The BBC has … started its news broadcast as usual from Ashkelon in Israel, highlighting rocket attacks on Israel. There is no mention on the BBC – there has never been any mention on the BBC, or anywhere in the Western mainstream media – that for at least 4,000 years Ashkelon was an Arab town, until in 1948 the entire, Arab population of 12,000 was driven out by armed force, many being massacred. Doubtless some older inhabitants of Gaza are refugees whose home is Ashkelon.
Israel is exercising its right of self-defence in precisely the same sense that Hitler was exercising the right of self-defence in Normandy in 1944 – ie not at all. Why the world puts up with this blatant ethnic cleansing and prolonged, agonizing genocide of the Palestinian people, I have no idea. It is not just about bombs and rockets and deaths now. It is about the shepherds being pushed out of their village in 2012 as part of the same process as the massacre of Ashkelon in 1948, all a process of genocide of the Palestinians in which Obama, Clinton, Cameron and Hague, as two whole generations of western politicians before them, are actively complicit.
I blogged this on 21 November 2012. Today every single BBC News bulletin leads with precisely the same trick, from precisely the same stolen Arab village. There is evidently a BBC policy to bias coverage of massacre in Gaza by basing it in the stolen town of Ashkelon. Every single BBC news programme is led by a report of the terror of people in Ashkelon at the rocket attacks which have killed and maimed – precisely nobody. There is then a brief “balancing” mention of the continual bombing of Gaza, which sometimes does and sometimes does not mention that at least 25 people have been killed, and hundreds maimed. Of the five reports I have seen, not one has mentioned that many of the Palestinian dead are women and children (although I once saw it on the strapline underneath). Rather the BBC says that “the Israeli government states it is targeting militants and weapons factories”.
The time given to the attacks on Palestine is abut 25% of that given to the rocket attacks on Israel. The coverage is also very different – we see human interest coverage of Israelis hiding from rockets in cafes. There is nothing remotely similar of the Palestinians under infinitely more deadly attack. There was one showing of funeral footage from Gaza, not of any of the women or children killed but of someone the BBC told us was simply a “militant”.
It is so blatant it is absolutely sickening. There are decent people I know in the BBC. Why do they put up with this?
Habbabkuk, 6:02 pm:
Yes, “our side”.
This is why I cannot be proud to be British, and cannot join you in your “Life is Good”.
It is antisemitic to mention the Palestinian dead were women and children.
It is antisemitic to mention every Jewish only town, city and villiage in Israel was once a Arab town, city or villiage that had all its people killed or expelled.
That is why the BBC don’t say it.
Clark
“Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, of course”
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That was a clarification of my post at 18h00, which was itself a response to Alex at 17h03 – read both carefully, Clark. I think you’ve misunderstood something.
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“This is why I cannot be proud to be British, and cannot join you in your “Life is Good”.”
_________________
“Life is good” flows from your personal circumstances and, more importantly, from your personal outlook and is unconnected (in any way that I can see) with your nationality. Why, then, do you link the two things?
Onan ( + Moderator)
Are you the White Knight (and other, subsequent handles) who was banned from here for anti-Semitism (“dershowitzery”, etc…)?
Yesterdays magnificent &-1 end to the Brazilian ‘fotbal do bono’ in favour of the german total football approach played here in Europe will rejuvenate team football.
German players, as individuals, are not football stars who can change the fortune’s of one or other club, but as a team playing together they are absolutely lethal.
Brazil played lacklustre and without any ideas, they deserved the score. That said it was also good to see the humiliation shown by the German players afterwards in consoling their Brazilian opponents.
Much thanks must go to the Brazilian who applauded the excellent game Germany played.
Whether its Holland or Argentina, they best watch out cause this ‘team’ does not want to loose now. My money is on Germany.
7-1 it should be.
