Tim Llewellyn, former BBC Middle East Correspondent, on the BBC’s Wilful Distortion and Manipulation of News About Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinians

 The Contrast Between the BBC’s Treatment of Russia’s Banning of Memorial Whilst Ignoring Israel’s Banning of Six Palestinian Human Rights Groups is Striking

I was watching the midnight edition of BBC News 24. The top story was Russia’s banning of human rights group, Memorial. Fiona Bruce and the BBC’s Russia correspondent Steve Rosenberg didn’t even bother to give Russia’s reasons for the ban. It was taken as given that this was an egregious and indefensible act.

Bruce told us that it had come ‘at the end of a year when the Kremlin has cracked down vigorously on its critics.’ Rosenberg told us that

‘more and more it feels as if Russia is turning the clock back. ‘Liquidate’ the judge says.... The organisation was found to have broken Russia’s draconian foreign agents law. ‘Disgraceful decision’ was the reaction from the gallery.’

Grigory Yavlinky of the Yabloko Party was then interviewed who stated that it’s just ‘one more step from an authoritarian, totalitarian regime’ with an extended description of how Memorial was shining a light on ‘one of the darkest chapters of Russian history’ namely Stalin’s terror.’ 

Rosenberg told us that the founding of Memorial 30 years ago was a ‘symbol of the Soviet Union opening up, facing up to its past’. But the ‘shutting down of Memorial is a symbol also of how the past is being reshaped, rewritten and how civil society is under attack.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWwCX0AjjNI

BBC 24 Hours makes the banning of Memorial a Russian Human Rights Group the lead news item

We were then shown a picture of Putin and the military, as a backdrop to the decision and we were told that Putin has been ‘using history to try to foster patriotism’.  Of course this is not something that would happen in the West!  Clearly the competition between Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer as to who can fit most Union Jacks into one photo shot is about something entirely different.

The BBC’s concern with human rights, be it in Russia, China or Hong Kong is selective and runs in tandem with British and Western Foreign Policy. When do we have similar reports on America’s client regimes such as Colombia or US support for coups against popular regimes that threaten its interests? When was the last BBC documentary on Saudi Arabia’s bombing of Yemen’s civilians or the threat that Israel poses to its neighbours?

In October Israel banned not 1 but 6 Palestinian human rights groups. One of them, Al Haq, was founded in 1979, some 43 years ago. Nearly half as long again as Memorial.  Did the BBC give us an insight into its work and film its staff at work?  B’Tselem, the main Israeli human rights group described Israel’s banning as ‘an act characteristic of totalitarian regimes’. Did the BBC interview anyone who described Israel’s actions in these terms? Of course not.

Memorial was banned by order of Russia’s Supreme Court, which is about as independent of government as our own Court of Appeal when it decided to hand over Julian Assange to the tender mercies of America’s judicial and prison system. Yet Israel didn’t even bother with the fig leaf of an order from Israel’s Colonial Courts. It was banned by edict from Israel’s War Minister  Benny Gantz. On this the BBC also had no comment

What limited coverage the BBC gave to Israel's banning of 6 human rights groups gave prominence to the accusations of 'terrorism' not the attack on the freedom of Palestinians

Who were the groups which Israel described as a front for the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine?

1.           Al-Haq, Law in the Service of Man,

2.           Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Bisan

3.           Center for Research and Development,

4.           Defence for Children International-Palestine (DCI-Palestine),

5.           the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) and

6.           the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees (UPWC).

Anyone who has any acquaintance with the work of these organisations knows that Israel’s motives in banning the groups was political and related to their opposition to the Occupation. The allegations were made without a shred of evidence.

The BBC included a picture of PFLP guerillas as part of its McCarthyist guilt-by-association techniques - not once did it ask where the proof was that PFLP military operations were funded by groups like Defence of Children International-Palestine

The idea that these organisations cannot employ members or supporters of the PFLP is preposterous. The PFLP is a legitimate Palestinian organisation. Settler groups that regularly terrorise Palestinian farmers are described by Israeli Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked as the ‘salt of the earth’ but Palestinian civil society groups or indeed any group opposing Israel’s occupation are ‘terrorist’.

The background to the BBC’s bias, in which every Israeli attack on the Palestinians is ‘retaliation’ whereas Palestinian attacks on settlers or the military is ‘terrorist’ is laid out in Tim Llewellyn’s excellent talk which the Balfour Project hosted in August.

Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East reporter, described how the BBC has adopted the viewpoint of the British and American Establishment on Israel and how it systematically distorts its news output in favour of Israel. Of course if the Palestinians lived in Hong Kong or Tibet then the BBC would be all over them like a rash.

We can get some measure of the BBC’s attitude by its response to Tim’s article in the Guardian where it says that:

Although Tim Llewellyn was indeed a BBC correspondent some years ago, we note that he subsequently was active for a period with the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU).

Having nothing to say to rebut the substance of Tim’s article the BBC resorted to attacking him personally because he is a member of CAABU, an organisation devoted to fostering British-Arab understanding.

But when Danny Cohen, a former BBC Director of Television signed a letter in the Guardian opposing a cultural boycott of Israel, the BBC merely said it was ‘inadvisable’. There was no condemnation.

The BBC was born in the womb of the British state. It has a record of racism, support for colonialism and hostility to the working class and trade unions. I expect no different from it which is people should not pay the TV Licence fee.  There is no reason why ordinary people should pay to fund this anti-working class organisation.

The BBC’s present Chairman Richard Sharpe, has donated £400,000 to the Tory Party over the last 20 years. As Richard Oborne detailed Sharpe donated a further £35,000 to the Islamaphobic charity Quillam, which itself was funded by some of the most virulent ‘counter Jihad’ organisations such as the John Templeton Foundation.

I disagree with Tim’s suggestion in the Guardian article that the responsibility for complaints should be taken out of the hands of the BBC Trust (which has been abolished) and handed to Ofcom, the state regulator.  Why? Because this has already been done and we saw how effective Ofcom was when it refused to investigate last year’s BBC Propaganda Film by John Ware, Is Labour Anti-Semitic?

I include below two previous articles that Tim Llewellyn wrote for the Guardian in 2009 and 2011 before Jonathan Freedland seized control of the Comment columns and before the Guardian’s dire editor, Freedland Kath Viner, gave the MI5 a veto over what the Guardian is allowed to print on Britain’s security state.

Below is Tony Benn’s interview on BBC Today programme where he defied the edict of BBC Director General Mark Thompson, who had banned an Appeal by the Disaster Emergency Committee. In 2008 Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in the course of which it killed 1400 people, 85% of whom were civilians, including 288 children.

Tony Greenstein

BBC is 'confusing cause and effect' in its Israeli coverage

A controversial book concludes Corporation still fails to present a fair and balanced picture of conflict

Israeli soldiers attack Palestinians during a demonstration marking al-Nakba Day in Bethlehem Photograph: Rex Features

Tim Llewellyn

Mon 23 May 2011 07.00 BST

British broadcasters' coverage of the Arab awakening over recent months has been brave and honest. These are difficult and dangerous stories. But the BBC – and in this article I am going to concentrate on the BBC, because it is the broadcaster we are taxed to enable and sets worldwide standards of fairness – and its teams have made every effort to report with balance and application.

However, the BBC coverage of Israel and Palestine, where another state continually kills and oppresses Arabs, is replete with imbalance and distortion.

I covered the Middle East for the BBC from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, and am aggrieved by my ex-employer's continuing inability to describe in a just and contextualised way the conflict between military occupier and militarily occupied. There is no attempt to properly convey cause and effect, to report the misery, violence and pillage that demean and deny freedom to the Palestinians and provoke their (limited) actions.

Greg Philo and Mike Berry, in their book More Bad News from Israel, prove by textual analysis and follow-up interviews with viewers and listeners that I am right – and so are an increasing number of people who are becoming aware that the BBC sells them short on Israel. Philo and Berry's book, an updated edition of Bad News From Israel (2004), examines coverage of the Israeli blitz on Gaza, analysing BBC TV and ITV early evening bulletins between its beginning on 27 December 2008, and the ceasefire on 17 January 2009.

Siege and blockade

They find that the Israeli explanation of why it went to war on a mainly defenceless Gazan population is the one broadly accepted by the BBC. It was a "response" to Palestinian rockets. The Palestinian case, that the Israelis violated a ceasefire that had held for nearly five months in November 2008, and that the Gazans had endured many years of intensifying siege and blockade, which had reduced them to stagnation and penury, was rarely put, if at all. "The story was unpacked," the authors write, "in the manner of the Israeli view."

