Opinion

It’s the way you tell it

OPINION PIECE BY JAMES J MARLOW

“Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas last night (Tuesday) and bombed several targets in the Gaza Strip.” This is how many of the news networks reported the news on Wednesday morning. Then comes the line, “Israel says, this was in retaliation for incendiary balloons launched from the territory”.

Sky, BBC, ITN, LBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, and the list goes on. This prompted the mob of haters to comment on social media with lines like: “Homemade fire balloons versus US bombs – Is there a better example of disproportionate use of force?” This came from popular Jewish anti-Israel activist, Ariel Gold, based in New York.

Also on my twitter thread, an account named, Jorge Orwell with the sarcastic words: “Balloons vs Fighter jets seems like a fair fight to me”.

The problem is that many people expect the worst from Israel. Many have it in their heads, that Israel is the “bad boy” in the classroom. He is the one who causes most of the friction, anti-social behaviour, provocation and of course the playground fights. They blame the parents and constantly tell their kids, to stay away from “that boy”.

But wait, after all the anti-Israel propaganda for many years in the media, the Jewish state was suddenly praised worldwide with their Covid vaccination roll-out programme. So what happened?

It is as if someone, somewhere said, Israel cannot be doing everything right. Let’s dig carefully to find some dirt. Next you have an “editor” who says, make sure you connect it with the Palestinian issue.

What comes next? “Israel denies Palestinians the vaccine”. The truth was: (1) The Palestinian Authority never requested any assistance. (2) They had their own independent Health Ministry, made possible by the internationally recognised legal document known as the Oslo Accords. (3) Their Secretary General of the PLO, the late Saeb Erekat, insisted that Palestinians did not accept health care from Israel, despite using Israeli hospitals himself, on many occasions, for Covid and other issues. (4) The PA already signed a deal to receive the Russian vaccine, Sputnik.

If you wish to mislead the public, you would write “Israel bombed Gaza targeting militia military compounds”. It’s not incorrect. It happened on Tuesday night. But the headline or lead-in on the news channels, is highly misleading and misses a chunk of the vital story piece.

How about: “Palestinian Hamas launched more than 300 hundred incendiary balloons from Gaza into Israel, setting at least 30 separate property and agricultural land fires across the south. “In response the Israeli air force targeted Hamas compounds in the Gaza Strip”.

Both statements are correct, but the second one gives more of an explanation of what actually occurred. But news editors will tell you, people don’t have time to read the details, they just need the headlines and brief bullet points of the story.

If that’s the case, (and it is) Israel has once again been demonised with an inflammatory headline and this could affect Jewish communities around the world, (which it has done and may continue to do so).

The truth is Hamas launched the balloons in response to the Jerusalem flag-day parade which took place in the old city on Tuesday.

Hamas once again claimed victory. They always do. But you have to give them credit. As a result of their threats of firing rockets into Jerusalem if the parade went ahead, Israel had no choice but to deploy the iron dome again. They also re-routed the parade so it would not enter the old city through the Damascus Gate and it altered flight paths for aircraft heading to Ben Gurion airport. That’s a victory.

Funny how this annual march has taken place every year, for more than 50 years with little fuss, in celebration of the reunification of Jerusalem known as Yom Yerushaliyim. Yes, this time it was re-scheduled from May 10, after Hamas fired rockets into Jerusalem, but it rarely gets this much world attention.

Israeli soldiers try to extinguish fire in an area close to the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

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20% discount applies to mugs only. Offer ends at 11.59pm on 31st August 2021. James J. Marlow is a broadcast journalist previously working for ITN, EuroNews, LBC Radio, Daily Express and a number of Jewish publications. In addition, he ran a Media and Communications Training Operation and was a consultant at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem. He was also responsible for the training of Shlichim at the Jewish Agency and Bnei Akiva.

The grim reality

OPINION PIECE BY ROBERT FESTENSTEIN

Last week a convoy of cars and coaches made their way to Central London from Bradford to call for a Free Palestine. Only they didn’t. Certainly they came to London and they certainly held a rally but they had no interest in a Free Palestine, just in destroying Israel.

David Collier in a recent article reminded me of the great imbalance that exists when it comes to those supporting Palestine. They have no interest in a real Free Palestine in the way that most protestors want. There were no calls for elections on the West Bank, removal of the misogynist Hamas regime in Gaza and absolutely no demands that attacks on Israel should cease. This was all about maintaining the terrorist status quo in the West Bank and Gaza and absolutely nothing about a Free Palestine.

Yet the media are content to ignore this grim reality. David Collier drew examples on a substantial bias in the media generally. These included the BBC, Sky News and the Guardian. They all make much of alleged Israeli crimes against Palestinians but have no or only a tiny interest in routine murders of people across Africa by various Islamist groups. For the BBC et al it would appear that only Western black lives matter, those in Africa have no value.

Similarly, when a Palestinian terrorist is killed by security forces when trying to stab Israeli citizens, there are headlines and reports on the BBC and critical articles in the Guardian. Surely the terrorist wasn’t such; his running at civilians with a knife was just his way of saying hello. Yet when dozens of Christians are murdered in Nigeria by Boko Haram there are no reports or angry newspaper articles and certainly no calls for intervention by the ICC or the UN.

I quote from David’s article: “What London witnessed yesterday [13 June 2021] was an Islamist demonstration. Many of those behind it all are known Islamist activist groups and radical Mosques. The demographic was clear and everywhere. This wasn’t a human rights protest at all – it was an Islamist protest against the Jewish state..”.

Despite the open support of Hamas, the obsession with Israel (as described by David Collier) is deep and far reaching. It permeates every aspect of our society, from politics, to the media, trades unions, universities and beyond. This legacy from the 1970s when the well-funded Arab and Palestinian societies on campus proclaimed that there would only be peace in the Middle East when the Israel - Palestine issue was resolved now lives on in those organisations run by these former students.

There are some uncomfortable truths to be faced about certain parts of our population; namely that they are anti-Western, anti-democratic and anti-Semitic. The Bradford convoy was not about peace and absolutely not about freeing Palestinians from the oppressive rule of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. It was about intimidating British Jews and further, declaring openly on British streets the desire to destroy Israel and declare support for proscribed terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Those who support Hamas and the firing of rockets into civilian areas should be decried for what they are: supporters of terrorism who have no place in our society. If a ten year old social media message can cause a cricketer to be suspended, then surely open supporters of Islamist terrorists should face the same scrutiny as to their conduct. We live in an open and tolerant society, and in order to maintain it we need to expose the extremists. We need to ensure they are unable to exploit our open society as part of their cynical campaign to destroy it. The grim reality needs to be laid bare for all to see.

The Bradford convoy was not about peace and absolutely not about freeing Palestinians from the oppressive rule of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

Robert Festenstein is a practising solicitor and has been the principal of his Salford based firm for over 20 years. He has fought BDS motions to the Court of Appeal and is President of the Zionist Central Council in Manchester which serves to protect and defend the democratic State of Israel.