The BBC: The story of the world's leading broadcaster

Published in the new issue of the Jerusalem Report, dated 12 August 2024

           The British Broadcasting Corporation marked its 100th anniversary in November 2022.  To mark the occasion David Hendy, Professor Emeritus of Media and Cultural History at the University of Sussex, undertook the mammoth task of producing a history of the organization from its origins right up to its 100th year.

            Something of the sort, but on a much more ambitious scale, had already been attempted.  In 1961 Professor Asa Briggs published the first of his five-volume official history of broadcasting in the UK, and spent the next 35 years on the task.  His fifth volume, bringing the story to 1974, appeared in 1995 and was the last. 

Briggs’s purpose was to recount the story of broadcasting as a whole in the UK.  For its first 30 years or so that meant the story of the BBC.  Unlike America, where competitive commercial radio stations quickly sprang up and multiplied, Britain established just the BBC to develop radio broadcasting for the nation, and it retained its monopoly for both radio and television until the mid-1950s.  Since then the growth of competitive broadcasting organizations and the increasing variety of transmission systems has made any generalized history too complex to contemplate.  No-one has had the temerity to resume the Briggs official history.

Hendy, of course, confines his account to the BBC’s story, and he chooses to do so in a way that emphasizes the human, rather than the organizational or political aspects – though these are certainly not neglected when germane.  He subtitles his work “A People’s History”.

Say “BBC” in Israel, and most informed people will immediately call to mind the charges of anti-Isael bias that have featured in the media over the past half-century or more.  Indeed 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.

These anti-Israel  charges, often associated with particular BBC reports or reporters, have persisted for 50 years or more. 

          In the Six Day War in 1967 the BBC refused for a time to broadcast the reports by Michael Elkins of immediate and massive Israeli victories, because the news editors simply did not believe them.  Over the following years the perceived anti-Israel bias by the BBC gave rise to bodies like BBC Watch, devoted to monitoring BBC programmes (that organization later became Camera-UK), and to individuals like UK-born lawyer Trevor Asserson.

For a seven-week period in 2001, Asserson’s 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 license to be unbiased and impartial.

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.   And locked away it has remained to this day, despite numerous and high-powered attempts to get it released to the public.

Turn to the extensive index in Hendy’s “The BBC”, and you will search in vain for Israel, BBC Watch, bias, Asserson, Balen or Gaza.  No doubt the author would assert, and no doubt with reason, that in a 600-page compass he could not cover every single aspect of the BBC’s story.  But this matter of BBC bias has been central to the Corporation’s existence for so long, and confidence in the BBC so shaken, that in June 2020 a new BBC Director General, Tim Davie, came to the post publicly committed to restoring public trust in the BBC.  “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”.

Hendy makes no mention of this, and for it to be by-passed in a modern history of the BBC seems a crucial omission.  Perhaps Hendy intends to pre-empt this criticism with his very first sentence: “Is a history of the BBC even possible?”  But what he does provide is an extremely readable account of this unique broadcasting organization whose reach gradually extended across the whole globe.

He starts by painting a detailed word portrait of the three men who, in November 1922, founded the British Broadcasting Company, as it was first named.  It turned into a Corporation in 1926.  One was the formidable and renowned later Director General, John Reith – the man who stamped his own Christian morality and strict personal principles on the organization he headed with distinction until his resignation – inexplicable to many – in 1938.

          Hendy explains how the new-born BBC was defined from its start by the high moral tone set by Reith, who summarized the nascent BBC's purpose as to “inform, educate and entertain”. The order of priority was deliberate. To Reith’s 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. A notable battle of wills with the government occurred during the General Strike of 1926, when Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill made several bids to control the BBC and use it to disseminate pro-government propaganda. Reith resisted, and helped establish the principle of the BBC’s independence. 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.

          Hendy paints a vivid picture of how the BBC coped with the exigencies of war, both domestically and by way of its overseas transmissions.  Bruce Belfrage was one of the small news-reading team stationed in the basement of Broadcasting House.  One evening, during the Blitz on London, he was broadcasting a news bulletin when a bomb crashed through a window on the seventh floor..  Listeners heard a distant thump.  Belfrage paused for a brief second and then went on calmly to finish the bulletin. 

