Israel-Hamas nr 53. As van het Kwaad of Heilig Land?

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IAP News) — An Israeli professor and military historian hinted that Israel could avenge the holocaust by annihilating millions of Germans and other Europeans.

Speaking during an interview which was published in Jerusalem Friday, Professor Martin Van Crevel said Israel had the capability of hitting most European capitals with nuclear weapons.

"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force."

Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, pointed out that "collective deportation" was Israel's only meaningful strategy towards the Palestinian people.

"The Palestinians should all be deported. The people who strive for this (the Israeli government) are waiting only for the right man and the right time. Two years ago, only 7 or 8 per cent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago it was 33 per cent, and now, according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent."

Creveld said he was sure that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wanted to deport the Palestinians.

"I think it's quite possible that he wants to do that. He wants to escalate the conflict. He knows that nothing else we do will succeed."

Asked if he was worried about Israel becoming a rogue state if it carried out a genocidal deportation against Palestinians, Creveld quoted former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who said "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."

Creveld argued that Israel wouldn't care much about becoming a rogue state.

"Our armed forces are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that this will happen before Israel goes under."

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Op maandag 26 januari 2009 21:31 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:
Het besluit van BBC directeur Mark Thompson om de oproep van de Britse gezamenlijke hulporganisaties te weigeren roept bij velen vraagtekens op. Waarom mag deze oproep voor hulp aan Gaza niet uitgezonden worden terwijl soortgelijke acties voor bijvoorbeeld Irak, Kosovo en Rwanda, zoals die voortdurend worden gehouden geen enkel probleem vormden?

Vragen.. tot we dit bericht uit 2005 vinden.
[..]

Het allereerste bezoek dat Mark Thompson doet in zijn nieuwe hoedanigheid als directeur van de BBC is naar Israel voor een onderonsje met Sharon. Met nog eens een liefdesverklaring voor "the Israeli cause" er achteraan.

Toen had hij blijkbaar wat minder zorgen over "impartiality".

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(met betrekking tot die laatste clip > Liars are exposed by blinking )

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BBC is right to ban Gaza appeal, but for the wrong reasons
It is not the job of an impartial broadcaster to decide issues of foreign policy, argues Janet Daley.

The BBC is in another mess over "impartiality". It will almost certainly stand by its decision not to broadcast the charity appeal for aid to Gaza: its pronouncements on the subject have that non-negotiable tone so familiar to those of us who monitor its public statements.

I am inclined to support the BBC's position, and that is not (as the anti-Zionist lobby will claim) because I am Jewish and generally, but not uncritically, pro-Israel. Quite apart from the fact that any decision that is attacked by Tony Benn and George Galloway can't be all bad, there is a genuine problem with this appeal which the corporation is failing to make sufficiently clear. BBC spokesmen are, in fact, muddying the issue by arguing two quite different things.

First, they are saying that showing the appeal as it stands would compromise the impartiality of their coverage of the situation in Gaza. There seems to be a quite legitimate case here: the film would appear to present itself as a piece of reportage which offers up images of destruction and death without any background description to the dispute.

By omission, in other words, it presents a picture of the damage done as gratuitous – without reason or explanation. To broadcast it without any contextual comment could be interpreted as a tacit endorsement of a view of the conflict which is tendentious and one-sided. So this strand of the BBC case is, at the very least, plausible and grounded in what must be the logic of its obligation to "treat controversial subjects with due impartiality".

But this defensible position has been muddled up with a much more difficult case for the BBC to maintain: it is taking upon itself what should be a political judgment about the likely effect of the distribution of aid in the region.

It has implied that it is concerned about whether the funds raised by this appeal would actually reach those in need, or be used to support the Hamas regime which is committed to the destruction of a neighbouring country. This part of its case has little to do with the BBC's role simply as a platform for presenting information in a neutral way: it is not just about who might be influenced or persuaded to think certain things by what it broadcasts, but about the use to which funds might be put which it has helped to raise.

Is it the function of a broadcasting organisation – even a publicly funded one – to make decisions about the appropriate use of donations to a charitable appeal, let alone to intervene in the hugely complex international question of how the civilian population of combatant countries should be helped? (Presumably it is this part of the BBC stance which makes impossible the obvious compromise: the telephone number for contributions to the aid appeal could simply be announced in the course of news bulletins without showing the contentious film produced by the 13 affiliated charities.)

