Impartiality and the BBC

This article appears in the new issue of the Jerusalem Report, dated 10 January 2022

Each new year brings with it a host of special anniversaries.  In 2022 few are likely to make a greater splash than the celebrations marking the centenary of the British Broadcasting Corporation.  

Today, the BBC is one of the largest and most influential broadcasting organizations in the world.  As well as serving the UK, it enjoys a massive global reach, transmitting entertainment, information, news and current events via TV, radio and the internet to audiences measured in hundreds of millions. Yet it continues to struggle with the requirement, built into its very DNA, to operate to the highest standards of objectivity, impartiality and lack of bias.  This is a problem that has haunted it for nearly half of its existence. As recently as 29 October 2021 the BBC published a new 10-point plan aimed at countering claims of bias and raising standards on impartiality across the organization.

Much of the year 1922 in Britain was taken with the business of getting broadcasting up and running in a way that avoided the chaos and commercialism that had marked its birth in the USA.  The British Broadcasting Company, as it was first known, was formed on 18 October 1922, and after several weeks of test transmissions, on 14 November Britain’s first radio station, using the call-sign 2LO, began broadcasting from Marconi House in London. 

But in the States a Pittsburgh station (later known as KDKA) had been on the air since 1920.  Others had followed, and by 1922 most US stations were being financed by the sale of advertising airtime.  This "American Plan" was rejected by all those involved in establishing  broadcasting in the UK.  Instead a so-called “British Plan” was devised to finance the new development – a licence fee to be imposed on the use of wireless sets. 

The result was that by the end of 1922 there were more than 500 radio stations broadcasting in the US, and just one – the BBC – in the UK.  And that’s the way it stayed in Britain until the introduction of commercial TV in 1955.

The new-born BBC was defined from its start by the high moral tone set by its first Director General, John Reith. 

Reith summarized the nascent BBC's purpose as to “inform, educate and entertain”. The order of priority was deliberate. To his way of thinking, entertainment was far from broadcasting’s main purpose. Informing and educating the public was of far greater importance. His principles live on to this day in the BBC’s mission statement, which runs: "to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.”

     From its earliest days Reith successfully established and maintained the independence of the BBC from political interference, and by 1939, when the UK went to war with Germany, the BBC’s reputation for accuracy, objectivity and impartiality was firmly established.

Throughout World War II the BBC broadcast to Nazi-occupied Europe in a multiplicity of languages, and people all over the continent literally risked their lives to hear the truth from London.  In addition, the BBC’s shortwave transmissions covered the world.  At its peak it was broadcasting across the globe in some 80 languages.  The wartime reputation that the BBC acquired of honesty, objectivity, and lack of bias is the bedrock on which today’s BBC stands.  Regrettably, in the more recent past the structure has wobbled badly on its foundations.

In defining the principles which underlie its editorial guidelines, the corporation says: “Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest. We are committed to achieving the highest standards of due accuracy and impartiality …”

There’s an old English saying: “Fine words butter no parsnips”. In other words, it’s not what you say that counts, but what you do. And there is no doubt that, at some point during the 1960s-1970s, something began to go very wrong within the BBC.  Not a deliberate policy, perhaps, but reflecting a general shift to the left among the opinion-forming élite, the BBC’s editorial standards came to be dominated by what became known as “political correctness” – an unspoken consensus of ultra left-leaning views. 

In 2010 Mark Thompson, one-time Director General of the BBC, admitted: "In the BBC I joined 30 years ago there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left. The organization did struggle then with impartiality."

This shift to the left permeated the BBC’s output across many types of programming including domestic political comment and even comedy.  It was no more starkly apparent than in its coverage of the Middle East in general, and Israel in particular.  The Six-Day War in 1967 marked a turning point. Until then, Israel’s kibbutz movement had been much admired in left-wing circles, and Israel itself had been seen as the brave little nation fighting off enemies intent on its destruction. With Israel conclusively victorious, a significant sector of UK public opinion shifted in favour of the Palestinians – the party now perceived as the “underdogs”, or more pertinently in terms of emerging left-wing ideology, as victims.

The philosophy that finally dominated left-wing thinking was termed “intersectionality”.  It asserted that all victims in whatever context – ethnic, sexual, economic, political – were interrelated and to be supported.  If you are opposed to one form of discrimination, the doctrine ran, you must oppose all.   Palestinians were perceived to be victims of Israeli oppression, so it became de rigueur for left-wing activists to carry the Palestinian flag and pro-Palestinian placards in mass demonstrations on a whole variety of topics, most having no connection with the Middle East.

Reflecting this, the BBC’s editorial stance began to shift significantly into the politically correct pro-Palestinian mode.  Eventually it became obvious that the corporation was no longer adhering to its much vaunted high standards of impartiality. In April 2004 the Israeli government wrote to the BBC accusing its Middle East correspondent, Orla Guerin, of antisemitism and "total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups" over a report on a 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber.

 A British lawyer, Trevor Asserson, became increasingly incensed with what appeared to be the BBC’s obvious departure from its declared principles. 

Asserting that “the BBC’s coverage of the Middle East is infected by an apparent widespread antipathy toward Israel,”  Asserson commissioned a series of in-depth studies to determine if indeed the BBC’s coverage was partial and biased.  For a seven-week period in 2001, his team recorded the bulk of the BBC’s Middle East news output on TV and radio, and for comparison they simultaneously recorded reports from a variety of other sources.  Their conclusion: the BBC was in frequent breach of its obligations under its charter and broadcasting licence to be unbiased and impartial.

