Showing posts with label Ha’aretz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ha’aretz. Show all posts

24 January 2024

Open Letter to the BBC's Director General - Tim Davie - Why I Shall Not Be Paying My TV Licence & Why You Should Not Pay Yours

 What the BBC Means By Impartiality is NOT Broadcasting South Africa’s Case for Genocide But instead Broadcasting Israel’s Defence!

Pilger on BBC

tim.davie@bbc.co.uk 

Dear Mr Davie,

On 11 January the International Court of Justice heard South Africa’s application that

‘acts and omissions by Israel . . . are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . . to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”

and that this was in clear contravention of the United Nation’s Convention on Genocide.

Paragraphs 101-107 of the Application gave numerous examples of the Genocidal Intent of Israeli military leaders, senior politicians and also their effect amongst Israel’s soldiers.

For example Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant’s declaration of 9 October that

International Court of Justice at The Hague

I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,”

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu implored his listeners:

you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible." with reference to I Samuel 15:1-34

"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass"

Viewers saw Irish KC Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh's powerful closing speech in South Africa case. All independent observers are agreed that South Africa’s case was overwhelming.

3 Israeli hostages die because Israeli used banned chemical weapons, poison gas, to try and kill Hamas militants

As Nimer Sultany wrote in The Guardian:

The powerful case brought by South Africa against Israel at the international court of justice under the genocide convention is a wake-up call for many western governments and media outlets that uncritically supported Israel’s savage war.



I say viewers, but of course not those who watch BBC because you took a decision, in the interests of ‘balance’, not to broadcast the case that South Africa  was presenting. Instead you decided, in line with previous practice, only to broadcast Israel’s defence the next day.

ICJ: Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh's powerful closing statement in South Africa case against Israel

BBC’s viewers were therefore unable to judge for themselves the case that Israel was responding to, which is exactly what you intended, because in your view the people of Gaza have no case.

The murder of 15,000+ children, 120 journalists, innumerable doctors and health workers, the attacks on all of Gaza’s hospitals – all on the pretext that Hamas was using them as their military bases counted for nothing because the BBC is nothing if not a spokesperson for British and US foreign policy. Their view and yours is that however many civilians are murdered, South Africa’s case is ‘meritless’.

If this was China or Russia then it would be a different story. If Russia had said that the Ukrainian resistance was hiding behind civilians or using hospitals as bases then the BBC would be the first to call this out for what it was. But as a failed Conservative candidate you know where your loyalties lie.

Those who wanted to listen to South Africa’s charges had to turn to Al Jazeera. The BBC decided that the injustice that Post Office managers have experienced was more important.

Israel’s ‘defence’ consisted primarily of accusations that South Africa was perpetrating a ‘blood libel’, i.e. ‘anti-Semitism’.

If the BBC was going to broadcast Israel’s defence then you were under a duty to broadcast the South Africa’s allegations of genocide. This is so elementary that it hardly needs stating.


The BBC's Lucy Williamson shows viewers the destruction in Kibbutz Be'eri but she never thinks to ask how Hamas caused it given they had no heavy weaponry

October 7 Breakout from Prison Gaza

The BBC has acted as the Voice of Israel. News coverage repeatedly goes back to the events of October 7 whilst carefully omitting the fact that Israeli tanks fired on houses in Kibbutz Be’eri killing both Israeli hostages and their Hamas captors.

The same is true of the Nova festival and the firing on cars escaping from the festival by Apache helicopters. All of this is ignored by the BBC which prefers to accept the Israeli version of what happened that day.

There is plenty of information on how Israel’s military took the decision to implement the Hannibal Directive and kill its own hostages, rather than allow them to be taken captive and exchanged for the Palestinian hostages that Israel holds.


See for example The Cradles’ How Israeli forces trapped and killed ravers at the Nova Festival, Ha’aretz’s Families of Israelis Killed in Be'eri Home Hit by IDF Tank on October 7 Demand Probe, Electronic Intifada’s Israeli child “burned completely” by Israeli tank fire at kibbutz.


Electronic Intifada and others published the interview with Yasmine Porat, a survivor of Kibbutz Be’eri but the BBC have never even referred to it or similar interviews.


Electronic Intifada’s article on how Israeli HQ ordered troops to shoot Israeli captives on 7 October, the Times of Israel’s IDF officer recounts ordering tank fire on Be’eri home during hostage standoff on Oct. 7 likewise made no impression on BBC coverage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza’s Palestinians.

