The unspeakable citing the unreadable

Kesher Talk (Alcy again) cites Melanie Phillips, author of the ludicrous "Londonistan" which no reputable British publisher would take (and whose title tells you all you need, or want, to know about it, and her). If you can bear to read a piece of ill-written drivel by a self-styled journalist (she writes right-wing tosh for the Daily Mail), go ahead. A few examples:

A reader writes to say that on BBC TV’s Hard Talk, the ex-Lebanese Prime Minister was allowed to say that the problem was ‘the occupation’ by Israel and nothing could be done until it ended. But Israel pulled out of Lebanon six years ago — a fact not pointed out at all by the presenter. (Possibly because the Lebanese prime minister was referring to the occupation of the, er, Occupied Territories. But Phillips probably hasn't heard of Palestine.)


The crucial point about the casualties in Lebanon is that the Hezbollah is using the civilian population as human shields, deliberately siting its rockets and other weapons in the basements of apartment blocks, schools, mosques and so on. It is therefore impossible to destroy these weapons without hurting some civilians. Even a UN official hostile to Israel has now admitted this. Jan Egeland, head of the UN’s humanitarian effort and who has criticised Israel’s ‘disproportionate’ response — a claim given ‘disproportionate’ coverage on the BBC — acknowledged:

‘Consistently, from the Hizbollah heartland, my message was that Hizbollah must stop this cowardly blending… among women and children,’ Mr Egeland said. ‘I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don’t think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men. We need a cessation of hostilities because this is a war where civilians are paying the price,’ said Egeland as he headed to Israel.

Don't you love the fact that the quote from Jan Egelund says absolutely nothing about the deliberate siting of rockets in civilan areas, or the deliberate use of "human shields", though Phillps cites it as though he does? And then this:

As of this evening, the BBC News website story reporting Mr Egeland’s criticism of Israel did not include one word of his acknowledgement of Hezbollah’s use of civilians as human shields

(possibly because, as we saw, he made no such acknowledgement). This of course is all part of the well-known "anti-Israeli bias" of the BBC:

There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that the cumulative effect of the BBC’s poisonous distortions is to incite hatred of Israel in anyone who knows little about the region and is exposed for long enough to its TV and radio bulletins

or

The BBC in particular has turned into the Beirut Broadcasting Corporation, reporting the war almost entirely from the perspective of a Lebanon that is entirely innocent and victimised (as opposed to Sky which is far more even-handed).

Mmmm, the famously even-handed Rupert Murdoch.

A small anecdote from today illustrates a trend which I had been noticing since the current crisis developed. On a bus in London, I was accosted by a middle-aged, West Indian gentleman on the adjacent seat. Recognising me, he congratulated me warmly on what I had been writing about Israel. He had wanted to attend last weekend’s Israel solidarity demonstration organised by the Board of Deputies but had been unable to find where it was being held. But friends of his had attended and shown him photographs they had taken of the event.

Maybe they got the details off the BBC's website, which had them in one of its news stories (originally it also had details of anti-Israeli demonstrations as well, but after protests from "members of the public" these were removed, leaving only the pro-Israel demo still being advertised.

The Israelis are leafleting Lebanese civilians in advance of their raids to ensure that as many as possible leave the zone of fire. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work, but the intention is patently there to avoid killing civilians because this is a war of self-defence against a terrorist army. The Hezbollah, by contrast, is firing its rockets tipped with ball-bearings — designed to murder and maim as many as possible —in order specifically to kill Israeli civilians.

I like the contrast there between the Hezbollah rockets tipped with ball-bearings (come now, they're professionally made, it will be proper shrapnel, not your Iraqi IED junk) and the Israeli barrage of leaflets (er, followed up by the, er, shrapnel-filled bombs). Given a choice between being blown apart and having to read noxious filth like Melanie Phillips' article and then be blown apart, I'd take option one every time.

Further evidence that Britain just doesn’t get it was shown by the silence which has greeted this story in last weekend’s Mail on Sunday:

Border guards seized a British lorry on its way to make a delivery to the Iranian military - after discovering it was packed with radioactive material that could be used to build a dirty bomb. The lorry set off from Kent on its way to Tehran but was stopped by officials at a checkpoint on Bulgaria’s northern border with Romania after a scanner indicated radiation levels 200 times above normal.

The lorry was impounded and the Bulgarian Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NPA) was called out. On board they found ten lead-lined boxes addressed to the Iranian Ministry of Defence. Inside each box was a soil-testing device, containing highly dangerous quantities of radioactive caesium 137 and americium-beryllium.

The soil testers had been sent to Iran by a British firm with the apparent export approval of the Department of Trade and Industry…Last night a DTI spokesman confirmed: ‘Exporters do not need a licence to transport this sort of material to Iran. It is not covered by our export controls.’In August last year there was a similar incident when a Turkish truck carrying a ton of zirconium silicate supplied by a British firm was stopped by Bulgarian customs at the Turkish border on its way to Tehran, after travelling from Britain, through Germany and Romania, without being stopped.

What on earth is the British Department of Trade doing, giving the nod to radioactive material to be sent to Iran– twice? And where is the outcry?

And where in the second case is the radioactive material? According to Nature's Building Blocks by John Emsley, Zirconium is regarded as "completely non-toxic and environmentally benign". Apparently Zirconium-96 (which makes up 3% of Zirconium) "may be radioactive but this has been difficult to assess because its half-life is reputed to be more than 300 quadrillion years, or around 60 million times longer than the age of the Earth)."

(Note from me for Phillips and other illiterate oafs: this means your outcry may be experiencing a slight delay. Please take a seat and shut the fuck up for 300 quadrillion years.)

And what the Department of Trade is doing is showing that it can tell the difference between a soil tester and a nuclear weapon even if the Daily Mail cannot. You get americium in smoke detectors, you buffoons: does that mean that every pensioner in Britain with a smoke detector is under suspicion by the Daily Mail of making a "dirty bomb"?

Note for Alcy - when you cite stuff from the Daily Mail, don't get the idea that they have fact checkers like US newspapers do. They print any old rubbish, which is why they employ junk journalists like Phillips. The more you quote it, the further out of touch you appear and the more ludicrous seem your squeaky assertions that the BBC is a wicked hotbed of anti-Israeli sentiment (the same BBC that always refers to the IDF's 'targetted killings', and 'retaliatory strikes' and Palestinians' 'terrorist attacks', and where Israeli deaths are 'civilians' and Palestinian ones are 'suspected terrorists'). Maybe you should try reading this, that is if so much exposure to the Daily Mail hasn't caused your reading age to regress too far.