The Honourable Woman BBC2/Sundance

Posted on by dianelangford

Morally Repugnant Story-telling

 

‘The Honourable Woman’, BBC 2/Sundance

 

Where to start with a critique of this series? With the finale still to come, it’s safe to say The Honourable Woman is a dishonourable endeavour with delusions of grandeur. Writers of fiction often assert an infinite horizon within which they can write about anything under the sun, liberating the imagination, say, to adopt the voice of a character of a different gender, ethnicity or species. Nothing is out of bounds. But without any historical contextualisation or factual accuracy, the results can be of variable authenticity and levels of offensiveness. Ricky Gervais, for instance, has plumbed the depths with his ghastly depictions of disabled people. Larger productions have included ‘Birth of a Nation’ and ‘Exodus,’ both examples of blockbuster propaganda efforts to make heroic narratives out of colonial settlement and dispossession.

The concept of ‘the Israel-Palestine conflict,’ so-called by the BBC – in reality a brutal military occupation – is adopted by writer-producer Hugo Blick, conforming to the corporation’s obsessive falsehood of ‘two sides,’ both behaving badly. Lack of authenticity is just one of its failings.

Blick gave an interview to Rebecca Nicolson in the Guardian (Saturday, 16th August, 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/aug/15/the-honourable-woman-hugo-blick-spy-thriller-middle-east-maggie-gyllenhaal) in which she praises a narrative constructed ‘under the opaque moral uncertainty of no side behaving well.’ An Israeli entrepreneur philanthropist ‘attempts to build reconciliation between Israel and Palestine,’ writes Nicolson, without considering that reconciliation usually takes place after an occupation or apartheid regime has ended. ‘The first episode aired at almost the same time as the resurgence of violence in Jerusalem…it could not be more timely.’ Violence in Jerusalem is always present as it is an occupied/annexed city whose Palestinain occupants undergo continual ethnic cleansing, house demolition, arrests, etc, but I wonder whether she is referring to the latest attack on Gaza? What would be timely – indeed, what the times cry out for – is truth telling, in both drama and reportage. The risible notion of balance, a smokescreen for privileging the Zionist narrative, has been taken to extremes in the BBC’s coverage. Thousands of films, books and TV series have been produced about the Nazis and nobody talks about ‘balancing’ the Nazi point of view with that of their victims.

In this series, the ongoing occupation and massacres are not depicted. The shallowness, inauthenticity and grandiose claims of Blick’s drama is blown to bits by the latest round of invasion, bombing and destruction perpetrated by the Israelis and watched in horror by millions on their TV screens.

The Guardian interview includes a disingenuous disclaimer: the writer-director pinpoints two morally repugnant tropes, readily admitting that his narrative relies on them. One is the notion that women who have been raped are gagging to repeat the experience and, to that end, become danger junkies. The second is that the oppression of the Palestinian people is an irrelevance and must be invisibilised.

Blick’s self-serving distancing of himself from the herd of other ‘glib’ writers is as dishonourable as the project itself, given that the series is entirely dependent on occupation and rape. ‘Within dramas, within the context of a thriller, rape is used as a story-telling device so glibly. We make it the middle of the story’. Blick explains the second rape: ‘It’s important that the character was trying to orbit the problem by returning to it, or returning to the danger of it, and going across that line.’

The founding of the State of Israel, the dispossession of the Palestinians, the endless occupation, siege, land theft and killings, cry out for authenticity in the telling, fiction or not. Peter Kosminsky’s four-parter, The Promise, turned down by the BBC and eventually made for Channel 4, was exemplary. Imagine making a TV series about South Africa through the lens of white racists without reference to apartheid?         As Blick’s Israeli heroine sweeps through a checkpoint in a convoy of limos, we glimpse, just for a second, Palestinians queueing up to go through the turnstiles, but unless the viewer is familiar with the scenario, that moment could easily be lost. The strand of plot involving the contracts for laying cables for a mobile phone network (again positing a false equivalence) in the West Bank dramatises the possibility of the Israelis and Americans listening in. In reality, the even more sinister use of the airwaves under Israeli control enables them to carry out targeted assassinations guided by victims’ phones. Absurdly, the Palestinian envoy in London – whose real-life counterpart is never invited to appear on the BBC, while Israeli spokespeople flood the news – is depicted as having a plush office and instant access to top level British intelligence agents, just as the Israelis do. The Israeli characters are rounded, cultured and complex, the Palestinian characters, thuggish and duplicitous.

Blick is concerned that ‘viewers might think’ that he is ‘capitalising on the conflict.’ Of a visit to Hebron he opines, the violence and conflict ‘is like a volcano that goes down and comes back up,’ and ‘it’s a complication that never goes away,’ evincing no awareness of the way in which military occupation deliberately creates eruptions of violence. He congratulates himself for what he describes as ‘a dexterity to the story-telling.’ It’s a dexterity that requires frequent pointers such as ‘three years later’ and after a few more unconnected scenes ‘eight years earlier’ and so on. No wonder Maggie Gyllenhaal was ‘alarmed by the whole idea’ and, according to Nicolson, ‘had to be pushed’ into accepting the role. What were those other fine actors thinking of? Lindsay Duncan has few lines and spends her screen time staring distractedly into the middle distance. Stephen Frea adopts his usual lugubrious, hangdog expression to no particular avail. Janet McTeer plays Frea’s ball-breaking spy-mistress and Eve Best, so great as Dr O’Hara in Nurse Jackie, should get back to All Saints as fast as her legs can carry her.

 

 

 

Palestine and the Media: talk at University of Kent, during Israel Apartheid week 2013

Posted on by dianelangford

Palestine and the Media: Talk at the University of Kent during

Israeli Apartheid Week – 26/2/13

 

Let’s start with the case of local rapper, Mic Righteous, from Margate, whose freestyle ‘Free Palestine’ was censored by the BBC’s Radio One: a sound effect was inserted over the word “Palestine” by the station’s duty editor. Following hundreds of complaints the corporation issued a statement:

“All BBC programmes have a responsibility to be impartial when dealing with controversial subjects and an edit was made to Mic Righteous’ freestyle to ensure that impartiality was maintained.”

With colleagues from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, I met Helen Boaden, then Head of News at the BBC, early last year. She attempted to explain the obliteration of the word Palestine: it was a mistake by a tired, hapless editor, late at night, trying to avoid controversy. The point is, why would any BBC employee feel that to mention Palestine is controversial?

By contrast, last week, Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, a flagship Sunday programme, repeated on Friday mornings, featured the columnist, Julie Burchill. Celebrities are invited to choose eight tunes they’d like to take with them were they to be marooned on a desert island. Burchill chose the Israeli National Anthem, the theme to the film Exodus and a Zionist pop song.

A word about Exodus: this film was huge when it came out starring one of the biggest Hollywood icons of the day, Paul Newman. It showed the power of cinema to shape people’s perceptions, even though the film has long ago been thoroughly exposed as myth-making propaganda…along the lines of D.W. Griffiths’ Birth of a Nation, which presents the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans as heroic nation-building.

Burchill’s choices were all aired without censorship. Such hypocrisy would be laughable if it wasn’t for the tragic situation underlying the BBC’s double standards.

I’ve been following the BBC’s coverage of the so-called ‘Israel-Palestine conflict’ for many years and gave evidence to the 2006 independent panel on impartiality that produced the Thomas Report. This document was shelved, despite its helpful findings. Ironically, the review was set up at the behest of the Zionist Federation who like to maintain the fiction that the BBC is biased against Israel. Instead, Thomas found that BBC coverage fails to convey the asymmetry of the conflict and doesn’t provide sufficient context to viewers and listeners to enable them to understand the background.

The BBC, like most western media, has unquestioningly adopted the Israeli narrative and language.

In fact, even the analogy of a ‘dual narrative’ is itself misleading, as the Israeli and Palestinian narratives are not equally valid. One represents the occupier and the other the occupied. The dispossession and occupation of Palestine is often referred to as ‘The Israel Palestine Conflict’ implying a conflict between two equal parties.