Interview with Yasmine Porat on Kan's Haboker Hazeh radio program on 15 October 2023

Whilst information on how many if not most civilian deaths on October 7 is easily available, not least from the Israeli press, including interviews with the hostages, the BBC has done nothing to question the Zionist narrative that Israeli deaths on October 7 were solely the work of Hamas.

An Open Letter from Israelis to fellow Israelis demanding the truth about October 7th at the end of October demanding an inquiry into the events of October 7 was ignored. They wrote:

Israel’s domestic and international rhetoric now contains something much more akin to Nazi extermination propaganda. 

We know what the purpose of this propaganda is. More than 8,500 indigenous Palestinian children, women, and men have been exterminated – and the number rises as we write. Many are trapped under the rubble of their homes, dying slowly. Others are facing thirst, starvation, and infectious diseases. At the same time, senior Israeli figures, even our president, keep howling that there are ‘no innocent civilians’ in Gaza. 

Make no mistake, what Israel is doing in Gaza now will haunt Israelis for decades. Now is the time to make sure all Israelis understand this. And this understanding should start with full disclosure about the events of October 7, 2023.

Not one word has left the lips of BBC interviewers about the Hannibal Directive despite widespread discussion in the Israeli press such as for example Ha’aretz’s 'Unlawful, Unethical, Horrifying': IDF Ethics Code Author on Alleged Use of 'Hannibal Directive' During Hamas Attack’. In this article Asa Kasher, the philosopher who wrote the Israeli Military’s Code of Conduct, told how ‘allegations that the infamous operational order may have been used on October 7 must be investigated immediately’. The BBC is simply not interested in such facts.

I did a google search on the Hannibal Directive and BBC. I came up with nothing. I went to the BBC’s own site and searched on ‘Hannibal Directive’. The nearest I came up with was a story Hannibal Mejbri: Manchester United midfielder joins Sevilla on loan!

These omissions are not accidental but deliberate policy decisions by BBC News, under your direction. You are deliberately distorting and slanting the news in such a direction as to support Israel’s narrative that October 7 was an unprovoked attack as Hamas sought to indulge in murder and rape. Your claim of ‘balance’ is nothing but a lie.

As Jonathan Cook, a former Guardian journalist wrote in What the BBC fails to tell you about October 7:

‘It is journalistic malpractice for the media to still be repeating so credulously the Israeli military’s account….

Simply repeating that narrative without any caveats has by now reached the level of journalistic malpractice. And yet that is precisely what the BBC does night after night.

Just a cursory look at the wreckage in the various kibbutz communities that were attacked that day should raise questions in the mind of any good reporter. Were Palestinian militants in a position to actually inflict physical damage to that degree and extent with the kind of light weapons they carried?

And if not, who else was in a position to wreak such havoc other than Israel?

The BBC has repeated every lie that Israel’s propagandists have conjured up in order to excuse Israel’s genocidal orgy in Gaza. Instead you preferred to faithfully follow the Israeli narrative on October 7. See for example Israel Gaza: Hamas raped and mutilated women on 7 October, BBC hears and Hamas planned sexual violence as weapon of war - Israeli campaigner.

A counter-narrative such as that from Mondoweiss’s article Despite lack of evidence, allegations of Hamas ‘mass rape’ are fueling Israeli genocide in Gaza has made no impression on the BBC’s coverage.

We should be grateful that the Palestinian armed resistance in Gaza is taking such a toll of the Zionist SS militias that have wreaked such havoc. Like the German SS, their Israeli equivalent are more at home killing children and doctors than confronting armed guerrillas which is why they are having to cover up their real casualties, something which the BBC has also not reported on. The BBC has totally failed to cover the actions of the Palestinian resistance so the increasing number of Israeli casualties must come as something of a surprise.

The BBC has repeated the Israeli lie that Hamas operates from the hospitals of Gaza. There was just one exception to this – Ros Atkins BBC Fact Investigation into Israel’s justification for its attack on Al Shifa Hospital.

The BBC has always been the Voice of the British Establishment since the days when it refused to allow the Archbishop of Canterbury to broadcast during the 1926 General Strike because he favoured compromise. The Catholic Archbishop of Westminster was though allowed to broadcast because he held the strike to be sinful.

