Channel 4 News’ Jonathan Miller doesn’t mention the 1948 war, and gets away with it.

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.

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My appearance on 4ThoughtTV: Are Jews Still Persecuted in Britain Today?

Tonight at 7.55pm on Channel 4 I am in 4ThoughtTV’s slot on whether Jews are still persecuted in Britain today, which is the theme of the week.

There are seven contributions in all. Here is the link to mine and the other six:

http://www.4thought.tv/themes/are-jews-still-persecuted-in-britain-today/richard-millett?autoplay=true

1. I spoke about my experiences of harassment at anti-Israel events when I have merely tried to get Israel’s point of view across.

2. Stephen Sizer is an anti-Israel/anti-Zionist Christian Minister. I once went to hear him speak at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign event held in a church. He said, inter alia, that churches that side with Israel have “repudiated Jesus, have repudiated the bible and are an abomination”. On my way out of that meeting I was accosted by an audience member who let out some of the most Holocaust denying anti-Jewish vitriol I have ever heard. She told me, inter alia, that Jews died in the Holocaust from having “had their foreskins chopped off.”

In his 4Thought clip Sizer claims it’s important to be able to criticise certain Israeli policies without being accused of anti-Semitism. Let’s be clear: criticising Israel’s policies is legitimate, just like it is legitimate to criticise the policies of any country.

Sizer and his ilk are accused of anti-Semitism because they want the world’s only Jewish state to disappear. This is completely different to criticising Israel’s policies. Instead, they single out the Jewish state, the collective Jew, for destruction. So, Sizer is being highly disingenuous. If he were truthful he would have admitted he wants the Jewish state removed.

3. Another who wants the Jewish state removed is Ahron Cohen, of the extremist religious Jewish sect the Neturei Karta which believes that Jews should only go to the Holy Land once they have received a direct order from God to do so. The Neturei Karta also embraces Iran’s Holocaust denying President Ahmadinejad who repeatedly calls for the destruction of Israel. Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei has referred to Israel as “the Zionist cancerous tumour in the heart of the Islamic world”.

In his clip, Cohen blames Palestinian terrorism “on the very existence of the sectarian state known as Israel”.

4. Mike Marcus has also fallen for the myth that “The Zionist lobby uses the label of anti-Semitism to silence their critics”.

5. Jose Martin correctly blames the media for whipping up anti-Semitism due to its unfair reportage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

6. Yisrael Abeles, a Holocaust survivor, also blames the media for driving much of what has, these days, become “institutionalised anti-Semitism” as opposed to street anti-Semitism.

7. The most moving clip is by schoolgirl Eden Simones-Jones who says that she still suffers from depression and anxiety due to anti-Semitic harassment. She finishes:

“If people say there is no problem with anti-Semitism, I think they should wake-up, open their eyes and really look about what’s going out there because they’re obviously sheltered in their own little dreamland where everything’s rosy, because anti-Semitism’s everywhere. You’ve just got to know what to look for.”

Sadly, she’s right. Anti-Semitism is everywhere. In Britain today anti-Zionism, an attack on Israel as the collective Jew, is the modern updated version of anti-Semitism, the attack on Jews as individuals. “Anti-Zionism” is a label that has been adopted by many of Britain’s  academics, journalists, politicians, religious leaders and charities to hide their true feelings about Jews. This is the “institutionalised anti-Semitism” referred to by Yisrael Abeles.

Channel 4’s lying subtitles in Going for Gold in Gaza documentary.

It seems that Channel 4 has not been telling the full truth in its recently shown Unreported World documentary Going for Gold in Gaza, about the efforts of the men’s Palestinian Paralympics team to qualify for London 2012, shown on Friday night and which I subsequently blogged about.

Of its 23 minute duration almost half of the documentary was devoted to a totally gratuitous demonisation of Israel. The problem for Aidan Hartley, the presenter, was that none of the Paralympians he was interviewing had been rendered disabled by Israel. Their disabilities stemmed from either accidents or intermarrying or were hereditary.

Instead, Hartley sought out Palestinians, mainly children, who had supposedly been maimed or killed by Israel, which had no connection to the the title of the programme.