In the bulletins they examined, the BBC gave 421.5 lines of text to Israeli explanations of why they attacked Gaza: the "need for security", "enemy rockets", "to stop the smuggling of weapons". The BBC devoted 14.25 lines to references to the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories and 10.5 lines to the blockade. The BBC repeatedly stressed the word [Israeli] "retaliation", and also implied that police stations bombed by the Israelis were military targets, describing other casualties as "civilian". It described these civilian installations as "targets". Newspapers such as the Guardian did point out the distinction.

"The offer that Hamas was said to have made, to halt this exchange [rockets v shells and air strikes] … was almost completely absent from the coverage,"

say the authors. They cite a BBC reporter saying: "Israel feels itself surrounded by enemies, with reason." They add: "We have not found a commentary noting that 'Palestinians feel themselves to be subject to a brutal military occupation, with reason.' Israel's official view is given as fact, they say, but the Palestinian view, on the rare occasions it is found at all, is not. Israelis "state", Palestinians "claim".

When the BBC and ITV did start reporting the horrific civilian casualties in Gaza and the use of phosphorus, Israeli spokespersons were immediately on hand to deny, explain or obfuscate. The Palestinians, especially Hamas, were rarely able to answer allegations. The Palestinians in situ usually lacked the resources or opportunity to make their case. The many articulate Palestinians in London available to help were rarely called on, whereas, as one BBC insider said, "the Israeli ambassador was practically camped at TV Centre".

More than two years on, the BBC continues to confuse cause and effect – Israeli attacks are always reported as retaliation to Palestinian violence or rockets, and the idea that Palestinian rockets, however ineffective, are armed resistance to Israel's hammering from land, sea and air is rarely broadcast. The daily indignities and brutalities of the siege and the occupation and the shelling and shooting of civilians are virtually absent from BBC consciousness unless an attack on Israel sparks interest.

Headline news

Philo and Berry quote the BBC correspondent Paul Adams, a Middle East expert: what is missing from the coverage, he says, is the view that the Palestinians are engaged in a war of national liberation, trying to throw off an occupying force. Any Israeli casualty is headline news, shown in high quality images. BBC teams are based in West Jerusalem, de facto Israeli territory, and are on hand. Arab casualties may be shown in reports of a funeral, usually agency film, the victim anonymous. The Israelis, it seems, are for the BBC "people like us". The Arabs are "the other".

Philo and Berry go on to interview viewers and listeners, all in higher education. They find that these focus groups were largely unaware of the Israeli occupation, often believing the Palestinians are the occupiers. Few knew that Hamas had been democratically elected in January 2006. "I had the impression they were a terrorist group from watching the BBC," said one respondent. In most cases, the assumption was that Palestinian rockets brought the invasion onto their own people's heads.

To complain means the official complaints procedure and dealing with the army of lawyers and layers of bureaucracy the BBC now deploys to see off all but the most assiduous. Editors and producers rarely respond individually to complaints and, if they do, do so with question-raising answers and self-justification.

For example, the BBC consistently describes illegal Israeli settlements as "held to be illegal". But they are illegal. Even the Foreign Office says so. The BBC always adds "Israel disputes this." Well it would, wouldn't it? Why these caveats? Why this reporting of a shout of denial from the convicted prisoner in the dock?

The BBC still has explained why it interviewed members of the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement without once revealing their identity

More than a month after I made an official complaint about this I have had no reply or acknowledgement. People who complained about Panorama's travesty of a documentary on the deaths caused when Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara, part of the Gaza aid flotilla, had to go through an obstacle course of form-filling and stonewalling.

The BBC Trust found the programme guilty on some counts but said it had not breached BBC guidelines of accuracy and impartiality. Why negotiate all this to end up with such contortionist, self-serving judgments?

Final arbiter

The BBC is on the defensive: the castle wall is the labyrinthine complaints procedure. It must be time for an independent body like Ofcom to be the final arbiter on BBC journalism, not the BBC itself. The BBC Trust, the highest court of appeal in these matters, is now chaired by Lord Patten, who has told us all how closely he intends to work with the director general, Mark Thompson: judge and potential defendant.