I’ll focus on the BBC because of its vast global footprint and its role as a public broadcaster obliging it to educate and inform its viewers and listeners. The Murdoch empire would require a whole other talk, but I recommend a quick look at what Sam Kiley has written from his point of view as a journalist who experienced the atmosphere of fear in the newsroom at The Times whenever Ariel Sharon’s close friend, Rupert Murdoch, telephoned.

In 2004 Greg Philo and Mike Berry of the Glasgow Media Group published a groundbreaking piece of research called “Bad News from Israel” establishing that most people get their information from television. They uncovered astonishing levels of public ignorance about Israel and Palestine and established a clear link between this information gap and the way the situation is reported. Respondents told researchers that even the phrase “occupied territory” doesn’t make clear who is occupying what. Just a couple of words could make that clear. Lack of time or space, doesn’t justify the omission of crucial words, and only adds to incomprehension and a feeling of helplessness. An impression is created that the problem is too difficult, too intractable and too complicated to understand.

Perhaps this is explained by a statement from the Israeli embassy press secretary, 21st September, 2001, carried by the The Independent newspaper.

“London is a world centre of media and the embassy here works night and day to try to influence that media. And, in many subtle ways, I think we don’t do a half bad job, if I may say so. We have newspapers that write consistently in a manner that supports and understands Israel’s situation and its challenges. And we have had influence on the BBC as well.”

The BBC changes its terminology to fit current Israeli PR requirements. For instance, Israel’s initial descriptor for its grotesque Wall was “separation fence”. When it became clear that comparisons with apartheid were invoked by reference to “separation” this term was dropped. In lock-step with Israel’s PR concerns, the BBC duly began using the new preferred term “security fence’.

Even when the Israeli army kills unarmed civilians the people involved are referred to as “militants”. A young boy was killed near the Wall and his murder was justified because he could have been ‘a look out for militants.’

When the Israeli army, one of the most powerful in the world, enters refugee camps or Palestinian towns with tanks and helicopters, the BBC describes the resulting slaughter as ‘pitched battles with militants.’

Another example of bias is manifested by the BBC’s practice of buying Israeli-produced programmes and showing un-mediated, non-attributed IDF propaganda footage. Imagine the BBC giving prime airtime to film coverage supplied by a Palestinian crew from a Palestinian perspective.

Though there are several Israeli nationals reporting from Jerusalem for the BBC, there are no Palestinian journalists with similar responsibilities – these are just “stringers.” Would the BBC send a Palestinian journalist to report on Israeli issues? Obviously this would be unthinkable even in terms of how such a reporter would traverse checkpoints and avoid closures, let alone obtain a press pass from the occupying power.

Despite a burgeoning Palestinian film industry, an incredible achievement of a people living under occupation, the BBC chooses to operate what amounts to a boycott of films produced by Palestinians, including feature films.

The courageous, non-violent demonstrations against the occupation, especially those against the apartheid Wall have not been given any attention by the BBC. The Israeli government restricts access to such demonstrations, but if Haaretz and Al Jazeera can cover these demonstrations, why not the BBC?

And there’s ample YouTube material: in the case of Syria and Iran, the BBC has no qualms about using uploaded mobile phone clips.

There’s a stark contrast between the rudeness with which Palestinians are often treated, as opposed to the deference shown to Israeli spokespersons, many of whom could be indicted as war criminals. The BBC appears to be at pains to avoid posing hard questions about the illegality of Israel’s actions when interviewing Israeli leaders.

Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister (in post during Operation Cast Lead) was in London on 6 October, last year, to meet William Hague. This led to a seven-minute interview with her on the ‘Today’ programme.

Evan Davis listened to Livni without a single challenge or interruption of any kind.

Having her on the Today programme was an opportunity to grill her on the arrest warrant issued against her in the UK in December 2009, which led to her cancelling a previous visit to London for fear of arrest. The warrant gave details of war crimes she is alleged to be guilty of: the use of phosphorous bombs, the avoidable massacre of civilians, attacking an unarmed, occupied population. As a result of Livni’s warrant, and the cancellation of visits by other Israeli officials, the Conservative Party took out a full page advert in the Jewish Chronicle in the run-up to the 2010 General Election, pledging to amend the legislation on universal jurisdiction that allows such warrants to be issued. They began work on this after taking power in May 2010 and, on September 15, 2011, the changes came into place as part of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act. Despite this change in the law, which makes it harder for war criminals to face arrest in the UK, Livini was also granted ‘special mission’ status by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office to enable her to make last October’s visit without fear of arrest.

Not a single question was asked on the Today programme about this extraordinary situation and Livni was in complete control of the interview. International law was ignored and Davis ratified illegal occupation and war crimes by referring to them as the ‘robust position’ taken by Israel.

What is left out of BBC reportage is often more significant than what is included. You could call this censorship by omission. For instance, as far as the mainstream media is concerned, the long-lasting campaign of hunger strikes by political prisoners has not been happening.

It is noticeable that words such as “quiet” are often used to describe periods in which no Palestinian resistance has occurred, even as targeted killings, house demolitions, land theft and mass arrests continue on a daily basis. If we didn’t know otherwise, it could be assumed “nothing” was happening. This indicates that Palestinian lives are considered less significant than Israeli ones.

Jerusalem is often referred to as the capital of Israel, rather than Tel Aviv, the internationally recognised capital; Palestinian towns such as Bethlehem and Jericho are frequently cited as being part of Israel; settlements are referred to as ‘Jewish neighbourhoods.’

Any Israeli violence must be presented as retaliatory, when all sources outside Israeli governmental circles show that this is not the case. It is as if ‘balance’ involves not reporting anything that shows Israel in a bad light. Can this bias be unintentional when we consider for example that the BBC Board of Governors has included Pauline Neville Jones, prominent member of Conservative Friends of Israel (incidentally also a director of weapons company Qinetiq, which trades arms with Israel, specialising in drones)?

In November 2009, Channel 4 broadcast a programme about the pro-Israel lobby, presented by Peter Oborne, of The Daily Telegraph. Dispatches approached Jonathan Dimbleby, who’d authored a powerfully argued article for the UK-based website Index on Censorship, criticizing the BBC’s betrayal of Jeremy Bowen, its Middle East editor. Dimbleby was keen to be interviewed by the show’s producers and the Dispatches team was baffled when he abruptly backed out.

In 2000, near the Lebanese border, Bowen witnessed an Israeli tank attack that incinerated his local colleague and driver, Abed Takkoush. Andrew Balcombe, Zionist Federation Chair, immediately wrote to the BBC Trust demanding Bowen’s removal as Middle East editor, claiming this incident was a “tragic mistake” that “may have colored [his] views about Israel.” Ever since, Israel’s allies have targeted Bowen.

He was accused of using language that “appears to be calculated to promote hatred of the Jewish state and the Jews.”

The BBC Trust upheld a complaint that Bowen had breached their standards of accuracy and impartiality by stating: “Zionism’s innate instinct to push out the frontier” and “the Israeli generals, mainly hugely self-confident Sabras in their late 30s and early 40s, had been training to finish the unfinished business of 1948 for most of their careers.”

Moreover, Dispatches discovered that the BBC’s Dimbleby began to experience exactly the same process of complaints that he described in the Bowen case. After attacking Bowen, the Zionist Federation’s Turner argued that Dimbleby’s defense of his colleague made him unfit to host the BBC’s popular radio program Any Questions.

In addition to those at the BBC, Dispatches discovered other members of the media who’ve been targeted by the Zionist lobby. Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian newspaper, described a 2006 visit from Gerald Ronson, chairman of the Community Security Trust, a charity for British Jews, and Henry Grunwald, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The meeting was triggered by an article in the Guardian by Chris McGreal that compared Israel to apartheid South Africa. After an emergency meeting at the Israeli ambassador’s residence that was also attended by British Israel Research and Communications chairman Poju Zabludowicz, Grumwald and Ronson were dispatched to confront the Guardian editor. Ronson accused the Guardian of fomenting anti-Semitic attacks, stating that “There is a line which can’t be crossed, you’ve crossed it, and you must stop this.”

The Guardian’s relationship with Israel has evolved. In 1914 the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann met with the editor of the then Manchester Guardian, C.P. Scott, a meeting that led to the Balfour Declaration of 1917. But the Guardian has fallen out of love with Israel now.

