Mel Flips over new Israel boycott

Melanie Phillips has just heard about plans to promote an academic boycott of Israel at the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education. But then she knew about it before it was publicised because:

As was entirely predictable, there is to be another attempt this year at an academic boycott of Israel. This one is to come not as last year from the AUT but the rival higher education union, NATFHE. All this was predicted on this website – and elsewhere – last year when the AUT effort failed and NATFHE’s strategy became all too apparent.

She then berates the opponents of the AUT boycott because they opposed the boycott on the wrong grounds.

The argument last time, which led overwhelmingly to the defeat of the boycott, was the issue of academic freedom. Of course this is important. But it’s not the point. The reason the boycott is so evil is that it is based on a series of Big Lies – the lie of Israeli ‘apartheid’, of Israeli ‘oppression’, ‘aggression’, ‘occupation’ and all the rest of the demonology of delegitimisation, ignorance and prejudice. Running through last year’s resistance movement against the boycott was the argument that academic freedom was necessary in order to continue to demonise and delegitimise Israel (I paraphrase, but that essentially was the message). That aspect of the resistance was thus guilty of the same prejudice that was behind the boycott itself. It was thus not only wrong in itself but ultimately self-defeating because it meant that the inspiration for the boycott was not only not being addressed but would surely lead to the boycott springing to life once again.

So it has now proved. This time, the resistance must take on the actual cause of the boycott: the wellsprings of hatred of the Jewish state which course through our campuses. Freedom of speech is not the issue. It’s the bigotry, stupid.

Clearly Mel hasn't realised that the opponents of the boyvott had to pretend to be concerned about the occupation, sorry, the "occupation," in order to get the boycott overturned. Any NATFHE delegate who might be fooled by this should visit the Engage site to be disabused of that absurd notion.

The antisemitism gag

That's not the gag about the Englishman, the Irishman and the nazi, it's the way the charge of antisemitism is used to silence criticism of Israel. Here's a Counterpunch article by Norman Solomon titled Gag and Smear, The Misuses of "Anti-Semitism."

The failure to make a distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel routinely stifles public debate. When convenient, pro-Israel groups in the United States will concede that it's possible to oppose Israeli policies without being anti-Semitic. Yet many of Israel's boosters reflexively pull out the heavy artillery of charging anti-Semitism when their position is challenged.

Numerous American Jewish groups dedicated to supporting Israel are eager to equate Israel with Judaism. Sometimes they have the arrogance to depict the country and the religion as inseparable. For example, in April 2000, a full-page United Jewish Appeal ad in The New York Times proclaimed: "The seeds of Jewish life and Jewish communities everywhere begin in Israel."

Of course there are many articles and even books about the antisemitism smear but this article comes from a chap who was a zionist activist in his youth. And this whilst more and more people are refusing to take the smear seriously anymore, there is very little exposure of it in the mainstream media.

As an aside here, this article is one of many arising out of the Mearsheimer and Walt article in the London Review of Books. No matter how it is ignored in the popular press and smeared in the "serious" press, that article seems to have released the genie from the bottle.

Zionists prepare for NATFHE boycott motion

From Ha'aretz, NATFHE, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education,

The largest university and college lecturers union in Britain is likely to decide shortly to recommend that its 67,000 members boycott Israeli lecturers and academic institutions that do not publicly declare their opposition to Israeli policy in the territories.

The boycott motion, which was drafted by the southeast region of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE), will be brought to a vote at its annual national conference, which will be held May 27-29. It comes about a year after the last boycott by British lecturers.

In April 2005, the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) decided to impose an academic boycott on Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities, but subsequently reversed the decision. The two lecturers organizations are slated to merge at the beginning of June.

The Engage website was a central resource in the campaign to have the Association of University Teachers. Let's hope delegates have a good browse this time around. Engage has degenerated from disingenuousness to downright dishonesty since the AUT business.

Rachel Corrie wasn't neutral shock!

Strange interviews on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning. John Humphries interviewed some chap who said it was wrong that the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie didn't contain anything about Rachel burning an American flag surrounded by militants". It was something like that anyway. This meant, he said, that Rachel was not neutral as she had been portrayed. She was with the ISM who are against the occupation. No one said she was neutral but the programme actually got worse when Humphries interviewed her parents. He asked them if the bullbozer driver (I think he said "the Israelis") may have thought she was a combatant. That's Rachel Corrie, the woman who was running around a tank in a bright orange jacket and holding a megaphone. Can you imagine the outcry if the BBC sought to justify the murder of an Israeli by a Palestinian in that way? Anyway you can listen to the broadcast here. You have to scroll down a bit but it's worth it to hear an example of how it was a recent independent report found that the BBC is biased in favour of Israel. You can also hear Rachel's parents giving a very good account of themselves and their daughter.

Linda Grant: an apology

Wow! This is exciting stuff. I posted that correspondence between Linda Grant and me because Engage wouldn't post a comment of mine under the Irene Bruegel article, responding to a load of emotive disingenuous nonsense by her (Linda not Irene). Well after I posted it, they posted my comment. Anyway, then they posted one by Deborah Fink. And then another one by Deborah Maccoby. So here's how it all began, I noticed this post from Linda Grant:

As far as I'm aware, Jews against Zionism oppose Zionism full stop. I take their position to be one of opposition to all forms of nationalism, but particularly Zionism, as it's predicated on the dispossession of another people's rights.


As their argument commences from the left, from an anti-nationalist socialism, they labour hard to provide evidence that Zionism and the right, including the evangelical right, and the anti-semitic right, are natural allies.

Frequently evidence presents itself which contradicts the clean lines of this position, but complexity isn't one of their great interests, and so they must find a means of eliding the inherent contradictions of documentary reality.

Basically, they fundamantalists-lite. They have a dogma.

A dogma, got that? Now here's Deborah Maccoby. She's a plucky one I must say:

I don't think any members of JAZ would dispute that many antisemites have jumped on to the anti-Zionist bandwagon. But surely the best way to unmask their real agenda is to bring out the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Instead, Engage adopts the dogmatic position that all anti-Zionism is antisemitism (in effect even if not in intent). The result is that only JAZ is actively opposing the Shamir group (and incurring great hostility from this group) because only JAZ can identify and act against real antisemitism.

As a corrective to the dogmatic Engage position, JAZ points out the many connections between Zionism and antisemitism. Personally I think Zionism is not monolithic and has had many different aspects and is full of contradictions, but certainly a mainstream trend of Zionism arose as a reaction to nationalistic, fascist antisemitism and formed its own nationalism, which we see now turning into fascism. There is of course a strong connection between Christian Zionism and antisemitism (this is just one aspect of the strong links between Zionism and antisemitism). And Israel has a vested interest in promoting antisemitism,, so that more Jews will emigrate to Israel. Also Israel uses European guilt about antisemitism in order to cover up its politicide against the Palestinians. And Engage, wittingly or not, is aiding it in this exploitation.

