Yeah it was those renaisaance painters who sexed Mary up a bit. She probably looked no better than the average woman from Dagenham at the time. Can't imagine wandering round the Holy Land and all that would have done anything for the cleanliness of her clothes either.
Israel in coordinated missile attacks on Gaza
- Thread starter Fez909
- Start date
Yeah it was those renaisaance painters who sexed Mary up a bit. She probably looked no better than the average woman from Dagenham at the time. Can't imagine wandering round the Holy Land and all that would have done anything for the cleanliness of her clothes either.
but the key to the change was the ira debates in prison where adams and mcguiness etc and on the other side david irvine realised that they could not defeat their enemy by warfare and must use political means .. the PLO went some way to trying to understand this .. i am not sure that isreal did and hamas certainly does not ..
p.s. would you accept a bnp govt?
chicken and egg again spion .. as with our other posts on the numbers game, we have the chicken and the egg game .. who started the violence? .. the arabs at jaffa? the zionists in the nakba? the 6 days war? or hebron 1920? or do we see think back to treblinka? or even York??
sorry spion you HAVE too widen your thinking on this .. to start the conflict in 1948 just does NOT work .. and the evidence that your theory does not work is there in front of your eyes in the bombs raining down on gaza city
why is isreal violent? as it STILL believes that it will be wiped out, if it does not do what it does, as so many times before .. for israelis they are STILL psychologically the victim and want to not be the victim .. you have to understand this
p.s. where have i condemned the palestinians, for rioting, for even voting hamas?? never once i have simply said it will NOT work to change society .. ( and that is the case with most rioting btw)
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
You can't take this analogy too far. Hamas have suceeded by political means. But whereas the unionists and the UK government have respected Sin Fein's election gains, Israel and the US have not done the same for Hamas's electoral gains.
not so i think .. only after SF/IRA did actually stop fighting weer they 'respected'..
hamas has not .. it is idiotic of them to continue with rocket attacks or to allow al aqsa to do so ( which they could stop) .. you must ask yourself why they continue to do these things .. it is imho becuse they live on israeli oppression .. they NEED israeli oppression to continue in power
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
Kevlicious, zachor probably gets his 'facts' about BBC and other media bias against Israel from organisations like 'Accuracy in Media' [sic] (basically a front for pro-Israel lobbyists).
There was an independent academic study* a few years ago from Glasgow university that actually statistically and analytically proved the reverse, that the voices and views of Israelis are given more airtime and prominence than those of Palestinians. The study proved, statistically and analytically that the Israeli version of events dominated news coverage.
The pro-Israeli lobbyists appear to be of the view that if you complain often enough and loud enough that the media is anti-semitic and against Israel, then that will become the accepted 'fact' and lots of people do believe it, because organisations like 'Accuracy in Media' [sic] and people like zachor state their assertions as 'facts'. Whereas in reality the facts as borne out by independent academic study do not support their assertions of anti-semitic media bias against the Israelis, but do support the fact that the Israeli version of events dominates the news coverage and Palestinians are given less airtime and their voices and views are drowned out by the Israelis and pro-Israel lobbyists.
*I've previously referred to it on Urban, but Google Greg Philo Glasgow Israel Palestinian bias (or something like that, it's out there).
No I dont' I compare the output of different stations. A quick flick between BBC and sky news is a start.
I also read Haaretz and Harrys Place and take some information from Memri. These are not my sole sources of media but just a small selection.
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
Given that you've accused the BBC of bias against Israel, would you care to respond to the fact that an independent academic study has previously been carried out (presumably following/looking into earlier allegations of media bias against Israel) and that the reverse was proven to be true, that the Israel voice and view dominates media coverage.
In fact, it's been widely reported -- in a number of media outlets, in relation to these air raids on Gaza -- that the Israeli government has gone on a spinning blitz, personnel recalled to their posts around the globe to spin the government line, a media centre opened up in Sderot... The Israeli government has a supremely effective media machine, which ensures that the media coverage tends to be dominated by Israeli voices and justifications for attacks against civilians.
