Mick Hartley

Marking their own homework

Written by

Mick Hartley

in

the truth.

Camera is left unimpressed. “With every single complaint that reached the ECU having been rejected, this putatively independent body appears to function as a rubber stamp for the whim of BBC Arabic editors,” its spokesman told me. This, he went on, was part of a trend whereby “a small group of BBC officials have marked their own homework.”

It's part of the continuous BBC effort to present the Palestinian cause as entirely about land: a classic case of freedom fighters against colonialism. In fact, if we were allowed to hear what Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza are actually saying, we'd see that it's all about Islam, it's all about Jew-hatred, and it's all about refusing to countenance the existence of a Jewish state.

Comments

  1. Joanne Avatar
    Joanne

    I think these people are stuck in an era when Islam played only a peripheral role in the politics of the region. That was in the 1960s to 1980s, a time when Palestinian activism was based on Third World-oriented left-wing secular nationalism.
    They don’t seem to realize that we’re no longer living in those times. With the exception of the Marxist PFLP, that ideological strain seems to have dissipated, at least since the WTC attack in 2001.
    Judith Butler once famously said that movements like Hamas and Hezbollah are part of the “global left.” She was very wrong. The Palestinian “resistance” is no longer left-wing; it’s not really about land per se or about “colonialism.” It is about Islam. However, the left-wing employees and management at the BBC are apparently ill equipped intellectually or emotionally to handle that fact.

    Reply

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