Deborah

That was a red rag to some but I want to cut through the non-celebrity dross and concentrate mostly on Linda Grant. Aha, there he is, it's me:

Linda

It's wrong to say that Jews against zionism are dogmatic. There are many different views we have on how governance or society might be improved in what we now call Israel and the occupied territories. Some want a one state solution, some two and still others think (as I do) that it isn't the number of state that is important but how they are ruled. Some want a socialist society others aren't socialists at all. I would say that we all share the view that the Law of Return is wrong and that the right of return should be granted to the Palestinian refugees. My own view is that Israel should adhere to minimalist principles of democracy, liberty and the rule of law and let the chips fall where they may. I see zionism (as in support for a state specifically for Jews) as being far more dogmatic since it has required colonial settlement by Jews, the ethnic cleansing of the native Arabs and an array of laws and policies (and even university conferences) to ensure that the resulting "demographic balance" is maintained.

Regarding zionist collusion and confluence with antisemitism, this is too well documented to either deny or to have to "labour hard to provide evidence of."

We know and we acknowledge that antisemites have used Israel's conduct to smear all Jews just as you and your Engage colleagues have used antisemitism to smear all anti-zionists. It is you and your colleagues who refuse to acknowledge the evidence against your zionist dogma. This is why Engage denunciations of anti-zionists are typically shrill and dishonest in what they say and avoid far more than they engage.

At this point for some reason Linda Grant comes and declares the argument over and the zionists have won.

You can actually hear the moment on this link at which anti-Zionism lost the argument among the overwhelming majority of Jews - it's one of the most extraordinary recordings I have ever heard, eerie and terrifying. Everything else is commentary.

http://www.israelreporter.com/files/radio/BergenBelsenHatikva.mp3

I still haven't listened to it so I don't know when Linda is claiming that her side won the argument among Jews or what exactly it was that brought about the victory. Judging from other remarks she has made I would say that this is one of those "good for Jews" arguments. But I'm only guessing. Next up a rather peculiar chap pops up to invent some stuff "from" my blog:

Mark Elf has a webside called “Jews without borders.” In it he has posted that he is grateful that he is British. When asked how he can be grateful to be a Jew living within a national State with borders he replied that Jews are white and indistinguishable from other white people and should assimilate.

Surely Linda Grant knows that I don't prescribe what Jews should or shouldn't do. After all, as we know, she monitors my blog. Well she seems to have ignored the guy to get back to her "it's good for Jews" schtick.

'let the chips fall where they may'

This remark of Mark's is at the very heart of why Jews against Zionism remains a marginal, peripheral group. He doesn't care what happens to Jews in a future non-Zionist state. The voices on the recording are the result of that not caring. They are his judge.

Patrick Gordon Walker says in his introduction that they want the world to hear what they have to say - I heard it. Loud and clear.

I think she is saying that I am being judged by holocaust victims. She hears them but I don't, therefore she supports a racist and militarist state and I, er, don't. And here's me again:

"Mark Elf has a website called “Jews without borders.” In it he has posted that he is grateful that he is British. When asked how he can be grateful to be a Jew living within a national State with borders he replied that Jews are white and indistinguishable from other white people and should assimilate."

This is absurd. I have never said any of that stuff as people can see for themselves, together with evidence of zionist antisemitism, here:http://tinyurl.com/pzwo7 Given your opening falsehood there's no need for me to deal with rest of what you say save for your last point which I skipped to. I don't see how establishing the most dangerous state where a Jew can live has helped Jews live freely in more democratic societies than Israel.

The relevant point to make here is that from its earliest days the zionist movement saw fit to collude with antisemitic movements and there are examples at every stage of its history up to the present. It began with Herzl's collaboration with the Tsarist regime, Jabotinsky collaborated with Petliura, there was collaboration with the nazis, covering up the antisemitism of the Galtieri regime and the present day collaboration with the antisemites of the Christian right in America. A lot of evidence was posted here -http://tinyurl.com/hzjou and here -http://tinyurl.com/lanpr - together with a fine example of how zionists like to debate.

I was trying to stay on topic. Linda Grant didn't have to do that because whilst the Engage site says that comments have to contribute to the debate, clearly the contributors, like Linda, don't have to abide by such rules. There was a lengthy comment by a guy complaining that all my examples of zionist/antisemite collaboration were taken out of context but that was by the same guy who said that my blog says that Jews should play the white man. Some of his links might be of interest but I couldn't be bothered with him except to say

you should provide a link and a quote from me that makes any reference to my "gratitude" for being British or any notion of mine that Jews should assimilate on the grounds that Jews are white. Not all Jews are white and I don't believe that Jews should assimilate if they don't want to. The closely that I have said that has anything to do with assimilation or segregation of Jews is that neither assimilation nor segregation should be enforced by legislation.

Regardless of what Jews in Israel think, Israel is the most dangerous place on earth that a Jew can live insofaras more Jews have died violently there in the post WWII period than anywhere else in the world.

Linda adopts a new language at this point: Melanie Phillipsish:

Ah yes, dangerous Israel in which Jews have the right of self-determination and self defence, as opposed to Mark's one-state solution where, in his own words. 'let the chips fall where they may.'

Come off it, we all know you don't give a damn about what happens to Israelis. You have never expressed a single word of interest in their fate.

In an interview with Ha'aretz in August 2000, Edward Said was asked what would happen to the Jews if they became a minority in a single state: "It worries me a great deal," he said. "The question of what is going to be the fate of the Jews is very difficult for me. I really don't know. It worries me."

It worries Edward Said, but it doesn't worry Mark Elf.

In summary, Mark Elf and his anti-Zionists don't give a toss about the fate of the Jews, so what's the likelihood of the Jews giving a toss about him?

Any true political activism needs to care about the future of BOTH peoples, to see BOTH as human, to hear BOTH narratives, to recognise BOTH the histories and the suffering. The anti-Zionist left and the Zionist right, only care for one. Cold, callous bastards, in my opinion, all of you.

I didn't read the whole comment at the time. The thing I noticed most was the "don't give a toss" bit. So here's me again:

Linda

The fact that I refuse to support racist rule by any group against any group does not amount to not giving a toss about Jews as a minority in Israel or Palestine or anywhere else and there is no telling that Jews would become a minority in a democratic secular state of Israel/Palestine.

I only joined this discussion because you misrepresented the position of Jews against zionism with regard to the relationship between antisemitism and zionism. I returned because someone lied about my position regarding Jews, assimilation and "whiteness" and now you are misrepresenting Jews against zionism again.

What is happening to Jews now in Palestine is that more are dying violently there, precisely because of zionist rule and the Palestinian resistance to it than are dying violently anywhere else because Jews are not oppressors anywhere else. To end the violence I suggest the oppression should end.

