The Glass Box for Friday
The Glass Box is the place where you can comment on what you heard on PM, interact with other listeners and get responses from the people who make the programme.
Just click on the "comment" link.
The Glass Box is named after the booth outside the PM studio where we all discuss the programme at 18.00 every weeknight. We try to be honest and constructive. Sometimes there is criticism, and the criticised get a chance to explain themselves.
The people who make PM will read the comments posted, and will sometimes respond. Unless it's Roger Sawyer editing. He's completely hopeless. Please feel free to post your thoughts. There is a link to previous Glass Boxes on the right.
Also on the right, you'll find FAQ: try it.
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Africa is always the center of attention when there is a summit. So why are they still poverty stricken and exploited? What changes once the cameras and microphones are taken away? A 'farce' is the wrong word- it's too sad for that. If you want the Political class to act seriously, we will have to act VERY seriously.
Early days yet, or minutes, but it is so refreshing to hear Mark Mardell using the term ‘kilometres’, as opposed to the irritatingly prevalent (Americanised) kil-OM-eters. Thanks.
Huzzah - someone else gets annoyed at the kill-OM-metre pronunciation of keel-OH-metre.
I though it was just me.... What's the 91Èȱ¬ pronunciation units view on this?
Do you know what a good DJ can do with Mark Mardel's "I thought I would come over all Jeremy Clarkson"?
It is 'Monroes', and not Morones, then. I say this because the hill of 3,000ft in Braemar is called Morone, and the villagers told me it was because of it's height. CAN YOU HELP, MR. ED IGLEHART?
I always find Mark Regev's comments refreshing. Zia Haider Rahman's article in the Telegraph 6.6.07 describes graphically the notion of conspiracy thoeries which abound in the "Muslim community, many of them piggy-backing on an underlying notion of an American-Israeli bogeyman". The ongoing conspiracy theory isn't just endemic in the parts of the Muslim community but also in parts of the academic community where it's always found a comfortable home.
I don't remember hearing Mr. Dimbley's trailer for tonight. Is it on?
xx
well obviously it was a great program tonight because for the first time ever I got read out in the letters and comments slot. I must be really sad as I found this quite exciting.
***
you see they read out your stuff, you think they like you and then! they call you malicious.
Lots of blog posts in the letters bit, I noticed.
Jolly good show Eric and co.
I have a complaint about PM.
It's on at the wrong time.
Plan A was for me to pop out for a meeting anytime between 3 and 6pm. I was aiming for 4pm.
Plan B was for me to dash out at 5pm but get it over as quickly as possible, not to miss too much of PM.
Plan C actually happened. As I was reaching for the car keys the doorbell rang: friends who have health issues and who're trying to sell/buy a house, dropping by to tell me the latest.
My meeting is now put back to tomorrow, and all I caught of PM was the weather.
So.... please can you move PM to 6 o'clock for me? There's a good chap.
Oh, thanks. I'll stick an extra fiver on next year's licence fee to cover it, OK?
Fifi :o(
Paula (7): No, it's not on at all. It's just not cricket. As for the show, no idea.
Was I alone feeling cheated at a pre-recorded Paddy? If there is no body there can be no corpse...
Paula (5),
Not really. I suspect it may be both a munro and named Morone, or you may have been at the receiving end of some "wry Scottish wit", aka irony...
xx
ed
If you're going to have that apologist propagandist Mark Regev on your programme, can you at least make him answer simple questions before allowing him to spout his "if you disapprove of Israel you're an anti-semite" bull... Such as
When will Israel start abiding by UN resolutions passed 40 years ago.
How many children have the Israeli armed forces killed this year?
Does Israel have a nuclear weapon, and if so, given its attacked all its neighbours relatively recently, should it not be considered a rogue state.
At long last the two Irish Knights...(Bono super rich U2 worth469m)..have saw through the lies of G8...I wonder if over the last two years they have been reading: Noam Chomsky, Mark Thomas, Mark Curtis, John Pilger, Michael Moore, Michael Woodwiss, Eric Schlosser, Noami Klein, Arundhati Roy et al...Chess is a very complex game men where you need good intellectual skills to defeat the enemy....all I can say is keep up the good works guys, perhaps you need a little help from the main female piece....
