May 24 2013

BBC myths and mantras on the peace process

Particularly on the day following the horrendous terrorist murder of a British soldier in Woolwich, it was difficult to find anything remotely newsworthy about the item broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 May 23^rd edition of the ‘Today’ programme with regard to the latest visit by John Kerry to Israel. At the time it was broadcast (9:30 am local time), Kerry would barely have had time to hang up his coat, let alone make any headway in the Middle East peace process. But nevertheless, the BBC Jerusalem Bureau’s Kevin Connolly used the occasion of the visit as a convenient hook upon which to hang three and a half minutes of repetition of jaded BBC mantras and to cook up some new tropes.

The broadcast is available here for a limited period of time and the relevant section begins at 1:30:40. Presenter John Humphrys opens:

“The American Secretary of State John Kerry is in the Middle East today doing what every secretary of state’s been trying to do for decades: trying to encourage a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Direct talks between the two sides had broken down even before the Arab uprising swept the Middle East. Our Middle East correspondent Kevin Connolly reports.”

It is not clear why Humphrys should see any connection between the timing of “the Arab uprising” and the breakdown of talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Connolly’s report begins:

“Last week Palestinians marked with protests and with rallies the moment in 1948 which helped define the modern Middle East. They call it the Naqba – the catastrophe. Israelis celebrate the same sequence of maneuverings of the UN and fighting in the Holy Land as Independence Day. It was diplomacy as a zero sum game. Israel – it seemed to the Arab world – won because the Palestinians lost. “

What the phrase “sequence of maneuverings of the UN” is supposed to represent is anyone’s guess, but it is notable that Connolly whitewashes the intended annihilation of nascent Israel by five Arab nations by euphemistically referring to “fighting in the Holy Land” and that he describes their defeat solely in terms of a Palestinian loss. Of course, had there been no Arab attack on Israel, there would have been no defeat – and no “catastrophe”. Connolly continues:

“In the decades since, world leaders have come to coalesce around what they believe would be a win-win solution. A Palestinian state could and should be created on the land Israel conquered in 1967. Israel could and should give up that territory in return for recognition and guaranteed security. Land for peace. “

Of course Connolly does not bother reminding readers that “the land Israel conquered in 1967″ was due to another annihilation attempt by Arab nations or that the said land was conquered by Jordan in 1948, with its 19-year occupation never recognized by the international community. Neither does he bother to examine the track record of the ‘land for peace’ principle. He goes on:

“When Barak Obama came to Israel a couple of months ago he put the argument elegantly and passionately, as he’s done before.”

The programme then cuts to a recording of part of Obama’s speech in Jerusalem in March:

BO: “But the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination – their right to justice – must also be recognized. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land.”

Then it is back to Connolly:

“Everyone knows the depths of mutual hostility and suspicion that make a deal so difficult. But the key players know how to avoid international condemnation by sounding like they’re readier to do a deal than they really are.

Under Benjamin Netanyahu, Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank have expanded. They are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes that interpretation. Mr Netanyahu leads a government which includes ministers who oppose the very idea of a Palestinian state, but when he talks about it, it still sounds eminently doable.”

There’s ye olde “international law” mantra, coming before the distinctly bizarre notion that all ministers in a democratic government should have the exact same opinions as their prime minister and if they don’t, then a peace deal cannot be made. The 1979 Knesset debate on the subject of the peace treaty with Egypt lasted a turbulent 28 hours – and not because all those present agreed with each other – but in the end the treaty was approved.

The broadcast then cuts to a recording of Binyamin Netanyahu:

BN: “So let me be clear: Israel remains fully committed to peace and to the solution of two states for two peoples. We extend our hands in peace and in friendship to the Palestinian people.”

Connolly goes on:

“The Palestinian leadership, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, says there can’t be peace talks until that settlement expansion stops. But on other issues Mr Abbas sounds the very soul of flexibility. He says he’s ready to give up his personal claim to right of return to his own childhood home – which is now in Israel – in order to make peace.”

There’s BBC mantra number two: ‘settlements are an obstacle to peace’. The broadcast then cuts to a recording of Mahmoud Abbas speaking in a 2012 interview with Israel’s Channel 2 TV station.

MA: “But I want to see Safed. It’s my right to see it but not to live there. West Bank and Gaza is Palestine. Other parts [sic] is Israel.”

Connolly conveniently avoids examining the issue of whether all Mahmoud Abbas’ ministers are pro-peace and ignores the fact that the Palestinian governmental system as a whole currently has no legitimate elected mandate. He equally conveniently airbrushes Hamas and the other rejectionist Palestinian factions out of the picture altogether. And of course Abbas’ supposed willingness to “give up…right of return” has absolutely no significance, as Abbas himself soon clarified.

“Talking about Safed is a personal position and does not mean giving up the right of return.” Indeed, he went on, “No-one can give up the right of return as all international texts and Arab and Islamic decisions refer to a just and agreed-upon solution to the refugee issue, according to UN Resolution 194, with the term ‘agreed upon’ meaning agreement with the Israeli side.”

“I do not change my position,” Abbas stressed. “What I say to the Palestinians is no different from what I say to the Israelis or the Americans or anyone.”

Connolly concludes:

“And yet, even with all that reasonableness around and all this renewed effort, another Naqba day has gone by with no deal. There was a time when making peace between Israel and the Palestinians was seen as the key to changing the Middle East, but the Arab Spring has shown that the Middle East was capable of changing while this peace process remained hopelessly stalled.”

Those who may think or have thought that the Arab-Israeli conflict is or was “the key to changing the Middle East” obviously had no understanding of the myriad of complex issues facing the region in the first place, but allowed themselves to be dazzled by the spotlight placed on that issue by political activists. They are – coincidentally – quite often those who equally erroneously promote the idea that the changes brought about by the ‘Arab Spring’ so far have made any significant difference to the lives of the peoples – and particularly the minorities – of the Middle East.

It seems that Kevin Connolly and the BBC are unable – and unwilling – to get themselves out of the rut of incessant repetition of the same old jaded, politically inspired myths and mantras about the Middle East which prevent audiences from gaining any real grasp of the region’s history, present or future.