           In one of his reports Asserson wrote: "In private conversations with senior BBC journalists, we have been told that anti-Israel feeling is rife within the BBC. Israel is considered a hated state. Anybody who has a different view has great difficulty being heard or getting his story out… It would, however, be naïve to think that there is a stated, written BBC policy to be anti-Israel…In the BBC's anti-Israeli atmosphere, the system works informally. It is full of reporters holding left-wing, so-called 'liberal' viewpoints, including very negative ones about Israel. They then recruit people under them who have a similar outlook. In this way, the liberal left-wing system propagates itself.” 

Trevor Asserson’s reports, matched by vociferous Palestinian claims of pro-Israel bias in the BBC, finally led the corporation to commission an investigation and report from one of its senior journalists, Malcolm Balen.

Balen examined hundreds of hours of broadcast material, both TV and radio, analyzing the content in minute detail.  This exhaustive study resulted in a 20,000-word report.  At the end of 2004 it was given highly restricted circulation within the top echelons of the BBC, but thereafter it was treated as Top Secret and locked away.  No details of its findings were released to the media.  All the same Keith Dovkants, a journalist working for the London Evening Standard, later claimed that elements of the report had been leaked, “including Balen's conclusion that the BBC's Middle East coverage had been biased against Israel”.

 “The enormity of this can hardly be overstated,” wrote Dovkants. “Apart from the corporation's legal obligation to be impartial, it had struggled for years to counter allegations that its reporting favoured the Palestinians. The claims meshed with attacks on the BBC for being Left-leaning…Bosses at the corporation ordered Balen's report to be locked away.”

Finally, after repeated legal applications for its release under the UK Freedom of Information Act – actions defended by the corporation at a cost of over £330,000 – in 2012 the House of Lords, then the UK’s supreme court, ruled that as “a document held for journalistic purposes”, the report was explicitly excluded from the requirements of the Act.  So it has never been published, but calls to the BBC to release it continue to be made.

It was only very slowly that the Balen report began to affect BBC editorial standards for the better. In October 2004 BBC journalist, Barbara Plett, described herself in a radio report as weeping when she saw a frail Yasser Arafat being evacuated to France for medical treatment.  Complaints of bias against Plett were at first rejected by the BBC, but a year later the relevant BBC committee ruled that Plett’s comments “breached the requirements of due impartiality”, and the then BBC director of news apologized for what she described as "an editorial misjudgment".

During Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008-2009, when the media took to charging Israel with “disproportionate” military activity, and later of war crimes, Israel’s case largely went by default as far as the BBC was concerned. In April 2009 a series of complaints of inaccuracy and anti-Israel bias were brought against the BBC’s Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen. On investigation the charges of bias were not sustained, but three complaints of inaccuracy were fully or partially upheld by the BBC.

In 2012, during Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza, the BBC seemed to present a more balanced view of the conflict. Their reports included something of Israel’s perspective, although the general impression left on the TV and radio audience was of a triumphant Hamas upholding the “armed struggle” against Israel and, as a principal partner in negotiating Egypt’s peace plan, winning valuable concessions in the cease-fire.

During Operation Protective Edge in 2014 the BBC clearly tried to ensure that an Israeli point of view was included in reports of the conflict. Its newscasters adopted a sharper edge in their questioning of Palestinian spokespeople. Moreover, they located an experienced journalist within Israel to balance the overall narrative.

The current effort by the BBC to renew its commitment to the principles of impartiality embedded in its constitution stems from the appointment in June 2020 of a new BBC Director General.  Tim Davie came to the post publicly committed to restoring public trust in the BBC.
 His new “action plan on impartiality and editorial standards”, published on 29 October,  amounts to a series of guidelines to staff on how to achieve his objective.  “Impartiality,” he told BBC staff, “is sacrosanct.”  On joining the corporation, he said, staff were required to leave their personal political views “at the door.”  He was prepared to dismiss anyone who breached the guidelines.  The BBC had to be “free from political bias”.

To underline how seriously the BBC takes the matter, the new plan commits the corporation to regular checks on the impartiality of its output, to be carried out by external experts.  Davie seems to have rediscovered the moral compass that guided the BBC in its early years, and was then apparently mislaid.  Could there possibly be a more appropriate 100th birthday present? 

All the same, another apt English saying does spring to mind: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

The continuing war against Islamic State

On December 14 two Typhoon fighter aircraft of the UK’s Royal Air Force were patrolling over Syria and Iraq, when they noticed an unidentified drone flying towards allied troops on the ground at the al-Tanf coalition base, in Syria.  Deeming the drone a threat, the RAF conducted its first air-to-air missile firing in almost 40 years. 

The RAF were participating in Operation Shader, Britain’s contribution to the global coalition against Islamic State (IS).  UK defense minister, Ben Wallace, said: "This strike is an impressive demonstration of the RAF's ability to take out hostile targets in the air which pose a threat to our forces. We continue to do everything we can alongside our coalition partners to stamp out the terrorist threat and protect our personnel and our partners."

            The partners that Wallace was referring to are the members of the Global Coalition against Islamic State (or Daesh, as it is known in many Muslim countries).  The body was formed under US auspices in September 2014, its sole purpose to degrade and ultimately defeat IS. The coalition, consisting today of no less than 79 countries and 5 international organizations like the EU, NATO, and the Arab League, is engaged in countering IS on all fronts, weakening its financial and economic infrastructure; preventing the flow of foreign terrorist fighters across borders; helping restore essential public services to areas liberated from IS; and countering the group’s on-line presence and its propaganda.

Their combined efforts have diminished IS’s military capability, territorial control, leadership, financial resources, and online influence. In helping to stabilize territory liberated from IS, they are sharing information and collaborating in law enforcement, countering terrorist recruitment, neutralizing IS narrative, and providing humanitarian assistance to communities suffering from displacement and conflict.

