I asked previously, “So why do you think Israel received a good press in the sixties and seventies ?” I’m talking here about media coverage and general public perception of Israel, not about specific government policies. All of your points miss the mark …

1) Ernest Bevin was Foreign Secretary in Attlee’s 1945 government. I wasn’t talking about that period, but yes clearly the Middle East policy of that government was a disgrace. Different issue though.

2) I don’t give a hang about what Bernard Levin thought either. Your point on weapons sales is wrong, as back in those days, Israel’s planes were French (Mystere, Ouragon, Mirage, Super Mystere) and the tanks were mainly British (Centurion) or American (Patton). At the end of the sixties American Phantoms and Skyhawks started arriving and became the backbone of the IAF.

3) Various points here. The reaction of many countries during and after the Yom Kippur War was dictated by fears over oil supplies and prices. I agree that the behaviour of Edward Heath’s government at the time was slimy in the extreme, but the media coverage was fair. Can you imagine the BBC employing someone with the journalistic stature of Michael Elkins nowadays ? If you’re too young to remember him, here’s some info on him … http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/michael-elkins-728919.html. You mention Paul Foot. He was editor of Socialist Worker in the seventies and that only underlines my point about anti-Israel hostility being confined to “the Trotskyite left, FCO Arabists and oddballs such as Christopher Mayhew”. The UN General Assembly is not representative of UK public or media opinion, far from it. I remember great sympathy for Israel after the Munich Olympics massacre. Were you around back then ?

4) I think reality is more nuanced. Yes, there’s plenty of anti-semitism out there, but it’s not as universal as you think. A lot of people and nations admired Israel for defending itself and plenty still do.

5) Again several points here. I don’t understand what you mean by my “decontextualization of the events of the 1980s”. Please explain. Yes, I didn’t like the Israeli Labour Party’s acquiescing to the building of settlements in isolated locations in the West Bank. But the main momentum came during the Begin and Shamir years. Settlement building was at the heart of their ideology. The hero Eli Moyal did not stand again for Mayor of Sderot in elections at the end of 2008. He had been investigated for corruption … http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/992002.html. My point against Moyal and Barak was their bad manners during Obama’s speech in Sderot and I stand by that. Obama has since reciprocated with an even worse display of manners towards Mr Netanyahu. He has even less excuse.

6) I’m also deeply unhappy with much of the UK media’s coverage. But I stick by the point that Israel can help its own cause by being more sophisticated in certain respects. Having a Foreign Minister like Avigdor Lieberman isn’t a great help. I was in the same dormitory as him at the Hebrew University many years ago, so I knew the guy. He’s being Foreign Minister is just bizarre.

“So why do you think Israel received a good press in the sixties and seventies?”

(I’m pushed for time so my answer unfortunately will have to be for the most part in point form.)

I know this business about Israel being popular in the 1960s and 1970s is a an argument that is much beloved by those on the left wing, but it is a gross distortion of the truth.

1) Remember first that it had been a Labour government with a virulently anti-Semitic Foreign Secretary that had launched a jihad against the Zionist movement in post-war Palestine.

2) Yes, at least up until the Six-Day War, there had been in certain left-wing circles a dewy-eyed romanticism about socialist Israel, but such feelings tended to be confined to the left and were by no means unanimous. Criticism was certainly not the preserve of “the Trotskyite left, FCO Arabists and oddballs such as Christopher Mayhew”. Even at the height of that war, when Israel’s victory seemed far from assured, the Jewish Bernard Levin writing a major piece in the Times informed the world that he was English and not Israeli (I actually think he said “Jewish” but I can’t be sure), and he really didn’t give a hang about the Jewish state. And even at that time such sympathy as there was for Israel was hardly translated into any real practical support like aid or weapons sales.

3) It was shortly after the Six-Day War and not in the 1980s the tide turned against Israel. Thus, in 1973, when Israel stood on the very brink of destruction, Britain like all other European nations refused permission to the U.S. to fly planes loaded with emergency supplies for a beleaguered Israel over its territory. If you look back at the papers at the time, you will see many violently anti-Israeli articles. If you had tuned in to “Any Questions” you would have heard individuals like Paul Foot delivering to wild applause the most poisonous diatribes against Israel. In the wider world, in 1975, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 was passed (75 to 35 with 32 absentions). That resolution determined that: “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. Three years earlier, in 1972, despite the murder of eleven Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympics, the world simply sniffed and carried on those Games without further ado.

