Terrorism is all in our heads?

Question

EU blasts Palestinian bid to pass banned chemical off as food aid

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=939844&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1

People say that the Palestinians aren't smuggling things, aren't trying to kill people, so the Israeli security measures aren't justified.

I have a question: if you were in Israel's place, when faced with things like the above story and the general 12 or so suicide bombings a week foiled by the checkpoints and security fence, what would you do to secure your country?

Now I have another question. Why does the BBC, considered a "notable and trustworthy unbiased news source" by many, takes no notice of this story?

Thanks

BBC, Fox, and CNN are all in the same boat IMO

mark--you mean sacks. "The sacks, confiscated in the West Bank several weeks ago, contained 6.5 tons of potassium nitrate, a chemical Israel has outlawed because it can be used to manufacture explosives, the military said" It's pretty hard to hide 6.5 tons of stuff in a sack. Duh.

Answer 1

EDIT: MIMI: SINCE YOU OBVIOUSLY FAILED TO NOTICE, THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP) and HAARETZ. The AP is not Jewish or Israeli.Thanks for implying that you trust no Jewish or Israeli source, though!
Also, "the European Union condemned on Sunday what it called an "abuse of humanitarian aid." Just so you know, the EU is also neither Jewish nor Israeli! So there you have it, you can trust the goyim (non-Jews)-- we don't make up stories like this after all!

Edit again: Depends on the source. Haaretz is an established paper that is extremely well-run, and frequently features pro-Palestinian articles. Do any Arab papers feature pro-Israeli articles, or articles about Jewish rights in their countries?

In conclusion, I hope you are satisfied with Ha'aretz, the AP, and the European Union. If you are not, I trust that you can google these terms and locate a sufficient source on your own.

My original post:

It is really not difficult to find articles and discussions focusing on the BBC's negative portrayal of Israel.

Anti-semitism in Britain is often cited as the reason for such anti-Israel news coverage.

My current personal belief is less that the BBC is rabidly anti-Semitic, and more that the news agency, like many Western news agencies and thinktanks, simply does not understand the workings of the Middle East. They are trying to apply their own paradigm on a region that will not conform to their worldview. The Middle East is difficult to analyze if you do not understand its workings.

Or maybe it is just classical anti-Semitism. However, I prefer the blissful ignorance theory.







The BBC is quickly becoming one of the world's 'kosher' purveyors of hate
By Douglas Davis, July 24 2002
http://jewishworldreview.com/0702/davis_bbc.html

Would I, asked the BBC researcher who called, be available to appear again on the Nicky Campbell programme -- Britain's equivalent of Larry King Live -- the following morning?

"It should be very interesting," she said, warming to her sales pitch. "We want to discuss whether Israel is a morally repugnant society."

"Thanks, but no thanks."

"You sure?" she asked, disbelief mingled with impatience.

"Absolutely positive. Absolutely," I replied, to avoid any possible confusion.

A moment's silence, then icily: "Okay," and the line went dead.

The BBC, in my experience, has always been critical of Israel. At times I have felt somewhat queasy by its coverage; on occasion, I have thought it downright unfair. But as an Israeli and a journalist I have defended its right to take a critical view of Israel, even an extremely critical view. After all, no one could accuse the Israeli media themselves of being tame. And besides, I subscribed to the ****-up rather than the conspiracy theory when it came to BBC coverage of the Middle East.

I argued that the Arab-Israel conflict, anchored in a heady mix of religious, territorial, political, social, economic and historic issues, presented an eye-crossing challenge to even the reasonably well-informed observer, let alone the neophyte from London intent on establishing a reputation in one of the world's media hot spots.

September 11 changed all that. Even as the Twin Towers came crashing down, the BBC was rushing in the first of a stream of studio analysts to solemnly intone, one after another, that it was racist to assume that Arabs or even Muslims were responsible. More likely, they chorused, it was the Mossad because such an event "played into Israeli hands."

But even if Arabs and Muslims had flown those planes, they said, was it not obvious that America itself was the real culprit? After all, it was America that was pursuing a pro- Israel foreign policy, dictated by the Jewish lobby; it was America that was ignoring the occupation and turning a blind eye to the settlements; it was America that was contemptuous of Arab sensibilities. Could anyone blame the Arabs for wanting to vent their humiliation, frustration and rage at this one-sided American foreign policy?