The BBC is not a department of state – however grandly it may conceive its public duty. It is staffed and run by people who are responsible for making television and radio programmes, not foreign policy. It is for governments or international bodies such as the UN to ensure that aid agencies are providing succour and assistance to civilian victims rather than terrorists or rogue regimes.

If the governments and global bodies fail in that duty then it is for the BBC, in company with other journalistic agencies, to report that failure. To intervene itself – to pre-empt such an outcome with its own embargo on an aid appeal – is way beyond its remit.

This is just one more example of how very much at sea the BBC now is in its pursuit of a new formulation of its "public service" role. Having pretty much lost its founding identity as a source of edification and enlightenment to the nation, it is now flailing around, unsure of whether it must justify its right to exist (which is to say, to retain its funding arrangements) by holding its own with crass commercial competitors, or by formulating a new grandiose social function.

The first objective ends in the grotesque spectacle of Jonathan Ross, and the second in a potentially dangerous assumption of political power which licenses (pun intended) the corporation to make judgments not only about what kind of society Britain should be, but also about how foreign aid should be dispensed and international conflicts resolved.

And all of this confusion about the rights and duties of a broadcasting organisation – the consequences of which are more serious and pervasive than you might think – arises from what is now an impossible anomaly.

It is not just the absurd anachronism of the BBC's funding mechanism that is straining the logical limits of modern reality but the whole notion of broadcasting as a field which must be controlled, rationed and censored by the state when the internet has blown the possibility of that control to smithereens. And yes, I did mean "censored". The regulations controlling all broadcast news, not just that of the BBC, decree that its presentation must be "neutral" and "balanced" which means, in effect, that it must subscribe to the acceptable tenets of received opinion.

That is why the spectrum of viewpoints and assumptions which underpin the description of events on television news coverage is so much narrower than in newspapers, and why the treatment of issues such as immigration or crime are deceptively bland in a way that often exasperates the public.

And because the requirement to be "neutral" is taken to mean "non-committal", television and radio news must also avoid any engagement with events that might actually excite, provoke or recruit anybody.

The viewer or listener must be a party to the same conformist acceptance of received wisdom as the broadcaster: instead of being exposed to differing committed viewpoints on which he might make a judgment – as readers of newspapers are – he must be protected from any perspective that is outside the "balanced" mainstream consensus.

The result is an implicit lie: the pretence that we are all in basic agreement on issues that actually divide us and which need to be resolved through honest argument. Why not set everybody free? Let Channel 4 offer the pro-Palestinian case if it wants to, and some other outfit report on crime as most people see it. Then you can come to your own conclusions and we can debate these things like grown-ups.

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For and against: was the BBC right?


The BBC was wrong

Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi is chairman of Arab Media Watch

I applaud ITV, Channel 4 and Five for agreeing to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee's appeal to help relieve the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. I watched the appeal, which was completely apolitical - indeed, it rightly stated that "this is not about the rights or wrongs of the conflict". It is about the unjust, abhorrent suffering of civilians, human beings, a population mostly of refugees, under occupation, bearing the brunt of military and economic siege.

The appeal by Britain's largest charities focused on the child victims of Gaza, and while the imagery used was heartbreaking, it was not grotesque or offensive to people's sensitivities. It was full of irrefutable facts and reliable statistics to drive home the urgency of the situation.

I hope that those responsible for denying the broadcast on the BBC and Sky will have watched the appeal, regretted their decision, and change their minds. The BBC claims that its decision shows its impartiality. Quite the contrary - its bias is revealed starkly in this case in its fear of the pro-Israel lobby, and by turning its back on chronic human suffering.

The BBC is in fact defying its own guidelines for approving such appeals: that the disaster "must be on such a scale and of such urgency as to call for swift international humanitarian assistance", that the DEC "must be in a position to provide effective and swift" assistance, and that there "must be sufficient public awareness of, and sympathy for, the humanitarian situation".

The BBC is effectively saying that human beings are not equal, that suffering Palestinians are less worthy of help than those in need in Congo, Burma, Sudan, Niger, Liberia, and numerous other countries that the BBC has helped through previous DEC appeals.

The BBC and Sky should heed the groundswell of opposition - public, humanitarian, media, religious and political - to their refusals. Otherwise, they should be ashamed of themselves.