The website organisation HonestReporting organised an “email bombardment” of The Guardian which included a hate campaign against their correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg which was so intense that it prevented her from carrying out her job.

Other journalists who’ve been hounded out of their Middle East postings include Orla Guerin and Barbara Plett of the BBC.

BBC coverage of the Palestinian/Israeli prisoner exchange, in October 2011, entirely focused on the released Israeli prisoner, Gilad Shalit, a serving IDF soldier, who was described as ‘a shy little boy’. Palestinian prisoners were lumped together as a group ‘who have committed appalling crimes’. The BBC never asked if the Palestinian prisoners had been properly tried in court and held under a legal framework, or had been seized and held without trial. There was no mention of detained Palestinian children. The only references to Palestinian prisoners were in a context of terrorism and how their release would affect grieving/fearful Israeli families.

BBC coverage of the 2012 onslaught on Gaza slipped below even its previous low point – its 2008/09 reportage of ‘Operation Cast Lead,’ when the BBC refused to broadcast a routine charity appeal and allowed Israeli spokesperson, Mark Regev, to take over its air waves.

Israeli attacks on Gaza were presented as ‘in response to Palestinian attacks’. Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel are never presented as ‘in response’ to 64 years of Israeli occupation or four years of siege.

Again it was demonstrated that the concept of rule of law, international human rights law and the Geneva Conventions are apparently irrelevant to the BBC’s pre-determined lack of balance. Failure to rigorously challenge Israeli army and state spokespeople is a hallmark of the BBC’s bias in favour of the occupying power and against the occupied Palestinian people and amounts to complicity with Israeli war crimes.

The weighted concern for Israeli civilian deaths and injury as compared to those of the entrapped, besieged civilians in Gaza who were being bombed in 2008-2009 and again in 2012 represents corporate cruelty towards Palestinians as the BBC’s default policy.

The setting up of a false equivalence has always been the main feature of BBC coverage and was again deployed from the outset of Operation Pillar of Cloud, the Israeli name for its latest attack on Gaza.

This began with the slaying of a boy playing football and was deliberately escalated by Israel’s targeted assassination of Ahmed Al Jabari. Despite the political significance of Mr Al Jabari’s role as a seasoned negotiator and participant in the formulation of a longer-lasting ceasefire, there was barely any analysis of this extreme provocation and its implications. Neither was the peaceful Palestinian initiative to apply for non-state membership of the UN given due importance alongside Israel’s upcoming election as the motive for Israel’s aggression.

Unless Israel is under rocket attack, apparently nothing is happening that is of interest to the BBC’s listeners and viewers.

During ‘Operation Cast Lead’ and its aftermath, the BBC frequently invited Jonathan Sacerdoti, introducing him as a ‘political analyst’ when in fact he has been a Director of Public Affairs at the Zionist Federation. Mr Sacerdoti was again in BBC studios to defend the attacks and massacres in Gaza, just as he was when Israeli forces attacked the aid ship Mavi Marmara in international waters, killing nine passengers who were trying to break Israel’s inhumane siege of Gaza. On 15 November last year he joked on Facebook that he ‘may as well move in’ at the BBC after yet another interview was lined up.

Over 1,500 complaints were received by the BBC after it aired a Panorama programme called Death in the Med in which it claimed that the human rights defenders aboard the Mavi Marmara were responsible for their own deaths. Ms Boaden described critics of the programme as ‘obsessives.’

She went on to describe Death in the Med as a ‘brave, thorough and highly forensic examination of what went wrong [on the Mavi Marmara]’, and described the programme’s presenter, Jane Corbin, as ‘one of our absolutely best reporters’.

A BBC Trust inquiry into complaints about the programme conceded that it failed to use the autopsies on the nine passengers killed by Israeli commandos, failed to mention the mistreatment of passengers by Israeli soldiers, failed to mention the amount of aid being carried on the Mavi Marmara and unfairly dismissed the medical aid as being out of date.

Towards the end of last year the Palestine Solidarity Campaign requested a further meeting with Helen Boaden to review matters discussed at our previous meeting when PSC offered to provide a list of contacts based in Palestine and outside experts who’d be available 24/7 for interview and comment. We were told that we’d already had one meeting in 2012 and we couldn’t have another one so soon.

In light of comments made by Ms Boaden about the number of times she meets with ‘the other side’ as she put it, and the boast of Mr Sacerdoti about moving into the BBC studios, I made a Freedom of Information request asking how many times last year Ms Boaden had met the Zionist Federation, the British Board of Deputies and BICOM. This was refused on the grounds of journalistic exemption.

Despite all this, I believe there’s been a major shift in public understanding in the past ten years. This is the result of intensified campaigning by Palestine solidarity activists, widespread use of the new media and the horrific actions of Israel itself that no amount of propaganda can whitewash, greenwash or pinkwash. Above all, world opinion is changing because people are witnessing for themselves the steadfastness of the Palestinian people in the face of dispossession, war crimes and apartheid.

The failure to tell the truth makes the media not only complicit but culpable. It’s up to us, international civil society, to tell the truth and spread awareness. So join PSC, take action whenever possible – be a part of the activism that counters the lies which perpetuate Palestinian oppression.

 

 

 

 

My Eye: looking at the implications of private units in NHS Foundation Trusts

Posted on by dianelangford

July 2014

 

Until I was summoned to an appointment at a private hospital I’d never heard of, for a procedure I didn’t need, I was ignorant of the manner in which NHS Foundation Trusts are obliged to raise money by running private units.

For nearly two years I’ve been receiving treatment at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital under the supervision of ophthalmology consultant, Mr X, for the inflammatory condition, vitritis. The disorder impairs vision, causes discomfort and light intolerance (uviitis). First, I was investigated for suspected sarcoids and eventually treated with steroid drops, then a course of oral steroids, then a steroid implant – Ozurdex – which slowly released steroids into my eye over several months.

In March 2014, a colleague of Mr X’s, Mr Y, also a consultant, viewed scans which showed my condition had slightly improved and was certainly not getting any worse. I was advised I needed no further treatment for now and given an appointment for monitoring purposes in July, 2014.

A couple of weeks after being told I needed no further treatment, a letter arrived from Spencer Private Hospital, Margate, inviting me to attend an appointment on 18th March with Mr Z, consultant opthamologist. At the time I was in London due to family illness. I tried making contact with Spencer Private Hospital to find out what the appointment was for and why they had my details. As this contradicted what I had been told at Kent and Canterbury Hospital, I was worried as to its purpose. When nobody picked up the phone at Spencer Private Hospital, I travelled home to Whitstable from London and my partner drove me over to Margate.

Mr Z told me that he was going to give me the first of a series of three injections in my eye. When I pointed out that this did not concur with Mr X’s advice, Mr Z insisted that the injection he was about to give me was a recently-licensed drug, much better than Ozurdex, and carried fewer risks as the needle used was smaller, though there was still a risk of side effects, including retinal detachment, increased eye pressure and glaucoma. I asked Mr Z whether he had my notes from the K & C. All he had was a manilla folder with my name and hospital number inside. I noticed that a nurse who was hovering nearby had prepared a trolley with the medication ready to be injected.

When I declined on the grounds that I may be subjected to an unnecessary procedure that was intrusive and potentially risky, Mr Z walked me out to the front office where G (Outpatients Bookings/IT Administrator) was told to sort it out.

On March 21 I wrote to Mr X requesting clarification about my treatment and asking how the Spencer Private Hospital came into possession of my name and address. When he did not reply. I made a complaint that crossed with a letter from him in which he confirmed that I did not need further treatment and denied that he had referred me to the Spencer Private Wing. He said the appointment had been an administrative error. He advised me that if I received any further communication from Spencer Private Wing, just to ignore it. His response implied that he did expect me to receive further such communications.

However, after I made a formal complaint to Kent and Canterbury Hospital, I received yet another invitation from Spencer Private Hospital, again offering an appointment with Mr Z. I telephoned Spencer Private Hospital using the number for G. He was insistent that Mr X had indeed referred me for an appointment.