Arguing for Jewish supremacy is not giving a toss about Jews any more than Hitler cared for Germans. It is causing terrible instability and conflict and anyone who looks for a way out of that is routinely denounced as being uncaring at best or antisemitic at worst on this site. Such is the Engage tactic and it is common to all of its contributors. With everything you write you show yourself to be completely lacking in integrity. You can't make a case for Israel because there is no case for Israel so you fabricate a case against Israel's detractors and then with the ultimate chutzpah you declare the argument over and that you have won.

Well done Linda!

I didn't mention that Linda was quoting someone whose right to return she was opposed to and I couldn't check the context of what Edward Said said because Linda Grant was now using another corpse to support her zionist position. So now Linda, the self-proclaimed opponent of dogma, asks me this:

Here's a straightforward question, Mark. What are your own concrete plans for Jews in a unitary state? What detailed, specific proposals have been worked out by advocates of a one-state solution that would ensure that once Jews no longer have the means of self-defence, Edward Said's fears are not realised? Because if you haven't actually worked out those plans, then why should anyone take your professed sympathy for the fate of the Jews seriously?

That's an interesting notion isn't it. If you don't have specific plans for Jews, not humans generally, not all of the people of Palestine, Jews only. If you don't have a plan for Jews you cannot be taken seriously. But there's more from Linda:

(Nor have I of course, Mark, misrepresnted your position. You call for a unitary state and 'let the chips fall where they may.' Your response is merely flapping up and down in indignation and lashing out in ad hominem attacks, as you realise you have painted yourself into a corner.)

She's good at English. Me? I don't understand the brackets. But what ad hominem attacks?

Linda

Re ad hominems and misrepresentation - I'm not playing games here. I haven't engaged in any ad hominem attacks and I haven't used terminology like "cold, callous bastards....all of you." I have stuck to the subject as presented by you and by Irene Bruegel and I have refuted lies about me by someone else. I don't need to repeat stuff here, people can simply look at the comments above, assuming, of course that this comment is allowed through. I had to post the last two twice in order to get them accepted. I hope the censors here won't censor this as it is a response to a question put to me and yet another false allegation, this time that I engage in ad hominem attacks.

"Let the chips fall where they may" means that it is not for anyone to dictate what the outcome of democracy, liberty and the rule of law should be in detail. Democracy means that all can choose their government and form of government, liberty means the absence or minimisation of coercion and the rule of law means that all are protected by the law regardless of their ethno-religious background. I apply those principles everywhere. If I focus more on Israel it is because Israel has more apologists (indeed liars)in the mainstream media than other states that lack this triad of sound principles. I reject the idea that people who support Jewish supremacy, care more about Jews than those of us who support equality. By all means call me naive, but I am not uncaring about the well-being of Jews or of anyone else. The idea that something can be "good for Jews" (as they say) but bad for the rest of humanity is a dangerous brand of short-termism and will ultimately be bad for Jews since Jews are a part of humanity, and I believe should be an integral and equal part of humanity; not apart from nor above nor beneath the rest of humanity.

The only thing we can be sure of if your Geneva accords were to be implemented is that Jews would continue to be the armed majority in Palestine and that the Palestinians would continue to be mostly dispossessed, scattered and powerless. When I asked you on the Just Peace forum if Israel could persist in its internal ethnic cleansing under the Geneva accords your reply was "I hope not." Hardly a detailed plan or a proposal to be taken seriously, any more than your cherry picking the points made in order to "paint [someone] into a corner" is.

and here's Linda once again declaring the argument over and that she has won:

Thanks. Your cupboard's bare then. Edward Said worries about the fate of the Jews in a single state. You don't.

Now here's my comment that they held back for a good while:

Deal with the arguments and stop falling back on emotive irrelevances. It is you who supports a situation that is getting Jews and Arabs killed in unacceptably large numbers and it is my belief that it is the injustice inflicted on the Palestinians by the zionist movement that is mostly responsible for this. Whether I worry about this or that group has no relevance to the rights and wrongs of the situation.

It makes no difference to me what Edward Said said but I would be interested to see the context of the quote you provide. Many people have expressed concern that whilst the Palestinians have indicated that they are willing to share Palestine as equals with Jews, the more they are oppressed and the longer the oppression persists, this willingness may disappear. Let's hope not. That would be worrying for both sides - not that worrying by me or by you is relevant.

And that might have been an end to it. But no, there's another Deborah, Fink this time

I've noticed that although you do post the comments of Elf and myself, you don't do so on the same page. You have therefore, not posted my last comment here and I guess, were Mark to defend me on another page, you wouldn't post that either.

You like to make us look like minorities who are a bait for your crows.

Obviously an offer they couldn't refuse. And that really should have been an end to it but no, Deborah Maccoby is back exposing Linda Grant's disingenuousness over her "quote" from Edward Said:

I don't think Linda Grant should be allowed to get away with quoting Edward Said entirely out of context. Her quote from him is taken from an Ari Shavit interview with Said in Ha'aretz, August 18th, 2000, which I recommend everyone to look up and read. He advocates a binational state in which Jews and Palestinians can retain their national identities but overcome their nationalism (note the difference). Shavit says this would make the Jews into a minority and yes, Said does say that he is worried about the fate of the Jews as a minority in the Middle East, but later on he returns to the subject of the Jews as a minority and strongly qualifies his previous statement by pointing out how much worse and more dangerous their present militaristic, paranoid ghetto Jewish State is:

"As a Jew, you obviously have good reasons to be afraid. But in the long run, one should move toward less rather than more anxiety. Maybe I'm wrong, but the way I read it, the present existence of Israel is based largely upon fending off what's around and preventing it, as it were, from crashing in. That's an unattractive way to live, I think. The nationalistic option created an anxiety-ridden society. It produced paranoia, militarization and a rigid mindset. All for what? The other way, the option I'm talking about, would give you, the Jews, a much more mobile and open life. It would give the project of the Jews coming to Palestine, to Israel, a much saner basis."

This is all left out by Linda, and she seriously distorts the quotation from Said by quoting it out of context.

Deborah (Maccoby)

Let's hope that's the last word.

Sweet revenge?

I often avoid anything that smacks of a conspiracy theory involving Israel even it looks plausible. There are so many theories involving the super-human efficacy of the Mossad that even when they appear true they're best avoided. I saw a reputable journalist in an Israeli paper saying that Israel poisoned Arafat but I either avoided it or buried in a post on something else. But this has appeared in the Daily Telegraph and whilst it has come a long way since its former owner, Conrad Black, got nicked, isn't given to conspiracy theories against Israel.

Israel's secret service used poisoned chocolate to kill a Palestinian wanted for plane hijackings, it was claimed yesterday.

Wadia Haddad, a terrorist with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had been suspected of several hijackings, including the 1976 seizure of an airliner at Entebbe, Uganda.