He also uncovered the case of a Palestinian boy, Yousef, who had lost an arm to cancer but who’d had a new artificial one, allegedly, blocked by Israel from entering Gaza. Terrible if true, but mean Hartley doesn’t bother trying to locate either the truth about the limb or the limb itself for Yousef.

Tom Meltzer’s review of the programme for The Guardian was equally villainous. For example, he describes the athletes as a “ragtag band of Palestinian Paralympic hopefuls”, eventhough one of them has a huge haul of medals from games from all around the world.

But now it gets worse.

Cifwatch had some subtitles in the programme translated by an Arabic expert and it now transpires that Hartley and his production team may have intentionally mistranslated the subtitles to leave out words that would have shown Israel in a good light, but which would have undermined the programme’s anti-Israel narrative.

Here is the relevant scene from the documentary:

Hartley is interviewing one of the Palestinian Paralympians who describes how he came to be disabled. The subtitles read:

“I was working on a building site and fell from a great height. After my accident, I went to a rehabilitation centre. At the centre I played sport for the first time. I felt it was a good replacement for something I had lost.”

But the subtitles should have read:

“After I was wounded, I went to Israeli hospitals and then to rehabilitation centers. The first time I did sports was at the Abu Raya center. I felt it was a good replacement for something I had lost.”

Hartley left out the fact that the Paralympian had been treated in Israeli hospitals!

And as for the “rehabilitation centers”, as opposed to just “a rehabilitation center” of the subtitles, our translator is almost certain that, from a grammatical point of view, those “rehabilitation centres” were also Israeli ones!

Additionally, the Paralympian actually said he first did sports at the Abu Raya centre, which is in Ramallah.

Mentioning those visits to Israel and Ramallah would not only have made Israel look too kind but would also have undermined Hartley’s later claim that:

“The Gaza strip has the atmosphere of a large prison. People are hemmed in and its claustrophobic and travel outside of Gaza is very restricted for any reason.”

This claim had, in fact, already been undermined when we learnt from the above clip that the Paralympian not only went to Israel and Ramallah to try to mend his broken body, but has since been everywhere to compete including to Birmingham, in 1998, to Guangzhou, in 2010, and to many Arab Games.

The programme was introduced by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, one of the main anchors of Channel 4 News, at the end of the news programme, giving it even more credibility.

Heads should roll for this but its Israel so they won’t. However, if anything, Channel 4’s subtitling should no longer be trusted.

(Thanks to Barry Mann who initially spotted the mistranslation)

Channel 4’s relentless pursuit of Israel continues in Palestinian Paralympics doc.

Blind Palestinian practising throwing the discus while his son claps so he knows where to aim (channel4.com)

Channel 4 continued its attacks on Israel in Friday night’s Going for Gold in Gaza documentary, which was meant to follow the efforts of the men’s Palestinian Paralympics team to qualify for London 2012. Their disabilities consisted of congenital blindness and physical disabilities caused by either work accidents or intermarriage.

But as I settled down to watch I found that presenter Aidan Hartley couldn’t resist repeatedly taking the documentary gratuitously off-track in order to demonise Israel.

Here are my thoughts, in italics, as I watched:

It opens on a Gaza street showing posters of dead Palestinian men holding guns and with Hartley saying:

“In Gaza it’s those who have died fighting Israel who are seen as heroes, not sportsmen.”

FREEZE FRAME: Oh, Aidan! These men were not soldiers “fighting Israel” but Hamas terrorists who had probably walked into Israeli restaurants to murder innocent people or they had helped plan such attacks and were subsequently killed by Israel.

The next 10 minutes were fascinating as we found out about the athletes, their families, how the athletes became disabled, how they trained, the medals they had previously won, their excitement about London 2012 and also their concerns. A blind athlete is upset as he may be required to have his eyes retested.

Then there’s a scene of another blind athlete and his son, Mohammad, who had his eyes tested and he now knows he won’t go blind like his father. Sinister music then follows and Hartley says:

“Gaza is effectively under siege. Israel controls the goods that go in and its hard for people to get out. Israeli gunboats control the coastline. Gunfire is an everyday sound. The Gaza strip has the atmosphere of a large prison. People are hemmed in and its claustrophobic and travel outside of Gaza is very restricted for any reason.”