All of which attests to the continuing threat IS represents to the civilized world. Following its defeat on the ground in Syria and Iraq, and the killing of its first leader in an air strike, IS is slowly regrouping, forming sleeper cells to launch attacks, waging low-level guerrilla insurgency and mobilizing new support.  Between January 2020 and September 2021 IS claimed an average of 90 operations per month in Iraq alone.  In short, it continues to be a highly active and lethal force.  Iraq, Syria, and the Sinai are its three main hotspots. but it continues to operate sporadically in Yemen, Somalia, and Libya, while in the past two years terrorist attacks linked to IS have been reported in Niger, the UK, Austria, Pakistan and New Zealand.

IS’s main fields of operation are in rural Iraq and Syria – the so-called “Iraq Province” and “al Sham Province.”  Despite what these names suggest, IS does not control them.  In the Sinai Peninsula – its so-called  “Sinai Province”– IS maintains a low-level insurgency in hopes of wearing down the Egyptian forces.  

Its strategy in these areas was set out in its official weekly newsletter, al Naba.  Distinguishing between guerrilla warfare (harb al isabat) and state-building (tamkin), the article explains that during the collapse of the territorial caliphate, IS decided to revert to guerrilla warfare. The new IS leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi has maintained a low profile, but just over two years after the death of its founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, IS remains a potent threat, not only to communities in Syria and Iraq, but in Africa and more widely. 

            Logic would suggest that foremost among the nations banded together under US auspices to defeat IS would be Israel.  After all, IS is dedicated to Israel’s destruction, while Israel must see IS as akin to the many terrorist bodies it declares enemies like Hamas and Hezbollah.  Yet Israel is not one of the 84 members of the Coalition. 

            As Eran Etzion, once head of policy planning in Israel’s foreign ministry, wrote in 2016, Israel and IS have demonstrated high levels of restraint toward one another. Israel has refrained from joining the Global Coalition, while IS has never mounted a serious attack on Israel itself. Five years later, that remains the case.

Etzion believed that the two parties were held in a sort of strategic balance, each side’s political priorities inhibiting direct action against the other.  IS’s core interest is the intra-Muslim fight for religious and political dominance. In this struggle Israel is almost irrelevant.  Back in pre-Abraham Accord days, Etzion believed IS saw Israel as a common denominator between itself and its Muslim opponents, and so counterproductive for its purposes. If or when IS re-established its caliphate, then would be the time for “the march on Jerusalem”.

As for Israel, its priority was its clear and present enemies and threats – namely Iran and its nuclear and geopolitical ambitions. Israel was concentrating on denying Iran the ability to acquire a nuclear arsenal and strengthen its political hold on the region by arming Hezbollah in Lebanon, Bashar Assad in Syria, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen.

Israel’s concentration on the threat from Iran has not, until recently, swayed US or most world opinion.  It was considered more important to eliminate residual IS influence and activity in Syria, Iraq and, until its takeover by the Taliban, Afghanistan. By reducing IS power and status, global terrorist activity that linked itself to IS would be inhibited. 

The world’s attention has refocused recently on Iran, but the anti-IS action program of the Global Coalition – now a structured organization conducting well-coordinated activities across a wide field – continues unabated. It will surely succeed finally in overcoming the nihilistic ambitions of this terrorist organization.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 28 December 2021:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-689915

Published in Eurasia Review, 8 January 2022
https://www.eurasiareview.com/08012022-the-continuing-war-against-islamic-state-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 9 January 2022
https://www.eurasiareview.com/08012022-the-continuing-war-against-islamic-state-oped/

Published in Jewish Business News, 7 January 2022
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/01/07/the-continuing-war-against-islamic-state/

Gilbert and Sullivan – a significant anniversary

 This article appears in the Jerusalem Post weekend magazine for 24 December.  It has been posted on this blog for the convenience of G&S fans

 

                                  Is Life a boon?
                                    If so, it must befall
                                    That Death, whene’er he call

                                    Must call too soon.

These words are inscribed on a bronze bust that adorns the Victoria Embankment gardens in the heart of London.  The memorial, which includes a sobbing woman representing the Muse of music, is to Sir Arthur Sullivan, the eminent 19th century composer, who formed one of the most enduring partnerships in musical history with the playwright and poet, W S Gilbert.  The words are by Gilbert himself, and are taken from the most serious of the operettas the two wrote together: The Yeomen of the Guard – the only piece where a leading character falls to the ground at the final curtain, either dead of a broken heart, or overcome by grief, according to how the audience views it.

William Schwenck Gilbert was a prolific and very successful playwright in mid-Victorian England.  Arthur Sullivan had achieved great fame as a composer of classical music.   They were introduced to each other in 1869, and agreed to collaborate on a light musical piece of theatre, which Gilbert called Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old.  The first night of this very first comic opera by W S Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan took place on December 23, 1871.  So December 23 this year, 2021, marks the 150th anniversary of this auspicious event.

The anniversary is of great significance, even though history records that Thespis closed after just 64 performances, and that this first collaborative effort was so unimportant in Sullivan’s eyes that he did not even keep a copy of the score. It has been lost. All that survives are three musical passages, one of them the chorus ”Climbing over rocky mountains” which Gilbert  transposed into a later comic opera, The Pirates of Penzance.

When the run of Thespis ended, Gilbert and Sullivan went their separate ways. It was to be four years before an enterprising musical impresario, Richard D’Oyly Carte, brought them together again.  Carte was mounting a production of Offenbach’s operetta La Perichole which, by itself, did not provide a full evening’s entertainment.  He needed a “filler”, and he asked Gilbert for a one-act piece which Sullivan could set to music.  The result was Trial by Jury, a musical delight which was first performed on March 25, 1875.  It was wildly successful and quickly became the main attraction.  Audiences flocked to the Royalty Theatre in London not for the Offenbach, but for the latest theatrical sensation.

