Media vultures seize on ‘brutality’ claims

The relentless media challenge over the conduct of Israel’s January Gaza campaign continues apace. The latest bout of criticism stems from a report by the Israeli-based NGO Breaking the Silence (Shovrim Shitka), a group which receives funding from the British, Spanish and Dutch governments, and collects testimony from veterans and serving IDF soldiers.

In its latest dossier, provided first to the Independent on July 15, it charges that Israeli soldiers were repeatedly encouraged to place their own safety above those of Palestinian civilians.

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Sir Philip's grand designs for Bhs

At 57 years old and several billion pounds to the good, you might think that retail entrepreneur Sir Philip Green would be thinking of hanging up his boots. But the burly tycoon who five years ago was rebuffed in his effort to takeover Marks & Spencer is as restless and ambitious as ever.

Whereas many retailers are struggling to survive the slump, he is anxious to expand. Indeed, he is as ambitious now to take his retail empire to the next level as at any time since he took control of Bhs in 2000 and Arcadia — then run by his mate Stuart Rose — in 2002.

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Pressure group must keep up pressure

The need for scrupulous monitoring of coverage of the core Middle East conflict in the British media has been evident since the outbreak of the second Intifada in autumn 2000. But it was not until the second Israel-Lebanon war in the summer of 2006 that a group of philanthropists and like-minded young professionals decided to move into the vacuum.

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Not just any broiges. An M&S broiges

To mark the 125th anniversary of Marks & Spencer, executive chairman Sir Stuart Rose commissioned a glossy “coffee table” history, replete with accounts of the retailer’s innovations down the decades.

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For a media award, just ‘monitor’ Israel

It is a tribute to Israel’s vibrant democracy that groups like B’Tselem, the Israeli NGO which monitors human rights abuses in the occupied territories, flourish. Reports from the group have dealt with issues including torture, fatal shootings by security forces, expropriation of land and discrimination in planning decisions in East Jerusalem, as well as house demolitions and violence by Israeli settlers.

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TV turmoil will take Sky to a new high

I bumped into James Murdoch at a party recently and he was in chipper mood.

At a time when both the writing and broadcast media are struggling, as a result of an advertising famine, the UK arm of the Murdoch empire looks to be emerging stronger than ever.

Much of the recent success can be attributed to Murdoch the younger, the likely heir to Rupert Murdoch’s empire , who at the end of 2007 stepped up to become the chief executive of News Corporation, Europe and Asia, and chairman of BritishSkyBroadcasting.

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Obama shows he really means business

Amid the British media’s blanket coverage of the Labour Party’s disintegration, few other stories have broken on to the front pages or into leader columns. An exception was President Obama’s much-hyped Cairo address. This even managed to unify those papers which cast a very critical eye over Israel’s actions in the Middle East with those that tend to take a more balanced view.

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Now fat cats have to fight for the cream

The backlash began with Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension. When shareholders learnt that the former Royal Bank of Scotland’s chief executive pension pot had been doubled to £16m, providing him with a pension of £703,000 for life at the age of 50, the public anger was palpable. The directors responsible — former RBS chairman Sir Tom McKillop and pay committee boss Bob Scott — were required to step down.

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Israel map row marks height of hypocrisy

When it comes to the Middle East, nothing is more important than maps. When you visit the Israeli Foreign Ministry for a briefing on peace initiatives, officials unfurl large maps showing every possible outcome, including charts with neatly drawn corridors linking the West Bank to Gaza.

At the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Jerusalem, a presentation shows the proliferation of security barriers across the region, which it regards as an affront to peace.

As much of an affront is the fact that many of them are unmanned but still counted.

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When supermarkets are superpowers

As a sector, Britain’s grocers are having a good recession. While other firms, including the food suppliers, have been shedding jobs, the supermarket chains Tesco, J Sainsbury, Wm Morrison, Asda and Waitrose have been adding them. And although Marks & Spencer has had to reshape “Simply Food”, jettisoning some of the stores it bought from Somerfield as a job lot, its executive chairman Sir Stuart Rose believes that its food offering has turned the corner, and that same-store sales — the critical measure for retailers — will soon be expanding again.

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Hastings’s case against Israel is flawed

Max Hastings is among Britain’s most distinguished and honoured journalists and an exemplary military historian. His years as editor of the London Evening Standard look like a golden age, given what has followed.

He is now a prolific commentator writing regularly in my own paper, the Daily Mail, as well as the Guardian. Bridging the gap between these two very different titles might be regarded as an achievement in itself.

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Darling has betrayed entrepreneurs

Alistair Darling’s April budget marked the end of New Labour. It was the party’s final divorce from the City.

Several of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs, including Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP and David Levin of United Business Media, have already upped sticks and moved their enterprises to Ireland because of efforts by HM Revenue and Customs to capture a bigger share of foreign earnings. Others are lining up to go.

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Trusting the BBC just a little bit more

There has been a great deal of triumphalism on the web and in print at the criticism levelled at BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen by the guardians of impartiality on the BBC Trust. Certainly, it is encouraging that the BBC Trust is taking its regulatory role more seriously.

In the pre-Hutton era, BBC governors saw their role as defending management and editorial from outside interference. Now it has shown it deals with complaints carefully and is determined to maintain journalistic standards.

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Syria could yet be key to Middle East peace

Expectations that President Obama would lift the Middle East peace process to the top of his international agenda have been short lived. Not surprisingly, it has been the global recession together with resetting the Nato agenda which has been dominant in the headlines.

This does not mean, however, that a great deal of preparatory work and thinking is not taking place.

A lengthy New Yorker article by veteran reporter Seymour Hersh records the belief in Washington that the route to an overall Middle East settlement lies through Syria.

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Hedge funds aren’t evil. They could save us all

As the credit crunch descended, the so-called “shadow banking” system, which includes hedge funds and private equity, attracted more than its fair share of opprobrium. In Germany, these groups, a symbol of free-wheeling Anglo-Saxon capitalism, were labelled “locusts”, and here in Britain the government launched a tax clampdown on private equity just as the financial system was seizing up.

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Gaza, NGOs and the dynamics of untruth

Just as it looked as if the worst of the press coverage of Israel’s Gaza campaign was over and the media had moved on, along comes a fresh charge sheet. Israel, according to the reports, engaged in all manner of war crimes, using Palestinian children as human shields, targeting medics and hospitals, and making “reckless” use of white phosphorous.

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TV reality is harsh, Grade must tune in fast

Michael Grade almost certainly missed his vocation. Listening to him at fundraising ORT events, he appears a natural for America’s “Borscht Belt” comedians who, before the days of cheap flights to Florida, toured the summer resorts in the Catskills. The ITV executive chairman is in need of every bit of quick wit he has at present.

Having risen to the peak of the establishment as chairman of the BBC in the wake of the clear-out after the Hutton report, he wrongfooted the media world in November 2006 when he abandoned his post to move to ITV.

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Israel can’t take US support for granted

The great taboo of Washington politics is to criticise Israel or the support of successive US administrations for the Jewish state. All seemed well on this front in the Barack Obama camp with the choice of former New York senator Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and ex-IDF volunteer Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff.

But forming a new US administration is not like changing government in Britain, when only a handful of special advisers are switched. In the US, the changes go deep into every aspect of policymaking and occasionally a controversial figure creeps in.

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