If you reckon that the media are biased against Israel, then the Israeli government's media blitz hasn't been working. But from where I've been sitting the media blitz is being very effective, they're not being denied opportunities to get their message across, they're being given opportunities in the interest of fairness and balance, with Tzipi Livni appearing on Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English, giving long interviews in which she is determined to deliver her pre-scripted line and talks over interviewers' interjections, asking her to answer the questions actually asked... and also Israel's former ambassador to the UN spouting the same line. And that's just a couple of snippets I've watched. The news agenda certainly is not dominated by the Palestinians, the Israeli spokespeople around the world have been specifically recalled from vacations to their posts to get their message out there. As you would have noticed, if you have been monitoring various outlets.
If anything, I would argue that the BBC coverage has been shockingly pro-Israel. I read an article (via my mobile on their WAP website), in which the top line was that Israel was targeting Hamas. The numbers of casualties was quoted. Blah blah blah blah. It wasn't until about the fifth paragraph that it was mentioned that the casualties weren't actually exclusively and only Hamas officials, but that the casualties also included women and children. That particular BBC article actually led and was totally dominated by the Israeli line, the Israeli version of events, with the reality that many of the casualties are women and children slipped in about half way through the article. Anyone quickly glancing at that article and reading the headline and intro would have been given the impression that the indiscriminate Israeli 'air raids' had been 'air strikes' on specific targets and the only casualties had been 'legitimate' targets, whereas that is not the case at all.
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
Come off it, durutti. It's ridiculous to think that Hamas only have to call a cease fire and they'll be allowed to the table. They've been on ceasefire and Israel has been consistently terrorising palestinians all through this. Say what you like about the brits, but they never cut off food and electricity ot the Catholic areas of Northern Ireland, did they? Most of Hamas' leadership, including the ones most in favour of peace with israel, have been assassinated. It's true that Hamas' leadership thrive on war with israel, but they could also thrive by being political leaders - but Israel does not intend to let that happen. Not to mention the legions of angry young people who will now be surghing into hamas' ranks, eager for revenge and against any compromises.
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
I don't expect any climb down from Zachor. He seems like the kind of person who's mind is made up and doesn't want any facts to start confusing him.
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
The difference being that Sinn Fein was not excluded from the political process. Well, there was that stupid thing about actor's voices, but it wasn't the case that they stood in elections, were elected, and then other governments refused to recognise the results because they didn't like *that* kind of democracy, they wanted the kind of democracy whereby they get to approve of the politicians who win the vote, where they effectively get to 'ratify' or 'veto' the democratic vote.
That's the case with Hamas; they were democratically elected, the US and Israel didn't like the result, so they have consistently sought to undermine and overturn that result.
Erm, since when have the bnp had a paramilitary wing? Since when has Britain/England been occupied? I don't see what parallels you're trying to draw here. Care to elaborate on what point you're trying to make there? 
Dimitris
Well-Known Member
As far as I know Egypt has closed down its borders and wants only injured to pass, they have ambulances waiting at the borders but Hamas does not let them as they want all people to be able to pass not only injured. This is what the greek media are saying. If this is correct, it actually means that Hamas is using the civilians and the wounded as a "shield" in order to draw attention and that really shows their way of thinking.
As I said earlier, Hamas by closing down Gaza are now on their own against the Israeli attack, something that Israel must really like.... According to greek media Hamas has announced that they have 100 dead members by now, it seems that they are loosing power and this may motivate Israel for a ground invation... Thing of this though, Hamas maybe alone for now but if a ground invation starts there is a possibility that Hezbollah and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood will start action as well, this could kick of violence to the whole middle east ... In Lebanon a few years back Hezbollah started a war against Israel in solidarity to the palestinians and what was happening then in Gaza... We must also take in account that the public in the countries around will get even more pressing towards their governments, who may have to change their perception of things.