Trial by Jury takes place in a topsy-turvy courtroom, in which a young Lothario is being sued for breach of promise of marriage.  The Judge starts the proceedings by explaining how he had reached his high position. As a penniless young lawyer, he’d needed a push up the ladder, so he decided to marry “a rich attorney’s elderly, ugly daughter.”  The rich attorney, delighted at getting her off his hands, had assured him that “she could very well pass for forty-three in the dusk with the light behind her.”  The Judge confides that, when it suited him, he’d thrown her over, “and now, if you please, I’m ready to try this breach of promise of marriage.”

When the jilted bride-to-be appears in court, dressed in her wedding gown and accompanied by her bridesmaids, she wins the hearts of the judge and all twelve jurymen.  They are quite unmoved by the defendant’s claim that it is quite in keeping with the laws of nature to “love this young lady today, and love that young lady tomorrow.  Nor,” he continues, appealing to their common sense, “is it the act of a sinner, when breakfast is taken away, to turn your attention to dinner.” 

The case collapses when the Judge decides to marry the young lady himself.

D’Oyly Carte immediately appreciated the cultural potential of a working collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan and –­ just as important – the business potential. He commissioned a full-length comic opera from them and formed his Comedy Opera Company to produce it. So was born the three-man partnership that was to create a fabulously successful theatrical phenomenon on both sides of the Atlantic. 

The Sorcerer, which ran for 178 performances, was considered a success and encouraged the partnership to proceed to a new piece.  HMS Pinafore opened at the Opera Comique in London on May 25, 1878 and ran for 571 performances.  It became an international sensation.  In the absence of any copyright agreements between the UK and the USA, the opera was pirated widely in America.  When Gilbert and Sullivan hastened over the Atlantic to produce their “authorized version” on Broadway, they found no less than 42 companies performing versions of HMS Pinafore across the States.

In Pinafore another high-ranking official – in this case the First Lord of the Admiralty – explains how he reached his eminent position despite knowing nothing about the navy and never having been to sea.  Sir Joseph Porter’s sung explanation was greeted with delight by a public keenly aware that Britain’s prime minister had recently appointed just such an individual to just this position.

         Sir Joseph confides that he began his ascent to high office as an office boy but eventually, gaining some legal knowledge. he had passed his examination, and was taken into partnership.

                                         And that junior partnership, I ween
                                        Was the only ship I ever had seen.
                                        But that kind of ship so suited me
                                        That now I am the ruler of the Queen’s Navy.

Pinafore's extraordinary popularity in Britain, America and elsewhere was followed by ten further Gilbert and Sullivan works.  The outstanding piece in later years was The Mikado which ran for 672 performances in the new Savoy Theatre, constructed in the heart of London’s West End by D’Oyly Carte especially to house the G&S comic operas.  Set in Japan, but essentially a satire on Victorian England, The Mikado marked the high-water mark of the G&S collaboration.  

In a song which became famous the world over, the Mikado confides that his “object all sublime”, which he reckoned he could achieve “in time”, was to “make the punishment fit the crime”.  The crimes he lists – various annoyances common in middle class English society – extracted roars of delighted recognition from the audience.

In all, fourteen works resulted from the G&S collaboration. With the exception of Thespis which is lost (although various attempts at reconstituting it have been tried, using the surviving musical fragments), all have defied the passage of time, and continue to be performed.  G&S companies – professional, semi-professional and amateur – flourish across the English-speaking world, and not only there. The operettas have been translated into scores of languages, including Hebrew and Yiddish.

The Gilbert and Sullivan Yiddish Light Opera Company was founded in New York in 1983, although it had its origins thirty years before.  In their productions the characters speak a mixture of Yiddish and English.  In HMS Pinafore Sir Joseph Porter becomes “Reb Yosi Yitzhak Nimitzbaum”.  The song “He is an Englishman” that features prominently in the piece becomes “Er iz a Guter Yid” (He’s a good Jew).  The company have produced recordings of their Yiddish productions of The Mikado, HMS Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance – the last under the title of “Di Yam Gazlonim” (Thieves of the Sea).

Coincidentally, it was also in 1983 that Robert Binder founded the Jerusalem Gilbert and Sullivan Society and affiliated it to the official London-based G&S Society.  He was building on the pioneer G&S enterprise, the Light Opera Group of the Negev (LOGON), based in Beer Sheva.  LOGON had begun mounting G&S operetta productions throughout Israel in 1981, including performances to sold-out houses in Jerusalem.  LOGON remains a flourishing theatrical company.  With an interesting history and in slightly new guise, the Jerusalem G&S Society also remains a thriving Israeli theatrical enterprise. 

In those early days the Jerusalem G&S Society consisted of a handful of enthusiasts who met in each other’s homes to listen to G&S recordings, and who mounted an occasional performance, or a modest, sometimes truncated production.  It was only when Paul Salter, a G&S aficionado, arrived from England on aliyah in 2000 that the society took wing.  It soon formed a theatrical company to stage the comic operas.

The company devised a musical biography of Gilbert and Sullivan that they performed at the Khan Theatre, Jerusalem under the auspices of JEST (the long-established Jerusalem English Speaking Theatre), and then took this to the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton, England – an annual event that attracts performing companies and audiences from around the world. 

On their return to Israel the company decided to present a full-length, fully-staged version of The Mikado with 30 performers, at the newly opened Hirsch Theater, Beit Shmuel.  They originally scheduled four performances, but demand for tickets was so great they extended the run. 

So began an annual G&S production as part of JEST’s season.  The Mikado was followed by The Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, HMS Pinafore, and Patience.  All were performed in English at first, but one of their volunteers, Reuven Ben-Shalom, started translating the libretti into Hebrew.  His work forms the basis of the surtitles which are now projected above the stage at each performance. 

