-Israeli web monitoring groups, say they also found “blood libels” about Israeli soldiers on Hyves.
A post by a person describing herself as a Palestinian girl from Jerusalem by the name of Fatma, wrote that her father had been abducted in the dead of night and hacked to pieces. “My dear mother was beaten to death before me by the Jews, the beasts,” the post went on to say, adding the soldiers raped the writer’s sister.”
http://tinyurl.com/neehkn
September 19th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
What can be expected from BBC which receives 40% of its news profits from Arab customers? As for Goldstone’s report, we prepared a detailed rebuttal at http://samsonblinded.org/blog/goldstone-report-the-rebuttal.htm