"…sent a joint complaint to the BBC after a presenter on its Football Focus program on March 24 mentioned that Jerusalem was Israel's capital and "historic soul.'" -- from this news article
What was the mistake? Jerusalem is Israel's capital. It is the place where the Knesset meets, and the President has his house, as well as the Vice-President. Jerusalem is also the "historic soul," as the keen presenter put it, of Israel. Where is the Western Wall? Where is the Old City itself, with that Western Wall? And where, despite Arab depredations, remains so much of what is central to Jewish history and Jewish life?
The fact that in 1948 the Arab Legion managed to seize the Old City and hold onto it until the Six-Day War, does not make Jerusalem less a center, the "historic soul," of Israel. And since the Six-Day War, because of Arab blackmail, based on a quite unnecessary fear of offending what are essentially gas station owners who need have no favors done them beyond paying the posted price for their gas, the Western world has forgotten the legal, moral, and historic claim of the Jews to Jerusalem. It has proceeded to believe that the Arab claim, which is based not on history but on the belief that a single phrase in the Qur'an (Jerusalem is nowhere mentioned in that Qur'an) about the "farthest mosque" (al-masjid al-aksa) must mean that that mosque is located in Jerusalem, right on Temple Mount (which is where, after some initial squabbling, Muslims of the time of the Umayyad Caliphate based in nearby Damascus, as a symbol of the power of Islam and the conquering Muslims, decided to place it, in the city holy to Jews and Christians, right smack on the site most important to Jews).
It is a matter of regret that Western countries did not immediately recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, thereby getting it over with forty years ago. It is too bad, but it reflects not history, nor a historical judgment, but merely cowardice and laziness. One can compare this inattention to real history, with the alacrity with which, after the Six-Day War, the Western world, or much of it, accepted the hastily-created "Palestinian people" out of what had always been -- not least among the Arab diplomats and leaders -- merely the "Arabs" of the area.
Those Arabs suddenly acquired not merely a name, but a hasty "construction of 'Palestinian' identity" out of people identical in language, culture, religion, in every way, to those other Arabs around them. They took on this purely verbal cloak to disguise, for obvious propagandistic reasons, the Arab war against the Infidel state of Israel, which is nothing but a classic Jihad, the Lesser Jihad.
The BBC can apologize all it wants to the Arabs and Muslims who have it in thrall. This is merely of a piece with its entire editorial policy, and its speakers and speakerines, of a piece with the head of its World Service, John Simpson (who, or possibly which, google along with "Jihad Watch" to find out about his enthusiastic delight in the antisemitic conspiracy history of one Lonni Brenner). And it is of a piece with the hideous crap the British and world public have been fed about the Middle East, and that has aroused the fury not only of those with a particular sympathy for Israel, but of all those who are still capable of seeing through the manipulation by and of the media -- such people, for example, as the celebrated Soviet dissident, long resident in Cambridge, England, Vladimir Bukovsky, who finds the BBC Stalinoid.
A very few of the individual reporters who spewed their venom have been transferred away from the Middle East. There was Barbara Plett, who wept when Yassir Arafat died (for more on Arafat, see the account of Magdi Allam in the just-published "Viva Israele"). There was Orla Guerin, who was herself married to the mob -- that is, she was married to a 'Palestinian' who told her all she needed to know, and which she was intent, every day, on helping the larger public know as well. She reported on the Arabs and Israel. Her accounts of the 'Palestinians' in their self-inflicted wretchedness and hate and cultivated primitivization reflected a diseased sympathy. She got to be even too much for the BBC, which has now switched her to southern Africa, while Barbara Plett reports from Afghanistan and Pakistan. But so many others remain in place, including those whose voices became immediately hostile when the word "Israel" was mentioned, and whose "interviews" with Israeli officials became exercises not in mere skepticism, but in hectoring abuse, while the assorted "Palestinians" and "Arabs" were treated with kid gloves, and all kinds of local open supporters of terrorism, including an open supporter of Hamas, were welcomed on the BBC, introduced with respect, and allowed to speak their piece.
That's the BBC.