Brian V Peck
pleasse,,
no more of this sucking up to the "Jews are always the afflicted" agenda. The report I heard tonight was a travesty of justice. Mark Regev was a consumate politician in that he engineered the response from the 91Èȱ¬ that the Academics' proposed boycot was anti semitic. T truth is that the State OF Israeal ocupies land which they took by force, that whch they are told that thay have to leave and that they do not wish to. Interational law states that they should remove themselve to the the 1967 borders
A nice balanced, well produced programme,
I'm well past getting a kick out of name checks, but thanks for correcting the Autobhan driving speed issue ( that simply wasn't true)
and of course - more importantly highlighting adminannie's and my own viewpoint on the blog's 'torture' thread.
I personally do believe he has other motives. - I may be wrong Ed I and Eddie, Rupert, Nigel, et al.
Ian and Richard (13 & 15),
hyou may be interested in Thursday's Glass Box. I thoroughly agree about the disgusting Mr Regev.
Jonnie (16),
I agree of course, he probably has mixed motives.
Nighty night all.
xx
ed
I must agree with Richard & Ian. Mark Regev's attitude was infuriating to say the least. Every time I heard him talk of "The Jewish State", I felt like screaming at the radio. By calling the country of Israel "The Jewish State", he was trying to frame any criticism of Israel as being anti-semitic. Because of our sense of guilt in Europe over the horrific holocaust of European Jewry by the Nazis, Mark Regev was attempting to use this to mis-direct the listener as to the reasoning behind the call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions by the UCU. Such a boycott isn't anti-semitism in and of itself. Anti-semitism is a motive behind actions, so we have to look at the motives of those calling for the boycott. Reading the reports in the newspapers, here on the 91Èȱ¬ News website, as well as other online sources from abroad, I don't think anti-semitism is behind this call. Rather, it is a reaction to the actions of the Israeli state. To call this anti-semitism is, I would suggest, an insult to those who died in the holocaust. Theirs was true suffering, while any academic boycott that arises due to the injustice (real or perceived) dealt to the Palestinian people is not. Personally, I'm not sure that the universities and colleges are the right target for a boycott. I understand that there are a lot of institutions who offer places to Palestinian students, only for the IDF to refuse the students permission to travel to the campuses. However, that
I do believe that you should have pushed him harder for answers, Eddie, and you shouldn't have let him get away with framing the interview on his own terms...
What was Eddie thinking when he asked Trevor Foster, the father of the murdered 17-year old Hannah Foster, "what would Hannah make of this?" (their progress in getting the suspect extradited from India. What was he supposed to say?
I may have missed the real, valid point to this question, but my initial reaction was that it was revolting and irrelevant.
My post seconding Richard & Ian has got lost in frogstipation, but FFred says it all so much better. That Regev is a disgusting individual and should have been banned long ago. He does his cause no good.
I agree the boycott may be misdirected. All persons and governments of conscience should withdraw diplomatic relations with the Israeli state, and those who supply them with massive aid, e.g. USA!
xx
ed
Fifi (10) Could you agree to 7pm and I'll put my fiver in too?!
Has my previous posting regarding Regev been moderated or complained about?
it certainly seems to anth and two of mine for this thread have never appeared. p'raps the mods only work mornings at the w/ends. or perhaps they get so fed up because they have to work that they take delight in doing all sorts of odd things to wind us poor frogs up.
admin annie(21),
Certainly looks like it!. Yet I never wrote anything more hard-hitting than FFread or Ed I - although he too appears to have a missing entry.
Could someone be complaining at our entries because they don't like what we wrote, I wonder?
Paula, re munros:
I think Ed's right.
Here's a good site:
Anth (23),
"Could someone be complaining at our entries because they don't like what we wrote, I wonder?"
Presumably they can only complain if it has appeared first, or if they are 'insiders', but there is little or no pattern in what fails or is delayed. Has the promised upgrade to the software failed to appear or simply failed.
Whatever it is it'll be the users' fault.
xx
ed
Admin Annie - 4 of mine went missing during the week and there was nothing controversial in them either. I think there's a blog black hole..... maybe it's full of trolls feeding on our comments?
Ooops - forget that site. It's only Munro 'tops'.
This might be better:
Ed I. may know this site - about the John Muir (are you by any chance related, Eddie?) Trust:
Frances (27),
Wee Johnnie Muir is very high in my crowded hall of Heroes. All of his writing is available , at the Sierra Club, which he founded. He stands with the Greats.
