Phyllis Chesler Interviews Carol Gould

carol gould

Join our email list for updates.

subscribe
unsubscribe


.

 

We hope that you'll feel our website is worthy enough to contribute a few pounds to the bandwidth bills.



 

 

'The Israeli Generals' on BBC and the Pig Tale...
Last uploaded : Tuesday 4th Nov 2003 at 01:12
Contributed by : The Editor

 

I was about to launch into a tirade about the BBC but I am duly humbled by the fact that the new BBC series on British satellite television, ?The Israeli Generals? is actually the product of an overwhelmingly Jewish and Israeli production team.

My complaint arises from the opening sequence about Yitzhak Rabin. The birth of the state is described as if the script had been written by Osama bin Laden. We are told that hundreds and hundreds of Arab villages were systematically wiped out by the Palmach, with whom Rabin had trained. Young Palmachniks, we are advised, trained for the purpose of ridding Palestine of ?the enemies? to make way for the hordes of Jews. Yitzhak himself is shown lamenting the bloodshed and ruthlessness of his campaign.

What is never explained is the agonising and protracted sequence of events that preceded the establishment of the Jewish state -- let alone the Shoah, which is never even mentioned in the script -- nor is it explained that the Palestinians rejected partition or that the Arab nations declared war to the death on the fledgling Israel. One can only assume this programme was devised by Israelis more concerned with what they describe as the ?Naqba? than of the tiny haven afforded the remnant of a race that had nearly been annihilated in Europe.

To top my irritation, the programme was somewhat spoilt by a clever prankster in the BBC Four control room who pressed a button to bring in a lengthy continuity announcement that drowned out a crucial bit of narrative on the Rabin story. An accident? Maybe yes. Maybe no.

The BBC cannot pass a week without reams on Israel, and this past week saw its website featuring a ?top story? about settlers training pigs to protect their enclaves. The article is written in serious journalistic form and even has a headline in bold about ?Rabbinical authorities? giving approval to the training of Israeli pigs for this purpose.

It is further suggested that Daniel Shilo of the Yesha Rabbinical Council asserts that the ban on the raising of pigs in Israel does not apply in this instance. Although one settler tells the BBC?s James Reynolds that the story is ?nonsense, the justification for the enterprise is that pigs have a unique sense of smell and they are anathema to Muslims. One can imagine Muslims reading no further and being utterly enraged at the idea that Israelis will now use pigs to deter them.

Whether this article is a fun, out-of-season April Fool or not, one suspects it is sure to be taken at face value in the Arab world. The BBC, Channel Four and Radio Four spend innumerable hours providing news of violence and offences against Palestinians. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asserted on Sunday that the world must do something about the destructive teachings in madrassahs, but the UK media and British newspapers are enough to inflame a suicide bomber before he even leaves for school. Last week The Guardian carried a large colour supplement spread by Chris McGreal about the IDF incursion in Rafah. Large captions asked how it could be explained to a small child that a head lying in the road is that of another child who was alive moments before. Nowhere in the article is it asked how one explains to an Israeli child why his father and sibling and mother carrying unborn sibling are scattered across a pavement in Tel Aviv.

In the same week we have been told by the retiring Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, that the Jews should stop acting as if the Holocaust is a reason for people to support our aspirations, and should not think of themselves as the Chosen People.

All of this as sixteen American soldiers are killed just as they are about to leave for much-awaited rest and relaxation at home after many months in Iraq. As the Yahrzeit of Yitzhak Rabin arrives, one hopes the bloodletting in Iraq and Israel will stop and that creativity and rebuilding will envelop the region.

The irony is that if Jews really DID rule the world, and if the Middle East were to model itself on the Israeli agricultural/scientific/industrial/cultural prototype, the Gulf would be the envy of the planet.






Read more Editorials    go >>

 

 


KD Web - Web Design
© Jewish Comment .com

All Rights reserved.
No copying of any text or images allowed in any form digitally or otherwise,
without the prior written consent of the copyright holders.