The response of the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust to my complaint was limited to the single issue of the erroneously generated appointments and did not answer my questions about the relationship between the EKHU NHS Foundation Trust and the Spencer Private Hospital. I had made clear that I did not want to be treated in a private hospital unless absolutely necessary. As things are, it is difficult enough to identify whether a particular procedure is being provided by a private company or the NHS as the latter frequently incorporate the NHS logo into their identities. Hence, many complaints against “the NHS” should be laid at the door of companies like Capita, VirginCare or Harmoni.

Part of my anxiety was due to the unexplained linkage between my treatment at an NHS unit and how this translated into receiving an invitation for private treatment. Who would have been liable had I complied with Mr Z and complications had arisen from the unnecessary treatment?

Although I believe it is illegal for NHS services to recruit patients for private NHS business[i][ref] I am concerned that my experience was not a one-off error. Another, less assertive, patient is potentially at risk of having unnecessary procedures that are charged to the NHS by private providers. Data protection within the health service is also an issue of concern.[ii][ref]

 

On 23rd June, 2014, Heather Munro, Divisional Head of Nursing, Surgical Division, wrote to me,

 

“An investigation into how you came to receive a duplicate appointment for treatment to take place at the Spencer Wing QEQMH, has now reached conclusion. Mr X is sincerely sorry that he inadvertently requested this appointment for you. Your name was erroneously included on a referral document and he deeply regrets this. The mistaken information has now been retrieved from the Administration Department in Spencer Wing QEQMH and the data has been removed from their system records.”

 

Ms Munro continued:

“The key actions that we are taking are: removal of erroneous referral data information from Spencer Wing QEQMH database, Ophthalmology Operations Manager to investigate introduction of a robust checking system of referrals from clinic appointments prior to them being actioned.”

 

The issue needs further clarification as the amendment to the Health and Social Care Act regarding NHS solicitation of private work (see footnote 1) does not mesh with the requirement of NHS Foundation Trusts to set up private units to raise money to fund themselves. It makes no sense that they would not refer NHS patients to their own privatised units, ‘erroneously’ or not. In fact, the reply I received to my complaint confirms that patients are being referred, though my own referral was ‘erroneous.’ Clinicians working across the private and NHS spheres, combined with Foundation Trusts who are forced to raise money by selling their services to privately run units, create an impression that the NHS is eating itself from within. Is the NHS actively participating in its own demise by channeling funds into privatising itself?

 

The relationship between the East Kent Foundation Trust and the Spencer Private Hospital is difficult to unravel. The Spencer Private Hospital website advertises breast enhancement, arm lifts, ear pinning, brow lifts, facelifts and nose jobs. It is located in the grounds of the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital, Ramsgate Road, Margate, Kent. Its parent company is East Kent Medical Services Limited; its CEO is Di Daw and one of its directors is Stuart Bain, CEO of East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust.

Financial statements and directors’ reports available on line for East Kent Medical Services Limited describe the “Ultimate parent undertaking” thus:

 

“The company is a 100% subsidiary of Healthex Limited (incorporated in the UK) and was ultimately controlled by Invicta Hospitals Project Limited until the sale of the shares in Healthex Limited on 3 December 2012. After this date the ultimate controlling part is East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, the parent company of Healthex Limited. Group accounts are prepared by EKHU NHS FT.”

 

Loans from the parent company (the Foundation Trust) and Healthex are being repaid over 20 years till 2028 and bear 4% interest above bank rates.

 

Some non-executive directors hold multiple directorships and have links to pharmaceutical, defence, IT, housing development and insurance companies.

In addition to the CEO of the Foundation Trust, Stuart Bain, the Director of HR and Corporate Services of the trust, P.J. Murphy, also sits on the Board of East Kent Medical Services Limited, as do other senior personnel from the Foundation Trust.

Minutes of a company board meeting dated 27 April 2012 [PDF published on line] include an item entitled “A Review of Options on the Future Control and Management of the Spencer Private Wing Group of companies,” followed by a note reading “this item is redacted due to commercial sensitivity.”[iii]

Sophie Barnes, writing in HealthJournal Online, discloses:

 

“East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust is seeking to work with an independent provider to ‘reinvigorate’ its private patient service.”[iv]

 

According to Barnes, the trust is tendering for a partner to develop a private hospital at the site of the Arundel Unit at William Harvey Hospital in Ashford. The contract is worth between £30 and £45 million and will last between 15 and 25 years. She quotes an advertisement[v] in which the trust stated it was looking for a provider who can deliver a return of more than 15 per cent on any investment made by the trust. The trust also hopes that the provider will “enhance the returns from Spencer Private Hospital.”[vi]

The 15 percent return mentioned is based on profit, not turnover. An announcement about this is expected this month (July, 2014).

The Arundel Unit at William Harvey, a mental health unit, was closed in 2012 after several high profile tragedies[vii], thus creating a long round trip to Canterbury or Margate for users.[viii]

In my opinion, this follows a pattern of units being starved of resources, ‘allowed’ to fail, then privatised on grounds of ‘failure.’

On the face of it, the NHS raising money from private patients having cosmetic surgery could benefit NHS services. East Kent Medical Services Limited/Healthex was a pre-existing local company taken over by the NHS. At least they saved the cost of having to start a private unit from scratch. Given the intention of the government to shift the responsibility for healthcare away from the Secretary of State and the example set by groups of GPs who have set up consortiums which have then been gobbled up by large private companies including hedge funds, the likelihood that this kind of privatisation could have a positive outcome is low.[ix] The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that over half of the board members in some GP consortia have links with Assura Medical, part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.[x]

It appears the foundation trust tried to play the system by integrating East Kent Medical Services into its structures but the government has made it easy for the financial sector to muscle in and take over such enterprises. Why should the NHS have to squander its resources on running private companies that become easy prey for equity fund vultures? Even though in this instance the company has not brought in spectacular amounts of money, the modus operandi is to make it difficult for the NHS to succeed in the private sector, then sell off the business to a hedge fund. Isn’t that how it works?

BBC Blogger Nick Triggle wrote:

NHS hospitals would be allowed to do 49% of their work in the private sector – something which could potentially mean eight in 10 increasing their private work 25-fold.

But NHS hospitals are not chomping at the bit to privatise themselves, so his use of the word ‘allowed’ is slightly misleading: ‘forced’ seems more descriptive of the situation.

However, Triggle also reported that some health managers are ‘rebelling’ against plans to create ‘greater competition’ in the NHS.[xi]

Guardian writer, Polly Curtis, notes that section 44 of the 2006 Act had, in practice, maintained a cap on private work ranging from 2-10%.[xii]

The government claimed that it had incorporated protections into the 2012 Act. However, these were introduced after Earl Howe had introduced the 49% cap. OnDecember 14, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, Lord Kakkar and Lord Darzi of Denham tabled the following amendment:

299B Page 159, line 33, at end insert—

“( ) An NHS Foundation Trust may provide private health treatment and care but not so that its provision is to any significant extent detrimental to that provided for the purposes of the health service save that that shall not restrict accommodation and services not available within the health service nor restrict treatment or care where that is not a clinical priority.”

On December 14th, a further amendment was introduced by Lord Philips of Sudbury et al:[xiii]

“NHS services must not use NHS business to recruit private patient business.”

In accordance with the timetable of the Act, Monitor updated the rules on the private patient income cap for NHS Trusts on 2nd October 2012.[xiv]

Lord Sudbury subsequently withdrew his amendment, persuaded by the government’s blandishments.

While we await the outcome of the bidding to develop the Arundel Unit, let’s consider the likely contenders who involve themselves in such profitable business ventures.

Hackney Coalition to defend the NHS[xv] has identified ‘grave concerns’ about the services Harmoni has provided since it was contracted to provide Out of Hours medical care in Hackney a few years ago. They looked into the ownership of Harmoni and found that, in November 2012, the company was bought up by Care UK. In November, 2009, Care UK funded the office of former Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley. Their chair is Jim Easton, once a top civil servant in the Department of Health. According to research by the Hackney group, Care UK is, in turn, mostly owned by Bridgepoint, a private equity company chaired by Alan Milburn, the former Labour Health Secretary who pushed for opening the NHS to the private sector. An informative photographic exhibition entitled “How come we didn’t know?” by Marion Macalpine, an activist with the Hackney group, illuminates the above facts.