What the BBC fails to tell you about October 7:

It is journalistic malpractice for the media to still be repeating so credulously the Israeli military’s account of that day. My latest: https://t.co/EJKNpYYzUM pic.twitter.com/lp6DoBrZWG

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 2, 2023

As the BBC’s own history admits:

During the strike Reith vetted almost all the bulletins, while also dealing with the political aspects. He decided to refuse the Archbishop of Canterbury's request to appeal for an end to the strike; but allowed reporting of TUC statements. He helped Baldwin write a speech to the nation, which was delivered from Reith's home in Westminster.

Lord Reith’s own diary recalls a cabinet meeting on 11 May which took the view that the government should be able to say

that they did not commandeer [the BBC], but they know that they can trust us not to be really impartial”.

And this remains the situation today. Through control of the license fee and appointments such as yours, the government can maintain a pretence that the BBC is independent.

When the Miners were confronting the government its Director-General was writing the Prime Minister’s speech! And nothing had changed when it came to the Miner’s strike of 1984-5. During the Orgreave clashes it reversed footage of police attacks on the miners to show the miners attacking first. In 1991 the BBC apologised for having ‘inadvertently reversed’ the footage.

This was about as inadvertent as the editing out of laughter at Boris Johnson when he responded to a question about the importance of politicians telling the truth.

We have come to expect that the BBC will faithfully follow the establishment narrative whether it is on Israel, strikes or any other issue involving a challenge to the rich and powerful.

However what the BBC is not entitled to do is to expect us to pay for what is an Establishment propaganda station.

As the late, great John Pilger, who was banned from appearing on the BBC in his later years, said

the BBC is and has been the most refined propaganda service in the world.’

In his 2010 documentary, The War You Don’t See, John confronted Fran Unsworth, head of newsgathering at BBC News and ITV News editor in chief, David Mannion, on the failure of their reporters to challenge the lies that had come from government and intelligence sources without which the Iraq war could never have been prosecuted.

It was the collusion of the corporate media in refusing to challenge the misinformation from the Foreign Office and US State Department that led to the death of over a million Iraqis.

The same is true today. Israel could not get away with genocide in Gaza if the BBC and the corporate media did not give credence to their lies and excuses. It is as if you would have both sided Hitler’s claim that the invasion of Poland was a reaction to Poland’s attack on Germany.

BBC News, by giving credence to Israel’s absurd lies and cavorting with its propagandists, have blood on their hands. What you call ‘balance’ is neutrality between right and wrong and you always manage to come out on the wrong side.

In the Russia/Ukraine war you have had no difficulty taking sides, erasing the history of NATO’s provocations and its expansion into Eastern Europe in the process. This despite the promises made to Gorbachev that there would be no expansion.

But when it comes to Palestine you adopt a fake neutrality which in practice means you treat Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank as if it was a normal state of affairs. You never refer, unlike Al Jazeera, to the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied. You treat Israel’s racist colonial police force as if it was Dixon of Dock Green. 

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the great hero of the South Africa struggle against Apartheid, which the BBC did nothing to help when it continued to broadcast South Africa’s all-white cricket team, said:

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

Tony Greenstein

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2 December 2023

Israel’s Institutional Sadism – Beatings and Food Deprivation are the lot of Palestinian Prisoners

Compare this with the Gentle Treatment of Israeli Prisoners By Hamas


Ex-Prisoners Recall Time In Israeli Detention

As Israel resumes its genocidal war against the Palestinians of Gaza it is worth bearing in mind the contrast between Hamas’s treatment of Israeli captives and Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners. According to groups like the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Hamas is both genocidal and anti-Semitic.


You would therefore expect that when Hamas captured over 200 Israeli hostages they would feel the full brunt of this anti-Semitism. One would expect those who were Jewish to testify to being beaten, possibly tortured and certainly subject to vile anti-Semitic comments.

In addition one might expect them to be deprived of food, medical treatment and subject to all manner of psychological torments designed to break them down.

Release of Israeli Hostages

Israel's President Herzog Holds all Palestinians Guilty

Yet the exact opposite was the case. What happened was that Hamas treated the Israeli hostages very differently to the sadistic brutes that constitute the Israeli Prison Service. At the very beginning of his reign as Israel’s neo-Nazi National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir sought to worsen the conditions of Palestinian prisoners. He stipulated that they could have a shower for only a maximum of 4 minutes. He ordered that they were no longer allowed to bake their own pittas.


As a result of their treatment the Israeli hostages displayed affection and warmth for their Hamas captors which posed a problem for Israeli propagandists. How to reconcile their racist portrayal of Hamas as sub-human anti-Semites and the reality of what happened?

