My friend Douglas Murray catches the BBC in a particularly egregious bit of antisemitic falsification of reality. “Bigotry on the Beeb,” by Douglas Murray in the Spectator, November 19 (thanks to Anne Crockett):
I have only just caught up on the latest episode of BBC Radio 4″s “˜Any Questions”. In that programme, from All Saints Church in Somerset, a Mr Stephen Bedford asked the panel this question:
“˜Despite all the foreign aid and support Israel has spectacularly failed to get on with its neighbours. Does Israel deserve a future?”…
Well, one reason is that so many British politicians, including Britain’s favourite idiot granny Shirley Williams, tell them lies about Israel which the BBC allows to go out uncorrected. Here is Shirley Williams in reply to the bigoted question with which (unlike the excellent two conservative voices on the panel) she had absolutely no problem.
Shirley Williams told the audience that Gaza is “˜a slum” and then went on to say the following:
“˜It’s crowded out to the gills. It’s full of people struggling to find a box in which to live. It’s full of people who see their land slowly eaten up by more and more Israeli settlements.”
What settlements? What “˜slow eating up”? Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005. There is not a Jew in Gaza. Not a Jewish family, not a Jewish settlement, not a Jewish house, not a Jew. The place is — as the Palestinians have said they would like the West Bank to be if it comes under their full control — wholly and absolutely Judenrein. The last Jew in Gaza was Gilad Shalit. Does Shirley Williams think he was there building settlements for five years, rather than holed up in captivity as a hostage of Hamas?…