Why is BBC reporting like this? The book addresses this in Chapter 4. In my view, the rot set in during 2001, after 9/11. Israel and its friends were quick to capitalise on "terror" and "Arabs" and massively enhanced their propaganda effort here, gaining access to BBC staff at all levels. BBC managers and editors do not like being shouted at, and they are soft toys when someone makes a loud and apparently convincing case. The Palestinians have no such machinery. As one BBC producer says in More Bad News: "We all fear the phone call from the Israeli embassy."

The BBC's main Middle East bureau in west Jerusalem is liable to Israeli pressure, and it is in Israel that the BBC perspective on the regional conflict is formed.

Editorially, Israeli spokesmen are easily available and producers love that. As Peter Oborne pointed out on Channel 4 in late 2009, each of our three main political parties is amenable to the "Friends of Israel" lobby. Our coalition leadership duo have both pledged themselves publicly to Israel. So did Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The BBC, like a well-kicked hound, does not in its post-Hutton malaise wish to antagonise politicians. It goes with reporting that's as low-profile as possible on this most sensitive of issues. It lives in horror of being accused of anti-semitism, Israel's ultimate smear. Reporters and editors know they have to pitch the Israel story in a certain manner to get it on the air – in effect, self-censorship.

Perhaps the most overwhelming distortion of the BBC in its coverage of Israel and Palestine is what I term "spurious equivalence": that the Palestinians and Israelis are two equal sides "at war" over "disputed" territory and may the best man win. Or, come on chaps, shouldn't reason prevail? The BBC knows that the Palestinians are a people fighting for independence, but its coverage does not tell it like it is.

In 2006, an independent panel appointed by the BBC governors assessed impartiality in coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Their review came after many complaints and the first edition of this book, which examined in similar form the BBC's distorted reporting of the Al-Aqsa (second) intifada and the subsequent Israeli bombardments and invasion of the cities of the West Bank.

The commission confirmed many of the Philo/Berry criticisms:

"BBC output does not consistently give a full and fair account of the conflict. In some ways the picture is incomplete and, in that sense, misleading."

Five years on, it remains so, and the BBC has put the commission's report under "File and Forget".

Tim Llewellyn was BBC Middle East correspondent from 1976-80 and 1987-92. More Bad News from Israel, by Greg Philo and Mike Berry, is published in paperback by Pluto Press at £15

BBC response to Tim Llewellyn's story

BBC News endeavours to report on all matters in the Middle East – as elsewhere – impartially, objectively and accurately.

We have extensive editorial guidelines which all reporters and producers are required to observe.

In a highly charged political atmosphere any impartial and accountable broadcaster will rightly find itself under scrutiny by all shades of opinion.

In the Middle East debate there are organised, motivated and effective lobby groups on both sides of the argument.

We listen to their concerns and act on them where we think they are justified, but in doing so we bear in mind that our audiences expect us to remain independent of political pressure.

Although Tim Llewellyn was indeed a BBC correspondent some years ago, we note that he subsequently was active for a period with the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU).

This cowardly decision betrays the values the corporation stands for

Tim Llewellyn

Sun 25 Jan 2009 00.01 GMT

On Tuesday, speaking from a pulpit in Westminster Abbey, the director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, paid tribute to one of the corporation's greatest journalists and broadcasters, Charles Wheeler, who died last summer at the age of 85.

Thompson spoke in reverential terms of Wheeler: his independence; his dislike of authority, any authority; his relentless search for the truth, in postwar Germany, in the United States of the 1960s and 1970s, LBJ, Vietnam, Nixon; in India, Kuwait, Kurdistan. Thompson was right. Wheeler was a giant among BBC journalists, rightly hailed as one of the best of his generation.

But even as Thompson spoke, the corporation was traducing every tradition that Wheeler, and many of us who still work for the BBC, have tried to live by. The corporation's chief operating officer, Caroline Thomson, had refused to allow it to broadcast an appeal on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee for Gaza. She said that one reason was that "the BBC's impartiality was in danger of being damaged". Could the BBC be sure, she added, that money raised for this cause would find its way to the right people?