The Gilbert and Sullivan operas, though assuredly rooted in Victorian England, have proved themselves timeless.  Well over a century after they were first performed, they continue to be admired – perhaps even adored – by performers and audiences across the globe.  A website run by the Gilbert and Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island lists more than 200 theatrical companies performing G&S operettas around the world.  Their list, they say, “is lengthy, though doubtless far from complete.”

Anyone who can access YouTube these days has the complete G&S canon available to them, each operetta performed on TV, on stage or on recordings. There is a wide choice of theatrical companies, professional and amateur, to choose from.  A few productions include subtitles, but to enjoy those that do not either summon up the libretto on a tablet, or acquire one of the volumes containing the complete G&S libretti.  With book or tablet on your lap, you can appreciate Gilbert’s wit and his literary skill to the full.

I remember my delight as a teenager in seeing the comic operas for the first time.  Back in the mid-twentieth century the D’Oyly Carte company used to run repertory seasons at the old Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, since rebuilt.  Week after week I’d make my way there to see a new opera and to delight in the performances of Martyn Green, Peter Pratt, Darrell Fancourt and the rest of the G&S stalwarts, the orchestra under the baton of Isidore Godfrey.  Their performances are preserved on recordings made in their heyday.

Whether you are so versed in the G&S canon that you can repeat the dialogue with the performers, or whether you await the inestimable joy of coming to the comic operas for the first time, Gilbert and Sullivan retain their appeal.  They are here to stay.  It is highly appropriate that we take a moment to celebrate the 150th anniversary of their very first collaboration.   

Published in the Jerusalem Post weekend magazine as "Historic British opera duo's work comes to Jerusalem", 24 December 2021:

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-689503

The attack on Latakia

        When the news broke on December 7 that the Syrian port of Latakia had been bombed, and that an Israeli military spokesperson had declined to comment, a natural first reaction was that this air strike was the latest of hundreds over the past few years, targeting Syrian government facilities in receipt of Iranian-supplied military hardware.  Although Latakia port is a vital gateway into Syria for goods of all kinds, it had not featured as a main reception point for Iranian weaponry, and had not been attacked in the past.  Perhaps intelligence had revealed suspect cargo arriving from Iran.

Then warning lights began flashing in the media.  Weren’t Latakia and the Russian military somehow connected?  Was this attack much more dangerous than at first appeared? Was Israel sailing too close to the wind? 

The key to the delicate situation lies in the Russian military presence in Syria.  Close Russo-Syrian relationships go back a long way – as far back as July 1944, two years before the French finally withdrew and Syria was an independent state.  Soviet support sustained the new nation in its early years, and in 1971 Syria’s then president, Hafez al-Assad, granted the USSR permission to open a naval military base in the port city of Tartus, giving it a presence in the Mediterranean and easy access to the Suez Canal.  To bolster their close connection, in 1980 Syria and the Soviet Union signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation.  With the Russian Federation recognized by Syria as the legal successor to the Soviet Union, that treaty remains in operation to this day.  

This intimate relationship, secured by pact, played an important part in the decision by Russian president Vladimir Putin to back Syria’s Bashar al-Assad from the start of the Syrian civil war, and later in Russia’s military intervention in 2015 in support of Assad against the groups seeking a democratic future for their country.  It also explains how Putin was able to consolidate, and later extend, his military presence in Syria.

When Putin intervened in the fighting, Russian air cover was located in the airbase at Hmeimim, which is situated in Latakia province, about 15 miles south-east of Latakia city.  During a surprise visit to Hmeimim in December 2017, Putin announced that he had signed a new 49-year deal with the Syrian government.  Russia’s air base at Hmeimim, together with its naval facility in Tartus, were to be expanded and could henceforth be used "on a permanent basis." 

A glance at the map of Syria’s Mediterranean coastline shows Latakia, Hmeimim and Tartus running north-south down a 52-mile stretch of coast road.  In short Russia’s vital naval and air bases in Syria are literally within striking distance of Latakia port, hit by airstrikes in the early hours of December 7.

Although Israel rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations, it is generally accepted that Israel has staged hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled Syria over the years.  What Israel does say is that its strikes on Iran-provided facilities and weapons inside Syria are justified to protect its citizens on the country’s northern borders, and that it attacks arms shipments it believes are bound for Syrian government forces, Hezbollah or Iranian-backed militias.  Israel rarely launches strikes close to the permanent Russian military and naval bases in government-controlled Syria.

The situation may appear alarming, with the potential to spiral out of control, but there is in fact a system in place aimed at avoiding any accidental clashes between Israel and Russia in Syria. 

Back in September 2015 then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited Putin in Moscow.  Briefing Israeli reporters after the meeting, Netanyahu said he had come with the aim of preventing misunderstandings between IDF and Russian forces in Syria, and that he and Putin had “agreed on a mechanism to prevent such misunderstandings”. They had decided that to avoid accidentally trading fire in Syria, their military activity would be coordinated. 

That understanding was confirmed as recently as October, when prime minister Naftali Bennett met Putin in Sochi.  They agreed that the two nations would continue to implement the so-called “deconfliction mechanism” that prevents Israeli and Russian forces from clashing in Syria. Housing minister Ze’ev Elkin, who accompanied Bennett, confirmed that the “very wide” talks regarding the situation in Syria were focused on “safeguarding the coordination mechanism.”

The media reported that during the meeting Putin agreed to Israel maintaining its freedom of action in Syria, but had asked for additional advanced warning of strikes.