FREEZE FRAME: Ok, starting to go off-track now but you have to mention Israel as it is part of the picture, obviously, but why is Hartley solely blaming Israel for Gaza’s deprivations when Egypt also borders Gaza? Hartley could also have explained why Israel takes these security measures (see “freeze frame” above).

Hartley then tells us that they found out there is a women’s Palestinian Paralympics team and he goes to see them training.

FREEZE FRAME: Ok, that’s the Israel bashing out of the way, hopefully, and to hear about Palestinian women athletes will be interesting.

But it didn’t last long. Fatma needs a special prosthetic leg without which she won’t be able to go to London 2012, so Hartley visits the Artifical Limbs Centre of Gaza where he interviews amputees on the waiting list.

Nine year old Yousef lost his left arm to cancer and has been waiting 10 months for a new prosthetic arm. The medical centre’s director tells Hartley that Israel has stopped sending materials directly and that a donation from Slovenia has been left in Tel Aviv since February. Hartley repeats:

“Let me get this right. Yousef, that nine year old boy, could have had a prosthetic limb months ago had the materials not been sitting in a warehouse in Israel for the last, nearly, eight months?”

We then get a flash of the security wall and Hartley says:

“Israel denies blocking medical supplies to Gaza. The sense that Gaza is under siege is never far away. And the conflict swells the number of injuries and amputations. Gazan civilians are killed or maimed by Israeli strikes, often in retaliation for rocket fire from Palestinian militants.”

FREEZE FRAME: Aidan, did you mean that Israel attacks Hamas and accidentally kills civilians or that Israel intentionally targets civilians as retaliation? It’s unclear but sounds like you meant the latter, which is untrue. And why didn’t you investigate the whereabouts of Yousef’s prosthetic limb and maybe even help obtain it for him? How mean of you.

Next Hartley visits a Palestinian home where he says “there are family members who are injured in recent violence”. A man tells Hartley how two weeks earlier his two nephews had been playing in the street. Israel, he said, responded to Hamas rockets with missiles from pilotless drones. Hartley finishes the story himself:

“Out of the blue a drone fired a rocket in amongst the children horribly wounding his two nephews. Saba wanted to show me where the attack occurred. In the weeks before we arrived dozens of civilians had been killed or maimed.”

Hartley is shown a narrow hole in the ground where the rocket, apparently, hit and the uncle shows Hartley pictures of his nephews lying horrifically injured in hospital. Hartley points to their amputations and says that one of them, Ibrahim, subsequently died.

FREEZE FRAME: Could these horrendous injuries possibly have been Hamas inflicted, a case of a Hamas rocket misfiring? It wouldn’t be the first time. Hartley doesn’t bother investigating.

Next Hartley meets another Palestinian man who “had lost his left leg when he was blown up by an Israeli missile”.

FREEZE FRAME: Again, Hartley doesn’t investigate how he tragically lost his leg.

Eventually, Hartley, again meets up with the paralympians that he had started the programme telling us about, one of whom had just lost his mother to cancer. She passed away in an Israeli hospital but, we are told, her son had not been allowed by the Israelis into Israel to be at her bedside when she died.

FREEZE FRAME: This has now become a programme demonising Israel, while occasionally concentrating on Palestinian paralympians.

Hartley signs off with:

“The Palestinians who make it to the London paralympics in 2012 will be amongst the most remarkable athletes at the games”.

FREEZE FRAME: These Paralympians are incredible and I have full respect for them and wish them every success next year but ALL paralympians are incredible. I don’t know how they do it. I couldn’t.

It’s a shame Hartley wasted so much of this short programme gratuitously attacking Israel. But after Channel 4’s War Child and The Promise nothing surprises me.

Jody McIntyre gone from the Indy, the HuffPo. and Channel 4.

Jody McIntyre; gone from the Indy, HuffPo. and Channel 4 for possible incitement to riot.