Then there are the coded messages that were slipped into wartime foreign-language services intended for resistance groups in occupied Europe. Listeners to the French service of the BBC soon became accustomed to a succession of odd messages like “Brother Paul hugs sister Mary” being broadcast after the news night after night – each a coded instruction to a resistance group.

Or an officer from one of the armies-in-exile would turn up at the BBC just before the news, carrying a record to be played on that night’s bulletin.  The system was not infallible. Once, the producer simply forgot to play the record. On another occasion, a programme assistant decided the track was too scratchy and chose another. Thus, as one BBC employee recalled, “the wrong bridge would get blown up in Poland.”

          The latter years in the BBC’s story contain a great deal to interest the reader, but do not have the sweep and excitement of the war years.  There have been scandals aplenty.  One concerned the late revelation that the BBC’s top entertainment star for many years, Jimmy Savile, had been a rampant paedophile all his working life.   Another was that the BBC journalist, Martin Bashir, who obtained an exclusive TV interview with the late Princess Diana, had forged a series of documents in an underhand operation to persuade her to grant it. A third was when a BBC journalist, Andrew Gilligan, accused Tony Blair, the prime minister, on air of deliberately and consciously misleading the nation into backing war with Iraq.

Hendy claims that the BBC is “on our side”; that it is always “for the people”. This claim is decisively disproved when it comes to the long period during which Brexit dominated the political arena. Throughout the national debate the BBC was obviously biased against Leave and firmly aligned to Remain. Yet, as the 2016 referendum demonstrated, “the people” were on the other side.  

The BBC is still grappling with its failure to live up fully to its aspiration of achieving genuine impartiality in issues of major importance – a failure which Hendy prefers to sidestep*. Nevertheless, The BBC – A People’s History is a fascinating, highly readable, and extremely informative record of the first century of what is probably the world’s leading broadcast organization.

*In contrast to his "Life on Air - A history of Radio Four", published in 2007, in which he deals extensively with the issues of bias and impartiality.

Israel and the ANC – a failure to connect

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 29 July 2024

            It all stems back to the dark days of apartheid.  Israel, aware of its obligations to the large Jewish community living in South Africa, maintained diplomatic, military and trade relations with the government – even though it did condemn the regime’s apartheid policies, and applied trade and cultural sanctions from 1987 until apartheid ended.  The African National Congress (ANC), fighting tooth and nail to eliminate apartheid, perceived Israel as less than a whole-hearted friend, and embraced the Palestinian cause. 

On Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990, one of the first leaders he met with was his close friend and confidante, PLO leader Yasser Arafat.  When he visited Israel in 1999, he  was very supportive of the Palestinian cause.

Efforts by Israel to repair relations, especially after the election of the ANC government in 1994, had little or no effect, although bilateral trade remained healthy for many years.  In 2012 bilateral trade peaked at $1.19 billion, but as ANC anti-Israel policy began to harden, trade began to decline. In 2015, then-ANC leader and president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, hosted a Hamas delegation including Khaled Mashaal.

 By 2019, when  South Africa downgraded its embassy in Tel Aviv to a liaison office, bilateral trade amounted to only $407.7 million. In 2023 it fell to about $350 million.

   The ANC ruled South Africa for thirty years until, in the general election of May 2024, the party lost its majority.  As part of the deal which stitched together a governing coalition, President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has repeatedly labeled Israel an apartheid state (he has never visited the country), was re-elected.  Since then the ANC-led coalition government has maintained its unyielding opposition to Israel, despite the far softer attitudes toward Israel of its coalition partners.