            There is little doubt. therefore, that had Israel intended to bomb Latakia port on December 7, Russian military intelligence would have been informed well in advance, and that their nearby airbase at Hmeimim would have been in no danger.  A safeguard system is up and running, but the potential for disaster lies just a human error away – as, for example, in 2018 when a Syrian air defense gunner, aiming for Israeli jets on a bombing run, downed a Russian military plane instead, killing all 15 people on board. 

            Until Syria can be stabilized and disconnected from Iran’s baleful involvement, avoiding a potentially disastrous military clash between Russia and Israel is dependent on the current precarious arrangements.  The main consolation is that they have not failed, so far.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and Jerusalem Post on-Line, 19 December 2021:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/could-israeli-strike-against-syria-harm-relations-with-russia-comment-689202

Published in Eurasia Review, 24 December 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/24122021-the-attack-on-latakia-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 24 December 2021:

https://mpc-journal.org/the-attack-on-latakia/

Published in Jewish Business News, 24 December 2021:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/12/24/the-attack-on-latakia/

Morocco-Israel normalization – some unforeseen consequences

 

When Benny Gantz made the first formal visit by an Israeli defence minister to Morocco on November 24, he landed in the midst of a political maelstrom. 

The Morocco-Israel normalization deal announced by US President Donald Trump on December 10, 2020, was not without its cost.  The price the US paid to secure Morocco’s signature under the Abraham Accords was to recognize Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara. In doing so America agreed to defy the UN, the African Union and most world opinion, which holds that Western Sahara’s future should be settled by a UN-supervised referendum of the Sahrawi people.  Morocco’s neighbor, Algeria, felt particularly aggrieved.  Algeria has long supported the Sahrawis of Western Sahara who, backed by their militant body the Polisario Front, are seeking independence from Moroccan rule.

After the normalization deal relations between Algeria and Morocco, uncertain for decades, deteriorated badly.  Since mid-2021 the two countries have severed diplomatic relations, recalled their ambassadors, closed their borders, and blocked their airspaces.  Then on November 1 Algeria ended the contract which delivers gas to Spain by way of a pipeline that runs through Morocco and had guaranteed it 10 percent of its gas supply.  That will now be lost.

Algeria's president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, issued a statement confirming that he had ordered the contract not to be renewed "in light of the hostile behaviour of [Morocco] which undermines national unity."  Spain will continue to receive its gas from Algeria by way of a second smaller pipeline augmented by liquified natural gas imported by sea.

On the very day the gas contract ended, the difficult situation between Morocco and Algeria deteriorated still further. Three Algerian truck drivers travelling on a desert highway through the Polisario-held area of Western Sahara were killed by a drone strike. 

“Several factors," ran an official Algerian statement, “indicate that the Moroccan occupation forces in Western Sahara carried out this cowardly assassination with a sophisticated weapon. The killings will not go unpunished."

Morocco denies carrying out the attack, although it is in possession of combat drones.  According to the Royal Moroccan Armed Services website, Morocco took delivery of Turkish-made Bayraktar drones in September 2020. 

This was the chaotic situation that greeted Gantz as he landed in Morocco.  However the furore was not permitted to disrupt the purpose of his visit.  On November 24 Israel and Morocco signed a landmark memorandum of understanding that lays the foundation for security cooperation, intelligence sharing and sales of military hardware.

Later Gantz said that the agreement was “very significant and will allow us to exchange ideas, enter joint projects and enable Israeli military exports here.”

When Salah Goudjil, president of the Algerian senate, learned of the new security agreement, which will make it easier for Morocco to acquire hi-tech exports from Israel and allow future arms deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he claimed that Gantz’s visit had “targeted” Algeria, and that Algeria’s enemies were intent on undermining the nation.

The antagonism between Morocco and Algeria centres on the past, present and future of Western Sahara, a large chunk of territory appended to the south of Morocco, with a 700-mile long Atlantic coastline. It was once a Spanish colony.  In 1966 the UN General Assembly asked Spain to hold a referendum of the Sahrawi population on the issue of self-determination. Instead, in 1975 Spain relinquished control of the region to a joint Moroccan-Mauritanian administration.  By then, though, a flourishing Sahrawi nationalist movement called the Polisario Front had sprung into existence.  Declaring the region to be a Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the Polisario launched armed resistance to the new regime.  Four years of combat were enough for Mauritania, which withdrew its claims on the territory, leaving Morocco in de facto control. 

x

What followed was a further twelve years of fighting between Morocco and the Polisario.  In 1991, a UN-brokered truce ended the conflict.  As part of the deal, Morocco promised to hold a referendum on independence.  This has not yet taken place.  Meanwhile the UN, maintaining that the Sahrawis have a right to self-determination, considers the Polisario Front to be the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people.  The African Union regards Western Sahara as an independent state.  In short, until the Trump deal Morocco stood alone in its claim on Western Sahara.  Now it is supported by both the US and Israel.

According to a statement from the White House issued at the time, as a quid pro quo for Morocco normalizing its relationship with Israel, Trump "reaffirmed his support for Morocco's serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal as the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute over the Western Sahara territory, and as such the president recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara territory."

The Moroccan autonomy proposal, first mooted in 2006, suggests that the Sahrawis could run their government under Moroccan sovereignty, with Morocco controlling only defence and foreign affairs. When the normalization deal with Israel was announced, a White House statement maintained that an “independent Sahrawi state is not a realistic option for resolving the conflict” and that “genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the only feasible solution.”

One experienced commentator on North African affairs believes that Morocco and Algeria are on the cusp of turning a cold war into armed conflict. He believes the two nations have distinct and potentially confrontational visions for the region.  Algeria views it as still in the process of casting off its colonial shackles.  Morocco, under its benevolent monarchy, has acquired a liberal, pragmatic approach to political affairs. He believes that relations between the two states have deteriorated to such an extent that armed conflict is a real possibility.

