In a cunning twist to that famous Fawlty Towers scene when Basil Fawlty tries to not mention the war when serving German guests but fails, Channel 4 News journalist Jonathan Miller does his best to not mention the war and succeeds!
The war that would not pass Miller’s lips was the one of 1948 when Israel beat five Arab armies and more to establish its legal state. Whereas the putative Israelis accepted UN Resolution 181 (the Partition resolution) the Arab world rejected it hoping to inflict on Israel’s Jews a second Holocaust instead.
To add to the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust another 6,000 Jews needlessly lost their lives in that 1947-49 war.
Not that such history seems to be of much concern to Jonathan Miller.
In his five-minute piece on Gaza for Channel 4 News last night he shows Palestinians playing football. Miller describes how “teams are named after the home towns from which previous generations were cleansed 66 years ago”. In one match we are told “Jaffa are playing Ashkelon”.
So Miller reduces the 1947-49 conflict down to one malicious word: Cleansed. The Palestinians were not “cleansed”, but Jews are cast as evil-doers nevertheless.
Miller tells us that Hamas and Fatah supporters play on the same team. It’s very touching to see guys taking time out from planning another genocide of the Jewish people (see Hamas’ Charter) and inciting racial hatred against Jews (see PA/Fatah TV) to play a bit of footy. The vicious fight at the end between two players possibly betrays the existing hatred between these two factions.
Miller starts his piece to camera with the common slur that Israel is cruel to Palestinian children. We are introduced to Abdel Karim who has a brain tumour and who has suffered a relapse after his first operation. Miller explains:
“Abdul Karim’s lifesaving treatment was delayed because Israel refused permission for his mother to accompany him to Jerusalem. They had to reapply for his grandmother to go instead. The process took two months. The oncologist is sending him to Israel again. This time for radiotherapy.”
Miller doesn’t tell us that Israel suspects Abdul’s father and mother of involvement in terrorism. Miller clearly outlines this on the Channel 4 News website where he writes:
“Arafat al-Dalo is not permitted to enter Israel because he had once been shot in the leg by an Israeli high-velocity bullet. Arafat, who is a tailor by trade, insisted categorically that he was not a militant. He had got caught up in a shooting incident at a border crossing, he said.
Ghada thinks she was refused because one of her brothers had been shot dead in a clash with Israeli forces. This made him a “shahid”, a “martyr” in Palestine; in Israel, it made Ghada a suspect.”
So why was this left out of the Channel 4 News footage?
Miller finishes his piece to camera with this cynical and unsubstantiated allegation against Israel:
“Paediatricians here cite several cases in which permissions to cross into Israel have taken so long that very sick children have died waiting.”
Jews responsible for the deaths of children is a long-standing anti-Semitic slur.
Last night Miller tweeted that he isn’t anti-Semitic:
What is truly shocking is Channel 4’s increasing attacks on Israel and the Jewish people.
Channel 4’s Dispatches Inside The Israel Lobby presented by Peter Oborne begins with Oborne’s ominous words:
“Tonight on Dispatches how British policy is influenced by supporters of a foreign power…We investigate the Israel Lobby’s bankrolling of British politicians.”
That’s another long-standing anti-Semitic slur of Jews using money and power for nefarious reasons.
Sadly, Oborne is allowed to continue plying his vile trade in spurious allegations against Israel and its supporters for the Daily Telegraph (here and here).
Channel 4 also showed Peter Kosminky’s The Promise which ended with the words of a British soldier:
“After Bergen Belsen, I thought that the Jews deserved a state, but now I’m not so sure…Their precious state has been born in violence and cruelty to its neighbours, and I’m not sure I want it to prosper…”
Channel 4 also broadcast Going for Gold in Gaza about disabled Palestinians training for the Paralympics. One Palestinian described in Arabic how he was able to rehabilitate himself at Israeli hospitals after the accident that left him disabled, but the word “Israeli” was suspiciously left out of the subtitles.
Finally, there was the time that Jon Snow, Channel 4’s main news presenter, lunged at me when I questioned him about his persistent use of the term “the Jewish lobby”.
Feel free to complain to OFCOM about Miller’s piece if you don’t want Miller to get away with it. Write to ofcomstandardsteam@ofcom.org.uk but you must mention the date and time of the programme: Channel 4 News at 7pm on 18th February.
And here is that famous “Don’t mention the War” scene from Fawlty Towers. Instead of Basil Fawlty, think Jonathan Miller.
See also Honest Reporting’s response to Jonathan Miller’s Channel 4 piece to camera.
RichardMillett's Blog 
Not only did Israel beat five Arab armies in 1948, it also beat the British who set up the Jews to be inadequately armed and be massacred as they were in the Holocaust.
But sadly for the perfidious British, it didn’t work out that way.
G-d Bless the Czechs!
This is a link to a ynet article that I found on this blog that is useful.
“In the service of the Palestinians”
Op-ed: In light of its dark past, Britain’s involvement in building of PA’s army very problematic
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4371351,00.html
Modern version of the blood libel: Israel kill babies. The more antisemites change the more they remain the same.