For many years he was far more appreciated in the USA, where he lived from the age of 11, than in the land of which he was so proud to be a native. The Scots have latterly come to appreciate him more of late, and the John Muir Trust has been behind much good work in keeping Scotland's wild places wild.
I commend his writings to one and all, and If I was Eddie, I'd take great pride in sharing a variation of his surname.
Humbly yours,
ed
Now how could that be malicious, I ask you!
Harrumpfh!
Saturday June 09, 2007 at 17:50:04 GMT
I'm always a bit baffled by another of the well-known phrases.
Jews, yes, are Semetic as a racial type. But are the Palestinians not Semitic too? They're not Bedouin, so it seems likely that they're 'descendents of Shem'. As such, it might be difficult for them to be anti-Semitic. In fact a whole lot of the Arab nations might have trouble, unless they're really profoundly self-loathing. So maybe it isn't that they are opposed to a racial type of which they are a part, but instead opposed to the State of Israel, of which they are not.
I know that the State of Israel and its supporters have more-or-less eastablished a monopoloy on the suffering in Hitler's death-camps, ignoring all the homosexuals and Romany and Roman Catholics and poles and non-Jewish victims, but surely they can't claim a monopoloy on a racial type? In fact, it could be argued in terms of numbers of Semites killed that the State of Israel might be the most anti-Semitic state in the world....
Muslims murder Muslims, people turn a blind eye. Jews defend themselves and the Christian world (as seen through the eyes of the 91Èȱ¬) fall to pieces. Is anti-semitism about jealousy. I suspect it is.
More of Mark Regev. His intellect is a breath of fresh air.
Chris, if you had read Gitta Sereny's book on Franz Stangl, the man who ran the Sobibor extermination camp you would know that Roman Catholics were running some of the camps, not being exterminated in them
Gays, and the physically and mentally disabled and Romanies were sent to extermination camps but eastern europeans, like the Poles you mention, tended to be sent to concentration camps and were worked to death rather than being gassed on arrival. That is how some of them survived the war.
I don't think saying that anyone has 'established a monopoly on the suffering in Hitler's death camps' is either true or useful or, to be honest, in particularly good taste, and I would say that whichever victim group you inserted in your sentence.
I do wonder why, when people are so careful nowadays to accept the disabled and the gay it is still thought OK to be anti-Jewish, a word I use since you thing anti-Semitic too wide. A colleague of mine heard our boss being referred to as ' a greasy Jewish paedophile' by a fellow parent at a parent's evening in a well thought of private school, by someone who had only seen him for two minutes on a television program. Do you honestly think that if the conditions were right Jewish people all over Europe wouldn't be again turned over to death camps? 'Cos I don't think people like that parent would be standing up and shouting about their human rights.
I'm not jewish, haven't met more Jews than most other people of my generation I don't suppose, but I do sometimes wonder why some people seem to think they haven't suffered enough.
Ken (31) Yes, yes, yes. I agree. No amount of intellectual clap-trap disguises irrational hatred. Look at David Irvine that well know historian (of sorts). Of course, it's historical in this culture. No amount of legislation can account for inadequate people.
I wonder if Ken (31) would reply to my comments that have been conveniently removed. As the sole supporter to the "Jewish" line of Ragev, I wonder if he might have complained of my previous comments, and others, that have not appeared in this blog. Censorship?
BTW, in my past, I asked a jewish woman to marry me. So don't accuse me of being anti-S!
on a couple of lighter notes - Lewis Hamilton has pole position for the Canadian Grand Prix tomoroow - yay!
and, having just watched the news on 91Èȱ¬1 I wonder if Peter or Rupert or Lissa or someone would like to tell us whether Eddie waves his hands around in a totally meaningless way the way his brother journos on the TV do. I do hope not.
AA,
"I do sometimes wonder why some people seem to think they haven't suffered enough. "
I sometimes wonder where such comments come from. Chris was playing with etymology and gave no indication of Jew-hating or anti-Semitism. Why the hypersensitivity?
Nobody said anyone hadn't suffered enough, but it's pretty clear that the "Jewish State", to use Mr Regev's terminology is causative and directly responsibility for much of the suffering of a group which has certainly suffered enough.
Like Holocaust, Anti-Semitism has come to have a general usage meaning somewhat different from its strict etymological origin.
As I think Reginald Hunter said, it ain't the words that are evil; the evil is in folks' hearts.
As for Regev's intellect, I hadn't noticed any sign of one. He's just an apologist for a repugnant regime.