A new book claims Mossad plied the 140kg Haddad -- who had a weakness for chocolate -- with poisoned Belgian sweets for six months in the late 1970s.

The book is called Striking Back, by Aaron J Klein. Israel always strikes back, never first.

Linda Grant's new fiction - Who cares wins

I've just been having the most ridiculous discussion with Linda Grant on the Engage site comments and frankly I am only posting this in a fit of pique because her debating style is so dishonest, emotive and hypocritical. The gist of her "argument" tonight was that I am uncaring about Jews in Palestine because I believe in democratic rights for all, liberty for all and for all to be protected by the rule of law.

Now I should say here that I don't like or respect Linda Grant. It goes back to reading her apologetics in the Guardian for some time. I remember that I told a friend of mine that I thought she was simply a zionist propagandist and he told me that he had read her book, When I lived in modern times, and that he thought she was simply mistaken as to the politics of the situation. I respected his opinion but again and again I noticed in her Guardian articles a clear bias in favour of zionism and some profoundly devious formulations. I often couldn't put my finger on them but one day she made reference to an incident that seemed to me to be implausible in the extreme. It's here:

at the stone-setting ceremony for my mother at a Bournemouth cemetery last year, the prayers were drowned out by a gang of teenage boys screaming "Die, fucking Jews, die".

Since there is no positive case for Israel zionists have an interest in exaggerating the incidence and indeed fabicrating incidents of antisemitism and I couldn't believe my luck when a mere four months later in a letter to the same Guardian, Linda Grant was protesting that:

I have not, as Rabbi Goldberg implies, ever commented, in print or otherwise about anti-Semitism in Britain.

This was back in 2002. I didn't start my blog until February or March 2004 but when the excuse arose I posted that Linda Grant had lied about the stone-setting incident. Well then I got an email from her and we had an exchange that had me thinking, wrongly, that she's not such a bad old stick after all. See this:

Dear Mr Elf

Unfortunately for me, I stumbled across your weblog. The distortions of my positions on various matters would be enough to fill a whole corrections and clarifications column in the Guardian, but are harmless enough as it is easy for anyone to check the originals which you helpfully link to.

However, I have read the following several times and can only assume that you are stating that I invented an anti-Semitic incident at my mother’s stone-setting in 2000.* This event was attended by around 30 people all of whom witnessed it. I believe the synagogue subsequently reported it to the police. Unless you have some convincing evidence to counter these eye witness accounts, I am going to have to ask you to remove this reference from your website. Perhaps it was merelkt badly worded and you merely meant that I had stated that I had not written about anti-Semitism in the UK and this small mention in an article about the Durban conference is in contradiction to that claim. You are welcome to make the point for what it’s worth, not very much in my view, but you cannot leave readers of your site with the impression that I invented an ugly and upsetting anti-Semitic incident. I think you will find that would come under the heading of libel. I have no wish to assault your right to free speech on the subject of Zionism, however that right does not extend to fabrication.

You do not, by the way, have my permission to reproduce this email on your website.*

Yours sincerely

Linda Grant

I checked with friends about this and all agreed that even though it was indeed implausible especially given her later denial of ever having said anything about antisemitism in Britain, then I had better remove the offending piece. Now see this:

Dear Ms Grant

Thank you very much for your email.

I actually checked with the police in Bournemouth when I read that stuff about the incident at your mother's stone-setting and they said that they could not find a record of it. That, of course didn't mean that it didn't happen. I just remember thinking how implausible it was at the time and phoning to check. Then, in response to an article by a rabbi, you wrote to The Guardian saying that you hadn't written or even said anything about anti-Semitism in the UK. This made the original piece all the more implausible. Not only could you not remember writing about it but you couldn't remember talking about it. These, I thought, were good enough reasons to assume that you were lying.

Anyway, I have now changed the word "falsified" to "written" and the word "lie" to "story", though frankly I'm not convinced and I certainly cannot be accused of "fabrication"; presumption perhaps but not fabrication.

I must say how honoured I feel that you stumbled on my blog. Kindly tell me what you were looking for when you found it. I'm guessing you were looking up "Linda Grant" but, as I know from this encounter, I shouldn't make assumptions.

Again thanks

Yours sincerely

Mark Elf

Now this is where it gets a bit weird. See her next letter and my response:

Dear Mr Elf

I have just checked your weblog and you have not made any alteration. Dealing with you on this matter rather reminds me of a similar incident regarding David Irving’s website: http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/00/08/Guardian260800.html. I have not been able to wrest any correction from him either. I’m afraid those who make a career of distorting verifiable facts end up in the libel courts.

As I have explained to you, there were around 30 witnesses to this event. The fact is that though you claim to be an anti-racist and opponent of the far-right, your comments may end up on a far-right website, and the desecration of my mother’s stone-setting by teenage thugs will become part of the very agenda you profess to fight. And all in the name of cheap, political point-scoring.

Yours sincerely

Linda Grant

Oo-er, perplexing stuff but trust me.

Don't be hasty now. I changed it. If it hasn't taken on all the archives that's just my inexperience. Calm down while I check.

Go there: http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_jewssansfrontieres_archive.html

And if you compare liberal people like myself to holocaust deniers in order to denounce "cheap political point scoring" you'll only make yourself look ridiculous.

Regards

Mark Elf

Phew! get this:

Found it. I had a weekly archive and changed to monthly. When I edited, it only edited the monthly. I didn't know the weekly had stayed in tact. I have now had to reschedule the whole archive to weekly again so that the changes would take throughout the whole archive.

Now check this:

http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2004_04_04_jewssansfrontieres_archive.html

Now, I wrote to a friend of mine to tell him about this (your first email) and he reckoned that you're possibly particularly upset because this struck a nerve, not about your writing, but about your mother. For that, I truly apologise. [I'll return to this apology in a mo']

Mark Elf

Now this is where Linda Grant starts to make nice and I start to be more stupid and gullible than usual.

Dear Mark

Your friend is quite correct. My mother died after a lengthy and horrible illness. What you do not know, and what I have not written about because it is a private, family matter, is that the stone-setting incident exacerbated an existing situation.

[Linda Grant has correctly pointed out that a reference here to an innocent person she used to get me to delete the post the first time around wasn't fair and has threatened to have my blog pulled. So I've deleted that reference - everything else is a matter of public record - albeit only from Linda Grant]

We spoke to the shul the next day who said that they would deal with it. We didn’t follow up on it because that was not our priority.

In the light of this information might I suggest that you remove the reference altogether.

Yours sincerely

Linda Grant

Moving stuff huh? Linda Grant wrote about an incident that was very upsetting for somebody, in the Guardian where hundreds of thousands of people, including that somebody, could read it and here she was asking me to delete all reference to it on my then 20 or so hits a day blog. And what did muggins do? You guessed correctly. I deleted all reference to it.