Apr 24 2013

More substance-free BBC ‘reporting’ on the Iron Dome

Six weeks after the BBC’s Defence Correspondent Jonathan Marcus based an entire article on speculations raised in an opinion piece written by Reuven Pedatzur in Ha’aretz, we now have two more BBC reports on the subject of the Iron Dome – this time by the Jerusalem Bureau’s Kevin Connolly.

Both those reports – a filmed version entitled “Does Israel’s Iron Dome actually work?” which also appeared on BBC television news, and a written version titled “Doubts fail to dent confidence in Israel’s Iron Dome” – appeared on the BBC News website’s Middle East page on April 22^nd.

Neither of the reports, however, brings anything new to the subject. Like Marcus’ previous piece, they too are based on the same speculations by the same people. In both items Connolly interviews the man who wrote the original Ha’aretz article.

Connolly opens his narration in the filmed item by describing the Iron Dome as:

“All just possibly a kind of optical illusion.”

Of course, he is unable to provide any concrete evidence upon which to base that statement. He goes on to say:

“Iron Dome is a missile defence system, credited by Israel with destroying nearly ninety percent of the rockets fired at it during the last conflict with Palestinian militants in Gaza.”

Accurately put, those missiles were not fired at the Iron Dome or at Israel (depending on how one wishes to interpret Connolly’s English), but at civilian communities within Israel.

Admitting that the content of his report is actually based on the opinions of “a handful of sceptics” who do not have access to the relevant data necessary in order to be able to make qualified statements on the subject, Connolly also interviews the former Director of the Israel Missile Defence Organisation, Uzi Rubin – whose recent article concerning the speculations BBC Watch brought to the attention of readers some time ago. As Mr Rubin stated in that article:

“His [Ted Postol's] claim that Israel has not provided the US with accurate data on the Iron Dome’s performance is ridiculous. Anyone who has had any contact with the US government knows that it would never agree to allocate such a large amount of funding to manufacture Iron Dome systems without carefully checking their performance.”

And as BBC Watch pointed out in relation to Jonathan Marcus’ article, Israeli and American scientists work on this project together, thus Connolly’s insinuation that the Iron Dome’s success rate is exclusively an Israeli claim is inaccurate.

“BBC Watch, however, did speak to the Ministry of Defence and was told that not only does the 84% success rate stand, but that post-event analysis by the Israel Missile Defence Association and the American Missile Defence Agency – carried out by scientists with access to the full range of data, of course – suggests an even higher success rate.”

In his written article Connolly opens with a particularly ugly insinuation. [Emphasis added]

“During his lengthy nomination process in Washington, Mr Hagel was forced to counter allegations that he did not feel quite the degree of enthusiasm for Israel which is part of the job description for senior American cabinet ministers these days.”

That turn of phrase sails dangerously close to the kind of antisemitic winds which whisper of “Jewish power” and Connolly should know better than to play to the bigots’ gallery in this fashion.

Connolly goes on:

“It is perhaps not a coincidence that on the eve of his visit, it emerged that the US is preparing to increase its investment in Iron Dome, the missile defence system said by Israel to have shot down nearly 90% of the rockets fired at it from Gaza last November.

That will eventually bring the total American investment in Iron Dome to around $750m – the clearest possible indication that the US government has not been troubled by recent attempts to cast doubt on how well the system works.”

At a press conference in Israel on April 22^nd, Secretary Hagel said:

“The United States Department of Defense and Israel’s Ministry of Defense are continually working together to ensure their militaries have the necessary capabilities in place to deal with changing security environments. These include major advances in cooperative rocket and missile defense efforts between the United States and Israel including Iron Dome, Arrow and David Sling.

Since its deployment, the Iron Dome system has saved many lives, and we are continuing to build on the program’s success. To date, the United States has provided more than 460 million dollars to support the ‘Iron dome’ program and we are requesting another 220 million [dollars] in our fiscal year 2014 defense budget request for Israel to acquire additional Iron Dome batteries.”

So according to the man who, it is safe to assume, knows rather more about this than Kevin Connolly, “preparing to increase its investment” is actually “requesting” and “$790m” is actually $680 million. And if Mr Hagel does not appear to be as “troubled” by the kind of evidence-free speculations tossed around by that “handful of sceptics” as Connolly appears to think he should be, that is probably because he has access to information to which neither Connolly nor the Ha’aretz writer are privy.

Connolly then goes on to quote two men who dismiss Pedatzur’s allegations – Uzi Rubin and Amos Harel.

“He [Rubin] says it is perfectly reasonable for Israel to keep detailed infra-red images of Iron Dome at work a closely-guarded secret. Publishing them might help the country’s enemies to work out how to evade the system.”

Connolly brings no new information to his audiences in either of these reports. Except for a near-antisemitic smear in his written piece and a snide dig at Israelis in the filmed report, he achieves little apart from padding out the BBC website.

“Most Israelis just think they [Iron Dome batteries] work and think they’re making the country safer and stronger.”

So what exactly is the point of the BBC’s repeated publication of articles on this subject which are based on nothing more than uninformed speculation? That remains unfathomed, but certainly the BBC would enhance its credibility were it to review its apparent policy of relying upon Ha’aretz as a source.

Apr 15 2013

BBC uses ‘Gatekeepers’ to advance its own weary mantras on Israel

The BBC’s employment of the opportunity provided by the film ‘The Gatekeepers’ to advance jaded stereotypes relating to Israel began with coverage of its Oscar nomination back in February with reports on the subject from Kevin Connolly, among others.

Two months on, the baton has been picked up by Lyse Doucet, with a written article appearing on the BBC News website on April 10^th along with an excerpt from a BBC World filmed programme on the subject.

This could have been an excellent opportunity for the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent to point out to her audiences that the very fact that this film was made at all is testimony to the vibrancy of Israel’s democratic credentials, not least as the film enjoyed funding from the Rabinovitch Fund (which is in turn funded by the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality, the Israeli Government Department for Culture and Sport and the Israeli equivalent of the National Lottery) and from Israel’s equivalent of the publicly funded BBC – Channel 1.

Instead, both Doucet’s reports advance a simplistic interpretation of the film which is used to promote existing memes frequently propagated by the BBC. In the filmed report we see J Street founder and New Israel Fund board member Daniel Levy say at 03:18:

“And I think the worrying thing is, will you still have an Israeli security establishment that plays that braking role? The new head of the Shin Bet – of this establishment – there was a suspicion that there was a political involvement there; that this guy is more sympathetic to a harder Right cause. You have the Israeli officer training corps increasingly drawn from the settler national religious establishment, so there’s a sense that the security is gonna (sic) line up more with the more extreme politics in the future.”