Salaam/Shalom
ed
Annie, I wouldn't exist on this planet in my current body if one or two people hadn't been fortunate (or perhaps sensible) enough to have got out of Germany at the right time. I still don't feel entitled to make the events there during the 1930s and 1940s a basis for my own behaviour or reactions or judgements about right and wrong. After all, I wasn't involved personally.
Some of the slaves of all sorts and nations and creeds survived, it's true; many of them didn't. Some of the Jews survived too; some of my parents' dear friends, for instance, whom I knew when I was a child. Those were people who *were* involved personally, and might have had the right to use their experience as a reason for hatred. The interesting thing is the way that mostly, they *didn't* do so.
My favourite of them, a lady with a number on her arm, explained to me when I was quite young (because I asked: otherwise she wouldn't have mentioned the matter) that no, she didn't hate the people who did this thing to her and most of her family. She wanted to make sure it never happened again, if that was possible, but to hate them and wish to take revenge on them would be to descend to their level.
Somehow, I feel that it would lessen her if I were to beat my breast and wail as if only I and mine were ever the victims of horror in the history of the world. Stalin too killed his six millions, after all; before then Kurds were slaughtered, and since then Biafrans. Enough already! is a good cry to raise, but not about only one of the horrors, surely?
To use someone else's suffering as any sort of excuse for inflicting suffering on somebody else, most particularly on someone who had nothing whatever to do with the original victim's pain, seems to me not to be balance of any kind, but to be insulting to the person used as an excuse. And to condone ill-treatment of others, because someone of one's family was ill-treated before one was born, would be to perpetuate evil.
Is it ok to be Jewish and not entirely in favour of the behaviour of the State of Israel? How about half-Jewish? How much Jewish blood must one have before one is allowed to criticise that government? Must it come from one's mother....
Zia Haider Rahman writing in the Daily Telegraph 6/6/07 graphically demonstrates the mentality which prevents progress on peace in Israelin in his article titled "Time to confront the Muslim conspiracists".
"SOMETHING is seriously wrong. A quater of British Muslims believe the Government and security services were involved in July 7 suicide bombings in London...Yet it not the first poll to show that British Muslims harbour conspiracy fantasies an NOP poll last August showed that 45% of Muslims believed that the attacks of 9/11 were a conspiracy between the United States and Israel...Conspiracy theories abound in the Muslim community, many of them piggy-backing on an underlying notion of an AMERICAN-ISRAELI BOGEYMAN.
If we had a balanced media in this country these sorts of serious issues would be confronted.
People would not be left to psychologically fester the usual excuses for not taking a balanced view. For example, ed suggest that Mark Regev is "an apologist for a repugnant regime." How does he view the regimes of the Arab countries which border Israel and beyond.
You see what I fail to grasp are the sorts of predictable must have comments which are often rolled out when commenting on Jews such as the stereotype of Jews being self centred and uncaring within the context of the holocaust. I don't think Jewish life is wonderful in fact as a female I am aware it is not. There is an appalling attitude toward females and education, poverty etc. just as in broader society.
Re: The Sony Game & Religion, we could ask who is kidding who? Torturing people by the West is probably an empirical fact...Games and Religion are nothing more than ficitious nonsense...
BVP
Oh lets hope Eddie and the team will be safe !
Jan (38),
"the mentality which prevents progress on peace in Israel"
Is the intransigence of the Israeli state in ignoring too many UN resolutions to number, in having based a 'right to exist' on the violent expulsion and dispossession of innocent natives, whose only crime was to resist their displacement, the continuing displacement and dispossession of those same people, the destruction of their homes and farms, the building of an apartheid wall, ignoring the democratic will of the Palestinian people and kidnapping their elected officials, and the collusion of the USA in providing billions to the Israeli state 'to help with the costs of the intifada' - that's right - BILLIONS,....need I go on? I think not.
Anyone proud to be a Jew should be mortified at the things being done supposedly in their name.
Salaam/Shalom
ed
above (lots) & Thursday's glass box.
Jan - you have junked together several issues that need to be addressed in turn.
a) You claim (38 - correctly?!) that people in this country believe in a conspiracy - I say that people also believe in Horoscopes, UFO's and a host of other irrational tenets. The media should challenge each irrational conspiracy or belief? I don't think so! It has a job reporting events
b) Lots of horrible events have happened in the past - if there is one thing we could do, surely it is not to visit on our children the horrors visited on our grandparents.