Right I've completely overhauled the offending post.

http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2004_04_04_jewssansfrontieres_archive.html

Regards

Mark

Ever the self-justifier, back she comes:

By the way, this is a complete misreading of what I actually said: “Well in between the mealy mouthed hand-wringing we find that Linda has no solution for the problem in Palestine but she does identify the problem. It's the suicide bombings.”

The suicide bombings are not the cause of hamatzav, (the situation) they are the cause of the buah (the bubble of denial). And the buah have now become part of hamatzav.

But you’re right, I don’t have a solution,.

And my final response:

Sorry Linda - I don't do nuance - I do black and white (but you knew that already)

I have to go to work now.

Regards

Mark

She did reply to say that nuance is her speciality but I didn't keep a copy of that. I thought we got on quite well in the end but when I wrote to her to try to get her help in getting an article published she seemed a bit curt and when I asked her for a link to her claim that most religious attacks in America were on Jews she assumed I was calling her a liar again which I wasn't; I really wanted to know. I think that little bout resulted in her calling me a "conspiracy theorist" but I didn't keep the correspondence then.

Anyway the apology. You remember?

I wrote to a friend of mine to tell him about this (your first email) and he reckoned that you're possibly particularly upset because this struck a nerve, not about your writing, but about your mother. For that, I truly apologise.

Well here's what the lovely Linda did with the apology. This was much later on the Nick Cohen site. Nick Cohen has deleted all comments on his blog now and stops all commenting after a little mess he got himself into on this site so I posted what I could here. Here's the stuff re the apology. It starts with me in comment 74.

On my blog I simply seek to expose liars in the media. You know yourself that I am always willing to correct any mistake pointed out to me and to apologise for the same. That is not part of any problem from an honest humanist perspective. I can see how a zionist might see it as a problem.

Bad move. Mention your willingness to admit that you are were wrong and she goes into a feed frenzy. Get this:

Mark has a long history of ascribing ideas to me that I do not hold. But worse, my first interaction with him was when he stated that I had invented an anti-semitic incident involving teenage yobs at my mother’s stone-setting, which I alluded to briefly in a Guardian article. He was forced to withdraw this allegation, and apologise.

Huh? forced to apologise? I was just being nice by apologising for mentioning her mother. And remember the delete all reference to it for the sake of that person? What happened to that? It took four months for her to forget a shocking antisemitic incident that she had written about in the Guardian. At least it took her a little longer to forget her hurt over her mother and the feelings of that someone. I would have posted this immediately after her disgraceful display on the Nick Cohen site but it was all buried in a broken computer. By the time I got the data files from it things had moved on.

I've been waiting for an excuse to post that stuff because I think it shows that on a political and a personal level she has a distinct lack of integrity. She's perfect for Engage but why do we get her tosh in the Guardian so often?

* Re the permission to post this on my site, I didn't know the status of this demand but since she went public on it on Nick Cohen's site, to paraphrase Willie Whitelaw, all bets are off Linda.

Israel against zionism?

Here's Ha'aretz with a post-zionist discourse based on a speech by the author AB Yehoshua.

Members of the American Jewish Committee, who identify with Israel and care about its welfare, were astounded and offended to the depths of their souls this week when they heard author A.B. Yehoshua say he feels no sense of identification with them and their fate. Yehoshua's "I have no brother" speech is doubtless harsh-sounding and infuriating to anyone for whom belonging to the Jewish collective means something. But rather than attack Yehoshua, those "good Jews" should direct complaints at themselves, for having done almost nothing to find out how they are perceived by their brethren in Israel.

Had the American Jewish Committee people displayed an interest in the intellectual discourse that has been taking place in Israel for some time, they would have known that Yehoshua's words express a widespread and accepted way of thinking. They would have learned that prominent intellectuals in Israel view relations with them as a harmful anachronism that undermines the efforts of Israeli society to grant its non-Jewish citizens a sense of belonging. They would have discovered that the philosopher Menachem Brinker, for example, thinks the Arabs of Umm al-Fahm and Lod are part of his nation much more so than the Jews of Manhattan or Chicago - the connection with whom, in his eyes, is a thing of the past. They would perhaps have been surprised to know that journalist Yaron London views foreign workers who wish to settle in Israel more worthy than themselves to be considered members of his people, since those migrants, contrary to them, speak his language and share in his destiny.

The piece is titled Alienated Jews but who feels alienated from whom here?

Judaism without borders?

I have just received an email drawing my attention to the site Judaism without borders. It's an interesting name I must say. I have only just heard of it so I am not vouching for it. I am simply drawing attention to it so others can assess it for themselves. This is what they say about themselves:

Our mission, as American Jews committed to full awareness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is to build trust and goodwill between Jews and Palestinians through direct encounter and direct service.

They are organising a tour of Palestine and they have a blog called the Peace Yeshiva.

The Jewish Chronicle on the BBC report

Having shouted long and loud for the BBC to address its bias on the question of Palestine the zionists got their wish and the BBC commissioned an independent report into their Middle East coverage. Well as I have said before the report didn't quite turn out how the zionists had hoped. It said what any obejective observer will have noticed already over they years: the BBC has been biased in favour of Israel by failing to contextualise the situation in that Israel is a major power and the Palestinians have no power. From the Jewish Chronicle (paid subscription only):

One passage noted the BBC's "failure to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, refelcting the fact that one side is in control and the other lives under occupation".

It continued: "Although this asymmetry does not necessarily bear on the relative merits of the two sides, it so marked and important that coverage should succeed in this if nothing else."

This has the zionists in a bit of a tizzy. The Britain-Israel Communications and Research Centre's Daniel Shek now says that to point this out would of itself mean a bias against Israel. At least it looks like that is what he's saying. Bear in mind here that zionists don't, as a rule, do clarity.

The most problematic passages relate to the fact that there is an intrinsic imbalance betweeen the two societies. The report then implies that an imbalance in BBC coverage could be acceptable.

Eh?

Anyway, the Labour MP Louise Ellman is also concerned

at the suggestion that not enough attention is paid to the Palestinian point of view. The report talks about about an imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians, but it doesn't refer to those Palestinians who are ambiguous about Israel's existence as a state.

So a bit of a panic among zionists that the BBC might be about to show the true context of the situation in Palestine but still there are those putting a brave face on it. A Board of Deputies spokesman, Jon Benjamin,

said that the Board was pleased that the panel had accepted that "a lack of context and historical background meant that reporting in the past been incomplete and therefore misleading."

So let's put that past behind us and look forward to the BBC telling it how it is: Israel is a colonial settler state based on ethnic cleansing and that at its most legitimate it is an occupying power and that its victims, are for the time being mostly powerless.