On what does Levy base those two assertions – both totally unquestioned by Doucet? As far as the subject of IDF officers coming from a specific background is concerned, as anyone familiar with the Israeli army knows, entry to an officer training course is based solely on ability – not postcode or religious/political belief. Levy’s implication that there is some sort of ‘guiding hand’ responsible for the fact that many of the outstanding soldiers who make it to officer level come from a specific sector of Israeli society – and that they all automatically sympathise with “extreme politics” – is not only stereotypical and mistaken, but it also neglects to inform audiences of the fact that soldiers of other political inclinations have exactly the same opportunities open to them.

As for Levy’s rather ugly unsourced innuendoes regarding the current head of the Shin Bet, they seem to be based on little more than the fact that Yoram Cohen is the first religiously observant person to fill that position and Levy’s own resulting preconceived assumptions regarding his political beliefs.

The head of the Shin Bet is appointed after the outgoing head makes recommendations to the Prime Minister. In this case, Yuval Diskin recommended three of his deputies, of which Cohen was one for three years. The decision regarding the appointment was made jointly by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence at the time, Ehud Barak, and then – according to protocol – approved by the Turkel Committee and the government. Levy ignores Cohen’s 30 years of service in the Shin Bet at the time of his appointment and his renowned expertise on the subject of radical Islamic organisations – particularly Hamas – in order to advance an evidence-free trope clearly designed to leave the listener with a very specific impression.

Throughout the conversation Levy, Doucet and the film’s director Dror Moreh all promote the notion that the current Israeli Prime Minister has not done enough to make peace with the Palestinians and cast doubts upon the sincerity of his commitment to a ‘two state-solution’. This one-dimensional portrayal is not balanced by any mention of the efforts which have been made in the last four years – or prior to that – and Doucet allows Moreh to claim that “the building in the settlements have continued to be larger and more deeper” (whatever that means) without making any mention of the ten month-long building freeze which was ignored by the PA for 90% of its duration.

In fact, an average audience member watching this programme or reading Doucet’s article would go away convinced that the peace process is a one-sided affair in which only Israelis have a part to play, that Israelis have no interest in making peace and that the ‘two state solution’ is not a majority consensus in Israeli society.

At one point in the programme Doucet says of the film:

“It is an Israeli conversation. There are no Palestinians in this film except of course in the footage.”

Despite having articulated that, Doucet has clearly missed the point that an “Israeli conversation” is exactly what this film is and that Israelis watching it will be in possession of the background information necessary in order to view the film in context. Israelis will know, for example, that three of the former Shin Bet heads interviewed took up political careers after their retirement from that organisation, and hence will be capable of contextualising their words within the framework of their various political views and aspirations. Israelis will also be only too aware of the important context of the security situations which form the subject matter of the interviews, but which are not represented in this film because there is no need to tell Israelis involved in this internal conversation that, for example, they are regularly bombarded by rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

Doucet’s treatment of this subject is banal and disappointing. There are not many countries – including Western democracies – capable of producing a film like this one in which an ongoing conflict is openly discussed by people who were – and in many cases still are – part of the establishment. Rather than clarifying to audiences the film’s function as testimony to Israeli democracy and freedom of speech, Doucet elected to go down the well-trodden route of using it to promote weary and inaccurate mantras such as ‘Israel isn’t doing enough to make peace’, which do nothing to enhance audience understanding of the dilemmas facing the country which ultimately produced it.

Mar 24 2013

A wave of propaganda: BBC revisits the 2010 flotilla

The BBC News website’s Middle East page on March 23^rd 2013 was headed by no fewer than six items pertaining to what was described as an “Israeli apology for flotilla deaths”.

Those items include a written article entitled “Israel PM apologies for Gaza flotilla deaths” which also includes video footage and a filmed report under the same title by Wyre Davies which appeared on BBC television news. Curiously, the footage in both those reports comes with a disclaimer.

Other items include a written report by Kevin Connolly entitled “Mavi Marmara: US extracts last-minute Israeli apology”, a written article titled “Obama ends Middle East trip with visit to Petra ruins” which also features video footage by Yolande Knell and Q&A piece going under the dramatic headline “Q&A: Israeli deadly raid on aid flotilla”.

All of these reports contain a plethora of basic inaccuracies on the one hand and distinguish themselves through deliberate omissions of crucial information on the other.

The widespread assertion made in the website heading, article titles and in the reports themselves that Israel apologized “for flotilla deaths” is both inaccurate and superficial. As Professor Barry Rubin points out here, this event did not come out of the blue and as explained on PM Netanyahu’s Facebook page, the apology was for “any mistakes that might have led to the loss of life or injury”.

Hence, the claim made by Wyre Davies in his filmed report that “Israel apologized for its role in the deaths of the nine activists” is inaccurate, as is the claim made by Yolande Knell that:

“He [Obama] got the Israeli Prime Minister on the phone apologizing to the Turkish Prime Minister for that deadly military raid on a Turkish ship heading to Gaza with activists on board three years ago.”

The fact that such inaccurate portrayals by Davies and Knell found their way into BBC television news reports is rendered even more egregious when one notes that the wording in the strap line of the main article appearing on the BBC News website indicates that the BBC is actually well aware of the real facts:

“Israel’s prime minister has apologised to Turkey for “any errors that could have led to loss of life” during the 2010 commando raid on an aid flotilla that tried to breach the Gaza blockade.” [emphasis added]

Another serious inaccuracy which appears across the board in these reports is the portrayal of the Mavi Maramra as a ship transporting “aid” to Gaza and the description of its passengers as “activists”. Wyre Davies says in his filmed report:

Sheikh Mohammed al-Hazimi, a member of the Yemeni Parliament and of Al-Islah, aboard the Mavi Marmara

“….nine Turkish activists on a boat called the Mavi Marmara taking aid to Gaza. That boat was boarded by Israeli marines and nine of the activists were killed.”

In this article the BBC claims that:

“Nine people were killed on board the Turkish aid ship, Mavi Marmara, when it was boarded by Israeli commandos while trying to transport aid supplies to Gaza in May 2010 in spite of an Israeli naval blockade.”