The BBC was right

Geoffery Alderman is the author of Modern British Jewry

On the face of it, what possible objection could there be to a genuinely non-partisan appeal to solicit donations for "humanitarian" assistance in war-torn Gaza? Well, for starters, such appeals are not made in a vacuum. Consider the context. Some constituents of the Disasters Emergency Committee, notably Oxfam, Christian Aid and the British Red Cross, boast a documented history of unbridled bias against Israel. In the past, their allegedly non-partisan, semi-hysterical appeals have virtually ignored the suffering experienced by Israelis as a result of Arab terrorism.

Oxfam has publicly condemned Israel, but has not once seen fit to expose the brutality of the Hamas leadership. Then there is the question of motivation. Objectively speaking there is simply no justification for the sort of appeal the DEC has launched.

The DEC has pleaded that, in principle, the monies it raises are for "all those affected by the recent conflict". But according to the BBC it has admitted that "in practice" the proceeds of its TV appeal would be earmarked "solely for Gaza," and that was indeed its exclusive focus.

Yet the DEC must know that there is more than enough wealth in the Arab world to ensure that every inhabitant of Gaza receives as much food, clothing and shelter as is necessary - and more. Indeed Hamas itself (ie Iran) has just offered no less than $52m to assist in relief efforts, and we might note that in the past Hamas (no doubt following the example of Robert Mugabe) has been known to divert internationally donated aid to serve its own political purposes; there is every risk that DEC-sponsored aid will suffer the same fate.

The two-minute DEC appeal showed us bleak images from Gaza, but not from Sderot or Ashdod. The BBC and Sky News were right not to broadcast it.

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The BBC ‘impartial’? Whoever believes that?

What an extraordinary crisis the BBC has provoked by its decision not to broadcast an appeal by various aid agencies for humanitarian relief for Gaza.

The BBC said it feared that doing so would compromise its reputation for impartiality. This detonated a ferocious attack from politicians, religious leaders and even members of its own journalistic staff, along with ‘Stop The War’ demonstrators laying siege to its offices.

It is not surprising that the BBC’s decision seems inexplicable to so many. After all, aid is intrinsically controversial, with repeated claims that it doesn’t get to the people who actually need it. Yet the BBC regularly broadcasts such appeals.

Indeed, its very own ‘Make Poverty History’ appeal programmes laid itself open to the charge that it was promoting a Left-wing view of humanitarian relief — and that the millions it was helping raise were likely to end up in the pockets of corrupt African kleptocrats.

So no wonder many have been baffled by the decision not to broadcast this particular appeal for Gaza, where the need for humanitarian relief for people suffering the grievous effects of war are undeniable.

Nevertheless, I personally believe that on this occasion the BBC has made the correct decision. For what few in this country are aware of is that Hamas is said to be systematically stealing shipments of humanitarian relief and shelling the aid crossing points.

These claims have been made not just by Israel but by Jordanian journalists and the Palestinian Authority, who have reported that Hamas has intercepted dozens of aid trucks and confiscated food and medical supplies bound for the UN aid stores in Gaza. The allegation is that Hamas is manipulating the aid convoys as a weapon of war.

So the BBC director-general Mark Thompson was, in my view, correct in justifying his decision not only because of concern that the aid would not get to the needy but also because the very issue of humanitarian need in Gaza remains deeply contentious.

Whether he was right or wrong, moreover, it is surely a matter of some concern that Government ministers have been putting such pressure on the BBC to reverse its decision. There were signs over the weekend that the BBC was digging itself in for a fight over the sensitive issue of its political independence.

With the Culture Secretary’s statement yesterday that the BBC was entitled to reach its own conclusion on what was a ‘difficult judgment call’, the Government seems to have recognised the political warning signals and drawn back.

But the BBC surely bears a far broader responsibility for this row. In particular, its claim that it was anxious to safeguard its reputation for impartiality will have caused a sharp intake of breath among the many who think it no longer has a reputation of impartiality to defend.

One of the great ironies of this situation, after all, is that most people in Britain have no idea about claims that Hamas has apparently been stealing the aid supplies and blowing up the crossing points — because the BBC’s reporters haven’t told them.

Indeed, by reporting many of Hamas’s own claims as fact — particularly its estimate of the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, which Israel strenuously contests — the BBC has helped create a dangerously unbalanced and irrational public mood. It was especially troubling, for example, to hear the jaw-dropping accusation — made by, among others, Health Minister Ben Bradshaw — that the BBC has buckled to Jewish or Israeli pressure.