Palestinians not allowed to celebrate their release in E Jerusalem

This was the context for the wheeling out of the Stockholm Syndrome, so-called because in 1973, after a failed bank robbery, when the robbers took 4 bank employees hostage, the hostages refused to testify against their kidnappers. Shivani Chauhan wrote about how

The recent release of Israeli hostages captured by Hamas, the Palestinian militia in Gaza, has unearthed a new dimension in the ongoing conflict. This event took a perplexing turn when hostages were seen warmly waving to the Hamas militants at the time of release, with one even writing a letter to his captor. Such behaviors have sparked discussions about the potential role of Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological condition where victims develop an affinity towards their captors.

There is just one flaw in this argument. No Palestinian detainee seems to have suffered from this psychological condition. They all speak of beatings, degradation, torture and food deprivation. They show no affection for their captors. Why is it that only Israeli hostages feel warmth for their captors?

Maya Lecker, a political analyst, wrote in Haaretz complaining about people ‘applauding Hamas gunmen for giving high-fives to their captives on camera’ and that ‘pro-Palestinian influencers and social media users’ were finding the nightly hand-overs of hostages ‘heart-warming public displays of humanity and morality by Hamas militants.’

Another political analyst, Yaniv Peleg, said in an article for the right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper that broadcasting the footage on television is detrimental to Israel. How one might wonder is showing the release of the hostages live on TV ‘detrimental to Israel’? Peleg even complained of the professionalism of Hamas footage! Is he admitting that the truth is detrimental to Israel’s narrative?

These are not human beings - Israeli soldier

Would it have been better not to release them? In fact this is what large parts of Israel’s neo-Nazi government, people like Bezalel Smotrich and Ben Gvir would have preferred. Smotrich is on record as saying that Israel should “not take the matter of the captives into significant consideration”.

What the Israeli state feared was of course the contrast between the propaganda image of Hamas as ‘human animals’ and the actuality. That is why the Israeli State and the Zionists were angry over footage depicting Hamas's treatment of released Israeli hostages because it did not accord with their propaganda.

Freed Palestinians Say They Were Tortured, Beaten and Starved in Israeli Prisons

Peleg complained that every detail was captured to portray the humanity of the perpetrators, Hamas, to the world. When you have spent years portraying Hamas as an evil group, whose sole intent was the destruction of every Jew, it might come as a surprise to know that they didn’t hate people simply because they were Jews.

That is why the Israeli state has strained every sinew to prevent the released hostages talking to the media. If their treatment had lived up to standard Israeli portrayals of Hamas militants and Netanyahu’s equation of Hamas as equal to ISIS, then one would have expected released hostages to have been paraded before the cameras. In fact they have been hidden away.

The absurdity of the comparison with ISIS is also evident. ISIS beheaded their captives and tortured them. Hamas did no such thing.

Alon Ben David: "Hamas treated the Israeli hostages well"

The military correspondent for Israel’s Channel 13, Alon Ben David, said that he had spoken with some of the released captives. All said that the Hamas fighters “have gathered the members of each kibbutz together, which gave them a greater sense of comfort.”


They were not subjected to any violence or insult, and Hamas members tried to provide them with food, painkillers, and their regular medications as much as possible, under dangerous and harsh security conditions underground and inside the tunnels.

They were sitting and talking to each other, he added, doing their usual activities, and using YouTube. “This gave them a boost to persevere.” How strange that the CAA’s genocidal anti-Semites had taken the trouble to gather members of each kibbutz together.

Another speaker on the same show said that they should all feel “ashamed” of themselves, because the testimonies given by the recently released Israeli captives are exactly the same as the testimony given by Lifshitz.

“She was telling the truth exactly as those [captives] said. I sat with them and heard the exact same story from them,”

Israeli Channel 13 reported, that the released Israeli hostages said they did not experience mistreatment and were not subjected to torture. The food was scarce, which was not surprising since Israel has imposed a total water and food blockade on Gaza.

The brutal treatment of Palestinian prisoners by Israel

Tel Aviv kept the released Israeli hostages away from the media and allowed only relatives and friends to meet them. The released hostages were forced into media silence as Israel tightened its control on interviews.

A report from Israeli news channel Channel 12 noted that Israeli authorities had arranged a special media process for the hostages’ post-release, in order to ensure they remain in control of the narrative.


