Good column on BBC coverage from the Jerusalem Post:
Anti-Semitism in three steps, By Bret Stephens
Dear Sir,
I would like to protest against your use of the pronoun "we" in reference to the coalition forces fighting to liberate Iraq....
Zionists are not part of the "we" of the freedom-loving English-speaking world. They are a curse on it, who bribe and morally blackmail our politicians and media. The vicarious glee at the defeat of the Arabs in The Jerusalem Post reads like medieval bigotry.
Please move into the twenty-first century, and start advocating democracy and self determination for all. It behooves Israel, from its position of strength, to magnanimously offer a generous peace, as the Americans wisely did to the Axis in 1945....
I am a principled conservative who actually believes justice and democracy should be extended at every opportunity. George W. Bush is not, and nor it seems are you. I don't like the Palestinians, but I am dispassionate enough to realise that their misconduct, which is driven by desperation, does not deprive them of their inalienable rights. Please stop to think whether aggression without justice will ever provide you with security. I pity the Israelis who will continue to be killed for as long as your government refuses to be just.
With kind regards
Yours sincerely,
[SIGNED]
London, England
I love the "kind regards." It is correct, earnest, blithe. Most of the anti-Semites who write me aren't sticklers for good form: "F-- you! Jewboy" is more typical. Then again, my Tory correspondent plainly doesn't think of himself as an anti-Semite. He is pro-self determination, pro-democracy, pro-justice, pro-freedom. He despises bigotry and aggression. If this makes him an anti-Zionist, it is because Zionism is bigoted and aggressive. How could he be an anti-Semite?
Here's how: By watching, on a semi-regular basis, the BBC.
EARLIER THIS week, the government of Israel decided that it would refuse BBC interviews, impose visa restrictions, refuse practical assistance and otherwise make life difficult for BBC personnel stationed in Israel.
The immediate cause of this decision was the airing of "Israel's Secret Weapon" on BBC Correspondent, an hour-long segment on BBC TV World News. Hosted by journalist Olenka Frenkiel, the show purports to be an expose both of Israel's non-conventional capabilities and of its treatment of Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli technician who laid bare those capabilities to the Sunday Times in 1986 and has been in jail ever since.
Sinister-sounding Klezmer music sets the tone of the program. Frenkiel describes Vanunu as a "nuclear whistleblower" who has been "buried alive" in a tiny prison cell. She quizzes Shimon Peres over Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity: "Isn't it just a euphemism for deception?" she asks. She travels to Dimona, site of Israel's nuclear reactor, and trains her camera through a chain link fence: "Israel," she says, "is an inspection-free zone." She rehearses the history of Dimona's construction: American inspectors were "hoodwinked" in the early '60s into believing the reactor was for power-generation purposes only. She rails against the unwillingness of Israelis involved in the program to discuss it openly: "If this was the Soviet Union or Iraq or North Korea I would understand why people are so scared to talk. But this is Israel, it's supposed to be a democracy."
Much of what Frenkiel reports is old news. She rehearses the story of Vanunu's abduction in Rome by the Mossad - complete with a staged "re-enactment" involving blurred images and syringes - and of his subsequent secret trial and imprisonment. She investigates claims that the Dimona reactor has leaked radiation, in part by secretly filming or recording the voices of her interview subjects without their consent.
Every now and then Frenkiel commits an error of fact. She states that Israel has nuclear submarines. In fact, it has three diesel-powered subs that, like most weapons' platforms, are theoretically capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles. She tells us that Ariel Sharon was held "personally responsible" by the Kahan Commission for the Sabra and Shatilla massacres. Actually, the commission found that "no Israeli was directly responsible for the events which occurred in the camps." She also takes at face value Palestinian claims that Israel used unknown and presumably forbidden gas agents against Palestinian civilians.
Still, none of this would matter very much were it not for Frenkiel's larger purpose: To paint Israel as the Middle East's real rogue regime, and Ariel Sharon as a Jewish Saddam Hussein.
