So many have a view, with varying degrees of knowledge of the Middle East. The mainstream media are challenged over their objectivity in reporting.
In the UK the BBC in particular is getting a pasting. It has not made life easy for itself by not branding Hamas unconditionally as a terrorist organisation. For those who cleave to the position that unless you are incontrovertibly for us then you are against us, that is enough to label the Beeb as a Hamas supporter. The logic may be flaky, but you can understand the emotion rising from October 7th and the unrelenting rise in anger as more than 100 hostages have still not been recovered from Gaza.
For Israelis the current situation is complicated by the burning wish to get the remaining hostages back (so Israel's turning to Lebanon can be seen as Netanyahu recognising a stalling in the south so turning to the north to enable military action to continue and keep him from the day of reckoning), but equally the desire to kick the s--t out of Hizbollah where there is a plain and simple need to allow displaced Israelis to return to their homes in the north of the country.
Whom do you trust? Back to the BBC, and a mention of the Asserson Report, cited as evidence of bias by the institution against Israel. It is presented as deeply researched:
'The report is the product of a team of expert lawyers working with data scientists who have used AI to assess the output of the BBC across television, radio, web and podcasts in the months following the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.'
Powerful stuff. Who could resist against a team of expert lawyers working with data scientists and using AI?
Right of response from the BBC? Obviously should be allowed (haven't seen any) - even an expert lawyer would have to accept this. But if you have a world view/ideology that has already written off the BBC then there is no need to look for a response, and if you cannot access all BBC content direct that will not stop you from forming your conclusions. Essentially (and I do not condemn this as it is human nature) you have confirmation bias - you seek the outlets that share your view.
As to the Asserson Report, I recognised the name. Trevor Asserson is the founder and Senior Partner of Asserson Law Office. From its website:
'Asserson's headquarters are in London, but with its largest office in the heart of Tel Aviv's business district, the firm supports clients from across the globe who conduct business across the globe'.
Ah, the sceptics say, a Jewish law firm, so you can't trust anything they say as credible for the neutral. I am not saying that. Everything they say may be correct. The point I make is that it is so difficult to assess the persuasiveness of individual submissions (whosever position the person is advocating) even where they come from 'experts'. Whether the viewpoints come from the weight of the Asserson report, or from an individual posting on X or Facebook or LinkedIn, the core of the content is a rhetorical appeal for agreement and support: 'You must agree with me because you must just agree with me'.
If you feel that I need to put more weight into my argument, I will draw your attention to Edward Hallett Carr. When I was starting a Masters in Historical Research shortly before the beginning of the pandemic, Carr's work What is History was one of the first texts to read. Carr writes:
'Study the historian before you begin to study the facts'
Carr goes on to describe how an 'intelligent undergraduate', when recommended to read a great historian scholar, will investigate '...what bees he has in his bonnet', and goes on:
'If you can detect none, either you are tone deaf or your historian is a dull dog'.
I hope that my drift is clear. This is not language that Prof. Carr would have used when writing in 1961, but you need to understand where the writer is coming from.
So is there any content that we can trust at face value? For Gaza I suggest that there is, and this is the first-hand footage of the events of October 7th. Clips tell a little, but more telling is a lengthier documentary presentation, piecing together mobile phone and dashcam footage (Israeli and Hamas),and providing a coherent narrative of the day.
There is more than one of these circulating, but my choice is Storyville: We Will Dance Again, a production for the BBC focussing on the Nova Music Festival. I could back my choice alone through simple reference to events in the film: the dawn dancing under a blue sky; the innocent belief that rockets flying overhead were 'just another day'; the shock when the partygoers realised that there were Hamas terrorists arriving fast by foot and by vehicle; the scramble to get to cars and flee; the panic when the escape routes were jammed; the quirk of fate that enabled the DJ to escape because his car was parked in a separate area from the partygoers; the fear while hiding in a shed or a container or a fridge, praying not to be discovered or praying to be thought dead; the shock on reaching an Israeli military base and finding that it had been overrun; the realisation that where you were hiding contained friends who were now dead bodies; the testamentary footage as survivors told their stories.
We Will Dance Again stands out for two reasons. The first, not limited to this type of full documentary, is that with so much evidence it is hard for your regular sceptic to claim selective editing. The second is that these were joyful, peaceful young people, there to enjoy music. People who I suspect would have strong humanitarian instincts and would be tolerant of different ethnicities living together. People who are so far away from the ultra-Orthodox and ultra-Nationalists, the puppetmasters to Netanyahu.
With my lawyer hat on I hate Latinisms, but there is one I reckon encapsulates what I have just argued:
Res ipsa loquitur, meaning the thing speaks for itself.
How could any human being counter October 7th? Enter Khalil al-Hayya, the deputy leader of Hamas, interviewed by the BBC's International Editor, Jeremy Bowen, in the safety for al-Hayya of Qatar. Al-Hayya argued that October 7th was necessary in order to place the issue of Palestinian statehood back on the global agenda. As to Hamas actions on the day, he excused violence against civilians as individual Hamas fighters getting out of control, and suggested that civilians were taken hostage only as Hamas could not find enough Israeli soldiers.
But here is the rub: al-Hayya contended that Israel's occupation of land Palestinians believed was theirs was at the root of the violence and killing in the Middle East.
In other words, Israel has no right to exist.
If this is a settled position from Hamas as one of Iran's proxies alongside the other proxies and Iran itself, then Israel can periodically degrade military opposition, but will never through military action alone be able to achieve the long-term secure peace it craves.
There is one approach being discussed that seems plausible in theory, and this is the use of military force to undermine the Iranian leadership and achieve regime change to a conciliatory government and maybe even the two-state solution. This was illustrated by Netanyahu posing as a great statesman and essaying to speak to the 'Persian people', in other words westernised Iran before the Islamist regime took control. But leaving aside the futility of this line being proclaimed by a politically busted flush, it can't be achieved without superhuman Western diplomacy and the cooperation of Saudi Arabia.
In fact, that scale of diplomacy is the only thing that offers a safe, long-term future for Israel. It was a political carve-up by the West that brought the fragile country into existence - the West owes it to Israel to find the long-term solution and save its people from forever living on their nerves.
.........
The author is a writer, speaker, historian, and former Managing Partner of a City law firm.