How is the BBC's impartiality to be prejudiced by asking others to raise money for the victims of an act of war by a recognised state, an ally of Britain, using the most lethal armaments it can against a defenceless population? What sly little trigger went off in her head when Thomson questioned whether the aid would reach the right people? What right people? Hamas, the elected representatives of the Palestinian people? The hospitals and clinics run by private charities and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency? The mosques? The citizens of Gaza, persecuted beyond measure not only by their Israeli enemies but by the western powers who arm and sustain Israel and defy the democratic vote of the Palestinian people?

Is Thomson more fussed about some imaginary "war on terror" that even the new White House is shying away from than she is about upholding the free speech and freedom of action of the corporation?

This pusillanimous obeisance to some imagined governmental threat has aroused unprecedented anger across the BBC. Reporters and correspondents still on the staff, and who will not name themselves, are beside themselves with rage against a corporation that is traducing the very ideals it is supposed to uphold, and for which the director-general seemed to speak in Westminster Abbey.

This is what one former BBC World Service current affairs producer wrote to his colleagues yesterday:

"... I am rarely moved to comment on aspects of the BBC I can no longer influence. But I confess I am deeply saddened and confused - and frankly pleased to be distanced from such decisions - after listening to Caroline Thomson's obfuscating defence on Today of the refusal to broadcast the joint charity appeal on behalf of the suffering in Gaza. The question of partiality is a red herring. It is for the general public to respond to a humanitarian disaster as they choose."

Having dealt with different news managers at the BBC over the past 30 years or so, I can safely say that the modern BBC has become a body of lions led by donkeys. Reporters of the calibre of Jeremy Bowen, David Lloyn, Lyse Doucet, experts in their field and brave people all, will be appalled by the directions they are being given. Edward Stourton and the Today programme rightly produced Tony Benn yesterday morning because they knew he would articulate what their bosses have failed to: reason and humanity.

The big question that remains is this: what are the suits scared of? Why do BBC managers try to second-guess our government and even outreach it in grovelling to the United States and Israel?

BBC journalists, extant and retired, not the "usual suspects", not disaffected radicals and high-octane lefties, are incandescent with rage over this extraordinary piece of institutional cowardice.

The episode makes a travesty of the institution's posturing in Westminster Abbey last week, and discredits the honest reporters the BBC still has on its books and in the field.

Tim Llewellyn is a former BBC Middle East correspondent

Israeli Embassy Operative Shai Masot Belonged to Psy-Ops Unit at new anti-BDS Unit

Israel using “black ops” against BDS, says veteran analyst

Ali Abunimah Activism and BDS Beat 5 September 2016

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, is treating the nonviolent BDS movement as if it were a miliary threat. (UK Embassy in Tel Aviv)

A veteran Israeli intelligence analyst is linking recent attacks and harassment campaigns against Palestinian activists and human rights organizations to so-called “black ops” by Israel’s intelligence agencies.

Writing in the Maariv newspaper on Sunday, Yossi Melman, who has covered Israel’s spy agencies for decades, reveals telling details about Israel’s ramped up fight against the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

The fight is being led by Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs. According to Melman, Erdan’s ministry is gearing up to face BDS as if it were a military challenge.

“We want most of the ministry’s work to be classified,” its director general Sima Vaknin-Gil recently told the transparency committee of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

“There are many sensitivities, and I can’t even explain in an open forum why there are such sensitivities,” Vaknin-Gil said. “A major part of what we do stays under the radar.”

Vaknin-Gil added that the ministry aims to “build a community of warriors.”

According to Melman, the ministry has recently hired 25 workers whose names are classified. It has an intelligence section run by a former security services operative and receives assistance from “a special unit” within Israeli military intelligence and from the Shin Bet secret police.

This report from Israel’s state broadcaster, subtitled in English by activist Ronnie Barkan, shows Vaknin-Gil vowing to defeat the BDS movement in her testimony to the Knesset committee. It also shows the committee’s chair, Stav Shaffir, complaining that the government is revealing almost nothing about how it is spending the huge sums allocated to the anti-BDS effort.

Black ops

In Maariv, Melman sounds a somewhat skeptical note, pointing out that the fight against BDS may be more of an excuse for the ministry to maintain its budget after its original purpose, facing the “threat” from Iran, became irrelevant following last year’s nuclear agreement.

But that does not mean it is not capable of damaging actions.

Among the ministry’s activities are what Melman terms “special operations” or “black ops” which may include “defamation campaigns, harassment and threats to the lives of activists” as well as “infringing on and violating their privacy.”