"There is a cry going up which is talking about a double standard," she says. "The world has to check Iraq's nuclear installations but not Israel's." She captures Israeli nuclear-disarmament activists in conversation: Israel, says one, "is the number-one privileged state on earth"; "Counter to the argument that the whole world is against us, it is the exact opposite," says another.
THIS IS not the first time the BBC has produced this kind of documentary: The Accused, which made its own indictment of Ariel Sharon for war crimes by combining half-truths, innuendo, one-sided testimonies and manipulated footage, aired on BBC Panorama in June 2001. But that was about one man only; "Israel's Secret Weapon" points a finger at nearly an entire country.
"How can you compare it?" an exasperated Shimon Peres replies to Frenkiel's suggestion that Israel's nuclear designs are as suspect as Iraq's. "Iraq is a dictatorship. Saddam Hussein is a killer. He killed a hundred thousand Kurds with gas bombs. How can you compare that at all?"
Frenkiel rejoins: "But some in Israel do. The current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon directed the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Thousands of innocent civilians were killed."
Notice Frenkiel's method. "But some in Israel do" - a statement that is true in the sense that, as in any free society, you can always find someone willing to make the most lurid comparisons. The line has the added benefit of citing unnamed Israelis to supply an anti-Israel slant. "The current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon directed the invasion of Lebanon in 1982" is another true statement, albeit one shorn of all context to explain the invasion. As for "Thousands of innocent civilians were killed," this too is true, though Frenkiel might have added that the bloodletting was mainly at the hands of warring Christian, Muslim, Syrian and Palestinian factions.
In other contexts, this would be known as checkout-line journalism. Frenkiel makes three statements that in the narrowest sense are true and puts them in the service of one terrific lie. It's a tactic that's been honed to perfection by outfits like National Enquirer. With the Enquirer, however, its targets are usually Hollywood celebs, and the innuendo can be shrugged off as so much tabloid trash. With the BBC, the target is the Jewish state, and the charges come with the imprimatur of one of world's most venerable news-gathering organizations. No wonder my London pen pal believes it and forms his views accordingly. No wonder he thinks Zionism is a "curse."
INDEED, IT is tempting to give him a pass. And perhaps the same goes for Oxford University pathology professor Andrew Wilkie, who late last month turned down an Israeli student's application to work in his lab on grounds of nationality. (Wilkie has since apologized following a university investigation.) One might say that since he is opposed only to Israeli government policy, not to Jewishness per se, he should be acquitted of charges of anti-Semitism. But this is true only if one also assumes that he is otherwise an imbecile.
Imagine that all Wilkie knew about Israel is what was shown in Frenkiel's documentary. However shocking Frenkiel made Vanunu's prison conditions seem, Wilkie would still have to ask why this "traitor to Judaism" was not instantly put to death and will, in fact, soon be released from prison. He would have to ask why Frenkiel relies openly on Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman for technical information, or on Israeli doves for some of the choicest criticisms of Israeli policy, or on Vanunu attorney Avigdor Feldman for a critique of Israel's legal procedures. He would have to acknowledge that every Western government, not just Israel's, has state secrets and harshly punishes those who betray them. He would have enough of a grasp of Middle East history to acknowledge that Israel's security concerns aren't completely baseless.
In other words, Frenkiel's documentary itself gives the lie to her idea that Israel is a police state. Imbeciles, as I said above, might be forgiven for not seeing this. But not this Oxford professor, who seems to be animated by a deeper prejudice. Or has Wilkie turned down Ph.D. candidates from China, whose repressive policies with respect to Tibet he must also surely disapprove of? I doubt it. Only the policies of the government of Israel inspire his ire against its citizens.
If this isn't anti-Semitism, quite, it is remarkably well aimed at a great many of the world's Jews. The same goes for the BBC. By sponsoring documentaries such as Frenkiel's, and through its tendentious coverage of Israel, the BBC today is doing more than championing the cause of the Palestinians. It is inciting against Israelis. When the next Jew gets beaten on London's streets, I, for one, will know whom to blame.
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