It has been a bad two days for Jody “setting London alight” McIntyre. He was sacked as a blogger for The Independent newspaper in the wake of the London riots for tweeting:

“Be inspired by the scenes in #tottenham, and rise up in your own neighbourhood. 100 people in every area = the way we can beat the feds.”

And in an interview with The Huffington Post when asked if Footlocker was a valid target for the rioters he replied:

“On a personal level I think Brixton police station would be a better target than footlocker….I find it very difficult to condemn the looting myself. I feel sympathy when small cornershops and people’s homes are damaged but I don’t feel any sympathy for JD sports or M&S.”

Well, now Lucy Lips at Harry’s place reports that the HuffPo. interview has also been pulled and replaced with:

“Editor’s Note: The Huffington Post’s editorial policy prohibits the promotion of incitement to riot. It has been brought to our attention that some of the comments made by the interviewee in this article could be construed as inciting others to take part in unlawful activity. As such, we have removed this post.”

McIntyre was also due to have his own tv show starting on Channel 4 on August 18th called Bars For Change. Here is a peek from youtube.

It has also just been pulled.

As Lucy Lips says he will still have a home with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which, as we have seen, actually applauds rhetoric calling for London to be burned.

Meanwhile, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s anti-Israel demonstration will be taking place as usual outside Ahava this Saturday dragging even more essential police resources away from emergency situations across London.

Around 20 police officers have to present to stop anarchists from invading Ahava and intimidating its customers.

But if you have any spare Plasma TVs or Nike trainers please bring them down to Ahava and give them to the protesters. It could save an awful lot of London’s shop windows being smashed in.

Police protecting Ahava from Palestine Solidarity Campaign activists.

Campaigning for Truth in Golders Green.

Passers-by in Golders Green studying pictures and the petition.

On Sunday a small group of activists took to the streets of Golders Green to launch a new organisation called Campaign For Truth (www.campaign4truth.org).

The aim is to Petition the BBC to report the full nature of organisations that have adopted an agenda of genocide against another people.

Hamas has adopted such an agenda. Its Charter expressly calls for the killing of Jews.

Yet, when the BBC reports on Hamas it uses phrases like “the Palestinian militant group Hamas” (see here) ” or “Israel regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation” (see here).

It states Hamas to be one “of the two main Palestinian factions” (see here) or it states, somewhat euphemistically, that “when Hamas won an election back in 2006, they kicked Fatah out of…Gaza” (see here).

Hamas is far more sinister than a “faction”. It is also far more sinister than a “militant group”, which gives the impression that it fights other military organisations as opposed to targeting innocent Israelis out for lunch with their families, queueing outside an Israeli nightclub or on the bus to work.

And to state “Israel regards Hamas as a terrorist orgnisation” is playing somewhat loose with the truth. It is listed by America and the EU as being a terrorist organisation.

As is stating “Hamas kicked Fatah out of …Gaza”. They murdered them out of Gaza. They tied Fatah activists hands behind their backs before shoving them head first off the tops of buildings.

How Fatah can now reunify with Hamas after having been so brutally dealt with by them is beyond me.

Fatah are obviously feeling the backlash after Palileaks exposed their negotiations with Israel. They know that any Palestinian that agrees a peace deal with Israel will find themselves swinging by a Hamas rope in the middle of the nearest Palestinian town square.

But I was amazed when on May 4th a Channel 4 newsreader, not Jon Snow, read out that the Hamas Charter is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Shouldn’t that be the form adopted by the BBC; to tell the licence payer what Hamas actually stands for? I cannot see Auntie Beeb declaring, while everyone is having supper, that Hamas desires to kill Jews but, as with Channel 4 News, stating that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel must, surely, be a minimum.

And on BBC Radio 5 Live the day after bin Laden was killed even David Cameron gave an interview showing just how out of touch he is with the true nature of Hamas. He said there are three things necessary for “a more peaceful world”:
1. Get bin Laden and roll up Al Qaeda.
2. Make sure the Arab Spring is a success and
3. Bring a historic peace deal between the Palestinians and the Israelis. (listen here: David Cameron on BBC 5 Live on OBL, torture and Israel.)

