BBC confirms my prediction

It came a week ago, when I wrote:

“Once the initial shock of decapitated Israeli babies dies out, the newspapers and airwaves will be flooded with pictures of destroyed tower blocks in Gaza and dead Palestinians. These will be accompanied by long stories couched in bien pensant terms but leaving no one in doubt as to which side the media support.”

That attempt at playing Cassandra was as unsporting as predicting that the sun will go up and so will taxes. Why state the bleeding obvious and then pretend to possess prophetic powers? Everyone knows both the sun and taxes are guaranteed to rise (unless it’s a fortnight before a general election).

Similarly, when a society’s moral fibre lies in tatters and its intellectual framework has been used for emotional kindling, natural instincts take over. And the knee of most of our media invariably jerks in favour of Third World savagery and against the West.

I know it, you know it, everyone knows it. Hence we aren’t going to be surprised by any subversive drivel emanating from the major newspapers and TV channels. Or are we?

Here I must admit that, for all my professed and carefully cultivated dyed-in-the-wool cynicism, even I was shocked by what the BBC did the other day.

When 150,000 pro-Hamas demonstrators took to the streets of London, that’s exactly how the BBC described those rallies, as those of pro-Hamas supporters.

Complaints flooded in instantly, courtesy of our laudable advances in electronic communications. I’ll spare you any direct quotations, most of them being either illiterate or obscene or couched in the language of Marxist Oxbridge academics. But the general thrust of all moans was that the demonstrations were not pro-Hamas but pro-Palestinian.

One would think that this nuance wouldn’t be worth mentioning because the crowds came out immediately after Hamas’s raid, and then again when Israel had the audacity to retaliate. Since most placards and banners said ‘Free Palestine’, and since the demonstrators were inspired by Hamas, it was they themselves who established an indissoluble blend between pro-Hamas and pro-Palestinian sentiments.

That’s how I’d respond to such complaints if I ran BBC News. But I don’t, and neither does anyone else whose view of life resembles mine even remotely. Those who do run it issued a rather different reply:

“Earlier we reported on some of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the weekend. We spoke about ‘several demonstrations across Britain during which people voiced their backing for Hamas’. We accept this was poorly phrased and was a misleading description of the demonstrations.”

Did you get it? The blighters actually apologised to the mob whose febrile emotions are a cocktail of pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and generally anti-West sentiments. Whatever next? Will the BBC now pay reparations to terrorists?

Having got indignation out of the way, let’s consider the serious message hiding behind two words ‘not all’. As in ‘not all Palestinians support terrorism’, ‘not all pro-Palestinian demonstrators back Hamas’, ‘not all Russians love Putin’ and, backtracking a bit, ‘not all Germans were Nazis’.

The word ‘all’ has two meanings: literal and colloquial. The former means every one with no exceptions, and it’s clearly meaningless when applied to millions of people. Not all of millions of people are anything – not even human, if the evidence kindly provided by Hamas is anything to go by.

Colloquially, however, that word ‘all’ can be perfectly sound. It means ‘such an overwhelming majority that the few exceptions make no difference’. The deliberate, and usually pernicious, confusion starts when critics latch on to the word ‘all’ (uttered or implied) and choose to interpret it literally whereas in fact it was meant colloquially.

They then scream whatever invective seems suitable: racist, fascist, white supremacist or, in different contexts, misogynist, transphobe, homophobe, global warming denier, elitist, sexist – choose your own term from the thick thesaurus of leftie abuse.

This legerdemain is typical of demagogues, mostly of the left but sometimes also of the right. Thus apologists for the saintly Russian people object to an imaginary opponent by saying “not all Russians support Putin, his regime and its war on the Ukraine”.

That’s indirectly accusing their imaginary opponents of stupidity. Of course, literally speaking, not every one of 140 million Russians cheers fascism. Only about 85 per cent do, while some brave people try to save what little is left of their country’s honour by protesting openly and going to prison for it (in today’s Russia, the former automatically entails the latter).

Yet all they are saving is their own souls. Their heroism (and the tacit disapproval of some 15 per cent of the population) makes no difference whatsoever to the general assessment of their country. And that assessment says today’s Russia is a fascist cancerous cell threatening to kill its host organism, the world’s body.

Yes, that’s passing a sweeping general judgement, but generalisations are perfectly valid when applied to large swathes of humanity acting as a mob. People who wish to be treated as individuals should act as such.

In the same spirit, I’d suggest that the proportion of pro-Hamas fanatics among the ‘Palestinians’ is so close to a hundred per cent that the word ‘all’ can be safely used both literally and colloquially. And among Muslims in general, that proportion is probably lower than the percentage of Russians disliking Putin.

As to the BBC, the corporation is solidly pro-Hamas. I’m sure some of its Jewish employees aren’t, and even a few pro-Israel and pro-West conservatives can be found among its technical staff. But only an expert juggler of mendacious words will insist that its editorial policy isn’t anti-Israeli.

That’s why the BBC steadfastly refuses to describe Hamas humanoids as terrorists. And that’s why it has issued an inconceivable grovelling apology to the pro-Hamas zealots turning London into Tehran Lite.

That’s what the BBC does in English. Its Arabic division, on the other hand, eschews tacit support in favour of hysterically enthusiastic backing. Its staffers have described the wholesale murder of Israeli civilians as “exhilarating”, “exciting” and “a morning of hope”.

These are some of the statements most of which BBC Arabic News staffers issued and some they liked and retweeted:

“Israel prestige is crying in the corner”.  

“Every member of the Zionist entity served in the army at some point in his life, whether men or women, and they all had victims of explicit violations… This term ‘civilians’ applies to the animals and pets that live there and they are not seriously at fault.” [Subtle irony, that.]

“The Zionist must know that he will live as a thief and a usurper”.

“The Palestinian resistance takes an initiative and surprises the Israeli occupier with an operation of quality.”

“You cannot support freedom fighters in Ukraine as they resist Russian occupation but not in Palestine against Israeli occupation, unless you have no conscience.”

“Settlers hiding inside a tin container in fear of the Palestinian resistance warriors.”

And so on, ad nauseum. Now, having overcome emesis, let’s remind ourselves what the BBC is. That will help us suggest an appropriate course of action.

The BBC is a public service broadcaster established under a royal charter. It’s mainly funded by an annual licence fee charged to all British households and organisations that own devices capable of receiving BBC output. The fee is set by HMG and is agreed by Parliament.

Thus the BBC is obligated to comply with the terms set by its charter:

“The Mission of the BBC is to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.” Not a word there about cheering for the beheading of babies.

If it’s as immediately obvious to you as it is to me that the BBC is in default of its mission, the corrective measures suggest themselves. The charter must be revoked, the licence fee abolished, and the BBC should be made to fend for itself in the open commercial market.

At the same time, a charge of incitement to violence must be filed against all BBC employees who channelled their flaming conscience into the kind of messages quoted above. Let them eat porridge as they support terrorism.