Apparently not. At least not at the BBC, which could not get enough of it. As I followed the events, I felt increasingly as though the rest of the world -- or at least that part of it which was inhabited by the BBC -- had gone stark, staring mad. Disbelief, it seemed, was suspended at Television Centre as logic was turned on its heads and victim became perpetrator. But far more shocking than the repeated ventilation of these bizarre views was the fact that they went virtually unchallenged by the BBC's usually robust interviewers.

Forget the apparently inconsequential fact that Israel had only a few months earlier offered to disgorge 97 per cent of the West Bank, grant the Palestinians a share in Jerusalem, permit a limited return of the refugees and recognise an independent Palestinian state (which no previous ruler in the area had ever done). Forget all that. In the Newspeak of the BBC, there was a direct, causal link between the attack on America and the occupation of the West Bank.

Did the BBC, which reaches into virtually every British living room, take a conscious policy decision to allow this arrant nonsense to become an established fact on its air waves? I doubt it. Rather, I believe, that the profound anti-Israel bias -- and now I am convinced that it does exist -- has, over the years, become ingrained in the BBC's corporate culture. Combine that with a massive dose of anti-Americanism and you have a combustible cocktail.

It is outside the range of my expertise to explain the behaviour of the BBC in this matter. On the face of it one might have expected a respected British institution to feel a sense of affinity with Israel, a Western, democratic state that shares common values, ideals and aspirations in a region where anti- democratic, despotic and corrupt regimes are the norm.

Perhaps a clinical psychiatrist could offer a cogent explanation of the causes and consequences of the BBC's extraordinary conduct. Or perhaps the answer is far simpler: a reflex reaction of the grown-up, new-left radicals from the Sixties who now occupy executive positions in the great offices of state.

Could such a collective mind-set, permeated with post- colonial guilt, have animated the Director-General, Greg Dyke, to declare that the BBC was "hideously white"? Could it have animated the Foreign Office Minister, Peter Hain, in a previous incarnation, to advocate the violent destruction of Israel and label Israelis "greedy oppressors"?

If there is a disparity between the time given to Arab and Israeli commentators on the BBC, I must take some of the blame. Over the past five years or so, I have been a frequent commentator on Middle East affairs. Since September 11, however, I have refused all invitations to appear on BBC radio or television. The reason is not that I wish to avoid a debate, but rather that I believe the BBC has crossed a dangerous threshold.

In my judgement, the volume and intensity of this unchallenged diatribe has now transcended mere criticism of Israel. Hatred is in the air. Wittingly or not, I the BBC has become the principal agent for re-infecting British society with the virus of anti-Semitism. And that is a game I am not willing to play, even if, as one BBC researcher recently assured me, my interview fee far exceeded that of my Arab protagonists (an outrageously racist point that I, a third-generation refugee and an exile from apartheid South Africa, found difficult to applaud).

I am neither an apologist for the Israeli government nor a defender of its policies. I have been perfectly capable of taking a critical view of Israel when appearing on the BBC, whether it was the Israel of Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak or Ariel Sharon. And I am not afraid of informed criticism from others. On the contrary, I believe criticism is essential to the health of the democratic process (although I was always perplexed that Arab guests were treated with a kind of paternalism that never permitted hard questions).

I have a problem with the BBC's propensity to select and spin the news in order to reduce a highly complex conflict to a monochromatic, single-dimensional comic cut-out, whose well-worn script features a relentlessly brutal, demonically evil Ariel Sharon and a plucky, bumbling, misunderstood Yasser Arafat, the benign Father of Palestine in need of a little TLC (plus $50 million a month) from the West.

But it was not just the lamentable standards of journalism: I parted company with the BBC over its systematic, hysterical advocacy of the most extreme Palestinian positions; an advocacy that has now transmogrified into a distorting hatred of a criminal Israel and, by extension, into a burgeoning hatred of Jews closer to home.

It is astonishing that little more than half a century after the Holocaust, the BBC, guardian of liberalism and political correctness, should provide the fertile seedbed for the return of "respectable" anti-Semitism which finds expression not only in the smart salons of London but, according to the experts who monitor such phenomena, across the entire political spectrum, uniting the far-left with the centre and far-right.

It is astonishing, too, though perhaps no longer so surprising, that the Oxford University English professor and poet Tom Paulin should continue to star on BBC Television's weekly culture panel, despite his clarion call, published in the Cairo- based al-Ahram last month, to kill Jewish settlers. One can only guess at the BBC's reaction if his remarks had been directed at British Asians rather than Israeli Jews.

