Patten's record a real concern

One of the Tory great and good, Lord Patten of Barnes, is about to be handed the chairmanship of the BBC Trust. The chance of presiding over the BBC and its £3.2 billion budget is clearly one he could not resist.

More..

Trains that run on crime

There are few more potent images of the Shoah than The Cattle Truck, immortalised in Jorge Semprun's 1960s novel. Yet, only now, seven decades after the transports of Jews from every corner of Europe to the death camps, are the railway authorities being forced to come to terms with their Nazi past.

The French state railway, SNCF, has for the first time publicly expressed its regret for conveying Jews to Nazi death camps in the Second World War. Previously, SNCF had claimed that it had been "forced" into the deportations by Nazi occupiers.

More..

Israel's unreported war

One of the great features of a civilised state is the willingness to accept that mistakes can be made and investigate them.

At times, the Israeli authorities may have to be dragged kicking and screaming into probes - as in the celebrated case of the shooting of student photographer Tom Hurndall in 2006. But, like all democracies, Israel is sensitive to political and diplomatic pressure.

More..

Fast? I can't even diet properly

With every year that passes, just as I am starting to feel a bit more Jew-ish than the year before, I run slap bang into Yom Kippur and realise that perhaps I'm not ready to embrace my Jewish roots after all. This year was no exception. It's the fasting. I love the idea in theory, but I simply can't do it. So this is my confession: I'm Venetia Thompson, and I can't manage 25 hours without (in order of importance) coffee, wine, mascara, or my patent leather Manolo Blahnik stilettos. Not to mention butter.

More..

Tea Party may help Israel

The arrival of the Tea Party as an American force has shaken the US political establishment. It is a sea change, compared by commentators such as Gerald Seib in the Wall Street Journal as similar to the arrival of the conservative movement headed by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

More..

EU corridors of prejudice

Of all the institutions in Germany, the Bundesbank, the nation's central bank, is the one which likes to think itself above politics. It may be less powerful than before the creation of the euro, but its influence on the European Central Bank and economic policy is considerable. The last thing the Bundesbank needed was a renegade member - in the shape of Thilo Sarrazin, 65, a former top finance official in the Berlin city government - spouting off.

More..

The dangers of a Wikimedia

Wikipedia is one of those websites which quietly has changed the way that people interact with the internet. For journalists, academics and ordinary consumers, it is often the first port of call for research. It is an organic encyclopaedia which for many providesan early draft of history.

It also defines events. It was academics debating on Wikipedia who decided that the 2006 conflagration between Israel and Hizbollah should be officially known as the 2006 Lebanon War.

More..

Up in arms over Saudi deal

The disclosure by the Israel-friendly Wall Street Journal that the Obama Administration is preparing to sell advanced Boeing F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia should not come as a major surprise. In recent months there have been unconfirmed reports in the American and Israeli media that a deal of this kind was in the offing. Nevertheless, it will lead to anxiety in Washington, Jerusalem and beyond.

More..

When the blogs don't work

It used to be that journalists told it as it was and did their best not to be emotionally involved in stories. The late Richard Dimbleby famously reported on the horrors of a liberated Auschwitz using stark language but without shedding a tear.

But when Yasir Arafat died in November 2004, BBC correspondent Barbara Plett was lachrymose on From Our Own Correspondent. It may be no accident that not long afterwards she was given a different beat.

More..

Flotilla: media's big omission

Amid the mountain of hostile media coverage following the raid on the Gaza flotilla last month, little was made of the personal accounts of the IDF forces involved. Yet what is absolutely clear from this testimony - which is available on major websites, including the BBC - is that what the soldiers most feared was the permanent capture of one of their colleagues.

The detention of 23-year-old Gilad Shalit - who is now at the start of his fifth year of Hamas captivity - on June 25, 2006 provides a stark reminder of the extenuating circumstances surrounding the botched Israeli boarding.

More..