The Q&A article claims that:

“It [the flotilla] wanted to deliver aid to Gaza, breaking an Israeli and Egyptian blockade on the territory. The ships were carrying 10,000 tonnes of goods, including school supplies, building materials and two large electricity generators. The activists also said they wanted to make the point that, in their view, the blockade was illegal under international law.”

The blockade is not of course “illegal under international law”, as the UN’s Palmer Report made perfectly clear.

“The fundamental principle of the freedom of navigation on the high seas is subject to only certain limited exceptions under international law. Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”

The fact that three years on, the BBC is still promoting that myth – albeit whilst apparently thinking it has itself covered by ostensibly quoting someone else – and that it does not make it clear that the “activists” have no legitimate basis for their “views”, represents a clear breach of BBC Editorial Guidelines on impartiality and accuracy.

As for the BBC’s various claims pertaining to “aid”, the Mavi Marmara was of course one of seven vessels which made up the flotilla, but the only one on board which any violence took place. The flotilla’s organisers were offered in advance by Israel the opportunity to dock at Ashdod port, have any cargo inspected for weapons and illegal goods and then have it transported into Gaza. Any legitimate aid organization would have taken advantage of that offer, but the flotilla organisers refused it.

Further, beyond the personal effects of some 600 passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara – clearly a number far in excess of that required by any legitimate aid mission – no humanitarian goods were found on that specific ship or on two of the other vessels comprising the flotilla.

The “aid” which was carried by the other four ships included expired medicines, second-hand used clothing and other goods – many of which were damaged due to improper packaging. The total amount of “aid” was later packed into 34 trucks for transport into Gaza (although Hamas refused to accept it initially). During the same week, 484 trucks of genuine aid passed into the Gaza Strip via the crossings on the border with Israel.

As for the “activists” (as the BBC euphemistically terms them), we can get a good idea of the kind of received wisdom which lies behind the use of that phrasing by looking at the section under the sub-heading “Who organised it?” of the Q&A article.

Bulent Yidirim (IHH) and Ismail Haniyeh, January 2010

“A group called The Free Gaza Movement, an umbrella organisation for activists from numerous countries, and a Turkish group called the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Aid (IHH).

The Israeli government says the IHH is closely linked to the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which it views as a terrorist group, and is a member of another organisation, the Union of the Good, which supports suicide bombings. However, the Turkish government regards the IHH as a legitimate charity, and had urged Israel to let the flotilla through.”

The BBC’s anodyne description of the ‘Free Gaza Movement’ is nothing less than scandalous. It completely ignores the FGM’s connections to the International Solidarity Movement and the close links of both those groups to the terrorist organisation Hamas. It fails to mention the FGM’s dismal record of support for terror and antisemitism and its documented strategy of organizing flotillas as a PR exercise, as well as the involvement of many of its members and supporters in other anti-Israel campaigns.

Members of the ‘Free Gaza Movement’ receive medals from Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza in 2008

No better is the BBC’s whitewashing of the IHH. As we see above, according to the BBC it is “the Israeli government” – and it alone – which “says” that the IHH is “closely linked” to Hamas. It is also the Israeli government which “views” Hamas as a “terrorist group”.

This warped version of reality ignores the fact that many other countries define Hamas as a terrorist organization besides Israel. It also downplays the nature of the ‘Union of Good’ – of which the IHH is a member – by describing it vaguely as an organization “which supports suicide bombings”. The Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Union of Good‘ – headed by the antisemitic preacher Yusuf Qaradawi – which came into existence at the beginning of the Second Intifada as a way of raising and channelling funds to enable terror attacks by Hamas and its affiliates against Israeli civilians. It is designated by the US government as well as Israel.

The BBC’s simplistic making do with the statement that the IHH is a “legitimate charity” in the eyes of the current Turkish government does not even attempt to explain to readers the close ties between the two and the extent of the support provided by the Turkish government in the organization of the flotilla.

All these BBC reports totally ignore the clear evidence of incitement to and preparations for violence on board the Mavi Marmara well in advance of any meeting with the IDF, as shown for example in an Al Jazeera report aired two days before the incident.

Almost three years after the Mavi Marmara incident, the BBC’s reporting on the subject reads like a press release of which the ‘Free Gaza Movement’ itself would be proud. The blatant omission of crucial information concerning the flotilla’s organisers and participants, as well as of the circumstances of the incident itself, can only be regarded as an attempt to dictate a very specific, dumbed-down narrative about the event to BBC audiences in order to shape perceptions. That clearly compromises the BBC’s obligations to both accuracy and impartiality – as well as insulting audiences’ intelligence.

Mar 19 2013

BBC’s Kevin Connolly tries wit, promotes jaded memes

The BBC programme ‘From our own Correspondent’ – broadcast on Radio 4 and the BBC World Service – promises its audiences:

“Insight, wit and analysis as BBC correspondents, journalists and writers take a closer look at the stories behind the headlines.”

On March 16^th 2013, the broadcast included an item by the BBC Jerusalem Bureau’s Kevin Connolly (available here from 21:58), the synopsis of which reads:

“People in Jerusalem are awaiting the imminent arrival of Barack Obama. Kevin Connolly speculates on what may emerge from the trip and wonders if, afterwards, streets will be named in honour of the American president! ”

Connolly’s attempts at wit unfortunately come across as more embarrassingly parochial than amusing.

“Foreigners tend to be commemorated here, naturally enough, according to the degree of enthusiasm they showed for the Zionist cause. So you’ll find streets named after Balfour and Lloyd George alongside roads named after men who are now otherwise figures of total historical obscurity. The back bench British MP Josiah Wedgwood, for example, or the colonial official Wyndham Deedes. The street map of Jerusalem can seem more like a ‘who’s he?’ rather than a Who’s Who.”

The ‘Josiah Wedgwood’ sailed from Italy in April 1946 with some 1,250 Holocaust survivors aboard. Arrested by the British off the coast of Haifa in June 1946, its passengers were interred in Atlit.

Of course it actually might be of some benefit to Mr Connolly’s listeners’ familiarity with Israel’s history (and Britain’s too) were the reporter to refrain from dismissing a figure such as Colonel Josiah Wedgwood as obscure before familiarizing himself with the latter’s tireless campaigning against British limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine and against restrictions on entry to Britain for persecuted European Jews in the pre-war years.

