On May 14 1948 to a rapt Tel Aviv audience, David Ben-Gurion, following UN Resolution 181, declared the re-birth of ancient Israel. As a young ex-RAF flyer, I saluted the achievement. But did you see how Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East director, “commemorated” the 60th anniversary?
Carefully constructed, his TV broadcast seemed to match every Jewish death from terrorism with a higher number of Palestinian lives lost - although these actually included the terrorists themselves, Palestinian “human shields,” and accidental victims. Glossing over the well-documented massacres of Jews in Hebron and Jerusalem, Bowen unearthed a Palestinian-claimed 'massacre' in a mosque, that no expert I know of has yet recorded.
Typically, Bowen sympathised that the 5 Arab armies attacking Israel had only 20,000 soldiers to Israel's 35,000. Again, news to many. In any event, he was comparing trained, foreign, regular troops, many Sandhurst-officered, with elderly and youthful Jewish civilian volunteers! (Trans)Jordan’s army, for instance, was led by experienced British Gen Glubb. Unlike the Arabs, too, the Jews lacked tanks, heavy artillery and warplanes - until a few aircraft were eventually rescued from post-War sales and scrapheaps.
The BBC’s alleged Jewish “atrocity” tales went unchallenged - there is more than one version of the Deir Yassin battle - while authentic Arab atrocities were slid over. Moreover, the Arabs seemingly invaded because they feared being “over-run in their own country.” No hint of the Jewish presence since Abraham’s time, two-and-a-half millennia before the Arabian invasion (kindly offering “the Koran or the sword”). Nor of more recent, uncontrolled Arab immigration, after Jews irrigated what Mark Twain described as “a desolate land,” and provided food and jobs. Meanwhile the notorious British White Paper on Immigration drastically excluded Jewish refugees, so condemning many to Hitler’s death camps. All despite the Mandate binding Britain to foster “close Jewish settlement.”
Being an inveterate Arab sympathiser does not excuse one from practising the impartiality that the BBC Charter enjoins. Surely viewers ought to learn, on the other side, that the covetous Arab nations already have 50 times Israel’s population and 800 times Israel’s land, the puny Jewish state being crammed into just one-eighth of the area actually promised them? Some “Promised Land!” And if hating immigrants justifies violence, would Bowen similarly find excuses for the BNP, if members rose in ”armed struggle,” bombing immigrants here?
The BBC seems unaware that the approximately 600, 000 Arab refugees (UN contemporary estimate) mostly left voluntarily in fact, having seen no soldiers (according to Gen Glubb) and defying Israel's plea to stay and help build up the new nation. Instead, they heeded Arab broadcasts promising them Jewish property, after the Jews were “driven into the sea.” They were, moreover, outnumbered by 850,000 Jews evicted from Arab states. But while the Arabs were confined to camps by their cynical brethren, the Jews were absorbed, mainly in Israel.
A fairer Bowen could also have pointed out that the “stateless Palestinians” have refused a state alongside Israel five times. And how about the unspoken “clincher?” There’s never been a sovereign state of Palestine. “Palestinians” were created by Arafat in 1964, as a PR ploy. Arab leaders denounced splitting the “indivisible Arab nation” but Arafat was a better kidder than Goebbels. Actually, since Europeans drew modern Middle East borders but Jews had lived there despite intermittent invasions for nearly 2,000 years since Abraham, before being ethnically cleansed and expelled by the Romans, and the Romans were expelled before the Crusaders arrived, and they were expelled by warring Muslims, later defeated in wars by the Allies and the Jews, the programme might equally plausibly have contended that the Italian descendants of the Romans have prior rights to live there over the Muslims!