If it continues, this may get nasty
As I said earlier, Hamas by closing down Gaza are now on their own against the Israeli attack, something that Israel must really like.... According to greek media Hamas has announced that they have 100 dead members by now, it seems that they are loosing power and this may motivate Israel for a ground invation... Thing of this though, Hamas maybe alone for now but if a ground invation starts there is a possibility that Hezbollah and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood will start action as well, this could kick of violence to the whole middle east ... In Lebanon a few years back Hezbollah started a war against Israel in solidarity to the palestinians and what was happening then in Gaza... We must also take in account that the public in the countries around will get even more pressing towards their governments, who may have to change their perception of things.
If it continues, this may get nasty
That is not my experience. They have consistently ignored the plight of the residents of Sderot and similar towns when they were facing their attacks even though this is a matter of interest to many UK citizens.
One area where I was pleased to see the bbc report accurately was the case of the nutter who went mad with the digger in Jerusalem there was very little condemnation of the kiling of said nutter and the case was reported accurately as far as I could tell.
As to the BBC Bias study I cannot comment on it as I haven't read it.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
This is interesting. I could only find it being reported in full by Russia Today after seeing it referred to obliquely in an Australian news piece. Can anyone find it on the BBC I wonder? I just tried searching on chunks of this text.
Richard Falk, United Nations Special Investigator for Human Rights
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
No doubt they'll get round to it. Meanwhile I was interested to see this related story, concerning the UN human rights official in question.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7784348.stm
On the face of it, Falk, who is after all Professor of International Law at Princeton and probably has some idea about this stuff, seems to have a point about Israel's use of collective punishments and their wanton disregard for civilian life demonstrated by ordering air-strikes on such a densely populated area as the Gaza strip.
Dimitris
Well-Known Member
A solidarity demo outside the Israeli embassy in Athens is taking place as we speak... About 600 people are attending and it has turned to a riot. Police attacked the demonstrators (palestinians, comrades and other people) with chemicals and stund grenades, the people responded with stones. The police then attacked heavily and destroyed the demo but a lot of clashes against the police are still taking place.
These info came to me by phone 2 minutes ago.
These info came to me by phone 2 minutes ago.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Interesting. Professor Falk's statement above was issued two days ago.
http://tinyurl.com/95ssj7
It's been echoed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and quoted by the President of the General Assembly. You really would think it'd be a major front-page story someplace besides Russia and China wouldn't you?
After all, think of the coverage given to the UN's perhaps more convenient statements about Saddam's many violations of international law and human rights in general.
In any case though, I think it's quite important to be clear that in the eminently qualified opinion of some senior human rights lawyers, Israel is actively committing war crimes in its actions against the people of Gaza.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Let's compare the provocation off sealing Gaza's borders to commerce and aid against the provocation of the launching of what amount to mortar shells into the territory of the state of Israel.
No comparison, is there? Obviously, using mortars to cause 16 deaths in 5 years outweighs starving an entire enclave of food, fuel and medicine.
If HAMAS' actions brought this on the people of Gaza, what punishment should be visited upon the citizens of the state of Israel for their government's transgressions, hmmm?
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Quite right Random - best to just point at and laugh. Zachor's source for Israel/Palestine is the neo-con shit blog "Harry's Place" (yes I know, what a fucking joke).
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Spion
I hear ya
OK, you've convinced me. I mean, poor Israel. Poor little victimised Israel. Why can't it just live in peace? All it did was make refugees of nearly a million people, steal their land, kill and harrass them and make them subject to racist laws and bomb their descendants and economically strangle them for 60 years.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
I know for an absolute fact that Al Jazeera English, which many accuse of having an anti-Israel bias, has not consistently ignored the plight of the residents of Sderot and similar towns, it has in actual fact reported what you're alleging has been ignored. I know for an absolute fact that AJE, for example, and I'm assuming that other broadcasters including the BBC that has correspondents in Israel, have regularly attended press conferences by Israeli officials and also in Sderot itself, covering the regular rocket attacks and the drills and precautions and the very, very occasional casualties. My experience is that that you're wrong. I appreciate that you don't watch television news 24/7 and can't watch all the channels simultaneously, so I will tell you of my experience, which is that the media generally, and AJE in particular absolutely does not consistently ignore the plight of the residents of Sderot and other towns. I vaguely recall seeing an AJE reporter in Ashkelon in the past couple of days, for example. I can absolutely, categorically, tell you that you are wrong.