Israel's immaturity by Tony Judt

Here's an opinion piece by Tony Judt in Ha'aretz. thanks to Dizzy in the comments for pointing it out to me. It's quite a long article - eight pages of A4 but well worth a read.

Collective cognitive dysfunction

But today the country's national narrative of macho victimhood appears to the rest of the world as simply bizarre: evidence of a sort of collective cognitive dysfunction that has gripped Israel's political culture. And the long cultivated persecution mania - "everyone's out to get us" - no longer elicits sympathy. Instead it attracts some very unappetizing comparisons: At a recent international meeting I heard one speaker, by analogy with Helmut Schmidt's famous dismissal of the Soviet Union as "Upper Volta with Missiles," describe Israel as "Serbia with nukes."

Israel has stayed the same, but the world - as I noted above - has changed. Whatever purchase Israel's self-description still has upon the imagination of Israelis themselves, it no longer operates beyond the country's frontiers. Even the Holocaust can no longer be instrumentalized to excuse Israel's behavior. Thanks to the passage of time, most Western European states have now come to terms with their part in the Holocaust, something that was not true a quarter century ago. From Israel's point of view, this has had paradoxical consequences: Until the end of the Cold War Israeli governments could still play upon the guilt of Germans and other Europeans, exploiting their failure to acknowledge fully what was done to Jews on their territory. Today, now that the history of World War II is retreating from the public square into the classroom and from the classroom into the history books, a growing majority of voters in Europe and elsewhere (young voters above all) simply cannot understand how the horrors of the last European war can be invoked to license or condone unacceptable behavior in another time and place. In the eyes of a watching world, the fact that the great-grandmother of an Israeli soldier died in Treblinka is no excuse for his own abusive treatment of a Palestinian woman waiting to cross a checkpoint. "Remember Auschwitz" is not an acceptable response.

As I said there's a whole lot more so please read the whole thing.

Just as an aside here. Linda Grant saw fit to play the holocaust card just recently in the Engage comments to an article by Irene Bruegel. She declares anti-zionists to have lost the argument over the rights and wrongs of zionism on account of this recording. Frankly I haven't listened to it yet but if anyone wants to give it a liosten and point out how a tape recording can justify colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing and an array of racist laws and policies to maintain the resulting "demographic balance" please free free to do so. I'll turn the moderator off while I go and visit my mum. If there are any antisemitic comments I'll delete them when I get home. They're usually from zionists trying to "prove" what a nasty bunch my blog attracts.

Funny, Israelis don't look antisemitic

Here's a bizarre thing that's been sent to me. It's Hansard's Written Questions for Answer on Tuesday 2 May 2006. See this:

265 Sir Gerald Kaufman(Manchester, Gorton): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 3rd March 2006, Official Report, column 10027W, on Israel, what further representation he has made to the Israeli government with regard to their failure to respond to his original representations of November 2005 in respect of the anti-semitic harassment of the Right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton by an Israeli official at Tel-Aviv airport.

Now what is all that about?

Israel takes its time on BBC report

According to the Jerusalem Post, the Israeli foreign ministry is still digesting the report on the BBC's Israeli coverage.

The Foreign Ministry had no comment Thursday on an independent inquiry into BBC coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that found the organization was not biased against Israel in its reporting.

Gideon Meir, deputy director-general for media and public affairs, said the ministry was studying the report. The ministry has often locked horns with the BBC over what it perceived to be slanted coverage.

In an appearance before the panel in January, Meir said that Israel's "primary concern about coverage of our region is that it is, in fact, giving disproportionate voice to one particular narrative. This is a narrative in which Israel is predominantly perceived in terms of power, and the Palestinians in terms of victimhood and suffering."

Unofficially, governmental sources in Jerusalem said they were not surprised by the report and that it reflected a "deeply engrained, pro-Arab bias" inside Britain.

So it's not the BBC that's biased in favour of Israel but the whole of Britain that's biased against it. Laugh? I nearly withheld my licence fee.

Mearsheimer and Walt answer their "critics"

The London Review of Books has published a lengthy letter from Mearsheimer and Walt, responding to the various misrepresentations and personal put-downs over their Israel Lobby article.

Finally, a few critics claim that some of our facts, references or quotations are mistaken. For example, Dershowitz challenges our claim that Israel was ‘explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship’. Israel was founded as a Jewish state (a fact Dershowitz does not challenge), and our reference to citizenship was obviously to Israel’s Jewish citizens, whose identity is ordinarily based on ancestry. We stated that Israel has a sizeable number of non-Jewish citizens (primarily Arabs), and our main point was that many of them are relegated to a second-class status in a predominantly Jewish society.

We also referred to Golda Meir’s famous statement that ‘there is no such thing as a Palestinian,’ and Jeremy Schreiber reads us as saying that Meir was denying the existence of those people rather than simply denying Palestinian nationhood (20 April). There is no disagreement here; we agree with Schreiber’s interpretation and we quoted Meir in a discussion of Israel’s prolonged effort ‘to deny the Palestinians’ national ambitions’.

Dershowitz challenges our claim that the Israelis did not offer the Palestinians a contiguous state at Camp David in July 2000. As support, he cites a statement by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and the memoirs of former US negotiator Dennis Ross. There are a number of competing accounts of what happened at Camp David, however, and many of them agree with our claim. Moreover, Barak himself acknowledges that ‘the Palestinians were promised a continuous piece of sovereign territory except for a razor-thin Israeli wedge running from Jerusalem . . . to the Jordan River.’ This wedge, which would bisect the West Bank, was essential to Israel’s plan to retain control of the Jordan River Valley for another six to twenty years. Finally, and contrary to Dershowitz’s claim, there was no ‘second map’ or map of a ‘final proposal at Camp David’. Indeed, it is explicitly stated in a note beside the map published in Ross’s memoirs that ‘no map was presented during the final rounds at Camp David.’ Given all this, it is not surprising that Barak’s foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was a key participant at Camp David, later admitted: ‘If I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David as well.’

Dershowitz also claims that we quote David Ben-Gurion ‘out of context’ and thus misrepresented his views on the need to use force to build a Jewish state in all of Palestine. Dershowitz is wrong. As a number of Israeli historians have shown, Ben-Gurion made numerous statements about the need to use force (or the threat of overwhelming force) to create a Jewish state in all of Palestine. In October 1937, for example, he wrote to his son Amos that the future Jewish state would have an ‘outstanding army . . . so I am certain that we won’t be constrained from settling in the rest of the country, either by mutual agreement and understanding with our Arab neighbours, or by some other way’ (emphasis added). Furthermore, common sense says that there was no other way to achieve that goal, because the Palestinians were hardly likely to give up their homeland voluntarily. Ben-Gurion was a consummate strategist and he understood that it would be unwise for the Zionists to talk openly about the need for ‘brutal compulsion’. We quote a memorandum Ben-Gurion wrote prior to the Extraordinary Zionist Conference at the Biltmore Hotel in New York in May 1942. He wrote that ‘it is impossible to imagine general evacuation’ of the Arab population of Palestine ‘without compulsion, and brutal compulsion’. Dershowitz claims that Ben-Gurion’s subsequent statement – ‘we should in no way make it part of our programme’ – shows that he opposed the transfer of the Arab population and the ‘brutal compulsion’ it would entail. But Ben-Gurion was not rejecting this policy: he was simply noting that the Zionists should not openly proclaim it. Indeed, he said that they should not ‘discourage other people, British or American, who favour transfer from advocating this course, but we should in no way make it part of our programme’.

