The first point is that it would never happen. There are no
Israeli organizations -- governmental or freelance -- that
would contemplate such a thing. That fact is itself
significant.
There would have been none of the caution which has
characterized the response of the BBC and of the Government
since Mr Johnston was abducted on March 12. The Israeli
government would immediately have been condemned for its
readiness to harbor terrorists or its failure to track them
down.
Loud would have been the denunciations of the extremist
doctrines of Zionism which had given rise to this vile act.
The world isolation of Israel, if it failed to get Mr
Johnston freed, would have been complete.
If Mr Johnston had been forced to broadcast saying, for
example, that Israel was entitled to all the territories
held since the Six-Day War, and calling on the release of
all Israeli soldiers held by Arab powers in return for his
own release, his words would have been scorned. The cause of
Israel in the world would have been irreparably damaged by
thus torturing him on television. No one would have been shy
of saying so.
But of course in real life it is Arabs holding Mr Johnston,
and so everyone treads on tip-toe. Bridget Kendall of the
BBC opined that Mr Johnston had been "asked" to say what he
said in his video. Asked! If it were merely an "ask", why
did he not say no?
Throughout Mr Johnston's captivity, the BBC has continually
emphasized that he gave "a voice" to the Palestinian people,
the implication being that he supported their cause, and
should therefore be let out. One cannot imagine the
equivalent being said if he had been held by Israelis.
What Johnston says under duress is not all that different from
what the BBC says every day.
Well, he is certainly giving a voice to the Palestinian people now. And the truth is that, although it is under horrible duress, what he says is not all that different from what the BBC says every day through the mouths of reporters who are not kidnapped and threatened, but are merely collecting their wages.The language is more lurid in the Johnston video, but the
narrative is essentially the same as we have heard over the
years from Orla Guerin and Jeremy Bowen and virtually the
whole pack of them.
It is that everything that is wrong in the Middle East and
the wider Muslim world is the result of aggression or
"heavy-handedness" (have you noticed how all actions by
American or Israeli troops are "heavy-handed", just as
surely as all racism is "unacceptable"?) by America or
Israel or Britain.
Alan Johnston, under terrorist orders, spoke of the
"absolute despair" of the Palestinians and attributed it to
40 years of Israeli occupation, "supported by the West".
That is how it is presented, night after night, by the BBC.
The other side is almost unexamined. There is little to
explain the internecine strife in the Arab world,
particularly in Gaza, or the cynical motivations of Arab
leaders for whom Palestinian miseries are politically
convenient.
You get precious little investigation of the networks and
mentalities of Islamist extremism -- the methods and money of
Hamas or Hizbollah and comparable groups -- which produce
acts of pure evil like that in which Mr Johnston is
involuntarily complicit.
The spotlight is not shone on how the "militants" (the BBC
does not even permit the word "terrorist" in the Middle East
context) and the warlords maintain their corruption and rule
of fear, persecuting, among others, the Palestinians.
Instead it shines pitilessly on Blair and Bush and on
Israel.
From the hellish to the ridiculous, the pattern is the same.
Back at home, the Universities and Colleges Union has just
voted for its members to "consider the moral implications of
existing and proposed links with Israeli academic
institutions".
Well, they could consider how work by scientists at the
Technion in Haifa has led to the production of the drug
Velcade, which treats multiple myeloma. Or they could look
at the professor at Ben-Gurion University who discovered a
bacteria that fights malaria and river blindness by killing
mosquitoes and black fly.
The main universities of Israel are, in fact, everything
that we in the West would recognize as proper universities.
Or they could study the co-operation between researchers at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who have isolated the
protein that triggers stress in order to try to treat
post-traumatic stress disorder, and their equivalents at the
Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in
Cambridge.
The main universities of Israel are, in fact, everything
that we in the West would recognize as proper universities.
They have intellectual freedom. They do not require an
ethnic or religious qualification for entry. They are not
controlled by the government. They have world-class
standards of research, often producing discoveries which
benefit all humanity. In all this, they are virtually unique
in the Middle East.
The silly dons are not alone. The National Union of
Journalists, of which I am proud never to have been a
member, has recently passed a comparable motion, brilliantly
singling out the only country in the region with a free
press for pariah treatment. Unison, which is a big, serious
union, is being pressed to support a boycott of Israeli
goods, products of the only country in the region with a
free trade union movement.
The doctrine is that Israel practices "apartheid" and that
it must therefore be boycotted.
All this is moral madness. It is not mad, of course, to
criticize Israeli policy. In some respects, indeed, it would
be mad not to. It is not mad -- though I think it is mistaken
to see the presence of Israel as the main reason for the
lack of peace in the region.
But it is mad or, perhaps one should rather say, bad to try
to raid Western culture's reserves of moral indignation and
expend them on a country that is part of that culture in
favor of surrounding countries that aren't. How can we have
got ourselves into a situation in which we half-excuse
turbaned torturers for kidnapping our fellow-citizens while
trying to exclude Jewish biochemists from lecturing to our
students?
Nobody yet knows the precise motivations of Mr Johnston's
captors, but it is surely not a coincidence that they held
him in silence until the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War
approached, and only then made him speak. They wanted him to
give the world their historical explanation - Israeli
oppression - for their cause.
Yet that war took place because President Nasser of Egypt
led his country and his allies declaring "Our basic
aim will be to destroy Israel".
He failed, abjectly, and Egypt and Jordan later gave up the
aspiration. But many others maintain it to this day, now
with a pseudo-religious gloss added.
We keep giving sympathetic air-time to their death cult. In
a way, Mr Johnston is paying the price: his captors are high
on the oxygen of his corporation's publicity.
As for Israel, many sins can be laid to its charge. But it
is morally serious in a way that we are not, because it has
to be. Forty years after its greatest victory, it has to
work out each morning how it can survive.
Published in the Telegraph.co.uk
Bagelblogger: As so often is the case with Israel and the Arab world, not only is Israel judged in a far far harsher light, it seems that the world is all too often willing to accept the most disgraceful actions of some under the pretense of fighting for the rights of Palestinians.
The fool hardiness of it all, is it would do people well to remember not only the historical context of the Arab's nations desire to destroy Israel and commit unfathomable genocide, it is something we are reminded of on a continual basis, yet somehow chose to ignore it.
The civilized world needs to see past the lies and distortions of the Arab world and see the real aim of Palestinian terrorism, which is simply to destroy the Israel State. Gaining territorial concessions under the pretense of peace is simply a progression towards this ultimate aim.
Move your mouse over to display Bagel menu.