Yesterday I linked to the testimony of a senior former AlQaida activist against Israel’s responsibility for the terror groups including ISIS and others in Syria.
http://counterinformation.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/obama-regimes-support-of-al-qaeda-and-isis/
No-one has commented on that link, even though as a criticism of the leaders of Al Qaida and the whole brutality of the war in Syria and Pakistan/Afghanistan it is one of the most significant breakthroughs against Israeli world-wide terror.
What is happening in Gaza is terrible, but a shadow of what has been happening at the hands of Israeli terrorism on the MUslim populations elsewhere in recent years.
Are you still all blinking after the rabbit hole? How can the light that burned so brightly. Suddenly burn so pale? Senior
Muslims are starting to speak against the sulphuric acid of Israeli, Pakistani, Libyan etc and Saudi terror in Syria.
Mary
“Jonathan Cook married a Palestinian. Find out what life is like in Nazareth. Write to him.”
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I’m aware of that, Mary.
My point – which you of course ignore – is that if he were in Russia reporting on Russian actions in Dagestan and Chechniya he’d be dead by now.
The Russian state would have bumped him off. Whereas he is alive and well in Nazareth, under Israeli occupation, and free to write whatever he pleases.
There are decent people I know in the BBC. Why do they put up with this?
How decent can one be while putting up with propaganda for genocide?
As you are serving behind the bar (sorry I’m a bit out of phase) at the Whistleblower’s Arms – at the Doune the Rabbit Hole Festival from 22 to 24 August at Cardross, Port of Menteith….
The hashtag takes me back well into the distant past…when things actually worked..and We actually worked hard…writing stuff…techie stuff…sure sometimes the stuff we wrote was very quick and dirty and very poorly documented…but it worked…sometimes exceptionally well…
Today next to F#c*ik All worked…
Yes…a very nice location…and the Chef could cook…
The staff were all very polite..and to everyone’s amazement…they were actually English…No Really….
I won’t go into the details…except just to mention…a lot of people around us politely got very annoyed…and after waiting for up two two hours…simply gave up and walked out…even though they had paid up front…after waiting in a queue…just to get a drink and place an order…for…well rather a long time…
But it was a nice location…and the weather was fine…and eventually rather than being annoyed…I found the chaos quite funny….
I thought well…I will take a few photos and maybe write a few things…My wife said…you are not doing that…under my Facebook account…absolutely no way…I did of course ask first..cos I am like that…though I very rarely use Facebook…
So I thought, O.K…I will log out…and do it under my own name…Yes I still have an account…even though Facebook told me…that someone from the USA had been trying to log on to it under my name…and thought it probably wasn’t me…cos well..they had probably sussed that I do not work for either the NSA or the CIA…
So I tried to log out… I succeeded in doing this only a few weeks ago..in Spain…but since then…Facebook has removed the logout function from Android phones..or it seemed to me they had…I couldn’t find it anywhere…
So I thought I would be clever…and try everything I could to crash Facebook, remove data…almost everything except throw the phone very hard against a brick wall…Then I tried a google search…I tried what was suggested 3 months ago….but they had even changed that..so that you could no longer log out of Facebook…I thought this is silly…I’m supposed to be having a nice meal in a nice location…
Now I have got home (obviously sober)…don’t be silly you can’t get drunk at that rate of service…I have found out the only most obscure way to log out of Facebook on an Android phone…that so far as I can tell…has not yet been documented…
I do realise why Facebook has done this…but why did the Pub fire all their staff two days ago…to replace them with a new bunch…without even a manager to teach them the basics….
I guess it has something to do with “WORK EXPERIENCE”…commonly called Slave Labour…at this rate the poor kids aren’t even going to get any tips…though of course they can at least eat and get drunk.
My wife can’t sing for toffee..but even she started on Hotel California..You can Checkout any Time You Like…But You Can Never Leave…
And then I thought of The ENGLISH SLAVES again…
This is only their Second Day…and they Will have to do The Evening Shift Now Too…
All For Free
Disclaimer…My Daughter worked her way through 4 years at University…doing this kind of work…She learnt how to do it on a second visit with her schoolfriend, and her Mum and Dad and brother..in Kefalonia…when she was 15. (We took our Kid’s Friends on Holiday with Us Too).