The most notable feature of this report though is the slick manner in which several beloved BBC memes are inserted into it. The introduction to the item begins with presenter Kate Adie saying:

“Barack Obama arrives in Israel next week. It’s the first foreign trip of his new presidency and it promises to be a tricky one; not least because he and the Israeli prime minister Netanyahu don’t apparently get on.” [emphasis added]

Later on we have Connolly repeating that meme:

“Mr Obama is widely thought not to have warmed to Mr Netanyahu personally, but Congress loves him.” [emphasis added]

Thought by whom? The listener is not made privy to the source of the BBC’s ‘Chinese whispers’.

Another rather suspect meme promoted by Connolly comes in this passage:

“Obama did come here as a presidential candidate: a prudent step to woo the Jewish vote at home and to please the powerful pro-Israel lobby.” [emphasis added]

Connolly also informs listeners that:

“There will be much talk of Iran whilst President Obama is in Israel. Its nuclear ambitions worry most Israelis and they sometimes seem to obsess Prime Minister Netanyahu.” [emphasis added]

Can we then assume that if a neighbouring enemy country which had vowed to wipe Britain off the map was developing nuclear weapons, Kevin Connolly would not expect his prime minister to be preoccupied with that issue?

And we also have an insertion of the much touted – but entirely unfounded – meme that all would be sweetness and light in the Middle East if only the Israelis and the Palestinians would make peace.

“One reason perhaps why there was no visit in that first Obama term was the sudden fluidity of the Middle East – a kind of breaking of the political pack-ice after decades of stagnation. America suddenly needed changing policies for changing times in Tunisia and Libya and – above all – Egypt. [….] In those long years of stagnation there was an unspoken belief that the key to unlocking everything was to find peace between Israel and the Palestinian people of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” [emphasis added]

As ridiculous as that “belief” may be, it was – and is – certainly not “unspoken” as Connolly claims. But one really would expect that analysts and commentators (and Western politicians) would have learned from the past two and a quarter years of Middle East turmoil that the fact that their own assessments and predictions proved redundant time and time again shows just how little of the region’s dynamics they actually understand. That applies just as much to the concept of the ‘peace process’ as the key to regional stability as it did to the ‘expert’ schools of thought which assured us that revolution would not happen in Libya and Syria, that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was ‘moderate’ and democracy-loving and that Bashar al Assad was a ‘reformer’.

The BBC’s seemingly limitless obsession with ‘the peace process’ as the only show in town – even as Al Qaeda affiliated militias stalk the Syrian side of Israel’s northern border and a Hamas minister tries to establish terror cells in PA controlled territories – is dismal testimony of the standard of Middle East-related “analysis” and “insight” it offers to its audiences.

Feb 5 2013

BBC’s Kevin Connolly stereotypes Israeli Arabs

Last month the BBC Jerusalem Bureau’s Kevin Connolly tried to persuade his audience that Israeli Arabs were likely to show a low turnout in the country’s elections. He was wrong: the average turnout in that sector was 56%, with some cities, towns and villages showing even more impressive rates.

“Kafr Kasim, near Rosh Ha’ayin, led the Arab sector with close to 80% turnout, according to the Central Elections Committee.

Other major Arab population centers also had a high turnout: Jaljulya at 70%, Kafr Bara 59%, Taibe 60%, Tira 59%, Rahat 57%, Umm el-Fahm 57% and Sakhnin around 80%.”

But what was really interesting about Connolly’s article was the way in which it stereotypically herded over 20% of the population of Israel into one homogeneous lump.

Connolly interviewed one Mohammed Darweshe in Nazareth. He did not reveal Mr Darweshe’s affiliations beyond the vague description of “community leader”, but his interviewee may perhaps be the co-executive director of the Abraham Fund Initiatives which has been involved in campaigning to encourage voters in the Arab sector to use their civil rights. Whether or not that is the case, it would certainly have been appropriate – in the interests of accuracy and impartiality – for Connolly to inform his readers about the variety of factors affecting electoral participation in the Israeli Arab sector, as outlined in some of that organisation’s literature, with one of those factors being the influence of groups such as ’Abnaa al-Balad’ and the Hamas-affiliated Northern Islamic Movement (headed by Raed Salah) which reject any participation in the electoral process in Israel.

Connolly’s next interviewee was Ibrahim Sarsour, who is not only the head of the United Arab List as described in the article, but also the leader of the Southern Islamic Movement which differs from its Northern counterpart in the fact that it does take part in the political process in Israel. Oddly, Connolly apparently did not think to ask Mr Sarsour if the fact that his party has never had a woman on its list might perhaps hinder its appeal to voters.

Throughout his entire article, Connolly ignored the political concerns of Christian Arabs, non-Arab Muslims, Bedouin and Druze, instead promoting the erroneous notion of a homogeneous Israeli Arab sector and disregarding the fact that for members of those groups – as well as many Muslim Israeli Arabs – priorities when deciding who to vote for might extend beyond the limited subject of “peace talks”.

“But it is obvious that Israeli-Arabs could wield a great deal more influence if they voted tactically and voted in larger numbers.

By voting for their own small parties they tend to ensure that in the kaleidoscope of Israeli politics they remain without real influence.

That influence would be felt very directly indeed if a very large number of Israeli Arabs were to vote for Meretz or any of the other parties that supports peace talks with the Palestinians.”

In stark contrast to Connolly’s article, however, the election results show the diversity of Israeli Arab opinion and perhaps also reflect the fact that in a 2012 poll, 52.8% of Israeli Arabs defined themselves as proud to be Israeli.

In the Northern Islamic Movement’s bastion of Um el Fahm, for example, 105 people voted for the Sephardic Orthodox party Shas and nineteen for Torah Judaism. In Bir al Maksour – a Bedouin district – 23% of the electorate voted for Tsipi Livni. The Labour party gained the majority of votes in the Druze town of Beit Jann, with Likud-Beiteinu coming second. In the Druze village of Julis, 11% of the voters gave their voice to the Jewish Home party and 14% to Shas, whilst Tsipi Livni won the most votes. In Nazareth 96 people voted for Shas, in Sakhnin, 22 people voted for the Torah Judaism party, whilst in the village of Nein near Afula, 63% of the electorate voted for Meretz. In the Bedouin town of Rahat in the Negev, nineteen people voted for the Breslev Hassidim ‘Nach Nach’ party and 16 voted for the ‘Green Leaf’ party which runs on a platform for the legalization of cannabis.