With the advent of TTIP[xvi], it will be impossible for companies to resist being taken over, illegal to end private contracts and illegal to stand in the way of privatisation.

Lucy Reynolds, London School of Tropical Medicine, speaking at an NHS/TTIP meeting, pointed out:

“What’s left, or what the private sector doesn’t want, is for philanthropy and charities to provide, using volunteer workers.

Since Thatcher, in fact since the 1970s, there have been waves of aggression against the NHS. First the easy bits, like catering…”

She references Oliver Letwin’s book Privatising the World, published in the 80s, and continues:

“The Health and Social Care Act is an insurance industry takeover, so health care in the UK becomes a clone of the US healthcare industry by 2020.”[xvii]

The notion that it doesn’t matter so long as healthcare remains free at the point of delivery is a common misconception. The private sector will cream off the profitable procedures and the reduced NHS will struggle to provide for the rest of us.

 

 

 

[i] Debate in House of Lords, December 14, 2010.

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/bill/2010/0092/amend/m1092-xii.htmLord

[ii] Swinford, Steven, senior political correspondent, “NHS legally barred from selling patient data for commercial use” Daily Telegraph, , 28th February 2010.

“Ministers will also bolster criminal sanctions for organisations which breach data protection laws by disclosing people’s personal data. Under a “one strike and you’re out” approach, they will be permanently banned from accessing NHS data.

The privacy drive comes after The Telegraph disclosed this week that 13 years of hospital data – covering 47 million patients – was sold by the NHS for insurance purposes.

The society of actuaries, which obtained the information, used it to provide insurance companies with guidance on how to set their prices for critical illness cover. They advised that higher premiums could be justified for most customers below the age of 50.”

 

[iii] East Kent Medical Services Limited, Financial Statements For the year ended 31st March 2013, Company Registration Number: 03130118

[iv] Barnes, Sophie Health Journal online http://www.hsj.co.uk/sophie-barnes/1203525.bio

 

[v]East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust (EKHUFT) wishes to identify a single partner organisation to re-invigorate the private patient services offering. EKHUFTs driver for seeking a partner organisation is ultimately to benefit NHS patients. This will be achieved by generating significant returns from private patient services delivered at EKHUFT sites and from exploitation of the Arundel Unit (an EKHUFT owned stand alone facility on the Ashford site), but also by benefitting from the operational expertise and capital investments of the partner organisations. Specifically the partnership will be expected to: • Provide a return on any EKHUFT investment of >15%; • Enhace the returns currently being provided by the SPH; • Generate financial returns significantly above the return that could obtained from alternative uses for the Arundel unit; • Build a strong private patient offering, based at EKHUFT sites, across the whole of East Kent; and • Forge a genuine partnership approach to co-development of NHS and private patient services to the mutual benefit of patients and both partners. Currently EKHUFT attracts private patient income from Spencer Private Hospitals (SPH) as well as directly in partnership with clinicians. EKHUFT is interested in tasking the market to see if a partnership can: • Bring all private patient provision from both SPH and EKHUFT under one “umbrella” organisation, this will; i) Create one interface for patients, private medical insurers, consultants and EKHUFT; ii) Generate synergy savings in terms of management and administration of the private patient offering; iii) Build a strong brand or exploit the partners existing strong brand; • Exploit the opportunity to develop a private hospital based on the Arundel Unit • Drive significant increases in market share/income/profits from the existing SPH facility in Margate; • Help consultants make the most efficient use of their time; • Increase overall market share/income/profits from all private patient services delivered from SPH and EKHUFT facilities. Any potential partner organisation should have a reputation for excellence, a background in building market share for private patient services, a strong financial management track record, experience of managing organisational change and brand development.

 

[vi]http://www.tendersdirect.co.uk/search/Tenders/Print.aspx?ID=%20000000004607995

[vii] “Mentally ill man dies in river” http://www.news.bbc.co.u.1/hi/england/kent/6455229.stm and http://inquest.org.uk/media/pr/inquest-into-the-death-of-kent-and-medway-patient-robien-winchester-begins

[viii] http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/mental-health-unit-in-ashford-to-a60194/

[ix] Gainsbury, Sally, “Goodwill could net GPs £8 bn” Health Service Journal, 29th July 2010

[x] http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/06/15/half-on-some-consortia-have-links-to-virgin-group/

[xi] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12862528

[xii] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2012/jan/19/health/bill/private/patients

See also: Briggs, Heather, Health Editor BBC News Website “Planned 49% limit for NHS private patients in England’, December 27, 2011.

[xiii] ibid Lord Phillips of Sudbury

‘The noble Earl then pointed me to another piece of guidance, Conflicts of Interest-Guidance for Doctors, paragraph 72(e) of which states:

“You must not put pressure on patients to accept private treatment”.

Again, that is stating the obvious. The problem is how to define “putting pressure on a patient”. If, for example, you truthfully say to a patient, “If I treat you under the NHS, the waiting list will be six weeks, but if I treat you as a private patient within this NHS institution you could be operated on within a fortnight”, then that would not constitute putting pressure on a patient. It would be in answer to the patient’s question, “What will happen, doctor, if I go private?”. None of the guidance presently covers that example or the others that the Minister cited. None of it covers the evil that my amendment seeks to address. There is a lot of stuff about the relationship between clinicians and their patients, but in no case that I am aware of does it deal with what one might call the strategic position of a doctor and the health service. It is always the relationship between an individual doctor and an individual patient, not about the general policy of a hospital, for example.’

 

[xiv] Monitor update on private patient income cap for NHS foundation trusts,2nd October 2012

On October 1, changes to the way the cap on the private patient income of NHS foundation trusts is enforced came into operation as a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. Monitor has written to the chairs and chief executives of each of the 144 foundation trusts in England outlining how these new arrangements will affect them.

In the past the limit on the amount of income that foundation trusts could earn from private patient work had to be set out in the terms of authorisation issued to each organisation by Monitor. From now on, the limit is directly enshrined in the legislation and Monitor will continue to have a role in ensuring foundation trusts comply.

Under the previous legislation, each foundation trust had its cap set individually, in many cases at the level of private income achieved ten years ago. Now the 2012 Act obliges foundation trusts to make sure that the income they receive from providing goods and services for the NHS (their principal purpose) is greater than their income from other sources.

The Act also obliges foundation trusts to publish information on all their non-NHS work and to explain its impact on the delivery of goods and services for the NHS.  In addition, any foundation trust that wishes to increase the share of its income from non-NHS sources (including  private work) by more than five percentage points in any one year must obtain prior approval from their governors.

Foundation trusts are obliged to comply with the law under their continuing terms of authorisation. Monitor can therefore act to ensure compliance, not only with the 2012 Act but also with the National Health Service Act 2006.  A condition requiring foundation trusts to ensure that they are able to comply is proposed as part of the licence that Monitor will issue to foundation trusts from next year, replacing the current Terms of Authorisation.

[xv] http://www.hackneykeepournhspublic.org/

[xvi] http://www.waronwant.org/campaigns/trade-justice/ttip

 

[xvii] Report from NHS/TTIP meeting 3rd February, 2014

Newsnight complaint update

Posted on by dianelangford

27th May 2010

Mr Bruce Vander,

Editorial Standards Committee,

The BBC Trust,

180 Great Portland Street,

London W1W 5QZ

Dear Mr Vander,

Richard Hutt has directed me to your Committee regarding my complaint (ref: RH1000081) against Newsnight, 19th Janury 2010. I am grateful for this opportunity to appeal against his findings.

In my opinion the segment featuring Colonel Tim Collins failed to ‘retain a respect for factual accuracy’ and did not ‘fairly represent opposing viewpoints when appropriate.’

Mr Hutt writes, in relation to Jeremy Paxman’s preview and opening cues:

‘It seems to me that these cues made clear to viewers that the report would give the “take” of Colonel Tim Collins on the conflict. I also consider that the introduction made clear that the perspective which Colonel Collins would offer would be that of a soldier, able to comment on the military exchanges that had taken place in the locations he visited. I would consider therefore that the report was appropriately signposted as an “authored” piece with a focus on the military aspect of the conflict.’