But After Her Work Experience…which she did on holiday at a Very Family Greek Place For Free…
She Got Paid…She learnt all the Skills There.
Be nice to the Barmaid.
Tony
Death toll rises as Israel bombing intensifies
Israel steps up strikes from air and sea, leaving at least 38 people reportedly dead and many more injured in Gaza, as Hamas fires rockets deep into Israel.
http://www.channel4.com/news/gaza-israel-airstrikes-dead-rockets-hamas
http://bcove.me/cheoghor video shown on tonight’s Channel 4 News
7.20pm Don’t be so asinine.
“ISIS or ISIL may be largely responsible and Palestians are Sunni”
As if that has anything to do with it. If ISIS genuinely wanted to harm US/EU/Israeli interests it would take over the Iraqi oilfields, currently controlled by the multinationals.
“There are decent people I know in the BBC. Why do they put up with this?”
Salary, career, the club and coke are much more important than dead women and kids.
I’d have thought that all the history we have of this phenomenon would have made the answer obvious.
It’s clear too that many “decent” people looked away as kids were raped and buggered to a political agenda, and even now they’re engaged in another cover up.
There’s nothing decent about them. Never was. Never will be.
Mary
“On 9 July 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the occupied Palestinian territory”
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Can you – or someone else – please provide a link to that Opinion?
Experience on this blog has taught me that when one reads links carefully (which of course commenters assume people won’t) there’s usually something in it which partially invalidates the line the commmenter is peddling.
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“Complete disregard by Israel for any laws, international or otherwise.”
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This is a typical piece of nonsense from you, Mary.
The inhabitants of Israel (including Israeli Arabs) enjoy better legal protection in Israel than they would in any Arab country.
You – and your fellow Eminences – may wish to consider the following:
On the late C19 and early C20, Jews left Eastern Europe in their hundreds of thousands to avoid discrimination and persecution. Is there any evidence of Israeli Arabs wishing to leave Israel in their (hundreds of) thousands? On the contrary – one of the demands of the Palestinian negotiators is, and has always been, the “right of return” to …. Israel.
Opinions welcome, as always.
“As if that has anything to do with it”
I guess I misunderstood your point. True enough Israeli/ISIS present interests may converge, but ISIS has been quite active in Gaza, leaving Hamas holding the bag. Rope-a-dope isn’t just a boxing strategy.
Have there been any BBC whistle blowers on policy and how it is implemented?
Habbabkuk If I appeared to omit the Saudis and other Gulf fascists it was not intentional, they are all monsters. All powerful Israel has the ability at a stroke to end this entire historic saga, along with their grotesque fellow travellers in the Arab world, US and Europe. But there is too much behind the scenes, geo politics, land grabs, ethnic cleansing, press propaganda, oil, Ziofascists, epic corruption, Arab hegemony, “Royal” privilege, and obese kleptocrats and banksters in the west with far too much to gain by keeping this catastrophe going. May they boil in shit in hell.
I don’t do Israel…though I have been to Sharm-El-Sheikh …which is almost the same…The snorkeling and diving is amazingly good…but it is even less like Egypt…than Agadir is like Morocco…Of course to try and escape out of these artificial tourists resorts…which are all over the world..and discover the real world – exactly how it is…finding and meeting the people who actually live in Their Countries…takes a bit of effort and courage…
But my Wife and I always did it..and so do our kids…and so do our friends’ kids….
I mean FFS do I really want to go THERE…even at my age??? I won’t bother giving you a list starting with Las Vegas….