In this context Melman points to recent attacks on the websites of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) and other organizations supporting Palestinian rights.

He also notes the death threats received by Nada Kiswanson, an attorney with the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, which is collecting evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza to submit to the International Criminal Court.

These threats are being investigated by Dutch authorities, where the ICC is based.

The well-connected Melman does not confirm long-standing suspicions of Israeli involvement, but hints strongly at an Israeli role.

“Of course, no one has assumed responsibility for the incident against the Palestinian lawyer, and no one has addressed the BDS campaign’s claims that the Israeli intelligence is running a cyber war against it,” Melman states. “But it is no secret that at the ministry of strategic affairs, as well as Israeli intelligence agencies which are assisting in the struggle against the BDS and delegitimization movement, diverse means which may be applied are being discussed.”

“It cannot be ruled out that these actions, if indeed taken by Israel, were a ‘shot across the bow,’” he adds.

Melman also suggests that the efforts may have been curtailed by concerns at Israel’s justice ministry that “the passion for secret actions and operations in the strategic affairs ministry may eventually end up in mishaps which would harm Israel’s foreign relations.”

As examples of such “mishaps,” Melman recalls “an elimination action, entry into buildings or the use of a false passport” – operations in which Israel “did not hesitate to violate the laws and sovereignty of foreign states, including its best friends.”

In recent years, countries including Canada and New Zealand have protested over Israel’s use of their passports to provide cover for agents from the Mossad spying and assassination agency.

In its 2010 slaying in a Dubai hotel room of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Mossad reportedly used forged or stolen passports from the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, France and Germany.

Melman is not the only person to liken Israel’s anti-BDS operations to assassinations. He says that strategic affairs ministry officials are likening the effort to crush the movement to the “struggle against terror.”

In April, for instance, Israel refused to renew the travel permit of Omar Barghouti, the Palestinian human rights defender and co-founder of the BDS movement.

The effective travel ban followed threats against Barghouti and other Palestinian human rights defenders by top Israeli government ministers including Erdan and intelligence minister Yisrael Katz who called for “targeted civil eliminations” of BDS leaders with the help of Israeli intelligence.
The Hebrew term Katz used was similar to the Israeli term for “targeted assassinations.”

At the time, Amnesty International strongly condemned these threats, warning that “an escalation of acts of intimidation by the government and attacks and threats by settlers and other non-state actors have created an increasingly dangerous environment” for human rights defenders in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And last month, Israel announced efforts to root out and expel foreign nationals suspected of being involved in the nonviolent movement for Palestinian rights.

Recruiting Palestinians as spies

It also appears that Israel is hoping to recruit Palestinian citizens of Israel to the effort.

Last week, the Nazareth-based Arabic newspaper al-Sonara published an advertisement from the Civil Administration, the name Israel gives to the military bureaucracy that rules over millions of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Images of the ad were posted on a Facebook page whose administrators identify themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel who support BDS.

The ad seeks Arabic speakers as consultants to “collect information from various primary and secondary sources,” including newspapers and websites, “but with an emphasis on social networks.” The information would relate to “incitement to violence and hatred and the development of BDS initiatives.”

Journalists and activists should remain vigilant about their use of social networks and should practice good digital security. The Electronic Intifada recently published a guide to online security for activists.

Using foreign organizations

Melman also confirms that Israel has strongly supported the push for legislation stigmatizing or curtailing the BDS movement in various Western countries.

It also uses proxies to achieve its aims.

“The ministry also initiates pressure or leveraging actions to convince international companies not to boycott Israel,” he writes. “This involves the use of AIPAC and Hillel in the US, or similar groups in other countries.”

AIPAC is the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group working in the US Congress, while Hillel is a network of campus centers for Jewish students across North America.

“This type of activity also has a certain sensitivity because it involves a foreign government (Israel) trying to act and influence organizations and individuals in other countries,” Melman notes.

Another form of influence he outlines – albeit one already well known – is Israel’s effort to use public relations, or hasbara, to influence international opinion.

In this regard, he reveals that the strategic affairs ministry is spending large sums to fund visits for what it calls “opinion leaders” – journalists, bloggers, actors and trade union leaders – to Israel.
The only thing the ministry has not apparently considered is ending Israel’s regime of occupation, apartheid and settler-colonialism and restoring Palestinian rights.

