As for the BBC’s vaunted ‘neutrality’–well, I think the suicide of a defamed scientist put that myth to rest. Public broadcasting services are no more immune to the corruption of power than any other bureaucracy; they are simply less accountable than most because they don’t rely on consumer support.

Following my recent post about Orla Guerin’s Middle East reporting, here is an article in today’s New York Times which appears t [...]

I won’t comment on the political preferences of journalists as they seem to be very much in the eye of the beholder. I don’t know about the Hamas story but I am very cautious as journalists have a tendency to get killed in that part of the world (by both sides, and who is ultimately responsible is’nt greatly helpful to them. I would not chose to be there). I should say that I don’t think being moved by the Palestinian reaction to Arafat’s death is an expression of bias. But we probably differ there.

Its true that it would be a good idea to explain how Israel came to be in Gaza. But there are also lots of other things which it would be a good idea to explain. Which are not typically.

Your highly selective narrative of history is an example of this, even down to the strange terminology (“Arabs chose to attack Israel” ie “THEY started it”). The Egyptians of course were offering peace for land (I assume thats what you meant) in the whole period before 1973. Only after 1973 was it recognised that they had to be taken seriously.

Sadat was seen as a failure though. Its interesting to discover why. And obviously I accept what Clinton’s negotiaters said rather then his spin afterwards.

Now between you and me there could be endless debates about this. We could send each other links (all of which we will have seen before recycled endlessly). We could hysterically denounce each other for having double standards. We could just hurl abuse. All the usual things.

Watching this how is a journalist supposed to respond? I’ve already stated that being ‘neutral’ is a strange virtue. It might even be a bit odd when it comes to getting at the truth. But its actually more interesting, (and not of course because I don’t have hundreds of cunning little arguments, links, all the rest of the usual nonsense up my sleeve) to work out what CAN be agreed on.

Its often very little. My own framework is basically this. This is a vicious ethnic conflict over land (what is sometimes called the ‘two tribes approach’). This not in itself unusual situation is complicated by the fact that the local origins of the conflict lie in the fact that it was the colonial powers who decided who was going to get sovereignty (right across the region and on what terms) something which is deeply resented by most people in that region. Its further complicated by the fact that Jewish history in Europe and the West is an awful story of persecution and suffering.

And those are really the three things I think its neccessary to bear in mind when discussing the whole history of the conflict and prognosis for it. Thats were I’m coming from.

It’s all very well to point out that people can not travel freely from one part of Gaza to another but I think you could at least be honest enough to point out why. Otherwise you are in in danger of drawing a moral equivalence between suicide bombing and forcing people to wait in queues.

Neutral reporting is not demonstrated by holding a position in the middle ie that it is okay to half hang a man. It is displayed by telling both sides of the story in such a way as that the listener can decide for themselves. That requires context, a sense of the historical perspective and a determination that both sides can recognise themselves as being undistorted. One has to ask whether Orla Guerin, who is (I understand) married to a Palestinian or her colleague, Barbara Plett, who cried on air when Arafat died or her colleague Faid Abu Shimalla, who told a Hamas rally a that they “waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people” can be considered as neutral. Of course balance can also be achieved by the BBC deliberately employing a number of blatantly pro-Israel reporters – I invite you to name them.

Such a neutral reporter might point out how Israel came to be in Gaza in the first place. They might report that Hamas still totally rejects Israel’s right to exist. That the Palestinian authority is failing to implement the Road Map obligations they freely signed up to. That Israeli’s might have cause to fear an Arab world that recently showed a television series based upon the Protocols of Zion. Gosh, they might even point out that the Palestinians have been offered a state at least three times in the past:

1948 – the Arabs chose to attack Israel.
1967 – the losing Arabs refused to trade land for peace. The exception, Sadat, was assassinated by his own people.
2000 – Arafat turned down the offer of 92-96% of the West Bank and all the Gaza strip, plus replacement land from Israel.

Of the last, Clinton has said “Right before I left office, Arafat thanked me for all my efforts and told me what a great man I was. ‘Mr Chairman,’ I replied, ‘I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you have made me a failure.’”

For the record I am totally opposed to the settlements. Regardless of their purpose, they have not been helpful to Israel in any terms.

PS: Google toolbar has a spellchecker for online forms.

I don’t really agree that the violence is entirely one sided in the way you seem to suggest or that a ‘peace movement’ (in other words a cessation of violence on the Palestinian side alone) would achieve a Palestinian state. This does not mean I’m in favour of violence. I do think however that Israel (as a state) holds the cards in the situation.

But anyway, as I said, it was not my intention to get involved in the usual historical discussions with which we are all entirely familiar and which never yield anything positive anyway.

Anyway I did’nt want to simply exchange propaganda.

Anyone who knows anything about the Israeli settlement movement knows that only recently has it become overwhelmingly the province of the religious. In the aftermath of the 67 war, plenty of secular Jews settled in the west bank and gaza because they viewed it as the next frontier, just as the deserts of the negev and the swamps of the galilee were in pre-state Israel — they were simply the next stage in the taming of the land, not to mention an effective security buffer. the notion that the construction of a synagogue lent an added layer of legitimacy to this enterprise would have been laughable to them.

But even if all you say is true, it is madness to think that the actions of a frenzied mob of Palestinians were calculated political gestures meant to ensure that the “misery and suffering” caused by the settlements did not recur. Much like the lynching of two Israeli reservists in the fall of 2000, this was mob violence, pure and simple. These were inviduals motivated by a lust for destruction and revenge. Ascribing certain rational political motives to them is the idiocy of the enlightened.

The proper context here is not the misery caused by the occupation (misery which, it must be said, is partly the fault of the Palestianian rejectionist terrorists that brought the occupation upon themselves), but the consistent Palestinian denial of Jewish history and victimhood, a denial that reached a new low with recent attempts to eliminate Britain’s Holocaust day.

Just as the destruction of synagogues is not about preventing suffering, eliminating Holocause day is not about inclusiveness and fairness, as its proponents contend. It is simply the latest attempt to erase and minimize the tragedy of the Jews. And it is precisely that minimization that opens the door to gratuitous violence perpetrated, if not against Jews, than against their holy places.

Johng, I think one of the problems here is an assumption on the part of many people around the world that the Israelis somehow do not want peace. That they just want to grab land and subjugate the Palestinians.

I do not see it that way. In my view, the majority of Israelis (and Israel’s supporters) would happily see Israel withdraw to its pre-1967 borders if they knew that they could live their lives in peace.

I think it is a fact that is overlooked time and again in the media. And I think it is overlooked because reporters like Orla Guerin know that this can never happen because the militants will never stop attacking Israel, forcing Israel to respond militarily, and driving more Palestinians into militantism.

What the Palesinians need is a peace movement. Not an intifada. But as Orla herself said:

To many Palestinians, the Israeli pullout is proof of one thing – that the militants are the best hope of getting a state, that violence succeeds where politics fails.

And the future here will not be written without the involvement of the gunmen.

Well, that is a bleak future indeed. And, in mt opinion, it spells nothing but misery for the Palesinians for decades to come.