We close with a final comment about the controversy surrounding our article. Although we are not surprised by the hostility directed at us, we are still disappointed that more attention has not been paid to the substance of the piece. The fact remains that the United States is in deep trouble in the Middle East, and it will not be able to develop effective policies if it is impossible to have a civilised discussion about the role of Israel in American foreign policy.

I skipped to the end here because it's an exposé of yet more of Alan Dershowitz's sheer dishonesty.

Good news on the BBC report

Here are two letters in today's Guardian from Greg Philo and my friend Ala Khazendar.

The BBC's Middle East coverage has had important effects on public understanding (BBC's coverage of Israeli-Palestinian conflict 'misleading', May 3). In our study - Bad News from Israel - three years ago we found that there was a strong emphasis on Israeli casualties in TV reports, even though deaths on the Palestinian side were much higher. In a large audience sample from 2002, just 35% knew that the Palestinians had significantly more casualties than the Israelis, while 43% believed either that there were more Israeli casualties or that the figures were the same for each side.

We showed how such reporting could strongly influence attitudes, leading, for example, to the belief that Palestinians were instigating violence while the Israelis "responded". Now the new report from the BBC and the research it commissioned from Loughborough University has found the same pattern for news about casualties, this time concluding that national news programmes reported six times as many Israeli as Palestinian fatalities (a more extreme ratio than we found). The question is: why has this situation been allowed to continue and what will the BBC now do to offer a better informed coverage.
Professor Greg Philo
Glasgow University Media Group

As a Palestinian, the BBC does indeed look unsympathetic most of the time. I look forward to the BBC no longer being afraid to call Palestinian terrorism terrorism, as well as being bold enough to describe targeted assassinations as Israeli executions without trial that inevitably kill civilian bystanders; the Israeli army as occupation forces; settlements as illegal Israeli colonies; and the security barrier as Israeli land theft condemned as illegal by the international court of justice. And if the BBC is really plucky, perhaps it will start describing those Palestinian acts of terrorism as retaliations to Israeli persecution.
Ala Khazendar
Pasadena, California, USA

A point that has been missed in articles and these letters on the report on the BBC's coverage of Israel/Palestine is that it was the zionists who called loudest for it. I wonder what the Jewish Chronicle will say about it tomorrow.

Palestinians recall expulsion

From Al-Jazeera's website.

Nakba day

Millions of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza and in the camps in neighbouring Arab states will officially commemorate the Nakba on May 15; but the smaller number of refugees inside Israel have traditionally staged their own event to coincide with Israel's Independence Day, the date of which varies according to the Hebrew calendar....

Internal refugees

Today, about 250,000 Palestinians in Israel - a quarter of their total number - are believed to be internal refugees. All are refused the right to return to their original homes and villages. The lands of Umm al-Zinat, as with many other destroyed villages, were planted with a forest of fir trees by the Jewish National Fund in an attempt, according to historian Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, to camouflage the ruins. Other lands belonging to Umm al-Zinat were handed over to a rural Jewish community, Elyakim, for it to farm.

Palestinian political and religious leaders in Israel, as well as the refugees themselves, used the event to denounce Israel's occupation and to demand the right of the refugees to return to their villages....

Massacres

Although for many years Israel's expulsions of Palestinian communities like Umm al-Zinat went by without remark, a new generation of Israeli historians has begun bringing to light evidence of at least two dozen massacres as well as rapes and murders of Palestinians.

The historians have found among papers in state and military archives proof that Israel encouraged the mass flight of Palestinians through well-publicised massacres such as one near Jersualem in the village of Deir Yassin. They have also unearthed a series of documents, such as Plan Dalet, that suggest it was the army's intention to ethnically cleanse the new state of as many Palestinians as possible.

The stories of Umm al-Zinat's refugees confirm these findings. Badria Fachmawi, who was 14 when Israeli soldiers advanced on the village, says she remembers the sound of Israeli gunfire and fleeing with her parents and siblings.

Here's Ha'aretz with what it calls "countrywide celebrtions before noting the demonstration by Israel's internal refugees which was supported by many Israelis including Ilan Pappe.

Bush man booed by the AJC

The American Jewish Committee has requested that George Bush stop linking his desire to go to war on Iran to his desire to promote Israel's interests. This is a curious article from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The chairman of the Republican Party was booed at an American Jewish Committee event over comments on Iraq.

Ken Mehlman, who is Jewish, said Iraq posed less of a challenge now than under Saddam Hussein.

Mehlman was otherwise politely received when he spoke Tuesday at the AJCommittee’s 100th anniversary celebrations in Washington, and he got warm applause when he said the Bush administration would not tolerate an Iranian nuclear bomb and always would stand by Israel.

The room burst into applause, however, when AJCommittee board member Edith Everett asked Mehlman to “take a message” to President Bush to stop linking Israel and Iran.
“It does not help Israel and it does not help American Jews to appear to be stimulators of any action against Iran,” Everett said. [this would be the same AJC that took out full page adverts in the world's press to encourage others to support war on Iran]


She added that “it’s easy to understand why Iran is not worried about us” because Iraq is consuming so many U.S. resources.

Mehlman replied by acknowledging that Iraq was a “challenge,” but claimed it’s “less of a challenge than when Saddam Hussein was in power.”

Was the Chairman of Bush's own party expected to claim that Iraq has been a disaster?

BBC bias towards Israel shock!

The Times reports that a BBC commissioned independent panel has found that BBC coverage of the Middle East tends to favour Israel. I was joking in the headline when I wrote "schock!" but the panel was appointed because the Israeli government and a ragbag of zionists kept complaining that the Beeb favoured the Palestinians.

THE BBC’S coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict implicitly favours the Israeli side, a study for the BBC Governors has concluded.

Deaths of Israelis received greater coverage than Palestinian fatalities, while Israelis received more airtime on news and current affairs programmes. The references to “identifiable shortcomings” surprised BBC News executives, who are more used to accusations that their coverage is routinely anti-Israel.

Only “a small percentage of Palestinian fatalities were reported by BBC News”, the analysis, published yesterday, noted, while “the killing of more than one Israeli by Palestinians either by gun or bomb was reported on national broadcast programmes”.