That would be the swiftest way to bring an end to BDS.

Translation provided by Ofer Neiman.

THIS IS Israel – Call to Kill All Arabs at Tel Aviv Rally in Support for Killer Soldier

Kill Them All - Kill All Arabs

 They may like Gays in Tel Aviv but in a city which is 95% Jewish they certainly don’t like Arabs.  In the South of Tel Aviv, where African refugees are concentrated, there is systematic racism and violence by the Jewish population. 

On Tuesday a rally of thousands gathered to give support to a soldier Elor Azarya, who had deliberately executed a severely injured Palestinian because ‘he deserved to die’ for having allegedly attacked Israeli soldiers with a knife.

Those in the West who sing the Zionist narrative and pretend that Israel is ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ bear as much responsibility as those who gathered in Tel Aviv and participated in the beating of a Jewish Israeli journalist suspected of being a human rights worker.

“Death to the Arabs” rally draws thousands in Tel Aviv

Ali Abunimah 19 April 2016

In Tel Aviv’s Yitzhak Rabin Square on Tuesday evening, thousands of Israelis rallied in support of Elor Azarya, the soldier filmed executing a gravely wounded Palestinian last month.

Rally-goers shouted anti-Arab slogans and attacked persons perceived as being leftists or journalists.

Hours earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a call for leniency for the soldier.

Few thousand people at the rally. Organizers keep telling crowd they aren't angry at the government or army. pic.twitter.com/kEcFGsiYM1

— Judah Ari Gross (@JudahAriGross) April 19, 2016

NOW: In Tel Aviv to cover rally for Israeli soldier who executed Palestinian & got beaten by mob & detained by cops. pic.twitter.com/XI5cwyZXQY

— David Sheen (@davidsheen) April 19, 2016

Signs at Rabin Square in support of Sgt. Azaria (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Times of Israel reporter Judah Ari Gross tweeted that an activist from B’Tselem, the human rights group that released the video of Azarya shooting and killing Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif, had to be escorted out of Rabin Square by police in order to “protect his life.”

Thousands of people here. So much for "liberal" Tel Aviv. This is fascist Israel. pic.twitter.com/quAOx3t8Jd

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) April 19, 2016

Police escorting a Btselem activist away from the rally in Kikar Rabin. pic.twitter.com/PiyrHfih3Z

— Judah Ari Gross (@JudahAriGross) April 19, 2016

Charlie and Oshra Azaria (on the right) and daughter Etti (in red on the left) at the rally (Photo: Dana Kopel)

Journalist attacked

Reporter David Sheen, a contributor to The Electronic Intifada, was set upon by a mob and then ordered to leave the area by police after he was accused of association with B’Tselem.

After being beaten by Tel Aviv mob rallying to support killer Israeli soldier, cops gave me ultimatum: A night in jail or go home immediately

— David Sheen (@davidsheen) April 19, 2016

Thanks to those who reached out after I was attacked by a mob in "liberal" Tel Aviv tonight. My phone battery's about to die, but I'll live.

— David Sheen (@davidsheen) April 19, 2016

Elor's mother and sister speaking (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Sheen told The Electronic Intifada he arrived at Rabin Square before the rally began but as several hundred people had already gathered. Some asked him to film them with their signs supporting Azarya.

At that point, Sheen said, a man began asking him why he was filming. Other members of the crowd quickly began joining in, shouting at Sheen, “Are you B’Tselem? Go to Gaza!”

Sheen said he tried to remain calm and exit the square but the increasingly agitated mob followed him and began to surround and kick him.

He was then grabbed by a police officer and extracted. Sheen said police took his camera equipment and questioned him. After he told them he was a journalist, they said he either had to leave immediately or face a night in jail. Sheen said he chose to leave and that police returned his equipment.

About 2,000 came to show their support (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

The police were effectively acting accomplices to the mob, Sheen observed, ensuring the removal of journalists who could document what occurred.

Sheen said that the assault was frightening, “because I knew that everyone else at that rally was of the same mindset and there wasn’t anyone who was going to step in, so it very easily could have gotten much worse and there wouldn’t have been anybody to fish me out.”

He said he had been threatened at other recent rallies he has covered, but had not experienced that level of violence.

“It doesn’t surprise me that people in Israel harbor hatred towards journalists,” Sheen said.

