Reply to: Biased Broadcasting Corporation

[ratewhore]

As for British forces training Hamas... I've not read specifically of that, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they had. We train all sorts of people all the time. In Andy McNab's latest book he talks about when the British trained the Mujahadeen to use Stinger missiles. Apparently the missiles were too noisy to be able to do the training on the spot, so they smuggled groups of Afghans out and flew them to Scotland, trained them there, then flew them back.

But they were fighting the commies. Your enemies enemy and all that. I personally cannot see that being the case with Hamas but I'd be more than happy to be proved wrong.

After all, people wouldn't post made up stuff as fact on CUK would they?

[Drewster]

.........I did read somewhere else that they tend to be a status symbol and usually don't get fired because then the owner instantly loses the cred of owning a missile,

S'right..... Look at all the News/Documenary Items on "Freedom Fighters" (or whatever).

Loads of Guys posing and looking hard with RPGs over thier shoulder...... beaten up, paint scratched and flaked..... it MUST have been bounced and bashed about a fair bit..... and obviously not been fired (or they wouldn't still have it).

Holding a stick obviously doesn't have the same qudos.....

although to be fair these are often the same guys who hack "opponents" (aka innocent women and children) to bits with a Machete

[Doggy Styles]

There are loads of Stingers still unaccounted for, though I did read somewhere else that they tend to be a status symbol and usually don't get fired because then the owner instantly loses the cred of owning a missile,

Like owning an expensive bottle of vintage wine.

[dang65]

Shame on you! You have lost my respect and until the BBC can show me true "impartiality", the BBC can have my TV license back.

David Soul - Actor

Well said mate!

Loads of countries have TV Licences, including ones with absolutely abysmal broadcast output. At least we get the BBC in exchange for our fee. If they didn't get their cut any more then we'd still have to pay, but we'd have to watch rubbish as well.

That letter from David Soul is lame. Why don't all these moaners forget about the BBC and pile all their efforts into raising funds for Gaza? Why haven't all the newspapers turned over any space they've wasted on this non-story to advertising for the campaign?

The BBC is, and has been since at least the Second World War, a source of neutral news for people all over the world, not just in Britain. They do show one-sided programmes from time to time, but then they'll show a different programme another time with the opposite bias. Either way they get moaned about. I'm not sure which news organisation people consider to be less biased???

As for British forces training Hamas... I've not read specifically of that, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they had. We train all sorts of people all the time. In Andy McNab's latest book he talks about when the British trained the Mujahadeen to use Stinger missiles. Apparently the missiles were too noisy to be able to do the training on the spot, so they smuggled groups of Afghans out and flew them to Scotland, trained them there, then flew them back. There are loads of Stingers still unaccounted for, though I did read somewhere else that they tend to be a status symbol and usually don't get fired because then the owner instantly loses the cred of owning a missile,

[Doggy Styles]

"The weapons that Hamas used were the very weapons supplied by the UK who also trained the Hamas security forces five years ago."

No evidence anywhere?

Anywhere?

Dust?

Anyone?

Does this refer to the home-made rockets? I don't think we supplied them.

[ratewhore]

Still waiting for the link to corroborate this.

Anyone..?

No evidence anywhere?

Anywhere?

Dust?

Anyone?

[AZZIK]

Letter from David Soul to the BBC

Regarding the BBC's unwillingness to support the appeal for relief to the people of Gaza:
It is unconscionable that the BBC refuses to make a distinction between "unbiased reporting" (which apparently means, bending to lobbying pressure) and supporting the humanitarian action that is so urgently needed in GAZA ... whoever may be responsible for causing the destruction.

Over 3,000 innocents in GAZA caught in the cross- fire are dead or wounded ... families have been decimated ... whole communities have been leveled ... infrastructure has been destroyed ... and you refuse to join humanitarian efforts to bring aid to them.

What is the matter with you people? Are you blind or just spineless?

Innocent people urgently need supplies of food, water, medicines, shelter ... yes, and limbs too ... as a result of the annihilation of GAZA. Meanwhile, the BBC puts its corporate tail between its legs and hides behind the thinly-veiled excuse of "impartiality".

What's the difference between supporting an appeal for aid to the victims of a Tsunami and supporting a relief effort to the innocent victims of war ... any war?
As an independent broadcaster, the public mandate of the BBC should be to place it squarely on the side of HUMANITY. That being so, the BBC should be at the forefront of reporting the whole story even as it supports the greater cause of HUMANITY.

Shame on you! You have lost my respect and until the BBC can show me true "impartiality", the BBC can have my TV license back.

David Soul - Actor

Well said mate!

[ace00]

....... They could have negotiated with Fatah's previous leader, Yasser Arafat, who was a friend of mine. Instead, they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah, where I visited him.

Well he must have sneaked out to get to the White House lawn in 1993 and shake Yitzhak Rabin's hand.

[lilelvis2000]

...That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.

The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists. Tzipi Livni's father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organized the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews.

Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin. Today, the present Israeli government indicates that they would be willing, in circumstances acceptable to them,...

...
It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis' real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools.

I've always wondered why Livni spoke like a terrorist. like a Kach member. Using language like "the humanitarian situation is as it should be..."

I also often wondered how many of the Israeli political parties were formed by terrorist groups. And how many of these parties see Jabotinsky as their "spiritual" leader - cause frankly I think most of them are Atheists anyway.

[ratewhore]

The weapons that Hamas used were the very weapons supplied by the UK who also trained the Hamas security forces five years ago.

Still waiting for the link to corroborate this.

Anyone..?

[NotAllThere]

The following is the complete text of Labor Member of Parliament...

Labour

I found five pages with this text. Where did you copy it from?

[expat]

A very moving speech from Gerald Kaufman. You can certainly find many Jews (possibly the world's most civilised people) who think something like that. That is one of the worst things about the Israeli government's behaviour: in the name of preserving a people and a culture, they are doing things that are contrary to what that people hold most dear.

The great Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, with whom I campaigned for peace on many platforms, said: "You make peace by talking to your enemies."

Amen.

[Board Game Geek]

If the BBC "bends" to this, then what next will it be expected to "bend" to ?
The BBC will then become expected to broadcast appeals for every other charity, because "well, you did it for Gaza, why not us ?"

If the BBC goes ahead with the appeal, they will be opening a bigger can of worms for the future.

They need to draw a line and say NO.

And the people clamouring for them to broadcast an appeal need to realise that they are being unreasonable in their expectations.

[Paddy]

The following is the complete text of Labor Member of Parliament and former government minister Sir Gerald Bernard Kaufman's speech, made during the January 15, 2009 House of Commons debate on Gaza:

I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist. On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine.

I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel.

One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me.

I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence.

My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt among Gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count.

On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians-the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that "500 of them were militants."

That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.

The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists. Tzipi Livni's father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organized the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews.

Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin. Today, the present Israeli government indicates that they would be willing, in circumstances acceptable to them, to negotiate with the Palestinian President Abbas of Fatah. It is too late for that. They could have negotiated with Fatah's previous leader, Yasser Arafat, who was a friend of mine. Instead, they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah, where I visited him. Because of the failings of Fatah since Arafat's death, Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006. Hamas is a deeply nasty organization, but it was democratically elected, and it is the only game in town. The boycotting of Hamas, including by our government, has been a culpable error, from which dreadful consequences have followed.

The great Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, with whom I campaigned for peace on many platforms, said: "You make peace by talking to your enemies."

However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more Palestinians on the West Bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.

It is time for our government to make clear to the Israeli government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel.

It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis' real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools.

[Doggy Styles]

There aren't any illegal settlements in Gaza

That's what I thought. I made that point earlier.