To do this, we need to keep things in balance, and make sure that our actions are not justified *solely* through history.
c) If there are any towns or people who need water in our state, while we have pipes and taps, then surely, before we concentrate on any thing else, we ought to put down pipelines, drains, sewers and clean fresh water to the vast vast majority.
Is this agreed?!
Isn't this universal?
d) I know that words are *so* important, each word and phrase used to label someone really needs to be doubly checked, and then checked again. We are all one and the same species, and all on this earth together, for a short time each.
e) A sense of being slighted or injured is in the eyes of the victim. All victims feel the same. Whether the cause was 50 years ago or last week, the festering hurt will cloud impartiality.
This is why we need to assist any refugees or victims of war, plague, holocaust, famine or drought; man-made or otherwise.
There are victims being born today in camps.
We need to give them water.
Is this agreed?!
All best wishes
nik
One at a time seems to be the rule...
xx
ed
And a , of expansionism...
(carefully delayed to escape being labelled 'malicious'
;-)
ed
Jan (38) Comments 41-44 demonstrate why the human condition slithers at the bottom of the ditch. Nice try.
Paul (45),
Would you care to contest the truth of any of the comments in 41-44 instead of an infantile attempt at dismissal?
xx
ed
Nikki Noodle @42
Yes.
Water.
In any desert land, to give water is to give life, and deliberately to destroy a source of water is a crime which has been universally regarded as deserving of death: not as vengeance, but to make sure that the poisoner of a well can never do it again.
It is hard to cherish love in the heart for the poisoner-of-wells. It is hard to cherish love in the heart for the breaker-of-watermains.
To take and use another's water may be the need of the moment, but to spill another's water into the sand for no use cannot be seen as virtuous.
Regev's intellect is certainly like a breath of fresh air. But I think a vacuum is a better analogy.
Paul L @45
What on earth is slither-at-the-bottom-of-the-ditch about NN's post @42? Why is the suggestion that water should be given to people who need it objectionable or indicative of a low state of human nature?
Verily the mind doth boggle.
Last time academics in Europe were told who to speak to and interact with was more than 50 years ago by the Nazis.
The good news was that the scientists who held the key to the nuclear bomb were Jewish and found a home in the US.
To be hostile to a group of people because of their ethnic background or the place they live to me is racism, Nothing else.
I hope that most academics, like me, will ignore this nonsense.
MCS
MCS (46),
The academic world is the least appropriate place for a boycott, I agree.
Since Israel refuses to be bound by the rules of the United Nations or abide by the Geneva Accords, she should be shunned by the community of civilised nations, as should her sponsor, the United States of America.
From the .
Salaam/Shalom
ed
Ed, I wasn't being hyperensitive, nor did I say Chris was anti-semitic. When I asked why some people thought the jews hadn't suffered enough I was referring to the casual anti-semitism which is widespread in the UK. I wondered why a white middle class male felt perfectly safe to slander someone, by calling them a 'greasy jewish paedophile' especially someone he had only seen briefly on television when he would never have dared say 'a greasy n*gger paedophile' or a 'greasy p*ki paedophile'.
I didn't mention Mark R nor do I have any time for him. In fact one of my disappearing posts last week was to congratulate Eddie on the way in which he made sure MR condemned himself out of his own mouth.
Chris of course it's OK to be jewish and not be in favour of what the government of Israel does. I can't see where in my post I had said or implied anything else. Anyone can criticise their own government and I am quite happy to criticise the Blair government a lot of the time especially over his middle eastern policy, or I should say his support of George Bush's.
What I am saying is that people in other countries are quite willing to disapprove of the actions of the Israeli government and then take their feelings out on jewish people who live in their community and that there is an attitude that this is OK whereas badmouthing people because of the colour of their skin, or their sexuality or because they were born with say cerebral palsy or have broken their backs and become paraplegic is no longer tolerated.
None of this means that I am pro- or anti- the Israeli government, or that I am pro -or anti- the Palestinians. It doesn't mean that I think a Palestinian child killed by an Israeli rocket is less of a loss to the world than an Israeli child blown up by a suicide bomber.
Nor by the way does it in some way infer that I am ignorant of or uncaring about child soldiers in Africa, street children in Latin America, or the various other sufferings inflicted by man upon man which you imply in your post.