We have been travelling so much throughout our lives…I know I had a very well paid job…and got an exceedingly large number of days off work 34+ bank holidays + negotiated time off for working very long hours when it was really needed (the thing just had to work – or we would all lose our jobs – and there was absolutely no way it was going to not work – we were so good – but I didn’t realise it at the time – cos it was just Normal – it was just what we did)…
Yet – I had all the support of the Companies I was working For..They did all the Nonsense Paper Work…
My Son Runs His Own Business…Yet last Year He Managed to get out rather a lot…with no support from me…but a lot from his friends…
He did 3 months in S.E Asia…After being invited to well…it wasn’t Israel …he just about got a pass on the stamps on his passport.
England is Just So Beautiful.
We go camping a lot.
Tony
Herbie
I realise that sole people hold that everything is political, but I was nevertheless surprised to see you write “kids were raped and buggered to a political agenda”.
What do you think that “political agenda” was (be as expansive as you wish), and do you think that (non-political)perverted sexual lust might have played a part in those rapes and buggerings?
While the tears of the fleeing ethnic cleansed of eastern Ukrainians are being shed so tragically the trivial weeping of the Brazilian fans is tonight’s BBC Worlds banal Global headline story! Then, to add insult to viewers’ intelligence the World Business news report aims to find a futile correlation between the global money markets and world cup football results. The World cup distraction/diversion tactics practiced by the BBC to avoid having to report on the unjustifiable political double dealing of US, UK and EU governments that the Ukraine war represents are plain stark, staring obvious
Tony Opmoc
We can always rely on you for some long-winded and whimsical diversionary posts from you when discussion heats up, can’t we.
Sofia – quick, some more sci-fi from you, please, to keep up the good work!
Johnstone (20h07)
Is there a point lurking under that exceedingly turgid prose?
I completely agree the bias of the BBC. Do look at Media Lens who analyse this so well.
These 2 news sites just made my blood boil today:
http://news.sky.com/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10954124/Where-is-the-outrage-over-the-bombardment-of-civilians-in-Israel.html
I’m old enough to remember the recalcitrance of white South Africans. At least there we had reasonable reporting.
Please please complain. I had a fob off response from Channel 4 but at least they had someone from Hamas tonight.
Loved your poem Mary!
Fred – you’ve managed to find one webpage where they put it fairly.
The Media Group at Glasgow University did the sums a while back. Have a read.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3829967.stm
Alex
I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I thought that you were referring to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies when you wrote “but the horrible bastards want to preserve their own DYNASTIC heritage”. That is why I responded by saying ” you err in not including OTHER Arab regimes (OTHER than the monarchies) in your condemnation” – meaning that you had erred in not mentioning non-monarchic Arab régimes such as Syria, Egypt, Irak.
Hope that clarifies.
Clicking on ‘palestine campaign.org’ (PSC) produces ‘Resource Limit Is Reached’
Has the Hasbara outfit been busy? They are capable of doing so.
The classic re the bias in BBC’s middle east coverage is Ahmadinejad’s “wipe off the map” speech.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/norouzi.php?articleid=11025
Despite the fact that it was a gross misreprentation, when complained about, the BBC found nothing wrong in their umpteen retellings of it – such is their arrogant disdain for accuracy, sorry – their ‘impartiality’.
Getting the BBC to acknowledge any failing is a tortuous process…
http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/blog/item/5620-bbc-finally-admits-bias-over-pro-israel-commentator
Unless its the orchestrated pro-Zionist lobby which jumps en masse upon the slightest thing they disapprove of and successfully bombard the BBC
“Fred – you’ve managed to find one webpage where they put it fairly.”
It was the first one on the list.
When I look at competitors, such as Sky say, it’s a different story.
“After a day of counter-strikes between Hamas and Israeli forces, rockets are fired at the highly secure Dimona nuclear site.”
http://news.sky.com/story/1297664/hamas-attempts-strike-on-israeli-nuclear-site
Has to be the most blatant piece of anti Palestinian propaganda yet, as if they could aim their rockets.
Yet when I look at the comments section I see the British public consider Sky to have a Palestinian bias.