Following the invitation of Hamas leader Khalid Meshal to address some British MPs, his words are worth considering: Hamas’ politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal made statements in an address to British lawmakers via satellite on Wednesday. “Resistance is means to an end and not the objective itself,” said Mashaal, “and if we find another way to…
Showing all posts tagged Britain
Talking won’t kill anyone
Let the usual suspects bleat, but this is certainly good news. It’s called acknowledging Middle East realities: The former Labour minister Clare Short has been embroiled in a row after inviting senior Hamas leader Khaled Meshal to address MPs in Parliament. Ms Short faced strong criticism from both the British and Israeli governments for her…
Searching for balance is a fool’s game
Following the revelation that the BBC Trust has censured a BBC journalist for supposed bias in his Middle East reporting, the London Independent today publishes a few letters in response: In comments on the Jeremy Bowen affair there seems a constant confusion between two different meanings of “impartial”. The first it that if two parties…
You bomb and you pay a price
As somebody who now openly supports the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaign against Israel, this recent news somehow slipped under the radar: Pro-Israel groups have attacked [British super-market] Tesco for setting up a customer helpline for those considering boycotting Israeli goods. Tesco says it provided the service in expectation of calls questioning its stocking…
Stone the journalist doing his job
Stop the presses! A British journalist states the bleeding obvious: The BBC Trust yesterday called into question the corporation’s reporting of the most sensitive news story of modern times, publishing findings that the BBC Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, had breached guidelines on accuracy and impartiality. The ruling will be seized upon by campaigners who…
Is our information safe?
Yet another episode in the ongoing lesson; never trust a government to honestly and transparently protect its citizens from “threats”: Britain’s failure to protect its citizens from secret surveillance on the internet is to be investigated by the European Commission. The move will fuel claims that Britain is sliding towards a Big Brother state and…
How many dead babies?
Will any Western country stop selling arms to this criminal state? Revelations that Britain licensed the sale of military equipment to Israel worth …£27 million during the first nine months of last year has brought a call for the UK government to stop arming Israel.
No, truth doesn’t matter
Medialens explains that most of the mainstream media have no memory or ethics: Have journalists learnt nothing from recent history? It truly is a wonder when a reporter can assert in public, on the BBC News no less, that “Tony Blair passionately believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and posed a grave threat.”…
How to overcome tyranny at home
John Pilger, New Statesman, March 4: Freedoms are being lost in Britain because of the rapid growth of the “national security state”. This form of militarism was imported from the United States by New Labour. Totalitarian in essence, it relies upon fear mongering to entrench the executive with venal legal mechanisms that progressively diminish democracy…
Some kind of dodgy science
Complicity in Israeli atrocities should not be tolerated, even in far away lands: Quite extraordinarily, the Science Museum in London and the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry have both been made available (on 3 and 5 March respectively) for an event called “Israel Day of Science”. The museums argue they are not sponsoring the…