In such an eventuality, Israel would certainly not wish to be drawn into military operations, but in light of the new agreement with Morocco it would need to consider just how far its support could go.

Published in Eurasia Review, 12 December 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/10122021-morocco-israel-normalization-some-unforeseen-consequences-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 9 December 2021:

https://mpc-journal.org/morocco-israel-normalization-some-unforeseen-consequences/

Published in Jewish Business News, 10 December 2021:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/12/10/morocco-israel-normalization-some-unforeseen-consequences/

The threat from China – should Israel act?

This article appears in the Jerusalem Post of Sunday, 12 December 2021 

          On 6 December US intelligence warned that Beijing intends to set up a permanent military base on the coast of Equatorial Guinea, giving it an Atlantic naval capability opposite the US.  The announcement made sense of the news, the same day, that the US has decided its diplomats will boycott the 2022 Beijing winter Olympics­ – officially in protest at China’s poor human rights record. 

As at December 2021 no less than 140 countries, ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, have signed a formal memorandum of understanding with China, and joined its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).  Israel, heavily involved with Chinese companies and government agencies across a wide range of projects, has not.  But Sino-Israeli connections are now so extensive that to many it seems only a matter of time before they too are formalized.  There are some good reasons why this might be a step too far. 

   China’s Belt and Road Initiative, adopted by the Chinese government in 2013, is the centre-piece of President Xi Jinping’s foreign policy.  Originally dubbed One Belt One Road (OBOR), Belt and Road incorporates a heady vision of massive Chinese investment, and thus in-depth involvement, in countries across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.  Belt and Road, considered by some the largest infrastructure and investment project in history, is regarded by others as a Machiavellian plan to achieve eventual Chinese world domination.  

The US and the UK regard China’s expanding global influence as of great concern.  In November 2020 the US Secretary of State’s office published a 72-page document which it called: “The Elements of the China Challenge”.  Amid seven examples of what the authors call China’s “quest for preeminence in world affairs”, they cite the Belt and Road initiative.  The idea, they believe, is to expand foreign markets for Chinese companies, thus drawing nations, and particularly their political and economic elites, into Beijing’s geopolitical orbit. Sometimes BRI projects involve 50- to 100-year relationships that confer power long-term to China over key parts of the host country’s infrastructure.

On December 1, in his first public address since becoming chief of MI6, Britain’s secret intelligence service made famous in the James Bond films, Richard Moore declared that China was the agency’s “single greatest priority”.  He cited Beijing’s large-scale espionage activities in the UK, but also China’s carefully coordinated plan to lure poor countries into what Moore termed “debt and data traps”, a policy designed to consolidate Chinese influence across the globe.

Israel is strategically located at the junction of three continents – Europe, Asia and Africa – which perhaps explains China’s particular interest in developing projects in Israel. In reviving the historic “Silk Road”, China acknowledges Israel’s potential for connecting China to the west. (“Belt” refers to these ancient overland trade routes; “Road” to new Indo-Pacific sea routes).

          A recent study by Tel Aviv university analyzes China’s economic involvement in Israel. It identified no less than 463 investments, mergers and acquisitions by Chinese companies in Israel from 2002 to December 2020. The study revealed that Chinese state-owned enterprises invest primarily in Israeli infrastructure, while private companies and venture capital funds are more focused on the high-tech sector. Starting from a base of about $1 billion in 2001, China-Israel trade reached a peak of $11.4 billion in 2018. The authors ascribe the small subsequent decline to the coronavirus pandemic, and perhaps to US security-related concerns.

          Washington has certainly indicated misgivings, for example about the new $1.7 billion Haifa port facility built by one Chinese company, to be operated for the next 25 years by another, the Shanghai International Port Group. The idea of Israel cancelling that operating contract has been mooted. Other recent major deals inside Israel include Chinese companies winning the contract to construct parts of the Tel Aviv Light Rail, a $2 billion tender to build the “Med-Red” railway linking Ashdod port with Eilat, and donations of $130 million and $300 million respectively for a Technion research centre and a joint research facility between Tel Aviv and Tsinghua universities. China has also recently acquired a $1 billion controlling stake in Israel's iconic Tnuva dairy company. All of which hands China considerable influence over Israel’s internal development.

The question for Israel is how far it should go in embracing China as a business partner, given American suspicions about China’s true motives. Are all such Chinese investments pieces in a vast jigsaw designed to secure China unassailable political and economic global supremacy?

The West is losing former firm alliances.  Pakistan, once a key Western ally in the war on terror, has become a Chinese client state, following the billions of dollars Islamabad has received for supporting Belt and Road.  When Sri Lanka failed to repay Chinese loans worth $1.3 million, it was forced to hand over a key southern port, Hambantota.  On both the east and west coasts of Africa, China in involved in multi-billion dollar construction projects.

Of particular concern is Beijing’s deepening involvement in Nigeria, a Commonwealth country that has seen its historic ties to Britain superseded by growing dependence on Chinese riches. Beijing has invested around $10 billion in developing Nigeria’s transport infrastructure.  Leading politician, Dr Bukola Saraki, said: “There is a real concern that, without a concerted effort to change this trajectory, our long-term future will lie with China rather than democratic allies like the UK.”

There is a growing recognition by both the US and the UK that more needs to be done to safeguard long-standing alliances against the Chinese marauder.  While many nations continue to succumb to the lure of Chinese gold, giving more weight to immediate benefits than to longer-term dangers, Israel would do well to take the longer view and avoid signing up formally to Belt and Road.  A cooling of Sino-Israeli economic collaboration might also be advisable.