What I do think is that there will never be progress towards peace in the middle east if things go on as they are today. It's no good shouting about what was done to whom and when and why. The thing is, we are where we are and if things are to progress than it has to be accepted that progress can only come by recognising that, getting over what happened in the past and trying to find a way forward and that applies to both sides.
mc s @50 wrote:
'The good news was that the scientists who held the key to the nuclear bomb were Jewish and found a home in the US.'
This is my day for being boggled.
Some though not all of the people who created the most appalling weapon in the history of the world were Jewish, and one of them though not Jewish had a Jewish wife, but I can't see that this is good news.
I don't think that any suggestion that Jews were responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki is very good news whichever end up I look at it, in fact.
That the Nazis didn't have the Bomb is less-bad than if they had had it, but *anybody* having it doesn't seem to me to be a very positive state of affairs.
The good news is that they found refuge in the US, the bad news is that they held the key to the nuclear bomb and used that key, perhaps?
You also wrote:
'Last time academics in Europe were told who to speak to and interact with was more than 50 years ago by the Nazis.'
Actually, since the overthrow of the Nazi regime in Germany quite a large number of academics have been told who they were *not* allowed to interact with, both by the government of the USSR and by the government of the USA. This has been particularly true for academics with an interest in certain of the sciences.
Annie (52),
I'm in complete agreement with what you say, and I'm unable to find where I implied any ignorance on your part, but apologise if I gave that impression.
Sadly, I fear folk aren't afraid to slur other groups as well as Jews. Prejudice is alive and well in many forms, even against my compatriots and yours.
I reiterate my view that the largest obstacle to peace in Palestine (as shown ) is the intransigence and expansionism of the Israeli state. This has been so since before it sprang into existence in an orgy of expansionist violence.
Salaam/Shalom
ed
xx
ed
MCS (50) Good to hear a well balanced academic view. Obviously, there are some individuals on this site with a not so hidden agenda. Lots of verbal diarreah and anti-Jewish material to hand.
I noticed that one commentator Jan (38) in response to the statement "Mark Regev is an apologist for a repugnant regime" asked the commentator for a view on the regimes of the Arab nations which surround Israel and beyond. The question was not answered.
MCS (50) Good to hear a well balanced academic view. Obviously, there are some individuals on this site with a not so hidden agenda. Lots of verbal diarreah and anti-Jewish material to hand.
I noticed that one commentator Jan (38) in response to the statement "Mark Regev is an apologist for a repugnant regime" asked the commentator for a view on the regimes of the Arab nations which surround Israel and beyond. The question was not answered.
Chris Goti wrote:
Some though not all of the people who created the most appalling weapon in the history of the world were Jewish, and one of them though not Jewish had a Jewish wife, but I can't see that this is good news.
Quote end
Without the basic physics by mostly Jewish scientist it would not have been possible.
The good news is that the nazis did not get it because they did not believe any of these scientists.
If the nuclear bomb was in itself evil and how many lives it has saved or cost is maybe for another debate
quote Goti
Actually, since the overthrow of the Nazi regime in Germany quite a large number of academics have been told who they were *not* allowed to interact with, both by the government of the USSR and by the government of the USA. This has been particularly true for academics with an interest in certain of the sciences.
quote end
USRR and Eastern Europe correct, but USA (which is hardly included in Europe) ? I wonder about these "sciences" and who imposed restrictions?
MCS,
Have you forgotten the McCarthy era in USA? There has been plenty of attempted suppression of academic freedom in USA down the years, Just examine the case of Sami al Arian for one example.
Fortunately, the tradition of academic freedom has its defenders.
Paul L,
"Lots of verbal diarreah and anti-Jewish material to hand."
Care to cite just ONE example of anti-Jewish material? Jan has not hesitated to libel 'Muslims', but no-one has libelled Jews. In fact, that is the primary point made regarding Mr Regev's attempt to identify criticism of "the Jewish state" with criticism of Jews. The Israeli regime is indeed repugnant and an acute embarrassment to all Jews of conscience.
As to repugnant regimes, there are plenty, but none which so considers itself immune to the generally accepted rules of decency as the Israeli state. None which claims the UN for its legitimacy, yet so completely disregards the obligations of UN membership.
When can we expect compliance with UN resolution 194? 242? ...? No need to answer - it won't happen.
When can we expect compliance with the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Never mind, Israel feels it has a special dispensation,...