When South Africa under the ANC took Israel to the International  Court of Justice (ICJ) in January on allegations of genocide in Gaza, the ANC’s main rival at the time, the right-leaning Democratic Alliance (DA), opposed the step. The right-wing populist Patriotic Alliance (PA) called the move a “joke”.  Both the DA and the PA are now in the coalition, as is the conservative Zulu-backed Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which has notably avoided condemning Israel.  The question must arise as to whether the views of the coalition partners will in future modify the vehemently anti-Israel stance of the ANC, and particularly whether  South Africa will maintain its lawfare against Israel in the ICJ.

The answer to this question may be lost in the fog of rumor and perhaps unprovable accusation surrounding the ANC’s approach to the ICJ. 

The facts are that shortly before South Africa accused Israel in the ICJ of committing genocide in Gaza, the South African ruling party, the ANC, known to have longstanding and crippling debts, suddenly announced that its financial problems had been resolved. It provided no information as to how this had been achieved.

            In May a group of 160 lawyers drawn from 10 different countries wrote to US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, calling for members of the ANC to be investigated under the Magnitsky Act for participating “in acts of significant corruption involving bribery.” The Magnitsky Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2012, authorizes the US government to sanction foreign government officials worldwide who are human rights offenders or have been involved in significant corruption.

The lawyers’ letter alleges that ANC officials agreed to pursue a case in the ICJ accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in return for bribes from Iran intended to cover ANC debts.

The letter reveals a series of events that began in October 2023, shortly after the outbreak of the war.  South Africa’s then-foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, traveled to Iran to meet with the Iranian president.  In December South Africa filed the accusation against Israel in the ICJ.  In January, despite well-publicized crippling financial difficulties within the ANC, the party surprisingly announced that its finances had been stabilized.

The lawyers write: "This change of economic fortune coincided with the South African government’s lodging a complaint in the ICJ. This sequence of events strongly suggests that the ANC party’s financial woes were resolved by Iran as a quid pro quo for South Africa’s anti-Israel complaint.”  The ANC leadership, the letter continued, has engaged "in the corrupt practice of accepting a bribe from Iran in exchange for serving as a diplomatic proxy for Iran against Israel.”

The lawyers who signed the letter are urging the White House, the Attorney General and the US Congress to investigate how the ANC mysteriously got out of debt, what deal was made with Iran, and why the ANC government is so driven to support Hamas. 

If these allegations are eventually proved, it could explain why South Africa’s government has continued to adhere to the rigid ANC anti-Israel line despite the presence of other parties in the coalition who are known to oppose the ANC on this.  If the ANC did indeed accept Iran’s debt-clearing payment, it would be obligated to deliver the goods. 

The ANC has denied all allegations of corruption.

Former Israeli Ambassador to South Africa, Arthur Lenk, believes that the Israeli-South African relationship will remain strained as long as the Gaza conflict and the case in The Hague continues.  An anti-Israel position, he says, fits with the ANC’s broader foreign policy, which has always been aligned with anti-Western causes to varying degrees.

Speaking before the recent election, he pointed out that the ANC government saw the BRICS organization (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as a key international grouping.  It led South Africa to deepen its relationship with China, and to support Russia, albeit unofficially, in its war against Ukraine by abstaining from votes against Moscow at the UN.

As for the ANC’s fixation on Israel, Lenk said it was “cold and calculated…They’re literally representing Hamas, but it serves a purpose; it matches the ANC foreign policy...”

Forming what he called a government of national unity, Ramaphosa gave a deputy ministerial post to the Muslim Al Jama-ah party – a clear sign that he intends to continue backing the Palestinians over Israel, despite opposition from the DA.

This perception was strengthened by the appointment of former justice minister Ronald Lamola as foreign minister.  A lawyer, Lamola led South Africa's opening arguments in the genocide case it brought against Israel at the ICJ.

It looks very much as though the stand-off between South Africa and Israel is fated to last a bit longer.


Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Why South Africa's ANC political party has taken an anti-Israel, pro-terrorist stance", 29 July 2024:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-812244

Will Gaza ceasefire end Hezbollah attacks?

