This week’s BBC Question Time took place in Belfast, and the Canary has received reports of pro-Palestine prospective audience members being turned away at the door.
BBC Question Time: rigged
Lisa McKee said she was invited to attend, but on arrival at the studio, she was rejected on the basis of her social media posts, and questions she had drafted. She was told by staff that she was “too political”. That seems an odd line of reasoning for a political discussion programme. The questions read:
What will it take for the UK government to change their current policies on sanctioning Israel, and demand a break of the siege on Gaza and an end to illegal occupation throughout Palestine? How is Stormont ensuring that the UK govt fulfils its legal obligation in the event of, what has already been declared, a genocide?
Neither of these are any more political than the first audience question of the night, where a man asked the panel:
Why do the government and left wing politicians continue to call concerned citizens far right when the vast majority are just concern about illegal immigration?
So detailed and specific questions about Britain’s participation in genocide – bad. Unsubstantiated immigration panic about the “vast majority” and how “concerned” they are – good.
Deirdre Linder also reported being refused entry due to an apparent “imbalance in the audience.” BBC Question Time staff told Linder that they had phoned earlier to inform her that she had not been accepted, but no record was present on her phone indicating such a call had been made. This meant a 100 mile round trip from Rostrevor was made for no reason. When she requested a manager to lodge a complaint, she was shepherded away by bouncers.
After then using a quarter of the programme’s time to frame the immigration non-issue as the most salient of our time – ahead of war, genocide, climate breakdown, the crippling cost of living – the discussion latterly moved to Gaza. The question was good – asking whether the current Trump/Blair/Netanyahu stitch-up disguised as a peace plan can work without the involvement of Palestinians. The rightful owners of Palestine have been almost entirely excluded from the proposals, which are currently being reviewed by Hamas.
Western civilisation? “I think it would be a good idea.” c. Gandhi
Trump, for his part, described the moment of its unveiling as “potentially one of the great days ever in civilisation.” That would imply that civilisation exists in a world where butchers like the US president and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu can stand in an opulent room and pontificate over the corpses of the likely 700,000 people they’ve murdered in Gaza.
On the BBC Question Time panel, Sinn Féin MP John Finucane was first to respond, acknowledging the lack of a Palestinian role in the so-called peace plan. He went on to say “serious questions” must be asked about so-called Israel’s “credibility as a sincere partner for peace.” Host Fiona Bruce was quick to suggest we ought to have similar concerns about Hamas. The latter have shown more willingness for peace than senior Israeli figures, with their 2017 charter accepting a two-state solution if it were to gain the approval of a majority of Palestinians. They have also adhered more strictly to ceasefires, and have continued to engage in peace talks, despite multiple murderous attacks on their negotiators.
Bruce also took issue with Finucane’s correct description of the “kidnapping” of Sinn Féin’s senator Chris Andrews by Israeli Genocide Forces (IGF). Andrews was taken in international waters when the Global Sumud Flotilla he was sailing on was blocked by Israeli naval vessels.
Crawley crawls up Netanyahu’s arse
The BBC then plumbed new depths today, with its flagship radio programme Talkback seeking to blame pro-Palestinian protest for Thursday’s violent attack at a Manchester synagogue, which left three dead. Kicking off, host William Crawley sombrely posed the question:
Should Palestinian street protests be paused…as a mark of respect and solidarity with our Jewish communities?
Crawley put this to Sue Pentel, a Jewish member of the Belfast branch of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), who responded:
The reason we felt that we could not stand down yesterday is because while we were marching and during the day over 70 Palestinians were killed. Some children died of starvation due to the Israeli blockade.
There are thousands of Jews involved in these demonstrations. All over the world, Jewish people are involved in standing up and saying “how can we mark the day of atonement when Israel is bombing and starving people in our name?”
Crawley went on to ventriloquise a hypothetical Jewish population of his own imagining, terrorised by equally fictitious antisemitic pro-Palestine protests:
If a large number of Jewish people around your protest feel threatened by it, feel it is fuelling antisemitism, feel they are living in the real world with the rhetorical or actual violent response that is generated by the atmosphere around those protests…if you were worried about it, then you might have a conversation with them about what it is that’s doing that.
If we want to take antisemitism out of the experience of these protests wouldn’t you talk to Jewish people about how you might do that.
Here Crawley – completely without evidence – suggested that Palestine protests are the cause of violence like that seen in Manchester. He had put this grotesque smear to People Before Profit activist Marc Mac Seáin, who responded:
I think that’s starting from a position that’s conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
Crawley then stammered, again without substantiation:
No it’s not, it’s literally not doing that.
When the necessity of putting pressure on one’s own government while it aids genocide was put to Crawley, he followed the standard BBC line of holocaust denial. This is despite the UN, the vast majority of genocide scholars, and Israeli human rights group B’Tselem describing it as such.
Asked by the Canary for comment on the discussion, Pentel said:
Anti-Zionism is as old as Zionism itself and there is a growing movement of Jewish people globally who oppose Israeli war crimes, land theft, starvation and genocide. I am one of many, so it was important to be heard on the radio, but to link peaceful protests against genocide and starvation with the violent aggression in Manchester was absolutely unacceptable and frankly insulting.
It was in itself putting those who peacefully oppose Israel, oppose Apartheid, and genocide into the same category as the perpetrator of this attack.
Zionist pile-on as right to protest attacked yet again
The BBC Question Time debacle marks another low in what has been a cynical free-for-all on the Palestine movement since the terrible Manchester attack.
Home secretary Shabana Mahmood provided us with the limited contents of her largely vacant head, saying:
I do think that carrying on in this way feels un-British, it feels wrong, and i would ask people who are thinking about going on protest this weekend – take a step back.
It’s true that opposing genocide, land-theft and ethnic cleansing would be a very un-British thing to do, given the nation spent several hundred years participating in those crimes. Not to mention the fact that Britain was key in setting up the Zionist entity that is the source of ire for demonstrators.
Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis piled in too, saying Palestine protest and “what happened in yesterday’s attack” are “directly linked.”
Meanwhile Novara’s Rivkah Brown lamented how the media treated perhaps the most relevant figure one might find in the current context – “Jewish lad from Salford” and Green Party leader Zack Polanski. Brown remarked on “parachuted-in Israel lobbyists” who “use a tragedy to defend Israel”, while Polanski is “subjected to hostile interviews” for his pro-Palestine views.
Defund Question Time and defund the BBC
The BBC, as genocide supporters two years into a slaughter which is overwhelmingly evidenced, can at this point be considered irredeemable. Just as it’s up to all of us to build alternatively political movements, we need to do likewise with media. If you’d like to hasten the BBC’s demise, you can do so here.
Funding the BBC is at this point little better than putting a bullet in an IGF rifle – cancel your license and tell them Palestine sent you.
Featured image via the Canary