A lesson in double-standards and
Salaam/Shalom/Shanthi/Dorood/Peace
ed
Annie, I don't think we're disagreeing particularly. I replied to you by name 'cos you'd addressed me personally so it seemed polite, and then carried on to say what I wanted to say and forgot that it would look as if I were talking only to or at you. Sorry.
Seems to me that the problem at least in part can be put down to the same thing that I felt was a problem on a previous occasion: 'the disabled'. We as a species seem altogether too prone to tie a label (the disabled, the aristocracy, the Muslims, the poor, the Jews, whatever) and then assume that the entire group we've decided to force into a single pigeon-hole are each of them some sort of a clone.
I have yet to meet any pair of individuals whose opinions, decisions, or feelings were identical in all respects on all subjects.
I know for sure that not all citizens of the State of Israel approve of the actions taken by their government, any more than all the people living in England (leave alone Scotland, Wales or Cornwall) approve of everything done by the one here.
I point-blank refuse to hate *anyone* on the basis of a broad generalisation based on some sort of preconception related to the person's race, creed, colour, sex, or way of dressing.
So to hate someone because of something that happened before either of us was born seems to me to be equally unacceptable.
You're right, we should (we must) try to put what is past into the past and leave it there, and try to deal only with what is happening now.
You wrote rather sadly:
'Nor by the way does it in some way infer that I am ignorant of or uncaring about child soldiers in Africa, street children in Latin America, or the various other sufferings inflicted by man upon man which you imply in your post.'
Neh, that wasn't you I meant, and I didn't think you ignorant or uncaring. I was pointing out that six million of other race than Jews were killed under Stalin, and Kurds were killed, and Baifrans were killed, and they too should be remembered on Holocaust Day, and so should *all* the people who have been the victims of 'ethnic cleansing' anywhere in the world. I would rather not be selective about whom I include as victims to be mourned when I am remembering man's inhumanity to man. That's all. (I was talking specifically about people killed not for anything they did in their lives but for having been born the person they were, of the race and in the place they were. Native Americans in the USA, too. Original inhabitants of Australian and New Zealand. Too many others.)
Paul (57) My husband suggested after reading the postings that some 91Èȱ¬ journalists/researchers are contributors. I had already taken that view. It's a good way to maintain the 91Èȱ¬ 'party line'.
Paul L (57): I believe that the regimes in many of the Arab countries are abhorrent. I also believe that we must do much more to stand up to the despots in certain African countries (Sudan & Zimbabwe leap to mind here) However, this doesn't justify the actions of the Israeli government by permitting occupied land to be settled in contravention of International Law. Nor does it justify the mis-treatment of an entire people through disruption of water supplies, destruction of their livelihoods, etc. We as a free people must stand up for all oppressed people across the world, whatever their race, or religion.
Jan (61): A 91Èȱ¬ "party line"? there have been a number of independent reviews of the 91Èȱ¬'s reporting of issues across the globe. They show an organisation that on the whole is fair, honest and balanced in it's reporting. We in the UK have some of the most un-biased broadcast news (91Èȱ¬, ITN, C4, Sky, etc.) in the world, and I for one am proud of the fact. By the way, before you ask, I am not nor have I ever been an employee of the 91Èȱ¬, nor have any of my family or friends.
FFred
Jen & Paul,
Still no response to my question:
Which, if any, statements made are false or anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish?
I, for one am not a Journalist, and my research is conducted as a matter of personal interest. I know nothing about any affiliations of other contributors.
The only vaguely impolite contributions have come from Paul regarding 'slithering' and 'verbal diarrhoea and yours imputing un-announced affiliations.
It strikes me that it might be hard to 'slither' in any ditch in Occupied Palestine, considering that 80% of the water's gone to Israel. For a moment, I was unsure whether or not Paul was supporting you, considering that 41-44 do attempt to show how low the Israeli state has gotten.
Paul is right on one point: My 'agenda' is not hidden.
Salaam/Shalom/Shanthi/Dorood/Peace
ed
Coo, does Auntie Beeb have an Agenda? I thought she just muddled along with her knitting from day to day.
Quite seriously, she is always accused of bias by anybody who doesn't agree with her reporting a particular story. (Please note: not her reporting *of* a story, her reporting it at all.) So if she doesn't mention Palestine, she's biased against the Palestinians, if she does, she's biased against Israel, depending which side her accuser happens to espouse.
It's a tough life trying to look at both sides of a fifty-year-old conflict and not see where one or the other has behaved badly: in a war, it's inevitable that people will do nasty things to each other.