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 22 July 2024

The possibility of full-scale conflict in northern Israel hangs like a dark cloud over the nation.  If, as Shakespeare has it, the dogs of war are indeed let slip, the armory of sophisticated Iranian-supplied weapons held by Hezbollah could inflict massive damage across the country. Equally, if forced into war, the IDF could decimate Hezbollah’s armed forces while Lebanon and its people, already enduring privation and distress, would inevitably suffer further unnecessary misery.

There are, however, reasons to believe that Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, does not want a full-scale war with Israel.  The country’s economy and its people are under extraordinary pressure.  A nationwide poll conducted by Arab Barometer between February and April 2024 showed that around 80% of citizens find accessing food supplies, to say nothing of its cost, a problem.  Many run out of food before they can afford to buy more.  The provision of water, internet access and health care are patchy, while 92% of respondents to the poll reported constant electricity outages.

  Two further findings from the Arab Barometer survey explain reluctance on Nasrallah’s part for a new all-out war with Israel. 

   Hezbollah as a political party garnered only 12% support nationally. If the 39% Shiite support is removed from the findings, then it emerges that no other segment of Lebanese society offered more than 1% support for Hezbollah as a political party

   Regarding the Gaza war, the Lebanese people are strongly pro-Palestinian, yet they believe that the Biden administration should prioritize economic development in the Middle East over the Palestinian issue. The pollsters believe this finding underscores just how desperate circumstances in Lebanon have become.

Although Hezbollah is virtually a self-functioning state within the state of Lebanon, weaponized and funded to the hilt by Iran, its forces are nevertheless composed of young Lebanese men with mothers, wives and sweethearts. Hezbollah’s eight-year military support of Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, which cost the lives of hundreds of young Lebanese fighters, is still resented. Up to 1250 Lebanese soldiers were killed in Syria between 2011 and 2019, when Hezbollah finally withdrew. Most Lebanese can see only death and destruction resulting from an unsought and unwanted war with Israel undertaken at the behest of the non-Arab entity, Iran. 

 This lack of political trust in Hezbollah outside the Shiite community translates into sustained criticism for waging a war against Israel without consulting other factions.  Even the Qatar-based Al Jazeera  acknowledges, in a report on July 3, that “some people in Lebanon, particularly from the Christian community, are very unhappy with Hezbollah.”

Samir Geagea and Sami Gemayel, Christian politicians who head the Lebanese Forces and Kataeb parties respectively, blame Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon into an avoidable “‘war of attrition” and drawing Israeli attacks to Lebanese soil.

“Many Christian leaders are opposed to Hezbollah’s decision to open a front against Israel,” a Lebanon analyst told Al Jazeera, adding that an additional intent may be “to show that not all of Lebanon is behind Hezbollah in hopes of perhaps sparing their areas the worst of a war with Israel.”

 It is against this background that on July 10 Nasrallah issued a new and surprising policy statement.  He announced that he was making Hezbollah’s future cross-border interchanges with Israel dependent on the success or otherwise of the Gaza ceasefire negotiations.

 “Hamas is negotiating…on behalf of the whole axis of resistance,” declared Nasrallah. “Whatever Hamas accepts, everyone accepts…If there is a ceasefire in Gaza then our front will also cease fire without discussion, irrespective of any other agreement or mechanisms or negotiations."

Nasrallah’s remarks came days after he met with a Hamas delegation headed by its foreign relations chief, Khalil al-Hayya.  On July 14, following Israel’s attempt to assassinate the Hamas military commander, Mohammed Deif, some commentators assumed that Hamas would pull out of the current round of negotiations.  Not so, perhaps because the leadership realizes that opportunities to escape from the Gaza Strip are rapidly diminishing.  Having already signaled that it would drop its insistence on a “complete” ceasefire as a condition for starting truce negotiations, Hamas remains engaged.

Should a deal emerge, that is when Nasrallah’s new policy might come into effect. “That is a commitment,” he said recently during a televised address, “because [we are] a support front, and we have been clear [about this] from the start.”