          The well-known warning by the Roman poet Virgil comes to mind: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 12 December: 

2021:https://www.jpost.com/opinion/should-israel-act-on-chinas-threat-688483

Published in Eurasia Review, 17 December 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/17122021-the-threat-from-china-should-israel-act-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 17 December 2021:

https://mpc-journal.org/the-threat-from-china-should-israel-act/

Published in Jewish Business News, 17 December 2021:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/12/17/the-threat-from-china-should-israel-act/

Iran’s nuclear strategy

        The parties to the world’s nuclear deal with Iran, including Iran itself, have started a new round of discussions – the seventh since April 2021, when newly elected US president Joe Biden initiated meetings aimed at America re-entering an updated agreement. The talks – if you can call a meeting “talks” where the US and Iran do not converse face-to-face but only through intermediaries – reconvened on November 29 in Vienna.

It was in 2015, in an effort to restrain Iran’s nuclear program, that the permanent members of the UN Security Council together with Germany concluded an agreement with Iran known as the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).  

No doubt all those involved, including then-US President Barack Obama, had the very best of intentions. They were convinced that with that deal, which incorporated a substantial financial boost to Iran, they had put the regime’s nuclear ambitions on hold for at least 15 years, making the world a safer place. Moreover they believed that they had taken an important step toward normalizing relations with Iran – a rogue state proved to have been behind terrorist actions across the world ever since its foundation in 1979 – and bringing it back within the comity of nations.

Donald Trump, soon to be president of the US, disagreed.  He believed the deal was flawed and in effect gave Iran the green light to acquire a nuclear arsenal in the comparatively near future. In May 2018 he withdrew the US from the deal and, adopting instead a policy of maximum pressure, imposed sanctions on Iran.

Speaking on January 8, 2020 he said: “They chanted "death to America" the day the agreement was signed. Then Iran went on a terror spree, funded by the money from the deal, and created hell in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration.”

Much of the world, including the EU and the other parties to the deal, opposed Trump’s withdrawal.  Biden certainly did.  During his presidential campaign he promised, if elected, to move quickly to rejoin the nuclear deal, provided Iran also came back into compliance. In essence that remains the US position, as it resumes the apparently endless rounds of talks with a regime notably more hardline following the recent Iranian presidential election. The Iranian regime has used the hiatus since June to place new limitations on the UN inspectors of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).  The obvious deduction is that Iran has been proceeding apace with its nuclear program in defiance of the deal.

Iran under its new president, Ebrahim Raisi, has already signaled that it does not wish to resume the talks exactly where they left off.  Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said in October: “We don’t want to enter the Vienna negotiations from the deadlock point of the Vienna negotiations”. 

Iran's already announced position – which does not augur well – is that the US must compensate Iran for its withdrawal from the deal, lift all the sanctions imposed since 2015 at once rather than in phases, and provide assurances that no future US administration will back out of the deal.  Given that list of demands, it seems clear that Iran is set on dragging out the negotiating process.

On November 21 Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, traveled to the UK for a 3-day official visit.  In a statement ahead of his trip Herzog wrote: “One issue that demands British-Israeli dialogue is Iran’s race toward nuclear weapons and regional hegemony. Iran does not want dialogue. It is exploiting the world’s willingness to negotiate to buy time. Israel cannot allow the fundamentalists of Tehran to acquire a nuclear bomb. The moderate nations of the Middle East need their allies, including Britain, to engage them in an urgent dialogue on how to stop Iran instead of wasting time on its games.”

For 42 years world leaders have been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to acknowledge what motivates the Iranian regime – namely, the philosophy behind its Islamic revolution of 1979.  Iran’s original Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, affirmed repeatedly that the foundation stone of his convictions, the very purpose of his revolution, was to destroy Western-style democracy and its way of life, and to impose Shia Islam on the whole world.  He identified the United States and Israel, together with the USSR, as prime targets.

“We wish to cause the corrupt roots of Zionism, Capitalism and Communism to wither throughout the world,” said Khomeini.  “We wish, as does God almighty, to destroy the systems which are based on these three foundations, and to promote the Islamic order of the Prophet.”  By this he meant his strict Shia interpretation of Islam, for elsewhere he had declared that the holy city of Mecca, situated in the heart of Sunni Saudi Arabia, was in the hands of “a band of heretics”.

            Ever since 1979 the world could have recognized, if it had had a mind to, that the Iranian regime was engaged in a focused pursuit of these objectives, quite impervious to any other considerations.  Instead wishful thinking has dominated the approach of many of the world’s leaders to Iran, and continues to do so.

“We shall export our revolution to the whole world,” declared Khomeini. “Until the cry 'there is no god but Allah' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”

Pursuit of this fundamental purpose of the Islamic Revolution has involved the state – acting either directly or through proxy militant bodies like Hezbollah or the Houthis – in a succession of acts of terror directed not only against Western targets, but against non-Shia Muslims as well. For decades Iran has also made determined efforts to develop nuclear power, with the aim, never openly acknowledged, of producing nuclear weapons as a vital means of achieving its objectives.

The Sunni Arab world knows its main enemy is Iran – the Abraham Accords attest to that.  Western leaders want to believe in an accommodation with the regime.  A clear-eyed look at the facts shows that this is simply not possible. This Iranian regime is not, and has no intention of ever becoming, one of the comity of civilized nations.  To do so would be to negate the fundamental purposes underlying the revolution, purposes to which the ayatollahs remain unshakably committed. 

To quote President Herzog: “Iran does not want dialogue. It is exploiting the world’s willingness to negotiate to buy time.”

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 2 December 2021, and in the Jerusalem Post on-line:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/irans-nuclear-strategy-opinion-687563

Published in the Eurasia Review, 4 December 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/04122021-irans-nuclear-strategy-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 3 December 2021:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/12/03/irans-nuclear-strategy/

Published in the MPC Journal, 4 December 2021:

https://mpc-journal.org/irans-nuclear-strategy/