There was a moment in a report from Tunisia by the BBC’s Wyre Davies when I could not stop myself laughing. I was listening to it on the Corporation’s generally excellent World Service radio. (In my view this particular BBC service is generally excellent because unlike all other BBC news and current affairs outlets, radio and tv, it often reflects some of the truth about what is happening in and over Palestine that became Israel).
Davies was in Tunisia to find out how its remaining 2,000 Jews (down from 300,000 once upon a time) were responding to a call from an Israeli government minister for them to move to Israel. The case the minister made was, apparently, that their security and wellbeing were no longer guaranteed in an Arab country with an Islamist government in place of what Davies called a “sectarian dictatorship”. In other words, Tunisia’s Jews were in danger and would be safe in Israel. (My guess is that the greatest concern of the Israeli minister and his colleagues was less the fate of Jews in Tunisia and more the need for Jews from anywhere to go to Israel to help defuse the ticking demographic time-bomb of occupation).
The story as told by Davies for the BBC’s World (radio) Service was honest reporting at its best. Its explicit message was that Tunisia’s Jews have rejected the Israeli call.
One of those interviewed by Davies said to him and a listening world, “No one here is afraid.”
Another said, “Go to Israel?… I’m not crazy!“
That’s what made me laugh.
A subsequent development wiped the smile from my face.
A friend in Italy sent me a web link for the television version of the Davies report from Tunisia. I opened the link to check that it was the same report I’d heard on the World (radio) Service. It started in exactly the same way so I assumed it was, and I tweeted it as “MUST WATCH: Tunisia’s Jews reject (Israel’s) call to leave,”
An hour or so later I made the time to view the complete television version. The Jewish gentleman who said, “Go to Israel…? I’m not crazy!” had been edited out.
On past BBC form there are four possible explanations.
- Driven by a personal commitment to Zionism and support for its monster child right or wrong, a senior BBC executive ordered the quote to be dropped on his own initiative,
-
A senior BBC executive received a telephone call from the Israeli Embassy in London, or possibly the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, telling him or her that Israel would not be pleased if the BBC gave more air time to a Tunisian Jew who was saying “No” to Israel in a way that suggested he had some contempt for the Zionist state and thought that many Israelis were crazy.
-
A senior BBC executive anticipated that giving the Jewish gentleman in Tunisia a wider audience would provoke Zionism’s wrath and decided (as BBC excutives often do) that it was better for the Corporation to censor itself than provoke that wrath.
- For reasons of limited space in a television news bulletin, the report for the World (radio) Service had to be edited, shortened.
I have to say that I consider the fourth possible explanation as summarized above to be the least likely one. Why? There are many very good journalists in the BBC and they know as well as I do that the single most revealing and therefore newsworthy statement in the original Davies report was that of the Jewish gentleman who said, “Go to Israel…? I’m not crazy!”
The censored (or edited) version of the Davies report can be found at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/world-africa-16805329
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BBC is a Zionist-controlled network. Many of its top officials are Zionist Jews. BBC was one of the groups which campaigned for banning Iranian Press TV.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/british-zog-bans-press-tv/
Sometimes I wish I could say "No" to BBC and NYT and NPR. After all, I'm not crazy. Or ill informed. But the pirates (1%) which control so much in the world control most of its media as well. How well ORWELL and others foresaw that the methods of Hitler and Stalin would be picked up as models. so much of importance goes "down the memory hole" even before it becomes a memory.
Very insightful comments Alan!
The demographic point you raise is so valid as the population of the OPT and those areas within the Green line already suggest a Jewish minority if not now, then very soon.
I wonder how many people picked up this omission? Certainly one cannot disagree with your comment that this sentence gave a certain flavour so to speak of the entire news. It was not just a random sound byte that was edited out.
Has anyone ascertained what DW and Radio Nederland carried, if anything, about the Tunisian Jewish Communities' wants and desires??
How can be get BBC to air the unedited story? There must be some way -- eventually the editing of news on behalf of Zionism will become a shameful scandal to the public and BBC and the NYT will be pointing fingers everywhere. I mean that eventually the BBC will look foolish and weak so why make things worse, why self-edit on this small thing? It's hard to understand.
Valid point David. When will news media realise that by censoring a news item, they are really only creating a whole new story? And not one of their choice either!