But way beyond the reporting of the Middle East, the BBC has brought this crisis upon itself. It is not surprising that it finds itself friendless, since for years it has been systematically squandering the respect and trust of the public — so much so that licence-fee payers are increasingly questioning its very existence as a publicly financed broadcaster.

Across the board, the BBC operates as a kind of ‘Guardian’ newspaper of the air. It is institutionally hostile to conservatism, big business, religion, the countryside and family values; it supports multiculturalism, environmentalism, European federalism, human rights law and ‘alternative’ lifestyles.

Its own impartiality review concluded two years ago that it operates in a ‘Leftleaning comfort zone’ and has an ‘innate liberal bias’, dictating what issues it chooses to cover and how it does so.

In another report, the writer Antony Jay, who helped create the sublime TV comedy Yes Minister — itself evidence of the brilliance that Auntie can produce — devastatingly described a BBC in which arrogance and a false sense of moral superiority combined with gross ignorance to spread an ideology ‘based not on observation and deduction but on faith and doctrine’, into which all events were wrenched to fit.

The worst of it is that even senior BBC executives can’t grasp the problem because they, too, share the same way of looking at the world and view their own Left-wing position as the centre ground.

Intrinsically unable to correct itself, the BBC thus embodies a frighteningly closed thought system. But the concerns extend more broadly even than its journalism. There is widespread dismay that, far from elevating and educating public values, its entertainment output is becoming steadily degraded.

The anger and revulsion this has created boiled over in the Jonathan Ross affair, when he and Russell Brand abused the elderly actor Andrew Sachs by leaving obscene and cruel messages on his telephone answering machine, which they broadcast on air.

Many people thought the Ł6 million-a-year Ross should have been sacked rather than suspended. But now he is back and it’s pretty well business as usual.

While his TV show was apparently carefully edited to remove the most offensive material, crude remarks were broadcast on his Radio 2 show about sleeping with an 80-year-old woman. And even on the TV show, a smutty question to Tom Cruise about breaking wind escaped the censor’s scissors.

The return of Jonathan Ross is not just a disgrace. It is a gesture of contempt to the public and highlights the extent to which the BBC has lost its way.

Its entire reason for existing as a public service broadcaster is to embody the highest standards of excellence and integrity. But through both its partisan journalism and its moronic and unprincipled entertainment shows it has destroyed this reputation.

The slew of audience-participation frauds that it perpetrated upon the public in such iconic shows as Blue Peter, Children In Need and Comic Relief, not to mention the broadcasting of faked footage purporting to show the Queen storming out of a photo-shoot when, in fact, she was arriving at it, brought to a head the real crisis gripping the BBC.

This is a profound loss of its identity, caused by a repudiation of the values that gave it a unique place in Britain’s cultural life and, indeed, the world. The resulting combination of loss of trust and public ignorance means that when the BBC makes a correct judgment call, no one recognises it as such.

The row over the aid appeal shows above all that the BBC is now dramatically reaping what it has so recklessly sown.

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Op dinsdag 27 januari 2009 01:03 schreef damian5700 het volgende:

[..]

Dit is echt conspiracy talk. Of ben jij op de hoogte van de inhoud van het gesprek dat daar gevoerd is?
In elk geval wil ik wel opmerken dat toen jij het bericht uit 2005 vond vergeten bent heel het artikel te knippen en plakken, want in diezelfde trip heeft Mark Thompson ook Mahmoud Abbas bezocht.
[ afbeelding ]
Het ziet er heel gezellig uit. Zouden zij over de een staat oplossing keuvelen?

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En die filmpjes. 'Ze knippert met haar ogen , dus ze liegt.'
Ik heb een opiniestuk waar ik meer waarde aan hecht dan aan deze gemanipuleerde filmpjes. Die wil ik graag met jouw delen.
[..]

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Op maandag 26 januari 2009 17:15 schreef damian5700 het volgende:

[..]

Ik vind dit toch wel erg raar. Het is, volgens mij, allang bekend dat de BBC bevooroordeeld is, soms zelfs partijdig

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Op dinsdag 27 januari 2009 01:50 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:

[..]

Het is geen conspiracy, het is een verklaring.

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Iemand vroeg je waarom jij van mening bent dat de BBC toch al niet objectief was.


Licht dat eens toe als je wilt.