BBC's impartiality and left-leaning are now officialy recognized by BBC itself:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6763205.stm
I wonder if any of you like me have tried posting on the BBC's 'Have your Say' facility on their website. It is absolutely impossible to get any comment even mildly critical of Muslims or Palestinians on there via the PC Dhimmi moderators. If however you wish to call for Muslim or Palestinian victory in the most violent terms whatsoever no problem at all and if you wish to critisise and denigrate, no matter how vehemently and unjustly Israel, the USA or British Government or any other Western Government go right ahead they love it.
"....cowardice and laziness...."
....both appear often in the western governments attitudes toward Islam....
All this hoopla from the Big Boob Company? Does "stiff upper lip" mean anything to these yahoo's at the bbc? Realist: I have tried posting on the bbc "have your say" I guess I'm not left enough. I may hurt someones feelings. Meanwhile, the paki's are trying run Briton, and prince charles is an islamo want to be. On the positive edge, I have more faith, thus far, in his sons.
Hugh, On June 4th or 5th I was listening to NPR radio. They had the BBC World program on, which was falling all over itself breathlessly "reporting" for a full hour (or more) on the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War. They had "reporters" live and linked in several Arab countries as well as Israel. They had martial music and hosts barely able to catch their breath from the excitement of it all. As could be expected from the Arabist BBC it was very one-sided (guess which way everything was slanted). In the rare moments where Israel's point of view was mentioned it was almost 100% on how Israel's occupation sapped the euphoria of victory and has been the primary cause of most of the problems of today. They even found a way to blame Israel for what's gone on in Gaza since Israel's withdrawal, without a word about daily rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel. And this was before the Hamas takeover of Gaza.
I was stunned to hear this program at all, stunned that it ran for a solid hour (or more), and had to wonder why it received such play from NPR. It was during the day and it pre-empted any other programming, even regular news at the top or bottom of the hour. If you tuned in in the middle of it you could easily think it was live coverage of the events happening now--not 30 year old "news."
I guess this is worth a mention on Dhimmi Watch.
You are right, Realist, it is impossible. I have written quite a few polite, concise, and relevant (though politically incorrect) comments to the BBC's HYS facility, and they don't get posted. I even registered on the site as I thought it might be because they just ignored guest commenters. Yet they seem to have no problem posting badly written, mispelled, even incomplete comments that toe their approved line.
This article in the Telegraph covers the BBC's own internal report on bias and more telling is the comments section.
http://tinyurl.com/2am66s
There's a ground swell of opinion against the BBC and I would agree.
I personally don't pay my license fee and risk fines and prosecution.
I don't object to the BBC because that would be against my belief in absolute freedom of the press.
What I and many Brits object to is the way it's funded by a blanket tax that is payable by every single household in the nation.
It is effectively extortion which is also a trait inherent in Islam..is it any wonder it gets a free pass from Al-BBC...
I think not.
Just one example from the comments section:
"It is all too simplistic, even somewhat lazy to describe the BBC as a kind of woolly but well-meaning liberal left university Common Room. It's far more sinister than that. After all, they still cling on to the vainglorious title of being a "British" organisation and despite a disturbing anti-Western bias they happily take our money. In truth, the BBC is one of the last of the nationalised industries, heavily infiltrated by a narrow, bigoted Londoncentric elite - a publicly renumerated alternative political party that no one voted for. After all, this is the channel whose teletext newspaper coverage of the press regularly included reports from the extremist Morning Star. You just have to look at their TV programming to witness the contempt their have for the rest of us. In truth, the BBC is now no longer taken seriously as a balanced news gatherer by anyone and they are so possessed with PC zeal that their news reports are often hours behind their competitors as in-house Stasi style commissars check editorial coverage to ensure it fits with the prevailing dictak. Despite their obsessive mantra: "majority bad, minority good" - the one group excluded from their protection are the Jews. Their Judeophobia is well documented (see the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism) and is being currently hidden away in a Report they won't publish. With Israel under mortal danger from Syria, Hezbollah & Hamas and a Summer war in the offing, you can almost hear the champagne corks popping at Broadcasting House and White City."
Realist, an update to my earlier comment: I have just found out that if you register on the BBC's HYS system you can see all your previous comments and what happened to them. It seems that to date I have commented 20 times, 10 on Islamic immigration / Middle East / women in veils type of issues, 10 on completely unrelated matters.
On these "other" matters my acceptance rate for comments was 7 out of 10, on Islamic matters it was just 1 out of 10. Fairly conclusive, as far as I am concerned.