“They don’t see the soldier’s actions as a problem,” he added. “They see the problem as exposure to world media that puts pressure on their government to withdraw support from that soldier.”

“But it still caught me by surprise how quickly people were whipped up into a frothing at the mouth mob,” he said.

Chants from the crowd heard by Sheen included “Kill the leftists” and “Elor Azarya is a hero, bring back our boy!”

A video of the mob assault on Sheen was posted on Facebook by a user who accuses him of being a B’Tselem videographer intent on “provoking” the rally-goers. Sheen is not affiliated with the human rights group.

Members of the mob can be heard shouting “son of a whore” and other insults.

“Kill them all”

Another independent reporter, Dan Cohen, tweeted that many in the crowd chanted “Death to Arabs,” a frequently heard rallying cry at anti-Palestinian demonstrations.

Crowd chants "Elor the hero" and "death to Arabs." This seems more like a celebration of murder than anything pic.twitter.com/2QHDpIT0LJ

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) April 19, 2016

Ahmed Tibi, a Palestinian lawmaker in Israel’s parliament, posted an image of a sign displayed at the rally reading “Kill them all.”

Message of the new Israeli justice & equality: "kill them all" in tel aviv rally supporting a murderer soldier pic.twitter.com/t9CqN777ya

— Ahmad Tibi (@Ahmad_tibi) April 19, 2016

The rally was organized by Sharon Gal, an Israeli journalist and former lawmaker, and was addressed by Azarya’s parents.

Several Israeli pop icons were also scheduled to entertain the rally-goers, including singers Moshik Afia, Maor Edri and Amos Elgali, as well as rapper Subliminal, the Israeli website Ynet reported.

But two performers, Eyal Golan and David D’Or, withdrew at the last minute in the wake of public outrage that their appearance could be seen as an attack on the Israeli army, which has faced heavy criticism for taking any measures at all against Azarya.

“I would have liked to come to perform at the assembly in the name of art, and personally as a performer and as a human being,” Golan stated. “However, I’m sorry to say that there are those who will use this as a political spectacle.”

“I wanted to show my sympathy to the family of the soldier,” D’Or said, “not to say anything against the IDF [Israeli army] or the IDF chief of staff, God forbid.”

Leniency

Last month, an opinion poll found that 57 percent of the Israeli public saw nothing wrong with Azarya’s actions and 32 percent supported it outright. Just five percent saw shooting an injured, incapacitated person as murder.

That support comes from the highest echelons of Israel’s government. In a statement to media hours before the rally, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded leniency for Azarya.

“As the father of a soldier and as Prime Minister, I would like to reiterate: the IDF backs its soldiers,” Netanyahu said.

“In my familiarity with the military justice system, I am convinced that the court will consider all circumstances regarding the incident. Our soldiers are not murderers. They act against murderers and I hope that a way will be found to balance between the action and the overall context of the event,” the prime minister added.

Netanyahu’s attempt to prejudge the outcome of any trial appears to be an effort to ride the wave of popularity Azarya is enjoying that was vividly – and violently – on display at the Tel Aviv rally.

Previously, B’Tselem has condemned similar statements by top Israeli officials as sending messages that “empty the official restrictions on use of force, and particularly on live fire, of real meaning.”

Cover-up

Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif and Ramzi al-Qasrawi, both 21, were shot dead after they allegedly tried to attack Israeli occupation soldiers in the West Bank city of Hebron on 24 March.

The killing of al-Sharif was caught on video which shows the youth on the ground, incapacitated, as Azarya points a rifle at him from close range and fires directly at his head.

The Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, which investigated the incident, called the killings war crimes and noted the complicity of Israeli medical workers and others in the vicinity who did nothing to assist the injured al-Sharif before he was extrajudicially executed.

Al-Haq dismissed the arrest of Azarya as part of a public relations effort, noting that no one was detained in the shooting of al-Qasrawi, whose killing was not filmed.

“The occupation authorities’ detention of the accused soldier is a cover-up of the crime, to show the occupier state as law abiding and holding violators accountable,” Al-Haq stated.

“The arrest of one soldier and not the other suggests that what the other soldier had done was not a crime because it was not captured on camera,” the group added.

Israel at first announced Azarya would be charged with murder, but following a surge of public support, the charges were downgraded to manslaughter.