Dear Richard, You don’t have to tell me about Peter Obourne’s long hatred of Israel. I used to take the Daily Telegraph and have a file of the complaints I made to the editor. He even personally replied on occasion to assure me the newspaper was not anti-Israel! And I had personal letters from Obourne. Unfortunately it’s so easy to make statements on TV about sick children denied treatment in Israel with no proof. The increasing anti-Semitic population will believe anything vile about Israel, yet that terrible country even treats wounded fighters from the Syrian rebels, who publically thank Israel…..and state that once they’ve defeated Assad they will invade the Golan and fight Israel!!!! Kin Regards, Brian Lux
======================================== Message Received: Feb 19 2014, 04:24 PM From: “RichardMillett’s Blog” To: brian@luxb.freeserve.co.uk Cc: Subject: [New post] Channel 4 News’ Jonathan Miller doesn’t mention the 1948 war, and gets away with it.
a:hover {color: red;} a { text-decoration: none; color: #0088cc; } a.primaryactionlink:link, a.primaryactionlink:visited { background-color: #2585B2; color: #fff; } a.primaryactionlink:hover, a.primaryactionlink:active { background-color: #11729E !important; color: #fff !important; } /* @media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) { .post { min-width: 700px !important; } } */ WordPress.com richardmillett posted: “In a cunning twist to that famous Fawlty Towers scene when Basil Fawlty tries to not mention the war when serving German guests but fails, Channel 4 News journalist Jonathan Miller does his best to not mention the war and succeeds! The war that would n” Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on RichardMillett’s Blog Channel 4 News’ Jonathan Miller doesn’t mention the 1948 war, and gets away with it. by richardmillett In a cunning twist to that famous Fawlty Towers scene when Basil Fawlty tries to not mention the war when serving German guests but fails, Channel 4 News journalist Jonathan Miller does his best to not mention the war and succeeds! The war that would not pass Miller’s lips was the one of 1948 when Israel beat five Arab armies and more to establish its legal state. Whereas the putative Israelis accepted UN Resolution 181 (the Partition resolution) the Arab world rejected it hoping to inflict on Israel’s Jews a second Holocaust instead. To add to the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust another 6,000 Jews needlessly lost heir lives in that 1947-49 war. Not that such history seems to be of much concern to Jonathan Miller. In his five-minute piece on Gaza for Channel 4 News last night he shows Palestinians playing football. Miller describes how “teams are named after the home towns from which previous generations were cleansed 66 years ago”. In one match we are told “Jaffa are playing Ashkelon”. So Miller reduces the 1947-49 conflict down to one malicious word: Cleansed. The Jews are cast as the evil-doers. Miller tells us that Hamas and Fatah supporters play on the same team. It’s very touching to see guys taking time out from planning another genocide of the Jewish people (see Hamas’ Charter) and inciting racial hatred against Jews (see PA/Fatah TV) to play a bit of footy. The vicious fight at the end between two players possibly betrays the existing hatred between these two factions. Miller starts his piece to camera with the common slur that Israel is cruel to Palestinian children. We are introduced to Abdel Karim who has a brain tumour and who has suffered a relapse after his first operation. Miller explains: “Abdul Karim’s lifesaving treatment was delayed because Israel refused permission for his mother to accompany him to Jerusalem. They had to reapply for his grandmother to go instead. The process took two months. The oncologist is sending him to Israel again. This time for radiotherapy.” Miller doesn’t tell us th
See this example of Channel 4’s many techniques to slander Israel between 2002 to 2005 . Here it was able to use a photo for propaganda against Israel in 2005 . It’s from an unusual complainant and shows Channel 4’s outrageous dishonesty and Offcom’s in dealing with the complaint http://netanyalynette.blogspot.co.il/2012/08/kurdish-viewers-complaint-about-photo.html
The most notorious documentary was from John Pilger in 2002. See how the complaints were dealt with athttp://netanyalynette.blogspot.co.il/2012/07/report-by-john-pilger-itv-16th.html
For any readers of this website unacquainted with the facts of 1947-48 and the establishment of the State of Israel, one source (which many may well see as biased, but such people should check out all the footnotes before reaching such conclusions), see Benny Morris “1948: The First Arab-Israeli War”. In the book, Morris details the efforts, first, of the Arab militias, after the passing of UN Resolution 181 in November 1947 (but before the Declaration of Independence in May 1948) to drive the Jews out of their towns and other settlements, wherever they were. Indeed, to drive them out of the land altogether.
Morris then goes on to show how 4 of the 5 Arab armies were halted and then driven back beyond what became the de facto borders of Israel by November or so 1948. The exception was the Jordanian army, which took what became the West Bank.
It is also important to note that the only people who accepted the boundaries laid down by 181 (essentially, an Israel that would have been non-contiguous and facing a hostile nation between its northern and southern segments – see the maps in Morris’s “One State, Two States” book from slightly later) were the Jews, as represented by the Jewish Agency (the Sochnut): all the surrounding Arab states and the Arabs in Mandate Palestine totally rejected 181, as noted in the comments above.
This is what one prominent Palestinian Arab said . He noted that “Arab armies… forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Europe.”
This prominent Palestinian Arab was none other than PA President Mahmoud Abbas himself. This was published in March 1976 in Falastin al-Thawra, the official publication of the PLO.
Did you see Ramadan Diaries on Channel 4?
In “Major Farran’s Hat” the story of the SAS assassination squads in British Palestine after WW2, they mention almost in passing that as a result of the executions of Irgun prisoners and reprisals against British troops there were widespread anti Jewish riots across Britain in August 1947. So much so that the Military Command was afraid that had they moved Major Farran’s trial to the UK there would be pogroms or worse, violence against Brits. Not much has changed in the general British view of Jews.