Contrary to the above, Colonel Collins completely failed to interrogate ‘military exchanges’ and instead chose to focus only on the feeble resistance to the overwhelming firepower of the Israeli offensive that a tiny number of Gazans were able to mount, ie. homemade rockets. He made no attempt to evaluate the ‘military exchanges’ initiated by Israel or to put these in the context of the breaking of the ceasefire with Hamas on the part of Israel. As I pointed out in my original complaint his analysis of whether weapons had been fired from a particular location did not hold up evidentially – he offered no evidence, only his biased opinion.

Colonel Desmond Travers, a co-author of the Goldstone Report, which, despite Israel’s attempts to undermine it, is the most authoritative and balanced source of material regarding Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, described the comments of Colonel Collins as ‘in breach of good evidentiary procedures.’

The segment did not live up to the introductory cues and was grossly biased and inhumane in its conclusion that the IDF were justified in firing on unarmed civilians and wiping out an entire family in one location visited. Many viewers were deeply shocked and saw this as of apiece with the BBC’s unfair decision not to broadcast the DEC appeal.

Yours sincerely,

Diane Langford

Frankie Boyle hits back

Posted on by dianelangford

Frankie Boyle: BBC are cowards
Comic defends Palestine gag

Frankie Boyle has lashed out at the BBC, branding them ‘cowardly’ and ‘cravenly afraid of giving offence’ after censuring one of his jokes.
In an angry open letter, the comedian hit back at the BBC Trust for apologising for a gag he felt drew some small attention to the ‘apartheid’ in Palestine.
The corporation’s governing body yesterday issued an apology for the joke Boyle made on Radio 4’s Political Animal two years ago. A listener took their complaint that the gag was anti-Semitic – although appearing on a show hosted by the Jewish Andy Zaltzman – all the way to the top.
They ruled that the gag was a ‘serious’ breach of BBC rules and said: ‘It said: ‘As a result, the committee wished to apologise to the complainant on behalf of the BBC for any offence the remark may have caused him and other listeners to the programme.’
However, Boyle says the Palestinian situation is a suitable topic for satire and defended the joke.
Here is the full text of his response:
Obviously, it feels strange to be on the moral high ground but I feel a response is required to the BBC Trust’s cowardly rebuke of my jokes about Palestine.
As always, I heard nothing from the BBC but read in a newspaper that editorial procedures would be tightened further to stop jokes with anything at all to say getting past the censors.
In case you missed it, the jokes in question are: ‘I’ve been studying Israeli Army Martial Arts. I now know 16 ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back. People think that the Middle East is very complex but I have an analogy that sums it up quite well. If you imagine that Palestine is a big cake, well…that cake is being punched to pieces by a very angry Jew.’
I think the problem here is that the show’s producers will have thought that Israel, an aggressive, terrorist state with a nuclear arsenal was an appropriate target for satire. The Trust’s ruling is essentially a note from their line managers. It says that if you imagine that a state busily going about the destruction of an entire people is fair game, you are mistaken. Israel is out of bounds.
The BBC refused to broadcast a humanitarian appeal in 2009 to help residents of Gaza rebuild their homes. It’s tragic for such a great institution but it is now cravenly afraid of giving offence and vulnerable to any kind of well drilled lobbying.
I told the jokes on a Radio 4 show called Political Animal. That title seems to promise provocative comedy with a point of view. In practice the BBC wish to deliver the flavour of political comedy with none of the content. The most recent offering I saw was BBC Two’s The Bubble. It looked exactly like a show where funny people sat around and did jokes about the news. Except the thrust of the format was that nobody had read the papers. I can only imagine how the head of the BBC Trust must have looked watching that, grinning like Gordon Brown having his prostrate examined.
The situation in Palestine seems to be, in essence, apartheid. I grew up with the anti apartheid thing being a huge focus of debate. It really seemed to matter to everybody that other human beings were being treated in that way. We didn’t just talk about it, we did things, I remember boycotts and marches and demos all being held because we couldn’t bear that people were being treated like that.
A few years ago I watched a documentary about life in Palestine. There’s a section where a UN dignitary of some kind comes to do a photo opportunity outside a new hospital. The staff know that it communicates nothing of the real desperation of their position, so they trick her into a side ward on her way out. She ends up in a room with a child who the doctors explain is in a critical condition because they don’t have the supplies to keep treating him. She flounders, awkwardly caught in the bleak reality of the room, mouthing platitudes over a dying boy.
The filmmaker asks one of the doctors what they think the stunt will have achieved. He is suddenly angry, perhaps having just felt at first hand something he knew in the abstract. The indifference of the world. ‘She will do nothing,’ he says to the filmmaker. Then he looks into the camera and says, ‘Neither will you’.
I cried at that and promised myself that I would do something. Other than write a few stupid jokes I have not done anything. Neither have you.
Frankie Boyle

BBC Respond to ‘Newsnight’ complaint

Posted on by dianelangford

Complaint regarding “Newsnight” on BBC2

Dear Gerald McCusker,

Thank you for your response to my complaint about the ‘Newsnight’ broadcast on 19 January 2010. You correctly anticipated that I would not be satisfied with your reply.

Far from engaging with ‘military matters’ the segment by Colonel Tim Collins made no effort to analyse the military aspect of the attack on Gaza with any pretence at objectivity. If this had been the case why were we not shown the extent of Israel’s military might? The Israeli army is the fourth largest in the world and has a vast range of munitions from nuclear to buzzing drones that are partly for surveillance (not a cat’s whisker moves in Gaza without the Israeli military knowing about it) and partly for psychological warfare (they are constantly overhead, ‘like having a wasp in your ear’ as one Palestinian has described it).

By making out that homemade rockets pose a threat to the Israeli army’s arsenal as if there were two equally powerful sides, your programme set out to give credence to Israel’s propagandising justification for its blitz on Gaza using weapons of mass destruction such as phospherous bombs.

This ‘soldier’s view’ was biased against the Palestinian people and Colonel Collins’  ‘military eye’ was turned away from Israel’s massive armoury.

Regarding your point that overall context of the piece was clear, this was far from the case. By suggesting that that the level of resistance to Israel’s onslaught merited its description of ‘military matters’ and ‘soldier’s eye’ is to grossly distort the facts. The Palestinians do not possess an army. The Gazans do not possess any military equipment at all that is capable of confronting the Israeli Army. How is a ‘soldier’s eye’ appropriate in this one-sided situation? The entire commentary was from the point of view of the Israeli side and was completely biased and a distortion of facts on the ground.

This being the case, I wish to take my complaint to the next stage of the process.

Thank you for your help with this.

Yours sincerely,

Diane Langford

Dear Ms Langford

Thanks for your e-mail regarding ‘Newsnight’ broadcast 19 January 2010.

I understand you’re concerned by Colonel Tim Collins’ report in this particular programme and I note you feel that it offered a unbalanced and biased account of the situation in Gaza.

I’m sorry you were unhappy with our authored report by Colonel Tim Collins. It was not meant to provide a political analysis of the conflict. As was made clear in the introduction to the piece we were giving a “soldier’s view” of the conflict, introducing Colonel Tim Collins as a “celebrated war veteran,” indicating that this was a piece offering a personal view based on his military experience.

The overall context of the piece was clear, in the introduction we said that a year ago “the Israeli army was readying itself to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, after a three-week campaign which led to accusations of war crimes.” We then go on to say 1300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died in the conflict.

As a soldier, he examined the evidence at the mosque – and gave his opinion – in fact he used those words “my opinion” – about the cause of the secondary explosions that he had discerned. He didn’t talk about Goldstone and the wider context because he was just reporting with his military eye on what he was able to see on the ground.

The piece was not intended as a comprehensive report but a ‘what I was able to see and reflect upon’ authored piece about military matters that, while a personal view, nonetheless took pains to steer clear of the perceived political rights and wrongs of the conflict.