In short, Nasrallah’s position now is that the increase in cross-border military activity since October 7 is not the precursor to an all-out conflict with Israel, but action in support of Hamas.  It is certainly true that in his much-trumpeted speech on November 3, 2023 Nasrallah, while predictably praising Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel, was at pains to emphasize that it had been a purely Palestinian enterprise. He asserted, whatever the truth of the matter, that neither Iran nor Hezbollah had had any part in planning or carrying out the operation, and that in present circumstances neither found it expedient to support Hamas by opening full-scale hostilities against Israel.  He wanted the subsequent conflict to remain Palestinian.

His latest pronouncement is consistent with this position, but it also reveals his lack of appetite for embarking on an all-out conflict with Israel.  It is to be hoped that Israel will, without swallowing Nasrallah’s words whole, take some account of them.  A few days before Nasrallah spoke, defense minister Yoav Gallant was in northern Israel, and what he said was uncompromising.

Gallant saw no obvious relationship between Israel’s military operations in Gaza and in Lebanon.  They are “two separate sectors”, he said.  He rejected any attempt to connect a hostage deal in the south to the on-going conflict along the Lebanese border.  To solve the latter a separate deal between Hezbollah and Israel would, he thought, be necessary.

“Even if there is a ceasefire [in Gaza],” he said, “here we continue to fight.” He further asserted that “we are ready for anything, but we are prepared for the fact that if they come to attack us, or if they try to harm us, or if they do not allow us to return our citizens safely to their homes – we will act.”

What Gallant may not yet have considered, however, is what Israel’s reaction would be if Hezbollah, on the conclusion of a ceasefire in Gaza, suddenly ceased all military activity aimed against northern Israel.  That is surely an eventuality worth pondering.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Lebanese civilians will not forgive Hezbollah if they don't cease fire during a ceasefire", 22 July 2024:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-811297

Published in Eurasia Review, 26 July 2024:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/26072024-will-gaza-ceasefire-end-hezbollah-attacks-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 29 July 2024:

https://mpc-journal.org/will-gaza-ceasefire-end-hezbollah-attacks/

UK's election: the Gaza vote

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 16 July 2024

In spite of Labour’s landslide success in the recent UK general election, analysis of the results reveals two surprising facts.  First, despite appearances, there was no surge of popular support for Labour, rather a rejection of the 14-year-old Conservative administration; and secondly the results were affected fundamentally by a new political force.        

            Traditionally, general elections in Britain turn on domestic issues.  The economy and health are usually to the forefront of voters’ minds, together with the record of the incumbent government.  This time around, though, a foreign war taking place 3000 miles away was more important than all the usual domestic concerns for one bloc of ethnic minority voters.  

            The activities of a brand new organization calling itself The Muslim Vote cost the Labour party five seats, slashed Labour majorities in a fair number of other constituencies, and has placed a caucus of rabidly anti-Israel MPs in the new House of Commons.  They have effectively become the sixth largest party in parliament, equal with Reform.

   The Muslim Vote was set up in May by an activist named Abubakr Nanabawa.  It was a response to the Labour Party’s initial decision to support Israel’s right of defense against the pogrom carried out by Hamas.  An alliance of 23 activist organizations, its aim was to unseat those MPs not sufficiently hostile to Israel, particularly Labour party members.

The new body was conceived as a political outlet for those opposed to Labour’s hesitancy is advocating a ceasefire, and announced its intention to create a list of approved candidates for Muslims to vote for in the general election.  Its candidates would stand in opposition to Labour and demand immediate recognition of Palestine as a state and the banning of all arms sales to Israel.

            This new pro-Palestinian bloc of MPs, all of whom have beaten their Labour opponents to win their seats, is headed by Jeremy Corbyn, one-time leader of the Labour party who, in 2019, presided over their greatest electoral defeat since 1935.  He was suspended from the party by its new leader, Keir Starmer, in 2020 for antisemitic attitudes and remarks, so he stood as an independent in the constituency of Islington North, which he has represented since 1983.  He trounced his Labour opponent, winning 49% of the votes compared to Labour’s 34%. 