Meanwhile, if anyone accuses me of being a journalist, my seconds will be coming round to talk with theirs, and I warn you, my weapon of choice is feather dusters at five hundred yards.
Paul L wrote:
'I noticed that one commentator Jan (38) in response to the statement "Mark Regev is an apologist for a repugnant regime" asked the commentator for a view on the regimes of the Arab nations which surround Israel and beyond. The question was not answered.'
My reaction to this was 'so what?', I'm afraid. What has that to do with the price of beans, Paul?
'In response to the statement "I dislike the taste of this cucumber", our correspondent asked for the speaker's views on the tastes of marshmallow, vodka, goulash and yorkshire pudding. The question was not answered.'
It is possible to dislike more than one thing at a time, y'know, and even to dislike both sides in a conflict. I'd find it very sad if the black-and-white, my enemy's enemy is my friend, simplistic-shrub 'if you ain't for us you're agin us' school of 'reasoning' should have any adherents in this bright forum, where unreason is not the norm at all.
Chris (64),
Actually, the conflict is more than sixty years old.
Annie (52),
"The thing is, we are where we are and if things are to progress than it has to be accepted that progress can only come by recognising that, getting over what happened in the past and trying to find a way forward and that applies to both sides."
I appreciate the sentiment of this, but we must also beware of rewarding the bully by leaving it in possession of all its ill-gotten gains.
Israel seized more than 77% of Palestine when the partition (if acceptable to the majority of inhabitants) would have given her 55% for the 33% of the population she represented. She subsequently has seized 100% of Palestine and part of Syria and refuses to be bound by numerous UN resolutions or the fourth Geneva convention.
She is enabled in this intransigence by having a large and powerful 'best buddy' which has vetoed numerous UN resolutions
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/UN/usvetoes.html...
and tried to abort the 1999 UN special conference on whether the fourth Geneva convention applies to the illegal settlements.
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Human_Rights/geneva.html
The Palestinians agreed more than a decade ago to accept the remaining 22% of Palestine ('green line', but Israel has since thrown every conceivable roadblock in the way of any such peace and continues today to defy numerous UN resolutions and the Geneva accords.
Instead, she carries on with apartheid policies and the construction of a wall intended to annex still more Palestinian land.
www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/
When will the international community finally ostracise this rogue state which seems to believe no law applies to her?
xx
ed
Ed asked:
'When will the international community finally ostracise this rogue state which seems to believe no law applies to her?'
When the Greeks count time by the Kalends, Ed. Sometime along about the second Thursday of next week.
The extent of the in the West Bank.
Colour me blue
Ó˪♩Ó˫♬
ed
Gosh the 'thought police' or should I say mutual appreciation society. AKA Ed and Chris et.al are everywhere. No wonder there's no balance of opinion on this blog, or should I say not as much balance as there ought to be.
Ruth (69) Perhaps you would like to redress the balance then? What are your views about Israel and Palestine? I would give your opinions as much respect and attention as I give to the other bloggers.
Every peace plan for The Palestinian-Israeli conflict fails and the people ask: why? There are conflicts everywhere in the world, and its cause is Greed, capitalism being the number one suspect. Israel, if granted all land it wants, still would be facing Civil War, Jews killing Jews for Greed. Palestine also suffered in the past and may like any other nation suffer exploitation by fellow Muslim Nations, which are dependent on Capitalism and have its own economical interests to defend, therefore even if Palestine were at its best, tough competition from Fellow Muslim Nations would make life not easy. Why every peace plan for The Palestinian-Israeli conflict fails ? It fails because The Jews in The United States fear Israel Economic competition and want poor muslins to impair the Israeli economic performance; it fails because Muslim Nations don't invest enough in a local Palestinian Industry. Both Palestinians and Jews are victims of foreign Greed. The United States and Fellow Muslin Nations want a perpetual armed conflict to keep Palestians and Jews economicaly weak and dependent on their " Charity ". The War is caused by the Barrier Between Gaza strip and The West Bank, hence the need to grant Palestinias a rout to the sea. Muslin Nations invest in Gaza Strip and West Bank industries and are granted by the Jews a neutral road to the sea. Jews are no longer bombed because Muslins would not bomb their rout to the sea and both nations grows economicaly. Gaza Strip and The West Bank are now connected and Palestinian territorial unity is apparent. Muslins and Jews remaing separate unities bound by a commom road to the sea, a symbol of progress to both nations.
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