2 min read
The BBC has got itself in a right old mess over the DEC Gaza appeal. But while the issue itself needs careful study - and in my own mind, I am split - it's some of the actions it has sparked which are perhaps most interesting.
First, the issue. Clearly, there is a humanitarian need for aid. No one denies that. But, as Melanie Phillips points out in her Mail column today;
For what few in this country are aware of is that Hamas is said to be systematically stealing shipments of humanitarian relief and shelling the aid crossing points.
These claims have been made not just by Israel but by Jordanian journalists and the Palestinian Authority, who have reported that Hamas has intercepted dozens of aid trucks and confiscated food and medical supplies bound for the UN aid stores in Gaza.
The allegation is that Hamas is manipulating the aid convoys as a weapon of war.
So the BBC director-general Mark Thompson was, in my view, correct in justifying his decision not only because of concern that the aid would not get to the needy but also because the very issue of humanitarian need in Gaza remains deeply contentious.
So it's far from clear cut that aid will go where it's needed, rather than straight into the hands of Hamas.
But it's the side issues that are, I think, especially interesting. Let's ignore for the monent the irony of the BBC - the BBC! - claiming that impartiality is its governing credo.
Let's focus instead on the reaction from the likes of Ben Bradshaw, the Health Minister, who on Any Questions on Friday night said that the BBC "has to stand up to the Israeli authorities occasionally" and said that the BBC has been "bullied by the Israeli authorities".
Ah yes, it's those Jews who control the media at it again.
Or how about Tony Benn, who told a demo outside the BBC's Bush House on Saturday that the BBC is controlled by the Israeli government:
Friends, the BBC would never be allowed to broadcast any message from Jesus. Because Jesus told us to love our neighbours and if the Archbishop of Canterbury read the Ten Commandments it might upset the Israeli government.
Now Sky has decided, too, that it won't broadcast the appeal. I guess it, too, is in the hands of the Israeli government.
The real problem with this - or perhaps it's an instructive byproduct - is that it has opened the floodgates for all kinds of prejudice to emerge. The most basic is the idea that the Jews have used their vast influence to stop a humanitarian appeal. But this piece in yesterday's Observer by Tim Llewellyn (a former BBC Middle East correspondent and now a fully fledged Israel basher) was especially vile:
...How is the BBC's impartiality to be prejudiced by asking others to raise money for the victims of an act of war by a recognised state, an ally of Britain, using the most lethal armaments it can against a defenceless population? What sly little trigger went off in her head when Thomson questioned whether the aid would reach the right people? What right people? Hamas, the elected representatives of the Palestinian people? The hospitals and clinics run by private charities and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency? The mosques? The citizens of Gaza, persecuted beyond measure not only by their Israeli enemies but by the western powers who arm and sustain Israel and defy the democratic vote of the Palestinian people?
...The big question that remains is this: what are the suits scared of? Why do BBC managers try to second-guess our government and even outreach it in grovelling to the United States and Israel?
Ah yes, grovelling to the Jews. Here we go...
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