So while it is ok for Britain and America to “get bin Laden and roll up Al Qaeda” Israel has to keep its own civilians under constant fear of terror by signing a deal with Hamas, an organisation that simply wants all Jews dead. An organisation that expresses a desire to kill Jews does not want peace. Hamas is Israel’s Al Qaeda and should be dealt with as such.

If Cameron wants “a more peaceful world” it will be one without both Al Qaeda and Hamas in it. To talk of a historic peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians without mentioning the true nature of Hamas is nonsensical.

But getting back to the signature collection last Sunday, at first I was a bit sceptical but there was a real apetite by many passers-by to express their disgust at the BBC’s leniency towards Hamas by signing the petition. Many also expressed there disgust at Channel 4’s The Promise.

Meanwhile, the petition should soon be online and there will be further street signature collections. For more info. contact info@campaign4truth.org

Another signature for the BBC.

And another.

And more.

The Fogel children who were murdered while in bed by Palestinian terrorists.

Channel 4 is not ‘Promising’ for British Jews.

The character of Len in The Promise (Guardian.co.uk)

Many British Jews woke up this morning feeling a little less welcome living in the UK. The overall feeling of watching the four episodes of The Promise is one of inciting racial hatred.

And it says a lot about the current UK environment that anti-Jewish propaganda is now so freely available on British tv and not just British university campuses.

Peter Kosminsky spent seven years writing The Promise but consulted avowedly anti-Israel groups like Breaking the Silence, Combatants for Peace and ISM and also British soldiers who had come under fire from Jewish military groups.

His facile conclusion is:

“The most striking thing I’m left with is a question: how did we get from there to here? Like most British soldiers we interviewed, arriving in Palestine from the war in Europe, Len Matthews felt only sympathy for the Jewish plight. Having seen the ovens of Bergen-Belsen, his heart tells him that Jews deserve a place of safety, almost at any price. In 1945, that view was shared by most of the world. In the era inhabited by Erin, his granddaughter, just 60 years later, Israel is isolated, loathed and feared in equal measure by its neighbours, finding little sympathy outside America for its uncompromising view of how to defend its borders and secure its future. How did Israel squander the compassion of the world within a lifetime?” (See a response to this here).

There was no attempt at balance or context. Jews and Israelis were portrayed as evil and the Arabs were portrayed as the good guys.

And these are the words that Len, the main British Mandate character in The Promise, writes in his diary as he departs British Mandate Palestine:

“We’ve left the Arabs in the shit. But what about the Jews and their bloody state for which they fought so hard? Three years ago I would have said give them whatever they want, they deserve it after all they have been through. Now I’m not so sure. This precious state of theirs has been born in violence and in cruelty to its neighbours. I’m not sure how it can thrive.”

Channel Four also recently showed War Child, a documentary on the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead in which “the Jews” were portrayed as going on a killing spree against Palestinian children.

And a few years ago it allowed mass murderer of his own people and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to broadcast a Chistmas speech. Then there is the anti-Israel Jon Snow who seems to split his career between reading Channel 4’s nightly news and chairing anti-Israel events.

Last night we finally found out what “the promise” of the title was all about. In 1948 Len, the British soldier, had promised, but failed, to return the key of the house owned by an Arab family he had befriended and who he ordered to flee to avoid being massacred by the oncoming Jews. 62 years later this promise was fulfilled by his grand-daughter, Erin. When she told him in his hospital bed back in the UK that she had finally returned the key he just lightly squeezed her hand before passing away without speaking.

To arrive at that point we witnessed some six hours of unmitigated demonisation of Jews; both those in British Mandate Palestine and those living in Israel today.

We watched as Erin gradually turned into a hardcore anti-Semite due to her experiences in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. She was an epileptic who suffered three seizures during the series. But the only time she fitted was when she was with Jews, never with Arabs.

The first time was in an Israeli nightclub when she collapsed on to the floor shaking uncontrollably and instead of anyone coming to help the Israelis just laughed at her.

The second time was when she was being reprimanded by the wealthy Jewish family she was staying with in Israel for bringing an Arab back to the house.

The third time was when she was confronted by three aggressive Israeli soldiers while she was trying to comfort a sick Palestinian woman who had been removed from her house just before it was about to be blown up because her family helped to shield a suicide bomber.