Interesting that you're saying the BBC reported accurately on "the case of the nutter who went mad with the digger in Jerusalem there was very little condemnation of the kiling of said nutter and the case was reported accurately as far as I could tell," well I guess that just goes to show your worldview on such matters.
It's interesting to note that you refer to him as a "nutter," because if that was the case, if he was mentally deranged or otherwise 'going postal' in some way, then the appropriate course of action would have been to detain and try him in a court of law. But of course the Israeli officials knee jerk called him a terrorist and... was it a security officer or a police officer who murdered him, thus ensuring he would never face justice for his actions in a court of law and that his motivation could never truly be known.
I'm surprised you didn't continue to spout the Israeli "he was a terrorist and this was a terrorist attack" line. Given that you believe him to be just a nutter (albeit one who went on a murderous rampage), could you clarify whether you believe it's acceptable for criminals to be summarily murdered, without trial or conviction?
Further, if a person is truly a "nutter," i.e. have some kind of mental incapacity or moment of insanity, then they ought to be treated. I mean, we do that in the UK, people can plead mental incapacity due to reason of insanity or something along those lines, and those people would be held in secure psychiatric facilities. Alternatively, if someone is just a criminally inclined person, again a civilised society would seek to bring that person to justice and not to kill them summarily without trial and conviction.
Any and every responsible journalist (and arguably every right minded person) would question whether the person responsible could have been detained and tried. Any and every responsible journalist (and arguably every right minded person) would question whether it was absolutely necessary to kill the perpetrator. Or do you agree with vigilante action and murder as opposed to the rule of law?
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
Here's the links:Zachor said:
http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/mediagroup/bnfi_reviews.htm
"...The study suggests that television news on the Israel/Palestinian conflict confuses viewers and substantially features Israeli government views. Israelis are quoted and speak in interviews over twice as much as Palestinians and there are major differences in the language used to describe the two sides. This operates in favours of the Israelis and influences how viewers understand the conflict. The study focused on BBC One and ITV News from the start of the current Palestinian intifada, the Glasgow researchers examined around 200 news programmes and interviewed and questioned over 800 people. The study is unique in that for the first time it brought senior broadcasters together with ordinary viewers to work in research groups, analysing how the news informs people and how it could be improved...
...Some Major Findings:
1. There is a preponderance of official ‘Israeli perspectives’, particularly on BBC 1, where Israelis were interviewed or reported over twice as much as Palestinians. On top of this, US politicians who support Israel were very strongly featured. They appeared more than politicians from any other country and twice as much as those from Britain...
2. TV news says almost nothing about the history or origins of the conflict. The great majority of viewers depended on this news as their main source of information. The gaps in their knowledge closely paralleled the ‘gaps’ in the news. Most [viewers] did not know that the Palestinians had been forced from their homes and land when Israel was established in 1948. In 1967 Israel occupied by force the territories to which the Palestinian refugees had moved. Most viewers did not know that the Palestinians subsequently lived under Israeli military rule or that the Israelis took control of key resources such as water, and the damage this did to the Palestinian economy. Without explanations being given on the news, there was great confusion amongst viewers even about who was ‘occupying’ the occupied territories. Some understood ‘occupied’ to mean that someone was on the land (as in a bathroom being occupied) so they thought that the Palestinians were the occupiers. Many saw the conflict as a sort of border dispute between two countries fighting over land between them. As one viewer put it:
The impression I got (from news) was that the Palestinians had lived around about that area and now they were trying to come back and get some more land for themselves - I didn’t realise they had been driven out of places in wars previously.
3. Journalists gave different views on why there was so little explanation on the news. George Alagiah from the BBC stressed the problem of time:
In depth it takes a long time, but we’re constantly being told that the attention span of our average viewer is about twenty seconds and if we don’t grab people - and we’ve looked at the figures - the number of people who shift channels around in my programme now six o’clock, there’s a movement of about three million people in that first minute, coming in and out.