Israelis – whatever their ethnic or religious background – obviously cannot be pigeon-holed into stereotypical categories. It is a pity that Kevin Connolly denied his audiences any real insight into Israeli society by trying so hard in this article to do just that, in order to promote his own pre-decided narrative about Israel.

One of Connolly’s opening ‘explanations’ for his predicted low voter turn-out was as follows:

“Things used to be very different.

In the first elections in Israeli history Arab parties ran as affiliates of the Mapai movement which was led by David Ben-Gurion, the architect of the state.

Parties like The Democratic List of Nazareth may not have been very big but they were included in governing coalitions and they reflected the impulse of the left-wing founders of the new state that the Arab minority had to be included in the political process.

Israel has changed a great deal since those days.

Its current leadership emphasises that it is a Jewish state; Benjamin Netanyahu would want the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to recognise it as such in any future negotiations. A law passed in the last parliament requires non-Jews who want to migrate here to swear an oath acknowledging its Jewish nature.

That kind of talk makes the 20 per cent or so of the population which is Arab feel uneasy, or even angry.”

Poor Ben Gurion must be spinning in his grave at the suggestion that the concept of Israel as a Jewish State is a product of the 21^st century. After all, from its very first day, Israel was defined as such.

“Accordingly we, the members of the people’s council, representatives of the Jewish community of Eretz-Israel and of the Zionist movement, are here assembled on the day of the termination of the British mandate over Eretz-Israel and, by virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the united nations general assembly, hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the state of Israel.”

Beyond his obviously patchy knowledge of history, Connolly clearly has no understanding of the relevance of the insistence upon the recognition of Israel as the Jewish state by presumed peace partners who not infrequently tout the subject of the ‘right of return’ of millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees to Israel – with the inevitable resulting demise of Jewish self-determination.

But clearly, what Connolly was trying to do in this article was to suggest that since the decline of the old, socialist-ruled Israel (the one which European Left-wingers could stomach) and the subsequent development of a more varied political spectrum, Israel has become more discriminatory towards its minorities and that leads to low participation in the electoral process.

In order to further promote that idea, he stated that non-Jews wishing to “migrate” to Israel (i.e. receive Israeli citizenship) are required by law to “swear an oath acknowledging its Jewish nature” and that the law concerned was passed in the 18^th Knesset.

Connolly does not provide a source for that assertion, but if he can find that clause in the Law of Citizenship or on the list of laws passed by the 18^th Knesset, his point is at least open to discussion. If he cannot, then not only must the BBC issue a prominent correction to this article, but a full apology is also in order.

Jan 28 2013

Kevin Connolly tweaks the Israeli political map

Apparently still unable to let go of the subject of the Israeli elections, the BBC featured another report on the subject by the Jerusalem Bureau’s Kevin Connolly in its January 26^th edition of ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ – broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service.

A podcast of the programme can be downloaded or heard here. Connolly’s report begins at 01:26, but it is also worth listening to the introduction by the programme’s presenter Kate Adie from 00:39, in which she once more repeats the unquestioned mantra of “the deadlocked peace process” as one of the “pressing regional matters”. Alternatively, a fairly accurate transcript of Connolly’s radio report can be read in the magazine section of the BBC News website.

Moving on past the rather laboured introduction, we reach Connolly’s assessment of democracy in the Middle East; one which seems riskily hasty if one considers the track record of elected Islamist regimes in the region so far.

“Israeli officials have long made the point that theirs is the only democracy in the Middle East – a claim that calls for a little tweaking or qualification in the light of Egypt’s elections last year.”

But the real intention of this report by Connolly seems to be to persuade audiences that the BBC’s pre-election analysis was not as far off the mark as they may think.

You see, if you happened to think that the BBC’s energetic promotion of the notion that Israelis were about to elect a right-wing government was mistaken then, according to Connolly, it is you who are wrong. And in order to explain just how wrong you were, Connolly says:

“What is interesting about this election is that the dynamic new force in parliament comes not from the far-right of Israeli politics as many expected, but from the centre.

A new party called “There is a Future” is the second-largest force in the new Knesset.

It is led by a popular television personality called Yair Lapid. If you are British or American, you will have to imagine David Dimbleby or David Letterman stepping down from the screen to sort the country out.”

So far, so good. But Connolly then continues:

“Using the term “centrist” in the context of Israeli politics is not always helpful.

I suspect that to many Europeans, it conjures an image of a leader who would be much less tough in negotiations with the Palestinians than Mr Netanyahu would.

But Mr Lapid does not believe that Israel should have to divide Jerusalem with the Palestinians in a future peace deal – one of the core elements of the two-state solution that the wider world continues to believe in.

That Mr Lapid is labelled a centrist perhaps shows you where the centre of gravity of Israeli opinion on such matters lies these days.”

So you see, the BBC was not wrong: Israelis did elect a far-right government after all, because Kevin Connolly has just ‘shown’ that in Israeli politics – which apparently should be defined in European terms and solely in relation to the ‘peace process’, ignoring aspects such as economic policy – even the Centre is Right.

And how does he pull that off? By blinkering his audience into focusing on one single issue – the subject of the possible re-division of Israel’s capital city – which Connolly should know is just one of many issues defined in internationally recognized agreements as subjects for final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The fact that Yair Lapid – or any other Israeli – may consider the division of Jerusalem undesirable is not a rejection of negotiations with a Palestinian Authority genuinely interested in reaching a settlement.

Of course Connolly’s convenient tweak of the Israeli political spectrum does nothing to explain why, in all its pre-election coverage of the Israeli Right (and only the right), did the Yesh Atid party barely get a mention. Rather embarrassingly, Connolly also seems to have forgotten that only three days previously he himself wrote the following words:

“But the sudden and decisive lurch to the right that many predicted hasn’t happened.

The results show that there’s plenty of life on the left and the centre of Israeli politics too.”