Meanwhile, Jews during the British Mandate Palestine era were all portrayed as brutal cold-blooded murderers with Kosminsky concentrating solely on the Irgun.

British soldiers and Arabs were constantly seen being shot by Jews, while we only see one Jew killed. Len shot a Jew dead while defending his beloved adopted Arab family.

No one would be able to comprehend from this series that almost 6,000 Jews died fighting the Arabs between 1947 and 1949, equivalent to 1% of the Jewish population of British Mandate Palestine at the time.

Nor was there any context to the Irgun’s actions. British government policy had become so anti-Jewish that the Jews were fighting for their lives.

In 1939 the British had reversed their own 1917 promise to the Jews to create a Jewish homeland. Instead only 75,000 Jews were now to be allowed to immigrate in to British Mandate Palestine over the next five years, after which the immigration numbers would be up to the Arab majority to decide. By 1949 British Mandate Palestine would effectively become another Arab state.

The Irgun put off any fighting until this five year period had expired. When there was no change in this British policy they starting fighting, which consisted of attacking buildings, not people (It was the Stern Gang, a small group of extremist Jews, who had no compunction about attacking civilians, soldiers and diplomatic figures).

The Irgun attacked the King David Hotel, as shown in The Promise, but not before, according to Menachem Begin, phoning through ignored warnings to evacuate.

In The Promise we were also shown Jews massacring unarmed Arabs in the village of Deir Yassin.

Begin claims that a warning was given to the inhabitants of Deir Yassin, so throwing away the element of surprise. He claims heavy fighting ensued and the Irgun suffered casualties of four dead and forty wounded, not as portrayed in The Promise.

Benny Morris claims that Arab radio broadcasts inflated what took place at Deir Yassin, and it was this that helped instigate the flight of the Arabs from all around the country.

But in The Promise the Arabs flee as a direct response to this “massacre” and fear of what the Jews might do to them. Again, there is no mention that up to 400,000 Palestinians did not flee.

The Promise also failed to mention La Saison when the Haganah (the main Jewish military force in British Mandate Palestine) caught members of the Irgun and handed them over to the British.

Instead, we were treated to one scene where British soldiers were shot through their heads as they sat in a military jeep outside a restaurant while rich Jewish diners just carried on eating, drinking and laughing.

Of course Kosminsky tried to promote what he thought was the Jewish/Israeli narrative.

The Promise occasionally flashed back to real scenes from The Holocaust, but there was no explanation of the Jews’ historic connection to Israel. The implication was that the Jews had stolen a country belonging to another people.

Second, Kosminsky showed two suicide bombings. The first one was just after an Israeli left-wing character had explained how the Security Wall has Arabs on both sides of it; some inside Israel proper and some inside the West Bank. The implication of the suicide bomb taking place straight after this was that the Security Wall was ineffective to stop suicide bombings and was merely a political tool used to grab more Palestinian land.

And after the second suicide bombing Erin, quite incredibly, befriends the family of the suicide bomber and even tried to stop their home being blown up by the IDF. This despite Erin not knowing the extent of the knowledge that the Palestinian family had about the intentions of their terrorist daughter.

Kosminsky also had Jewish children in the West Bank attacking Arab families with rocks while the IDF looked on and the IDF using a child as a human shield. We also saw a bulldozer almost run down Erin, recalling the death of Rachel Corrie in the same way. This is all straight out of an ISM handbook.

The Promise had everything for the Jew hater and Israel hater, but what you won’t see is a series about the Arab uprising in British Mandate Palestine between 1936-1939, which was brutally put down by the British and in which some 5,000 Arabs, 300 Jews and 260 Britons were killed and during which the Peel Commission offered the Arabs 80% of British Mandate Palestine, which the greedy Arab leadership duly rejected.

It was this that sowed the seeds for what followed and for the Arab defeat in 1948, but, as ever, why let facts get in the way of demonising Jews and Israel.

The BBC’s Valentine’s Day Demolition of Jews, Israel and Zionism.

"Jew lover and Zionist", Geert Wilders: Europe's Most Dangerous Man?