4) The nations of the world turned against Israel for the most part because they never could cotton to the idea of Jews defending themselves.

5) Your decontextualization of the events of the 1980s together with the white-washing of Labor’s responsibility for the settlements is really quite shocking. Then again, I suppose I should be used to your utterances after what you wrote at Melanie Phillips’s blog about the courageous mayor of Sderot:

“On the platform behind him stood Eli Moyal, the mayor of Sderot, in his sunglasses looking like some gaunt, seedy gangster”

http://tinyurl.com/ykgofwv

6) Even if everything you say about Israel were true, it still would not in any way excuse the hypocrisy, the double standards, the bigotry and the anti-Semitism of the British media. Or perhaps you are suggesting that unless we Jews conduct ourselves according to the dictates of non-Jews, we somehow deserve all the anti-Semitism we get.

So why do you think Israel received a good press in the sixties and seventies ? I think the deterioration since then is because both Israel has changed and the general mindset of ‘Western European opinion formers’ has changed, as described in Robin’s book. The question is the level of causality.

As for the BBC, I’ve written dozens of useless complaints to the BBC regarding inaccuracies and bias in its Middle East reporting over the past few years. Jeremy Bowen is a particular disgrace when it comes to presenting shallow opinions as journalism.

Given my mistrust of the BBC, I don’t watch much BBC news and current affairs nowadays. Therefore coverage of the civilisational clash over houmous passed me by. However this BBC website article seems perfectly fair …

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8375952.stm

Let’s hope the ‘Better Place’ initiative in Israel goes well and then let’s see then if it gets coverage. The fact is that in people’s minds, ‘the occupation’ blinds them to the many good facets of Israel. The counter argument of Arab rejectionism just hasn’t carried enough weight. I think Israel’s leadership needs to constantly keep the Palestinians on the back foot by showing a clear and public willingness to negotiate and compromise. That will expose any duplicity and intransigence on their part. It will drag them into scarier territory, where they are forced to compromise, eg. land swaps along the Green Line, demilitarisation arrangements etc.

That is true, when you substitute Blacks for Jews. But the analogy is less imperfect and less misleading if you substitute Muslims for Jews. In that context, the parallels are clearer. Now, how likely do you think it is that the Guardian would have published an article that included the following statement:

“Both [Hussein] and [Turabi] are Muslim, and [Turabi] at least has a record of active support for [Islamism],” he said. “…if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available. Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced.”

M

Sorry to butt in with an unsolicited comment, but I would call your attention to the fact that the BBC for example, as other media too purposefully contains any, ANY information about Israel that might put it into positive light. They are doing it deliberately, out of sheer sinister animus for Israel.

My examples? Let me just give you two: Israel last autumn “conqured” The Guiness title from Lebanon in hummus cooking. The BBC deligently reported on the former Lebanese record, but suppressed the Israeli one. The event took place in Abu Gosh, a very well integrated Arab village close to Jerusalem just right next to Highway 1 that connects the capital to Tel-Aviv. On the occasion there were dozens of blue and white balloons, joyous and festive atmosphere in the air, dozens of cooks (Arabs and Jews!) together who prepared the food since that day early morning. Why did the BBC failed to report on it? Embarrassed at the very sight of a Jewish-Arab cooperative spirit, instead of the hebitual propagandistic portrayal of enmity and hatred?
The other one: Nissan will reportedly introduce its electric cars on the UK market in 2013. The very same car-maker (Nissan-Renault) in tandem with “Better Place” (Israeli firm) launches its electric-network and cars equipped with the needed tools in Israel NEXT YEAR, not in three years’ time. Of course they would have risked showing the REALITY to millions of British viewers and the accompanying tens of millions worldwide that Israel (the shitty little country) IS MORE advanced, more developed, more at the cutting edge than Britain. So Mr. Karmi don’t you think that the BBC armed with this kind of prejudice and acute seething hatred for Israel it will NEVER be fair and all the usual blahblah it tells about itself absolutely REGARDLESS of what the composition of the current Israeli gov’t is? Don’t you understand that this is deeper, much much deeper than some particular Israeli cabinet? I, on my part, DO. And this very attitude, this very approach apply to the two partners-in-crime “newspapers”.

Respectfully,