Unfortunately, this latest report by Connolly appears to indicate that not only is the BBC nowhere near engaging in the much-needed self-criticism shown to be so necessary by its coverage of the Israeli elections, but that it appears to be determined to avoid that introspection like the plague, even if it makes itself and its correspondents look very silly in the process.

Jan 24 2013

Not Right: why did the BBC get the Israeli elections so wrong?

The day after the Israeli elections, with most of the real results in, some furious back-tracking was going on across the board of BBC reporting. All of a sudden, the obviously flawed predictions were attributed to an anonymous “many” in a revealingly titled article by Kevin Connolly:

“But the sudden and decisive lurch to the right that many predicted hasn’t happened.

The results show that there’s plenty of life on the left and the centre of Israeli politics too.”

That same message was repeated in an additional article, in which (as well as in another report) it was also suddenly discovered that security was not the main issue worrying Israelis at all, as the BBC had previously claimed.

“However, unlike in previous elections, the campaign focused largely on social and economic issues, rather than the prospects for a permanent peace agreement with the Palestinians.”

On election day itself, the BBC was still promoting the notion of the “sleepiest election ever” – although it soon had to back-track on that theme too.

So why did the BBC – with its multitude of locally based reporters, analysts and ‘expert’ Middle East editors get it so wrong?

The obvious answer to that lies in the BBC’s organizational culture. Existing collective assumptions about Israel – influenced by an unchallenged predominant political view – guided interpretation of facts and events and prevented BBC journalists from taking note of local outside analysts other than those which supported their own preconceived ideas.

Collective perceptions of Israel and Israelis – perhaps coupled with over-confidence in their own expertise – meant that BBC reporters did not even try to find out which issues were important to the Israeli electorate: instead they produced material which supported their own preconceived ideas – beginning long before the election itself, with the promotion of the notion that Operation ‘Pillar of Cloud’ was part of the Likud election campaign. In addition, a marked lack of understanding of the inapplicability of their own Eurocentric interpretations of terms such as Left and Right or “nationalist” to the Israeli political scene was very evident – especially in relation to the subject of traditional support from specific socio-economic groups for certain parties.

Tweet by Jon Donnison, 22/1/13

The term “nationalist” (and even “ultra-nationalist” – whatever that may be!) was, for example, employed exclusively – and with implied disapproval – as a description of parties considered by the BBC to be on the Right of the political map, such as Likud-Beiteinu and ‘Jewish Home’. What the BBC failed to grasp is that many of the other parties which it may have categorized as ‘Left’ or ‘Centre’ are no less committed to the principle of national independence and Zionism – the right of Jews to self-determination in their own nation-state.

Most blatantly obvious is the fact that the BBC’s insistence upon framing this election almost exclusively in terms of the potential effect of its results on ‘the peace process’ reflects its own institutional attitude towards that subject, both in terms of its perceived importance and in terms of the curious notion that only what Israel does has any effect upon that process’ chances.

Broadly speaking – and we see this reflected time and time again in its reporting; not only in relation to the elections – the BBC absolves the Palestinian side of the equation of any responsibility for the progress of the peace process (or lack of it) and turns Palestinians into child-like creatures lacking all agency. That approach was reflected in a strange report which asked Palestinians in Gaza and Ramallah “what the results [of elections in Israel] could mean for them”.

Twenty years of waiting for the Oslo Accords to produce positive results means that for many Israelis, the subject of ‘the peace process’ with the Palestinians is not the most burning issue on the agenda. According to the BBC’s accepted wisdom, however, that is the only subject of importance – and one which it frequently mistakenly describes as ‘Middle East peace’; as though the rest of the region were a bastion of tolerance and harmony.

There can be no doubt that the BBC’s organizational culture – molded by a largely homogeneous political approach to Israel and the Middle East – is what led it to make such dramatically mistaken assumptions which, in turn, produced seriously flawed interpretations which generated a volume of useless reporting and analysis.

Such mistakes are, of course by no means the exclusive territory of the BBC, but they are also not confined to the subject of the Israeli elections. This blatantly obvious failure to meet its commitment to “explain the world” accurately and impartially to its licence fee-paying funders should, in theory at least, be the catalyst for some very serious introspection on the part of the BBC.

Jan 22 2013

Roundup of BBC coverage of the Israeli elections

IDF soldiers stationed on Mount Hermon cast their votes on January 21st.

An overview of the BBC’s coverage of the Israeli elections up until the commencement of polling by 5,656,705 eligible voters at 10,132 polling stations on the morning of Tuesday, January 22^nd 2013 shows some interesting trends.

The vast majority of the thirty two contending parties have been totally ignored in all BBC coverage since the elections were announced.

Politicians who did get the BBC’s attention are mostly located on the right of the political map. Avigdor Lieberman was the subject of an item by Kevin Connolly broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on January 7^th. Naftali Bennett of ‘Jewish Home’ was the subject of another radio item by Connolly (note the description of Machane Yehuda market as being in “West Jerusalem”) and an article by Wyre Davies. An article on Binyamin Netanyahu focused on the subject of his approach to the subject of settlements.

More general articles on the subject of the elections also largely ignored the centrist and Left-wing parties. Tsipi Livni’s party got a mention in a December 20^th 2012 article by Kevin Connolly, but only in the context of her ability to challenge Netanyahu: readers learned nothing about the policies or personalities of ‘HaTnua’.

In his January 16^th ‘roadtrip’ article, Yuval Ben Ami spent the first third of the piece claiming that a lot of people were going to vote for the Orthodox Shas party and the second part focusing on a perceived ominous rise of the right – with particular focus on Bennett and including a very thinly-veiled analogy between him and the European far-Right of the 1930s. Centrist parties get a mention in name alone.

Under the decidedly dubious headline “Migrant politics”, the BBC informed us that Russian-born Israelis (most of whom have been in the country for at least 20 years) will be voting for the Right.

Contrary to the picture presented in readily-available opinion polls, Wyre Davies was keen to persuade BBC audiences that the main issue in these elections is security. Kevin Connolly produced a superficial article on the subject of the low turn-out to the polls in the Arab sector which, inter alia, completely ignored the influence of the Northern Islamic Movement.

The BBC’s Q&A on the subject of the Israeli elections gets the number of parties contending wrong, inaccurately describes ‘Jewish Home’ as being one of several “new parties” (it was founded in 2008 and held 3 seats in the 18^th Knesset) and provides no information about the policies of Centrist or Left parties.