Lindsey Hilsum from Channel 4 News also commented on how difficult it was to report in a controversial area:
With a conflict like this, nearly every single fact is disputed, I think ‘Oh God, the Palestinians say this and the Israelis say that…’ I know it’s a question of interpretation so I have to say what both sides think and I think sometimes that stops us from giving the background we should be giving.
The book also examines other factors in production such as lobbying and public relations by both sides.
excerpt from book
4. Because there was not account of historical events such as the Palestinians losing their homes, there was a tendency for viewers to see the problems as “starting ” with Palestinian action. On the news, Israeli actions tended to be explained and contextualised - they were often shown as merely “responding ” to what had been done to them by Palestinians (in the 2001 samples they were six times as likely to be presented as “retaliating ” or in some way responding than were the Palestinians). This apparently influenced many viewers to blame Palestinians for the conflict, as in these comments from two 20 year olds:
You always think of the Palestinians as being really aggressive because of the stories you hear on the news… I always think the Israelis are fighting back against the bombings that have been done to them.
I wasn’t under the impression that Israeli borders had changed or that they had taken land from other people - I thought it was more a Palestinian aggression than it was Israeli aggression.
Some people disputed such views but they tended to cite alternative sources of information other than the television news.
excerpt from book
5. In news reporting there was a tendency to present Israeli settlements in the occupied territories as vulnerable communities, rather than as having a role in imposing the occupation. But as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has written, they have a key military and strategic function. They have been built on hilltops to give a commanding position and their occupants are often heavily armed. The Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, has pointed to its role in attacking Palestinians in attempts to seize land. Most viewers knew very little of this - one describes his surprise at learning that the settlements controlled over 40% of the West Bank:
I had absolutely no idea it was that percentage… I saw them as small embattled and surrounded by hostile Palestinians - that’s entirely thanks to watching the television news.
6. There was a strong emphasis on Israeli casualties on the news, relative to Palestinians (even though Palestinians had around 2-3 times the number of deaths as Israelis). In one week in March 02 which the BBC reported as having the most Palestinian casualties since the start of the intifada, there was actually more coverage on the news of Israeli deaths. There were also differences in the language used by journalists for Israelis and Palestinians - words such as ‘atrocity’, ‘brutal murder’, ‘mass murder’, ‘savage cold blooded killing’, ‘lynching’ and ‘slaughter’ were used about Israeli deaths but not Palestinian. The word ‘terrorist’ was used to describe Palestinians by journalists but when an Israeli group was reported as trying to bomb a Palestinian school, they were referred to as ‘extremists’ or ‘vigilantes’ (BBC 1 lunch time news and ITV main news 5/03/02). TV News coverage influenced some viewers to believe most deaths had been Israeli as in these comments about the reporting of suicide bombs:
I remembered it was the suicide bombers - they are the one who go in and take maybe a whole busload and I thought it would be more Israelis.
And this is from a viewer who believed the Israelis had five times as many casualties as Palestinians:
I would imagine it’s going to be more casualties on the Israeli side, but it’s purely from television - that’s where I get my info from."
http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/mediagroup/badnews.htm
*my bold. And I added the word [viewers] in square brackets to make a sentence readable in bold.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Yeas, because anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism = Nazism, doesn't it, you sententious dickhead?
Sheer chutzpah coming from the resident BNP apologist innit? Many of the "fervent anti-Zionists" appear to be Jewish and might, just might, be angry that over 200 people have just been massacred by a brutal occupation. JHE on the other hand is probably glad because many of those killed will have been muslims.
It's a shame he insists on being a racist arsehole because he can actually be pretty funny at times.
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
Russia Today is an English (and others) language Russian state broadcaster.
Xinhua is the Chinese state press agency.
Btw, the BBC is the British state broadcaster.
All propaganda merchants for their masters to varying degrees.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Only when confronted with inarticulate Judaeophobes attempting to gloss their anti-Semitism with the pretence of being anti-Zionist.
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