At the same time, there was “little reporting of the difficulties faced by the Palestinians in their daily lives” and a “failure to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, reflecting the fact that one side is in control and the other side lives under occupation”.

Led by Sir Quentin Thomas, the president of the British Board of Film Classification, the Governors’ study group analysed a period between August 2005 and January this year in which 98 Palestinians were killed and there were up to 23 Israeli fatalities.

The findings were seized upon by pro-Palestinian groups. Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, said: “When research consistently shows that fatalities from one side of a conflict — the party that has by far the least number — are more frequently covered, then this must raise alarm bells.”

However, the Thomas inquiry also argued that the BBC should be less cautious over its use of the the word “terrorism” because “that is the most accurate expression for actions which involve violence against randomly selected civilians”.

The panel relied on research by Loughborough University for its conclusions about the coverage of deaths in the conflict, as well as the calculation that more “talk time” was given to non-party political Israelis, thereby tipping the balance away from Palestinians.

The report focuses on news and current affairs output during the period when Orla Guerin was the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent and concluded that there was “little to suggest deliberate or systematic bias” in the coverage of the conflict. “On the contrary, there was evidence of a commitment to be fair, accurate and impartial,” it said.

Instead, to rectify the problems, journalists were advised not to always highlight events accompanied by dramatic pictures, but concentrate on in-depth items that would reflect “shifts in Palestinian society and politics”.

The Thomas panel also suggested that a senior editor be appointed to oversee coverage of the conflict as a whole.

Michael Grade, the Chairman of the Governors, said that he would ask news bosses to come back with their response to the report next month.

Sir Quentin said: “What the BBC does now is good for the most part; some of it very good. But it could and should do better to meet the gold standard which it sets itself.”

Here's the BBC's offering on the same panel report:

The BBC fails to always give a "full and fair account" of the Israeli Palestinian conflict but is not deliberately biased, a report has said.
The BBC governors asked an independent panel to scrutinise its output.

Its report said the BBC was committed to being fair, accurate and impartial and UK viewers regarded it as unbiased.

But coverage was not consistently full and fair and "in important respects, presents an incomplete and in that sense misleading picture", it found.

The panel, chaired by British Board of Film Classification president Sir Quentin Thomas, examined only the corporation's UK domestic public service output.

Sir Quentin said: "What the BBC does now is good for the most part - some of it very good.

"But it could and should do better to meet the gold standard which it sets itself in its best programmes."

The report said: "Apart from individual lapses, sometimes of tone, language or attitude, there was little to suggest systematic or deliberate bias.

"On the contrary, there was evidence, in the programming and in other ways, of a commitment to be fair, accurate and impartial."

The report also said: "There is high quality reporting from location, some outstanding current affairs programmes and the website provides much valuable historical and other context."


Bus bombs should be described as terrorist acts, the report decided
But there were gaps in analysis, context and perspective as well as a failure to consistently uphold editorial standards, it continued.

Broadcast news lacked historical background, stories were often not put in the wider context and there was insufficient analysis and interpretation of important events and issues, the report said.

The range of stories and perspectives was too narrow and reporters' use of language was often inconsistent, it decided.

That included the use of the words "terrorism" and "terrorist". The BBC advises its journalists to avoid the latter because it can be "a barrier to understanding".

From the BBC's report you might think that the Palestinians were the beneficiaries of BBC bias.

The Guardian's piece on the same thing focuses on the BBC's avoidance of the word "terrorist" thereby implying a pro-Palestinian bias and only gets round to stating the finding regarding the Beeb's overall coverage close to the end of the article:

The report notes stronger evidence of pro-Israeli than pro-Palestinian coverage by the BBC, while concluding there was no overall, systematic bias one way or the other.

Now read the report, I know I should.

Finkelstein on Mearsheimer and Walt

Norman Finkelstein has an article in Counterpunch on the M & W LRB article. Put very briefly he argues that it makes no difference whether the Israel Lobby is responsible for US policy in the Middle East or not and the question of who wags what is not one of "either/or". I'll probably return to this later when I've had a chance to read the whole thing.

In the current fractious debate over the role of the Israel Lobby in the formulation and execution of US policies in the Middle East, the "either-or" framework -- giving primacy to either the Israel Lobby or to U.S. strategic interests -- isn't, in my opinion, very useful.

Apart from the Israel-Palestine conflict, fundamental U.S. policy in the Middle East hasn't been affected by the Lobby. For different reasons, both U.S. and Israeli elites have always believed that the Arabs need to be kept subordinate. However, once the U.S. solidified its alliance with Israel after June 1967, it began to look at Israelis ­ and Israelis projected themselves ­ as experts on the "Arab mind." Accordingly, the alliance with Israel has abetted the most truculent U.S. policies, Israelis believing that "Arabs only understand the language of force" and every few years this or that Arab country needs to be smashed up. The spectrum of U.S. policy differences might be narrow, but in terms of impact on the real lives of real people in the Arab world these differences are probably meaningful, the Israeli influence making things worse.

The claim that Israel has become a liability for U.S. "national" interests in the Middle East misses the bigger picture. Sometimes what's most obvious escapes the eye. Israel is the only stable and secure base for projecting U.S. power in this region. Every other country the U.S. relies on might, for all anyone knows, fall out of U.S. control tomorrow. The U.S.A. discovered this to its horror in 1979, after immense investment in the Shah. On the other hand, Israel was a creation of the West; it's in every respect ­ culturally, politically, economically ­ in thrall to the West, notably the U.S. This is true not just at the level of a corrupt leadership, as elsewhere in the Middle East but ­ what's most important ­ at the popular level. Israel's pro-American orientation exists not just among Israeli elites but also among the whole population. Come what may in Israel, it's inconceivable that this fundamental orientation will change. Combined with its overwhelming military power, this makes Israel a unique and irreplaceable American asset in the Middle East.

Norman Finkelstein's own site is here.

B'tselem on rerouting the wall

The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B'tselem, has a report on the rerouting of the wall:

On 30 April the government approved a series of alterations to the route of the separation barrier. In accordance with the newly approved route, the barrier will form two enclaves instead of one in the area of the Ariel-Kdumim settlements, thus allowing a number of Palestinian villages to remain under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Responsibility for security in the barrier gateways in the Jerusalem area will be transferred from the army to the police.

Even in its new, amended, route, the barrier in the Ariel-Kdumim area will severely infringe upon the human rights of thousands of Palestinians who live nearby, only to allow for the annexation of 15 Jewish settlements as well as huge swaths of land for their future expansion. In the announcement it published this morning, following the government decision, B'tselem emphasized that "a route which penetrates deep into the West Bank, a distance of 22 km from the green line, is not a security route, but a blatantly political route, which fails to realize the promise of security, and infringes upon human rights."

I wonder how B'tselem would respond if the human rights issue still stood but Israel's security was enhanced.