“There are 34 parties contesting the polls (14 parties are represented in the current Knesset). They range from extreme left to extreme right, and from secular to ultra-Orthodox, and there are Arab as well as Jewish parties. New parties have emerged since the last elections, most notably the ultra-nationalist religious Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party, led by Naftali Bennett, a high-tech millionaire and former adviser to Mr Netanyahu.”

Articles relating to the voters themselves included a ‘man in the street’ item which focused mainly on the Jerusalem area and Yuval Ben Ami’s bizarre piece about a fringe movement of Israeli voters donating their votes to Palestinians.

A last minute article published hours before the polling stations opened, by Kevin Connolly, focused once more upon Netanyahu’s Likud and Bennett’s ‘Jewish Home’ parties, stating that:

“It is very hard to imagine a government led by Mr Netanyahu and with Mr Bennett somewhere in its ranks negotiating seriously about a two-state solution – something that will anger Palestinians and frustrate American and European leaders.”

That theme was again repeated in an article published just as Israelis began to vote.

The BBC’s overall coverage of this election has presented a picture which disproportionately focuses on one side of the Israeli political map. Audiences will not only have been unable to learn anything about the policies of Centrist and Leftist parties, but will also know nothing about the people leading them. Subjects such as the involvement of Arab women in the political process – which would likely interest readers and viewers in this ‘Arab Spring’ era – have been completely ignored.

Overall, the BBC’s selective coverage of the elections has had one very specific agenda: to present Israel as a country lurching rightwards and to depict that perceived shift as the exclusive reason for the predicted failure to make progress on the subject of the peace process.

Neither of those assumptions is anchored in reality, but the BBC continues to selectively tailor the news in order to influence audience perceptions.

Jan 15 2013

Elections in Israel and the BBC

With a week to go until the Israeli elections on January 22^nd 2013, the BBC’s coverage of the subject has so far been extremely sparse. The Jerusalem Bureau’s Kevin Connolly has produced a few items, including a December 20^th article focusing mainly upon Binyamin Netanyahu’s chances of re-election and an item on the BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme of January 7^th about the Israeli politician Western journalists love to hate – Avigdor Lieberman.

Apart from that, BBC audiences will so far have scant idea of the characteristics of the thirty-odd parties standing for election, their political leanings or their manifestos. They will know little about the women heading some of those parties such as Sheli Yechimovitch, Tsipi Livni, Zahava Galon or Asma Agbarieh-Zahalka. They will not know, for example, that in addition to the usual Arab parties, a new one named “The Hope for Change” is running this year on a very different platform than that usually offered to Arab voters or that there are two parties running which aim to represent Israel’s Ethiopian community.

Instead, like much of the Western media, the BBC so far seems intent upon portraying these elections in terms of an ominous shift to the right by the Israeli electorate and revolving solely around the issue of peace with the Palestinians.

The kind of interpretation of the Israeli political scene which appears to be prevalent at the BBC is represented in this blog post from Robin Lustig, who recently stepped down from his BBC posts after 23 years of presenting. As a now private citizen, Mr Lustig is of course entitled to write whatever he likes, but for those of us trying to make sense of the BBC’s coverage of Israel, he provides some valuable insights into the prevailing accepted wisdom in its corridors.

“Two-state solution? Forget it – even if President Obama really tries to push for a settlement (and let’s be honest, there’s been no sign so far that he intends to), Mr Netanyahu will simply say sorry, no can do, the Knesset won’t wear it.

Here’s the situation: Israelis have discovered they can live with the status quo. With the exception of those periods when Palestinian fighters fire rockets into Israel from Gaza, spreading real fear but causing mercifully few casualties, the vast majority of Israelis can get on with their daily lives without thinking about Palestinians at all.

So why even talk to them? Most Israelis still say they believe in a two-state solution, but it’s the sort of thing you can say without having to think too much about it. After all, anyone who looks at a map of where the Israelis have already built in the West Bank, which they’ve occupied now for more than 45 years – and where they intend to build – can see the reality: there’s no room left for anything that would remotely resemble a viable Palestinian state. […]

So, to many Israelis, it may look as if what they have now is sustainable, that somehow the Palestinians in the West Bank will eventually forget that they ever wanted a state of their own or the opportunity to decide their own futures — and that Palestinians in Gaza will no longer mind living in what they have long called the world’s biggest open-air prison.

In my view, this is a profound, and potentially disastrous, mistake. Israelis need only look to their neighbours in Egypt and Syria to see what happens when prolonged injustice is allowed to fester. But for now, what many Israelis see is a region mired in uncertainty and instability, and growing Islamist power which looks deeply alarming.

That, I suspect, is why they’re turning to leaders who speak the language of strength and resistance to compromise. What matters to them is not whether they’re liked, or even whether they’re approved of. What matters is that they’re feared. ”

Beyond his disturbingly ill-informed and superficial sound-bites (for a more nuanced view, Mr Lustig - and the recipients of his newsletter which recently included this blog-post – might like to read this recent article by Daniel Gordis), Robin Lustig provides an excellent example of the widely popular ‘doom and gloom’ approach to anticipated results of the democratic process in Israel.

And of course what is really interesting about that approach – characterized as it is by the frequent use of adjectives such as ‘hardline’, ‘right-wing’, ‘nationalist’ or ‘hawkish’ – is the glaring contrast with the way in which the BBC approached the elections in Tunisia and Egypt, for example.

Tunisia’s winning party Ennahda was repeatedly described as “moderate Islamist” by the BBC and one will certainly not find any of those above adjectives used to describe Mohamed Morsi, who – the BBC was very keen to inform audiences on multiple occasions – is “quietly” or “softly spoken”. In fact, as long as the ‘Arab Spring’ elections could be described as free and democratic, the BBC seemed to be perfectly willing to enthusiastically embrace the people’s choice, no matter what the ideology of those elected.

Any rightward shift which may or may not take place in next week’s vote in Israel will be the result of free and democratic elections. It is a pity that the BBC seems too often to be unable to appreciate that the Arab-Israeli conflict is just one of many issues facing those going to the polls or to respect the right of Israeli voters to make their own choices – even if those choices do not square up to the BBC world view.

BBC Watch

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