I believe the real question the BBC can't face is: “Why can’t Jews live where they want?” In Israel, Arab citizens sit in Parliament, become ministers, judges, generals and diplomats. Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely. Even women have equal rights. All virtually unknown in the Arab world. Mr Bowen is not ignorant of all this. Shouldn’t a serious BBC programme seriously acknowledge such truths? ENDS
Carefully constructed, his TV broadcast seemed to match every Jewish death from terrorism with a higher number of Palestinian lives lost - although these actually included the terrorists themselves, Palestinian “human shields,” and accidental victims. Glossing over the well-documented massacres of Jews in Hebron and Jerusalem, Bowen unearthed a Palestinian-claimed 'massacre' in a mosque, that no expert I know of has yet recorded.
Typically, Bowen sympathised that the 5 Arab armies attacking Israel had only 20,000 soldiers to Israel's 35,000. Again, news to many. In any event, he was comparing trained, foreign, regular troops, many Sandhurst-officered, with elderly and youthful Jewish civilian volunteers! (Trans)Jordan’s army, for instance, was led by experienced British Gen Glubb. Unlike the Arabs, too, the Jews lacked tanks, heavy artillery and warplanes - until a few aircraft were eventually rescued from post-War sales and scrapheaps.
The BBC’s alleged Jewish “atrocity” tales went unchallenged - there is more than one version of the Deir Yassin battle - while authentic Arab atrocities were slid over. Moreover, the Arabs seemingly invaded because they feared being “over-run in their own country.” No hint of the Jewish presence since Abraham’s time, two-and-a-half millennia before the Arabian invasion (kindly offering “the Koran or the sword”). Nor of more recent, uncontrolled Arab immigration, after Jews irrigated what Mark Twain described as “a desolate land,” and provided food and jobs. Meanwhile the notorious British White Paper on Immigration drastically excluded Jewish refugees, so condemning many to Hitler’s death camps. All despite the Mandate binding Britain to foster “close Jewish settlement.”
Being an inveterate Arab sympathiser does not excuse one from practising the impartiality that the BBC Charter enjoins. Surely viewers ought to learn, on the other side, that the covetous Arab nations already have 50 times Israel’s population and 800 times Israel’s land, the puny Jewish state being crammed into just one-eighth of the area actually promised them? Some “Promised Land!” And if hating immigrants justifies violence, would Bowen similarly find excuses for the BNP, if members rose in ”armed struggle,” bombing immigrants here?
The BBC seems unaware that the approximately 600, 000 Arab refugees (UN contemporary estimate) mostly left voluntarily in fact, having seen no soldiers (according to Gen Glubb) and defying Israel's plea to stay and help build up the new nation. Instead, they heeded Arab broadcasts promising them Jewish property, after the Jews were “driven into the sea.” They were, moreover, outnumbered by 850,000 Jews evicted from Arab states. But while the Arabs were confined to camps by their cynical brethren, the Jews were absorbed, mainly in Israel.
A fairer Bowen could also have pointed out that the “stateless Palestinians” have refused a state alongside Israel five times. And how about the unspoken “clincher?” There’s never been a sovereign state of Palestine. “Palestinians” were created by Arafat in 1964, as a PR ploy. Arab leaders denounced splitting the “indivisible Arab nation” but Arafat was a better kidder than Goebbels. Actually, since Europeans drew modern Middle East borders but Jews had lived there despite intermittent invasions for nearly 2,000 years since Abraham, before being ethnically cleansed and expelled by the Romans, and the Romans were expelled before the Crusaders arrived, and they were expelled by warring Muslims, later defeated in wars by the Allies and the Jews, the programme might equally plausibly have contended that the Italian descendants of the Romans have prior rights to live there over the Muslims!
I believe the real question the BBC can't face is: “Why can’t Jews live where they want?” In Israel, Arab citizens sit in Parliament, become ministers, judges, generals and diplomats. Muslims, Christians and Jews worship freely. Even women have equal rights. All virtually unknown in the Arab world. Mr Bowen is not ignorant of all this. Shouldn’t a serious BBC programme seriously acknowledge such truths? ENDS
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