Boycott recalls a darker era

Israel, and Tel Aviv in particular, has long regarded itself as a home of cultural cool. It is the kind of place which ranks alongside Barcelona for its eclectic mix of bars, boutiques and Bauhaus architecture.

Moreover, it has developed a distinct cultural heritage with its world-class writers like David Grossman, prize-winning movies like Waltz with Bashir, and prize winners such as Yael Bartana who recently carried off the 4th Artes Mundi Prize at the National Museum of Cardiff.

More..

It's the economy, stupid

Former prime Minister Gordon Brown always regarded building the economy and institutions as the best path to resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict. But it is a view that has never found great favour in the British media, which is obsessive about settlements (even when they are in urban Jerusalem), the IDF's alleged human rights abuses and the blockade of Gaza.

More..

When rumour replaces news

Every American political leader strives to earn a place in history which stretches beyond their own term in office. One of the most effective ways of doing this is to nominate like-minded people to the Supreme Court where there are no term limits and justices serve well into their dotage.

As a result, the proposed justices come under extraordinary scrutiny in Congress, in the media and these days in the blogosphere. The choice by Barack Obama of 50-year-old Solicitor-General Elena Kagan as the replacement for nonagenarian John Paul Stevens is no exception.

More..

Getting away with murder

The way in which the media has turned the narrative of human rights and political accountability in the Middle East on its head is remarkable. Israel, at times no doubt deservedly, finds itself under constant fire. Yet the behaviour of Hamas and Hizbollah is rarely accorded the same hostility.

More..

Israel doesn't agree with Nick

The great joy of being a third party in British politics is that the detail of policy pronouncements mostly goes unremarked in the media. The surge in Liberal Democrat support, after Nick Clegg's winning performance in the first of the leadership debates, changed that.

There has been a concerted effort to examine every aspect of policy. When it comes to the Middle East the portents are not encouraging. Clegg is a long-term critic of Israel's policies and led the charge to denounce Israel and impose sanctions during the 2009 Gaza war.

More..

Revealed - Gaza's mini-boom

The conventional wisdom on Gaza is that it is the largest prison camp in the world. The liberal US Daily Kos website quotes former US President Jimmy Carter saying that the blockade of the territory is "a crime and atrocity". It also notes that the UK's luvvie lobby, Independent Jewish Voices, has accused Israel of breaching international law in the area.

More..

Settlement row exposes bias

No one disputes that the announcement of plans to build 1,600 new homes in the Jerusalem suburb of Ramat Shlomo, during the visit of US vice-president Joe Biden to Jerusalem early this month, was a blunder of the first order.

Not only did it cast an ugly pall over Washington-Jerusalem relations, it provided an excuse for Israel's critics in the media (in the US, London and Israel itself) to engage in unrestrained bashing of the Netanyahu administration and settlement policy. It also has led to rioting in and around Jerusalem and the loss (last weekend) of some young Palestinian lives.

More..

Never mind facts, it’s Mossad!

The faux media outrage over the alleged use by the Mossad of copied British passportsin the audacious
assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai could not disguise the glee in much of the reporting. Amid the dreary daily fare of budget deficits and the Punch and Judy politics of the UK election, the events in Dubai actually had people buying newspapers and listening to broadcasts.

More..

Chazan row not about JPost

The ousting of Naomi Chazan, the president of the New Israel Fund, as a columnist for the Jerusalem Post is no normal storm in a media teacup.

The row is much more a symptom of the bitterness which has erupted over the role of Israeli NGOs in framing some of the content of the Goldstone Report than the politics of the Jerusalem Post and its British-born editor-in-chief David Horovitz.

More..

Web paywalls are bad news

Over the past decade or so, clicking onto media websites, from Ha’aretz to the Washington Post, has become a habit for millions of people worldwide.

Search engines such as Google allow anyone to be instantly up with the geopolitical news and gossip. Moreover, in the case of the most recognisable media outlets the reader has the benefit of newsrooms filled with journalists, a solid editing process and access to up-to-date news agency copy on breaking events.

More..