A guest post by Joe Geary.
(The programme can be downloaded here for a limited period of time or listened to here. The relevant section begins at 12:23′. – Ed.)
Not learning any lessons from harbouring child molesters, the BBC is a natural home for Israel molesters.
First of all – the breathtaking question from one Stephen Bedford:
“Despite all the foreign aid and support, Israel has spectacularly failed to get on with its neighbours. Does Israel deserve a future?”
How did they possibly allow such a question? Still, it tells you all you need to know about the Political Wing of the BBC.
Cue a vicious anti-Israel tirade from Shirley Williams.
She’s actually visited Gaza, she says (one wonders who showed her round) and it’s “a slum, worse than anything in Britain in the 19th Century”. But wouldn’t that be its government’s fault, Shirley? And you don’t know your history. Average Gazan life expectancy is over 73 years – in Britain in the 19th Century it was below 40 and in 2011, male life expectancy in Glasgow was 71.
And it’s “crowded out to the gills”. Yes, and how precisely is that Israel’s fault? Do they put something in the water to make Gazans have more babies?
And Gaza is full of people “who see their land slowly eaten up by more and more Israeli settlements”. Come again, Shirley? Israeli settlements in Gaza as the pretext for violence against Israel? The sheer ignorance is astounding.
So of course Jonathan Dimbleby, the BBC chair, steps in to quietly correct the facts. Fat chance. So yet another anti-Israel lying slander passes through the BBC airwaves.
As for Williams’s motives. My guess is this. Her party keeps getting a kicking in the press and at polls. So what do you do? Turn round and give Israel a good kicking. Feel better now Shirley?
P.S. Dimbleby’s main contribution was to interject that in the current conflict only three Israelis have been killed but over 30 Palestinians. So the main problem for the BBC man is not enough dead Israelis.