We have covered the Gaza incursion on ‘Newsnight’ in many ways, and this piece should be seen as one perspective in our overall coverage. The role of ‘Newsnight’ as a news and current affairs programme is to give our viewers distinctive coverage from the news bulletins and to offer new perspectives on long-running stories, and so engage our viewers. This is what we were attempting to do with this piece.

However I note the strength of your feelings in relation to this matter and accept that you may continue to disagree and I’d like to take a moment to assure you that I’ve registered your complaint on our audience log.

This is the internal report of audience feedback which we compile daily for all news programme makers within the BBC, and also their senior management.

Thanks once again for taking the time to contact us.

Regards

Gerald McCusker

BBC Complaints

http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

BBC2 Newsnight, complaint

Posted on by dianelangford

Newsnight, Tuesday 19th January 2010

I was repelled by the ‘Newsnight’ segment featuring Colonel Tim Collins on Tuesday night. He was on an obvious mission to justify the Israeli massacre in Gaza that occurred a year ago. Given the BBC’s callous refusal to publicise The DEC appeal that followed this inhuman and, universally acknowledged, disproportionate attack, it is astonishing that you would follow this up with a downright justification of Israel’s horrific war crimes. The BBC’S claim to impartiality has been completely discredited by this sequence of events.

Colonel Collins, who has been compared to a character out of ‘Apocalypse Now,’ made no effort to make sense of the numbers of deaths involved: 13 Israelis (four of those were ‘friendly fire’, 1,400 Palestinians, involving hundreds of civilians, including women and children. Instead, he seemed unmoved by the evidence in front of him and chose only to see Hamas posters and interview the usual suspects in their ‘lair’ with an arsenal consisting of homemade rockets.

At Sderot, his guide was Mickey Roosevelt, ‘from North London’ who showed Colonel Collins the rockets collected since 2000 which have caused so little damage. He was not taken to review Israel’s arsenal of F16s, nuclear weapons, phosphorous bombs and all the other paraphanalia of the world’s fourth largest army. It was as if Israel was the unarmed victim, living in fear of having homes demolished, schools flattened and hundreds of civilians slaughtered.

The programme presented a complete distortion of the facts and made no attempt to inform, provide context, or even the slightest attempt at impartiality.

Colonel Collins is well-known for his gung-ho speeches (‘show them no mercy’, ‘we are their nemesis’) and boasts of his war record in the most brutal military interventions of the past decades. ‘Not as bad as Faluja,’ he commented, eyeing a flattened mosque. He claimed to have found proof of weapons having been stored in the crypt of this building, but there was no evidence shown on camera.

As he toured the region in an Israeli-piloted helicopter, he flew over Qalqilya, one of the Palestinian towns most grievously affected by Israel’s apartheid wall. ‘It’s to protect the main road,’ said the pilot, speaking of an Israeli-only road built on stolen Palestinian land.

Given the BBC’s complete blanking of the recent VivaPalestina Convoy, the Gaza Freedom March, and other efforts by civil society humanitarian activists from around the world, the programme takes on a special meaning. The depth of the BBC’s bias is demonstrated across the entire output of your programming and not only by the skewed nature of this particular item on ‘Newsnight.’

Israel is Bad News

Posted on by dianelangford

Israel wants to be seen as a normal country while claiming exemption from international norms. It must twist the truth to play the victim, hide its brutal features, the occupation, the Wall, the Law of Return. Unrelenting hasbara (Heb. explanation/propaganda) is its only recourse. Wars that were months, sometimes years, in the making are backed up with scripts casting atrocities as benign. Last December Mark Regev and Major Avital Leibowitz stood by in well-equipped press facilities on the border, rehearsing predetermined denials before the first soldier set foot in Gaza.

Leibowitz, Deputy Spokesperson for the IDF, says its spokesperson’s office has opened up a 24-hour North American desk, a European desk, a Russian desk, a Latin American desk, a new Arabic desk, as well as a film and photo desk. She described three main objectives, ‘maximizing access for news media, twenty-four hour availability, and showing the human face of the IDF.’ Indignant assertions that the IDF is the ‘world’s most moral army’ spew down the wires.

The foreign ministry’s deputy director for cultural affairs, Arye Mekel, recently declared, ‘We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, plus theatre companies, exhibits. This way you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.’

Israeli Embassies around the world dictate terms of reference such as ‘disputed territories’ and ensure that Jerusalem is referred to as the capital of Israel. Many succumb to the constant barrage of zionist hasbara from cyber ops such as Honest Reporting, BBC Watch, The Jewish Internet Defence Force, Tom Gross Media and the use of downloadable gizmos like Giyus.

A network of emailers and bloggers, known as The Hasbara Brigade, supports Israel’s governmental, military and ‘diplomatic’ hasbara, demanding apologies, retractions and resignations. Suppression is the objective and Karl Sabbagh believes ‘for this to succeed it must be directed at people who are unfamiliar with the issues and who might be persuaded that they have somehow “got it wrong.”’

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) sent hundreds of lobbyists urging Members of Congress sign a letter to President Obama demanding Israel be ‘allowed to set the pace of any future negotiations.’ HonestReporting.com sent up to 6,000 emails a day to CNN executives, paralysing their system. The Jewish Internet Defence Force focuses on sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and Google Earth, taking control of social networking groups campaigning for Palestinian human rights and dismantling them.

Jim Hoagland revealed in The Washington Post ‘a queasiness between the two allies (USA and Israel) that cannot be publicly discussed by either without damaging political consequences.’ [April 26, 2009) That is hasbara at work.

Far from a heterogeneous ‘Jewish conspiracy’ the most influential purveyors of pressure and misinformation are united by a common neo-con agenda, not by race or religion. The intimidating spectre of Rupert Murdoch, personal friend of Ariel Sharon, haunts the newsrooms of London, Sydney and New York. On January 26, 2009, a London Times editorial parroted Murdoch’s Newscorp mantra: ‘Israel is better than its enemies…The bitter lesson of this war is that Hamas cannot be allowed to win.’ For ‘Hamas’ read ‘Palestinians’ and you get the drift.

Sam Kiley once wrote of the fear Murdoch instils, ‘The Times foreign editor and other middle managers flew into hysterical terror every time a pro-Israel lobbying group wrote in with a quibble or complaint, and then usually took their side against their own correspondent—deleting words and phrases from the lexicon to rob its reporters of the ability to make sense of what was going on.’ [6th September 2001, ‘Middle East War of Words,’ Evening Standard.]

Associated Newspapers’ Daily Mail with over two million readers always mirrors Israel’s pronouncements,‘Revealed: UNRWA spokesman who lied about Israel’s shelling of a school previously worked at the BBC with Jeremy Bowen.’ [January 9, 2009]

An example of the solidarity Israel receives from other colonial settler societies and their presses was the walkout in Geneva at The Durban Review Conference, ‘A great victory,’ Shimon Peres crowed. The influence of hasbara was noticeable in coverage of the event.

Haider Eid, writing about The Durban Review Conference for Maan, reminds us,

‘The conflict has been misrepresented, by CNNized mainstream media owned by those who decided to boycott the DRC, as a “war” between “two sides.” In fact, as I have argued, and as the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said put it, there are not two sides involved in the “violence” in the Middle East. There is a colonial state turning all its great power against a stateless people, repeatedly made refugees – a dispossessed people, bereft of arms with the aim of destroying this people.’

A sign that the tide is turning came when former Evening Standard editor Max Hastings wrote in the Guardian on Saturday, 9th May, 2009, that he has ‘fallen out of love with Israel.’ He spoke for many more journalists and editors who, for decades, unquestioningly tolled the bell for the zionist state but are now wearying of its needy, megaphonic demands.

Max Hastings’ article can be read in full at: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2009/05/08/limitsofforce-hastings.pdf

Media Manipulators, David Leigh in The Guardian

Posted on by dianelangford

Media manipulators

How a north London web-designer began a campaign that deluged the Guardian with emails

More net news

David Leigh

Guardian

Thursday February 22, 2001

Why would the Guardian provide moral and medical justification for the multiple murder of innocent Israeli civilians?

