Not Your Grandfather's BBC
The BBC has produced a three-part documentary on the Arab-Israeli conflict titled "Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs." The project quite naturally involved interviews with various of the players, including representatives of While rather unlikely, it is not impossible that the President said something more or less along the lines of being impelled by a perceived moral obligation. It's anyone's guess how whatever was said comes out translated into Arabic, and then back into English, filtered through the memory of an interested party.
But the Palestinian Foreign Minister has an even more bizarre tale to tell:
Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"This is, of course, preposterous. And we leave aside the question (which will be answered only when the program airs) of whether the Beeb has provided the slightest corroboration for this silliness via interviews with the usual army of translators, aides, other officials and the like, some part of the "all of us" Shaath claims was present. The press release certainly makes no reference to any substantiation, nor does it express the slightest curiosity as to why such a strange story should first come to light more than two years after the fact.
What is positively grotesque is the fact that the BBC's press release touting the program is titled "God told me to invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian ministers," and the first line of the release explains, "President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals."
Note the absence of any qualifying language such as "A Palestinian minister claims . . . " or the like. If Nabil Shaath says so, and if it makes the President of the United States look like a dangerous nitwit who hears voices and gets his instructions directly from the Almighty (with whom he is apparently on a first-name basis), then that must make it so, right?
Sigh . . . . . .
The press release is online HERE.
Presented for your delectation by the Gentleman Farmer at 6:10 PM
Comments on "Not Your Grandfather's BBC"
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Anonymous said ... (11:01 AM) :
post a commentI fear that some catasprophe accounts for G&S not having any fresh posts since Thursday. Maybe you're actually located in Pakistan and got hurt by that awful earthquake. In any event, I'd like to PRE-comment on the next post you surely will do about Western bending over backwards to avoid discrminating against Muslims:
I think we should do a study of all the Islamic countries, and find the one that is the most open, the most tolerant, the most respectful of religious minorities, the most liberal. We should get an accurate description of their rules and policies toward minority religions (esp. Christianity). Then we in the West should simply adopt equivalent rules:
I.e., if that most tolerant of the Islamic countries allows Christians to worship and proselytize, then we should allow Muslims to worship and proselytize to the same extent. If that most liberal of Islamic countries issues licenses to Christians to let them run places of worship, then we should issue licenses to Muslims to the same extent. If that most free of Islamic countries allows public criticism of Islam and its prophet, then we should allow Muslims here to publicly criticize Christianity and Jesus. If that most benevolent of Islamic countries requires public officials to respect the Christian Bible and the Cross, then we should likewise require that our officials respect the Koran and the Crescent. If that most sensitive of Islamic countries prohibits Islamic symbols in public that might hurt the feelings of fragile Christians, then we should prohibit Christian symbols (and other things, like pictures of pigs) to the same extent.
But if, instead, the most liberal Islamic state effectively burdens the practice of Christianity, or saddles it with licensing obligations, or restricts the Church's public activities, or puts sanctions on those who convert to Christianity, or threatens Christians with legal problems if Muslims accuse them of proselytizing or defaming the Prophet, or expects Christians to understand that they are a minority and should just get used to it--if that's what we find, then we should simply revert to our status quo ante of about the year 2000. We should then invite any Muslims who do not feel grateful for the unaccountable freedom and welcome that they enjoy in this stupendously magnanimous country either (a) to suck it up and be quiet and look away from any pig pictures that hurt their feelings, or (b) to invest their energy in addressing the gross injustices against Christians that are perpetrated officially and without apology in Islamic states and cultures, or (c) to go to the Islamic state of their choice and bask in the Muslim bliss that they will presumably find there.
What happens to make some Muslims who emigrate to the West develop all of a sudden these finely-tuned standards of human rights?