Note the contrast in condition - Israeli prisoner on left, Hamas prisoner on right

It said that medical officials will first assess whether the released hostages were fit enough to be questioned about their ordeal by Israel’s security police, Shin Bet. The children who were taken hostage will also undergo questioning by special child investigators.

The Channel 12 report noted that Israeli authorities had sought to control the narrative following criticism by Israeli commentators for what they said was a careless handling of Lifshitz’s press conference.

It said media interviews will not be banned for abductees, but closely supervised.

Despite the anger after Yochaved Lifshitz's press conference upon her release, this time too there will be no ban on media interviews of the abductees.

What do the videos of released Hamas captives tell us | Al Jazeera Newsfeed

Despite pretending to be unconcerned Israeli authorities were outraged at the fact that Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv had facilitated Yocheved Lifshitz’s interview. As a result hospital employee Avi Shoshan has been suspended and summoned to a pre-dismissal hearing. For enabling a hostage to tell the truth someone is being threatened with dismissal. That’s not something the BBC or the prostitute press will report but that is what happens when Israel’s narrative is questioned.

Shoshan was summoned to a pre-dismissal hearing after the hospital held a press conference with 85-year-old Lifshitz, an abductee who was released by Hamas last month.

Yocheved Lifshitz press conference

Time Magazine reported 85-year-old Yocheved Lipschitz as saying that her captors “told us they are people who believe in the Quran and wouldn’t hurt us.”

Lifshitz said captives were treated well and received medical care, including medication. The guards kept conditions clean, she said. Hostages were given one meal a day of cheese, cucumber and pita, she said, adding that her captors ate the same.

Hamas prisoners - unlike Israel's prisoners there is no sign of beating or torture

A family member of Ruth Munder, an elderly woman who was released, told the Jerusalem Post that Munder did not experience any harm during her captivity. In a section ‘How did Hamas Treat the Hostages’ the Jerusalem Post reported that

Initially, there weren't many people with them, but at some point, more individuals were added. They had access to a radio and television, where they heard news from Israel. Ruth heard on the radio that her son [Roi Munder] had been killed… The conditions were far from ideal; 80-year-old men and women lied down on plastic benches similar to those in a hospital, without mattresses.

"Fortunately, they did not endure any unpleasant experiences during their captivity; they were treated in a humane manner," continued the family member.

"Contrary to our fears, they did not encounter the horrifying stories we had imagined. They described the initial moments of their kidnapping when the terrorists were agitated and threatened to harm them, but once they were on motorcycles, they did not harm them."

After 85-year-old captive Yochaved Lifshitz told the media she was treated "with care" and was filmed shaking hands in a peace gesture with a Hamas soldier, the Israeli authorities have been eager to regain the narrative.

Lifshitz told the press how she received daily visits from a doctor during her captivity, and that they ate the same food as the guards. Lifshitz’s daughter also said that her mother was cared for by a paramedic during her captivity.

On October 24, Lifshitz told the press that she was treated well while in Hamas captivity after she was driven into the Gaza Strip while being beaten by Hamas terrorists. Her statements caused an uproar in Israel, with some government and diplomatic figures accusing the conference organizers of damaging the country's advocacy efforts by portraying a positive image of Hamas.

In other words the organisers of the press conference had allowed doubt to be cast upon government lies about Hamas and that is unforgiveable. Ha’aretz reported how Lifshitz started the press conference by recounting the details of the October 7 kidnapping: "Masses mobbed our homes. They beat people, took some hostage." She described it as "very painful.”

It was the statements that followed, however, that drew controversy in Israel. She said that the kidnappers brought a doctor that gave them medical treatment, that the hostages were treated well and the kidnappers were friendly. "We lay on mattresses, they made sure everything was sanitary," she said. "They made sure we wouldn't get sick, and we had a doctor with us every two or three days.”

Ha’aretz reported the story as ‘The problem is you, not Hamas' : Hostages' families lash out at Israeli government.’

"They were very friendly to us," Lifshitz said, "they treated us gently and looked after us." Clearly this dedemonising of Hamas and the portray of its members as human beings could not be allowed again.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israel’s released hostages ‘are expected to receive close supervision, and they will be instructed on what to tell the media and what not."

What this shows is that Israel as a settler-colonial state consciously seeks to portray those who oppose it as less than human, brutal animal savages whereas in fact if anyone conforms to this image it is the Zionists themselves.

Tony Greenstein

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