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Initially, a complaint of bias against Plett was turned down by the BBC's head of editorial complaints. However, almost a year later, on November 25, 2005, the programme complaints committee of the BBC governors ruled that Plett’s comments “breached the requirements of due impartiality”

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"The committee considered that by selecting only references to Israel, the online article did not accurately reflect this balance and gave a biased impression. It therefore breached editorial standards on both accuracy and impartiality".

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Op dinsdag 27 januari 2009 00:35 schreef Meki het volgende:
Israelische professor: "We could destroy all European capitals"


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[..]

http://www.rense.com/general34/esde.htm

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Op zondag 25 januari 2009 22:43 schreef Kees22 het volgende:

[..]

Het bevestigt niet dat Hamas schuilt tussen de burgerbevolking: het huis stond leeg.

Maar goed: wat wil je verder zeggen met dit verhaal? Dat Israel gelijk had/heeft?

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Mylene [ Moderator (was: Schatje) ]zondag 25 januari 2009 @ 15:06 (#257)


Kritische geluiden vanuit Gaza op Hamas.

Others swallow their anger.
Hail's house is just a few streets away and only suffered light damage.
There are a few bullet holes in the living room walls and all of the window panes are broken.
Hail also found out after the cease-fire that the militants had used his house as a base for their operations. The door to his house stood open and there were electric cables lying in the hallway.
When Hail followed them they led to his neighbor's house which it seems Hamas had mined.

As Hail, in his mid-30s, sat on his porch and thought about what to do a man came by: He was from Hamas and had left something in Hail's home.
He let him in and the man then emerged with a bullet proof vest, a rocket launcher and an ammunitions belt. An hour later a fighter with Islamic Jihad called to the door, then disappeared onto the roof and reappeared with a box of ammunition.
"The abused civilians' homes for their own purposes.
That is not right," Hail says with disgust while trying to remain polite.

In contrast to many of their neighbors the Sadala family is doing comparatively well.
They have all survived and the house could theoretically still be repaired. Mohammed Sadala is of another opinion: "There is no way," he says.
What happened in his bedroom cannot be covered up just by cleaning.
The worst is that he now knows who died in the room.
It was Bilal Haj Ali.
Sadala knows this because the young mans brothers came to visit a few days ago.
They wanted to see the place where Bilal became a martyr.
"I did let them in but I hardly spoke a word with them," he says.

The young men took photos of the remains of their brother with their mobile phones.
"But they didn't want to clean it up," Sadala says. "I told them not to show their faces here ever again."

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Op dinsdag 27 januari 2009 01:50 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:


Onder druk van deze mensen en Israel heeft de BBC gecapituleert, precies zoals Tony Benn zegt. Imho.

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Je mag voor mij het hele topic volposten met opinie stukken, een ander zou hetzelfde kunnen doen met stukken die een andere opinie vertolken, maar behalve lange lappen tekst die bijna niemand zal lezen zal het voornamelijk alleen scrollwielen slijten.

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Nevertheless, I personally believe that on this occasion the BBC has made the correct decision. For what few in this country are aware of is that Hamas is said to be systematically stealing shipments of humanitarian relief and shelling the aid crossing points.

These claims have been made not just by Israel but by Jordanian journalists and the Palestinian Authority, who have reported that Hamas has intercepted dozens of aid trucks and confiscated food and medical supplies bound for the UN aid stores in Gaza. The allegation is that Hamas is manipulating the aid convoys as a weapon of war.

quote:

One of the great ironies of this situation, after all, is that most people in Britain have no idea about claims that Hamas has apparently been stealing the aid supplies and blowing up the crossing points — because the BBC’s reporters haven’t told them.

Indeed, by reporting many of Hamas’s own claims as fact — particularly its estimate of the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, which Israel strenuously contests — the BBC has helped create a dangerously unbalanced and irrational public mood. It was especially troubling, for example, to hear the jaw-dropping accusation — made by, among others, Health Minister Ben Bradshaw — that the BBC has buckled to Jewish or Israeli pressure.

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Het is alsmaar rechtvaardiging zoeken.

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Op dinsdag 27 januari 2009 11:33 schreef damian5700 het volgende:
Laten we nu ook meteen vaststellen dat de Palestijnen als eerste zijn begonnen sinds het bestand van vorige week.

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Op dinsdag 27 januari 2009 12:35 schreef Meki het volgende:

[..]

Nee hoor. ze worden gevangenen gehouden en de grenzen zijn nog dicht.