While you were making yourself look beautiful for your Valentine on monday evening the BBC was showing Geert Wilders: Europe’s Most Dangerous Man?.

Someone sent me an email stating that he had “just seen the most disgraceful attempt to associate Jews with extremism and hatred against Islam. This programme is an utter disgrace, as ever trying to delegitimise us. Frankly, I fear that we have no future in Europe”.

He is not usually one for polemic like this, so I had a watch on iplayer.

We see Joost van der Valk following Wilders trying, and failing, to get interviews with him.

van der Valk interviewed Dutch Muslims, who blame Wilders for stirring up race hate in Holland. One woman, a Turkish teacher, says of Holland today:

“I’m thinking of the 1940s when the Jews had to wear a star of David and had to ask at a shop if I can come in or can I enter the swimming pool. It’s almost the same as back then. The country is in a bad state and (they say) Islam is the culprit.”

The film forcefully sets out the case against Wilders. The prosecution in Wilders’ trial for inciting racial hatred, which has been adjourned, provides some of his alleged words:

“There is no such thing as moderate Islam, because there is no difference between good Islam and bad Islam. There’s Islam and that’s all there is. The Quran is the Mein Kampf of a religion that intends to eliminate us”.

van der Valk then went off in search of Wilders’ admirers.

He interviewed people who want Holland go back to its roots. One woman says “I want my children to feel they live in Holland”. A man says “There’s going to be a world war between Muslims and non-Muslims. We will have a Bosnia effect here within five years.”

Then he interviewed two Kahanist Jews. One was ‘Robert’, the other was Chaim Ben Pesach, who apparently served five years in prison for an anti-Soviet bombing campaign in New York. They were described as being “more radical than Wilders” and as espousing an extreme form of Zionism.

They belong to the Jewish Task Force and ‘Robert’ said:

“Islam is a global threat. They say we will take over Europe with the wombs of our women, so they are breeding Jihadis everwhere. They have more and more kids. Then they get more women to come here from the Moroccan mountains to bear children. They want to be in the majority so they can take over.”

Not content van der Valk did a google search of “Wilders Israel” and found half a million references. Some references suggest Wilders is a spy. van der Valk concluded, “It was obvious that Wilders was being informed by the Israeli Embassy”.

At the beginning of the film we were introduced to Shaykh Khalid Yassin, who is described as an “American Muslim teacher extremely popular among young European Muslims. He has embarked on a mission to deradicalise them”.

But when questioned about Wilders Yassin said:

“I think he has taken and embraced the idea of Modern Zionism. And he is using the idea of Modern Zionism to espouse the same concepts about Muslims in the world and the Quran that the Jews cannot afford to say in Israel. But Mr Wilders can do them a favour. He can go outside of Israel with those same feelings and then he can characterise the way that the Zionists characterise the Palestinians, to legititimise (sic) their power. Mr Wilders can characterise Islam in the same way.”

Although the film stated that “many Israelis would take issue with Wilders’ ideas”, van der Valk, nevertheless, went to Israel to see where Wilders spent his youth. We heard from Wilders’ old Israeli friends and admirers.

We were told that Wilders had a Jewish grandmother and married a Jewish woman and he “makes no secret of his affection for Israel and its people”.

The whole thesis of the film seemed to be that Zionism, Israel and Jews are the inspiration for Wilders’ alleged incitement to race hate.

Two weeks ago the BBC showed Louis Theroux’s The Ultra Zionists, which portrayed Jews as religious fanatics.

The Promise, by Peter Kosminsky, currently showing on Channel 4, can be best summed up as ‘rich European Jews came to Palestine after the Holocaust, stole the Palestinians’ land and murdered British soldiers’.

For his research Kosminsky consulted the International Solidarity Movement about Israel, which is like basing your views on immigration on interviews with the BNP.

Last night’s film War Child, also on Channel 4, was, basically, about ‘Jews’ killing innocent Palestinians and blinding and disabling Palestinian children who cannot, now, wait to grow up to kill ‘Jews’.

And now the BBC have shown a documentary which started out as a valid investigation into Islamophobia in Holland but, which, degenerated into a gratuitous attack on Jews, Israel and Zionism.