This is very common, unfortunately. In fact, I know a Salafi sheikh here in Egypt who was interviewed last fall by Fox News. They interviewed him for more than an hour, but the end product consisted of less than five minutes of airtime wherein the Sheikh's remarks were craftily edited to make him sound like a religious fanatic.
Of course the BBC didn't want any negative remarks to be included in the broadcast. After the radio piece was aired, obviously some zionist piped up and complained about the "I'm not crazy" remark and so it was deemed necessary to remove it. After all, who needs flak from zionist groups who would complain after hearing it? Who needs to lose sponsors? It's so much easier to sanitize the news, right?
After seeing how black Ethiopian Jews are being treated and discriminated against, why would any Jew - especially a non-Caucasian, want to move to israel.
I don't think those who make Aliyah give a damn about Ethiopian Jews or anyone else. The zionist dream of a "homeland" wherein everyone magically gets a place to live (in an illegal settlement in the West Bank, almost always) and a job is what lures them to Israel.
Israel makes excuses for its racism, of course, and some people choose to accept those excuses as valid, failing to see the racism for what it is. The demographic question is a case in point. What if the US, for example, determined that it must take steps to conserve its white majority population demographic? Didn't South Africa do the same thing, or close to it? Yet the sympathy factor is woven into the question, the "victims of the holocaust" factor, if you will. Racism is racism regardless of what precipitates it.
In 2007, American Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein’s IFCJ offered $10,000 each to 25,000 Iranian Jews to immigrate to Israel. However, only a dozen of them took the bait. The video below shows how Iranian Jews are treated in their own words.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/tunisian-jew-im-not-stupid-to-immigrate-to-israel/
The most terrifying question of all. "Give me the name of one person with proof who died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz." My bet is that this comment will disappear incredibly faster than the Jews comment about being crazy. Have a nice day. In fact it will not show up at all I see.
D Gudgel, perhaps the comment won't show up because it's not relevant to the discussion. And perhaps Alan isn't into holocaust denial. I know I'm not. The issue of gas chambers belongs elsewhere, not here.
D Gudgel: Of course your comment showed up. Alan promotes free discussion and would never censor needlessly, despite this being a moderated blog.
I find the BBC no longer available in recent months, but I do not miss it, as I felt it had become more and more biased. Angry Arab has quoted a lot of Jim Muir's recent reporting, with disgust.
As for the Tunisian Jew, he sounds as many US Jews used to be, proud of the variety of their own land and not wanting to live in a theocracy.
I bet the BBC will never tell this story.
Under UN mandated occupation of Ottomon Wilyat of Palestine - London created the new post of Chief Rabbi as the tiny Jewish minority did have a religious leader with whom the colonial power can relate to (both Muslim and Christian communities always had “Mufti” and “Bishop” under Ottomon rule. It appointed Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), a fervent Latvian Zionist, as the Chief Rabbi of Palestine in 1921 – the post he held till his death on September 1, 1935. Haji Amin al-Husseini (1895-1974) was appointed as the Grand Mufti of Palestine in 1921. He tried to get the support of Orthodox Jewish leaders, who were against the Zionist movement and a creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine under a Zionist-regime - to support Zionists’ idea of a Jewish homeland in occupied Palestine but failed to get that. Then the Chief Rabbi thought of a bright idea to sell Zionism to the Orthodox religious leaders. He told them – Consider Zionists as the mule on which the Messiah is prophesized to ride while entering the city of Jerusalem (Bible). They got the point and threw their support behind World Zionist movement. As a reward, when the British left Palestine in a hurry – the Zionist thugs declared an independent state on Arab land in 1948 – its first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, gave the ‘ministry of religious affairs’ to these rabbis, which they still hold.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/350000-harijan-jews-in-israel/
@ maryam, It is the most important part of the conversation with regard to Palestine. The jews make the world pity them for a lie. It never happened. I am a denier and I'm proud. Maybe you should check your loyalties, meaning to jews or Humanity. Any talk of Palestine must include the balfour decleration, the rothschild (it was givin to them by balfour)and World war two, (judae declares war on Germany, prior to the start). Everything is interelated, you cannot seperate any part. Bet you dont even believe that the jews run thye media then? or should we leave that for another discussion?
Israelis would be morally better off and certainly safer if they immigrated to Tunisia and gave that land back to its natives.