It’s a pretty bizarre question, but we found ourselves being asked it over and over again this week. Emails clicked in to the letters page by the hundred, all making the same weirdly alliterative points. This followed publication of a Guardian article trying to understand the motivations of the Palestinian bus driver who ploughed into a queue this month, killing eight Israelis.

The mysteriously similar emails – from all over the world – started coming in, too, to our foreign editor; to our website; and to the personal email address of our Middle East correspondent, Suzanne Goldenberg.

They were inconvenient, and also sometimes a bit scary in their violent tone – “The bloody Guardian… Have you killed a Jew today?… Are you anti-Jewish?… Unrelenting Guardian anti-Israel bias… Why would the Guardian provide moral and medical justification etc…?’

This global blitzing was tending to crowd out genuine expressions of opinion from our readers. Our suspicions aroused, we tried to discover what was going on. It wasn’t straightforward. But eventually we discovered the trick. A website calling itself HonestReporting.com was set up in London last autumn.

It has recruited 12,000 subscribers to its database, it claims, all dedicated to fighting anti-Israel “bias” in the media. The aim was to recruit a total of 25,000.

Every time someone writes something they don’t like, details of the offending article are circulated round the world, together with a handy form of protesting words, ready to be lightly embroidered and electronically dispatched at the push of a button.

“This is what you should do,” they tell their members “Forward it on to the news company concerned at the email address provided. If you can, please change the subject of the email to ‘complaint’ or something similar.”

Their first success, HonestReporting boasted, was with the London Evening Standard. Its columnist Brian Sewell wrote last autumn calling on Israel to “become a multicultural society” and cease exploiting the Holocaust to justify unacceptable behaviour.

“The next day, [we] sent out a letter to subscribers.” Standard articles recorded “a wave of complaints… hundreds of Jewish readers have written in”. Then “after more pressure” there followed a pro-Israel article by Simon Sebag-Montefiore. “This is an example of what we can do.”

And now it was the Guardian’s turn to get the email treatment. A long electronic bulletin went out headed: “The Guardian: a mainstream British newspaper consistently blames Israel for everything.”

It complained that a Steve Bell cartoon showing Sharon’s bloody handprints on the Wailing Wall “encroaches on brash anti-semitism”. It complained that a Muslim, Faisal Bodi, had written questioning Israel’s right to statehood; and complained that the Guardian had said Sharon had killed the peace process. “No blame is assigned to Arafat.” And there too, was our old alliterative friend: “Why would the Guardian provide moral and medical justification…?”

Who was behind this internet harassment? The website gave no address. It had been registered last October under a London name and phone number that seemed not to exist. Eventually, it transpired that it had been set up by a 27-year-old Jewish web-designer from north London called Jonathan. “Don’t give my full name,” he asked. “Someone was killed in Stamford Hill [the Jewish district] the other day.” He and his friends came up with the idea by themselves: “We were just brainstorming.”

But the operation was now being funded and run from the US by an organisation concerned with media fairness, Media Watch International.

And who were they? “We’re pretty new,” says their director, Sharon Tzur, speaking from Manhattan. “It’s a group of concerned Jewish business people in New York.”

Yet a bit more inquiry reveals that this is not quite the whole story either. For this week’s bulletin denouncing the Guardian was in fact composed in Israel by a man named Shraga Simmons.

And when he is not working for HonestReporting, Mr Simmons is to be found employed at another organisation altogether – Aish HaTora. This is an international group promoting orthodox Judaism. “I do some work for Aish,” Mr Simmons says, from Israel. And Jonathan, the web-designer who started it all in London, also concedes: “I go to the odd class at Aish.”

Aish verge on the colourful in their antics. Founded by Rabbi Noah Weinberg, who complains that “20,000 kids a year” are being lost to Judaism by marrying out, Aish invented speed-dating – eight-minute sessions in cafes to help New Yorkers find compatible Jewish partners. They’re widely regarded as rightwing extremists. And they’re certainly not people entitled to harass the media into what they would call “objectivity”.

david.leigh@guardian.co.uk

In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence – and to a large degree, it works….

There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile “pro-Israel” writers and media monitoring groups – including Honest Reporting and Camera – said I am an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came flooding in calling for me to be sacked.

BBC Betrays Jeremy Bowen

Posted on by dianelangford

Beeb betrays Bowen

After witnessing his local colleague and driver, Abed Takkoush, being incinerated by an Israeli tank near the Lebanese border in 2000, Jeremy Bowen was shot at himself. Andrew Balcombe, Zionist Federation Chair, immediately wrote to the BBC Trust demanding Bowen’s removal as Middle East Editor claiming that this incident – a ‘tragic mistake’ – ‘may have coloured (his) views about Israel.’ Ever since, the zionists have been gunning for Bowen, unearthing internal emails in which he carried out his remit of reviewing the situation in the Middle East for fellow staffers, and claiming in the Jerusalem Post, ‘Jeremy Bowen faces Mecca while he writes for the BBC.’

New efforts to undermine him have resulted in the BBC Trust caving in to the ZF and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (Camera).  Complaints that Bowen’s online analysis, How 1967 defined the Middle East and his report From Our Own Correspondent BBC Radio 4, 12 January 2008 were ‘chronically biased’ came from Jonathan Turner of the ZF and from Camera. Even though the Trust only upheld three out of 24 specific complaints, this has been spun as a huge victory and Turner called Bowen’s position ‘untenable.’ The 118-page report published by the BBC Trust was lambasted for ‘failing to offer correctional steps.’  The complainants even claimed BBC editorial guidelines are ‘illegal.’

For describing Jebel Abu Ghoneim (Har Homa) as ‘a big concrete housing development,’ when the complainant insisted that the buildings were faced with Jerusalem stone, Bowen was accused of using language that ‘appears to be calculated to promote hatred of the Jewish state and the Jews.’

His statement: ‘For Palestinians, the settlements are a catastrophe, made worse every day by the fact that they are expanding fast’ was upheld as accurate, even though the complainant argued that the settlements were ‘beneficial economically’ to the Palestinians, are ‘not expanding’ and they are ‘militarily necessary for Israel’s security.’ Another of Bowen’s statements that annoyed the ZF was that Israel was ‘in defiance of everyone’s interpretation of international law except its own.’ This time, the Trust found that Bowen’s language was ‘imprecise’ and suggested he should have qualified ‘everyone’ with ‘nearly everyone.’

The BBC Trust claims that Bowen’s online piece ‘breached the rules on impartiality’ because readers might come away from it thinking that the interpretation offered was the only sensible view of the1967 war. As Robert Fisk commented: ‘…I suppose the BBC believes that Israel’s claim to own land which in fact belongs to other people is another “sensible” view of the war.’ The Independent journalist admits feeling nauseous every time he types ‘Trust’ into his laptop. ‘…That word,’ he wrote, ‘which so dishonours everything about the BBC.’

Anthony Lerman observed in the Guardian: ‘There’s something faintly distasteful about the whole exercise…one wonders whether people behaving like vexatious litigants should really be given such credence.’

The ZF submitted that the number of complaints to the BBC from pro-Palestinian groups has reduced over the past three years; hence, the BBC must be pro-Palestinian.

The BBC Trust’s report can be read in full at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/appeals/esc_bulletins/2009/mar.pdf

Meanwhile, the long-running Freedom of Information case between Steven Sugar and the BBC over publication of the Balen Report is back in the High Court. The ZF manufactured a storm over an internal document produced by a senior editorial adviser hired in 2004.  They are hopeful that Malcolm Balen, appointed to appease the zionist lobby, found the BBC was biased against Israel.  The corporation is appealing a House of Lords ruling that overturned a previous decision that the report was ‘for the purposes of journalism’ and therefore exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

None of Balen’s public comments indicate his report would be anything other than bland. The Thomas Report, an independent inquiry commissioned by the BBC Governors in 2006, took Balen’s findings into account. They concluded, far from being biased against Israel, the BBC had work to do to make their coverage more even-handed.

BBC news managers responded to Thomas: ‘An internal BBC News review, led by senior editorial adviser Malcolm Balen, led to greater resources being allocated to the Middle East and the appointment of a specific editor, veteran foreign correspondent Jeremy Bowen.’