I still receive a couple of calls a week from producers and researchers at the BBC - there is obviously a serious disconnect there somewhere - but they should know by now that I am no longer a candidate to make up the numbers in order to allow them to justify the injection of yet more poison into the national bloodstream.

Nor, as Nicky Campbell's researcher so sweetly asked, am I prepared to defend the legitimacy of Israel's existence - and, effectively, the legitimacy of my own existence as an Israeli and as a Jew. To that I say: "Get stuffed."

Answer 2

once again, we see that the palestinian militants don't care about the palestinian people. they are happy to jeopardize emergency food shipments by smuggling in weapons disguised as humanitarian aid. then they'll whine that there's not enough sugar in gaza.
and the terrorist apologists here will sit in their comfy homes and complain about israel, while their people suffer at their own hands.

Answer 3

No answers, but a temporary palliative: Take 3 deep breaths and read the story below. It will make you feel better.

(I know it's off topic for this post because the Muslim clerics in the story are not Palestinian, but hey, I just read it and had to share. There is always hope.)

Answer 4

Mark goes to all extremes to vilifyy the Israelis. He asks,
"How in the world did the Israeli discover that sack of chemical in a trucks full of sacks. It is made up story to justify the collective punishment of the entire civilian population."

Actually, Israel's intelligence is among the best in the world. They had a tip-off and knew where to look and what to look for.

You may have forgotten the Karine A ship, which was smuggling ENORMOUS quantities of arms to the Arabs in Gaza. To remind Mark and his friends:

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) navy and air force units captured a Palestinian Authority-owned freighter loaded with 50 tons of weapons shortly before dawn on January 3, 2002. The operation, code-named Noah's Ark, took place 300 miles south of Israel, in the Red Sea. According to then IDF Chief of General Staff Shaul Mofaz, IDF commandoes took over Karine A, a 4,000-ton freighter captained by a high-ranking PA naval policeman, without a single shot being fired. The Iranian and Russian-made weapons on board included long-range Katyusha rockets with a 20-kilometer (12-mile) range, LAW anti-tank missiles, Sagger anti-tank missiles, long range mortar bombs, mines, sniper rifles, ammunition and more than two tons of high explosives, Mofaz said.

The Karine A was purchased in Lebanon and then sent to Sudan, where it picked up 20 tons of watermelon and sesame seeds. The ship eventually went to Yemen for repairs and a cargo of rice, clothes and toys to conceal the weapons onboard.

The capture of the weapons prevented uncountable loss of life in Israel, Mofaz said, adding that the shipment was in clear violation of agreements with the PA and demonstrated that the late PA Chairman and terrorist leader Yasser Arafat was not committed to fight terrorism.

Now Arafat is dead, and those presently in charge are no more interested in stopping the massive flow of arms to the Radical Muslims.

And to answer the asker's question, the BBC has its own agenda.


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Answer 5

Actually its true, somethings happen and the fourth branch of govt. (media) tells everyone over and over again to build support for its govt.

Answer 6

Don't worry about Mark - he just likes to be wrong most of the time. The reality with the Europeans and the BBC is that they would rather ignore the crazy things Arabs do then deal with them. After all the EU is worried more about its supply of oil than any ethical stands on any issue.

Good Luck!!!

Answer 7

I think you should pull your head out of the sand.

Answer 8

actually, BBC is the most biased news source

Answer 9

security measures are important but when they are based on humilation of other people, they are critsized. I understand that the check points are important for security measures but how do you justify Israeli soldiers for example preventing a woman to pass to give birth?


I don't trust BBC

Also can you provide other sources that are not Jewish or Israeli to the same story?

Thanks

Peace


riviva, I just asked for another source. Yes I don't trust Jewish or Israeli sources, do you trust muslim or Arabic sources when they say something like that about Jews?

Answer 10

Because it wouldn't fit their political agenda. Because it might shatter the myth that the 'Palestinians' are innocent, oppressed, peaceful folks just trying to scratch out a living, and big, bad Israel is persistently persecuting them. Because it just might shake SOME of the Israel haters from their delusional hatred.

Answer 11

How in the world did the Israeli discover that sack of chemical in a trucks full of sacks. It is made up story to justify the collective punishment of the entire civilian population.

ivri:
It is well known fact that the Israeli make up stories for political reasons to show EU support for lifting the siege and collective punishment is wrong policy.
The question why now?
After Paris meeting and EU call for lifting the siege on the Palestinian people.
EU are well aware of the Israeli intentions.