            The other four pro-Palestine MPs were elected in areas with among the highest proportion of Muslim voters in the UK.  They range from Blackburn, where 47% of voters are Muslim to Leicester South, where it is 35%.  One of Labour’s biggest shocks on election night was when the party’s shadow Treasury minister, Jonathan Ashworth, lost his Leicester South seat by around 1,000 votes to Shockat Adam.

 “This is for Gaza!” declared Adam, as he made his victory speech.

In Birmingham Ayoub Khan’s victory over Labour was by a paper-thin 507 votes.

Following the October 7 massacre, Khan posted a video on TikTok claiming he had a “problem with the credibility” of some of the accounts of what took place.  At the time he was a local government councilor in Birmingham.  His then party, the Liberal Democrats, later announced that he had been cleared of wrongdoing, had “apologized and deleted the post” in question, and “agreed to undergo anti-Semitism training.”

But Khan subsequently said he had not approved the statement and did not intend to take the anti-Semitism training course. He went on to quit the party and run as an independent candidate in the election.

In Blackburn, Adnan Hussain overturned a previous Labour majority of over 10,000 to win the seat by 132 votes   Hussain posted an online statement to voters: “I promise to make your concerns against the injustice being inflicted against the people of Gaza be heard in the places where our so-called representatives failed.”

In Dewsbury independent candidate Iqbal Mohamed crushed his Labour opponent by winning 41% of the vote against her 22%. Video of Mohamed speaking at a recent rally shows him encouraging children to boycott Israel: “Go home, find every brand and every product that has been supporting Israel and Zionism from the beginning of time and throw it away, throw it away…That is the least we can do.”

This loss of seats that Labour might reasonably have expected to win tells only a part of the story.  More than a few Labour figures, including some now in ministerial positions, squeezed past the winning post by the skin of their teeth.

For example Wes Streeting, now the minister of health, won back his seat by just 528 votes over British-Palestinian Leanne Mohamad.

And Jess Phillips, a prominent member of the party, saw her previous 13,000 majority truncated to just 693.  When she tried to give a victory speech after the declaration, she was booed and jeered by pro-Palestinian activists, including chants of “shame on you” and “free Palestine”.  She responded by condemning the intimidation her campaign had faced, and said the election has been “the worst I have ever stood in.”

At his own count, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer saw his previous majority of nearly 23,000 cut in half.  He won handsomely, but it was the pro-Gaza activist, Andrew Feinstein, who came second.  Feinstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor, is a South African and was once an ANC member of the National Assembly under Nelson Mandela.  He completed his studies in California and then the University of Cambridge in 1990.  He was a strong supporter of the UK Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn, but has described Starmer as “inauthentic”.

 With 412 MPs out of a total of 650, Starmer for the next five years is theoretically in a position to win each and every issue put to a vote in the House of Commons, and to win it overwhelmingly.  Yet the five Muslim Vote MPs could seriously disrupt the main thrust of the government’s intentions if they managed to gather support for anti-Israel action from the body of Labour MPs – and this is not outside the bounds of possibility. 

Despite Starmer’s largely successful efforts to disempower the hard left within his party so as to make it electable after the Corbyn years, a sizeable rump of pro-Corbynites remains.  Israel, Gaza, a ceasefire, the two-state solution, recognizing Palestine, international arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and minister of defense, the judgment of the International Court of Justice on the accusation against Israel of genocide – all these issues may see the government’s view challenged by the Muslim Vote five, and then supported by an unassessable number of Labour MPs.  There may be trouble ahead.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Despite landslide victory, there may be trouble ahead for UK government", 16 July 2024:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-810444

Published in Eurasia Review titled: "Britain's election:  the Gaza connection", 19 July 2024:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/19072024-britains-election-the-gaza-connection-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 22 July 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/uks-election-the-gaza-vote/

Will Labour pursue Britain's ICC challenge?

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 8 July 2024:

          It was on May 20, 2024 that Karim Khan KC, a British jurist and chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), applied to the court to issue international arrest warrants against three Hamas leaders and also against Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yoav Gallant.

          On June 10, Britain’s then-Conservative government, acting as a so-called "amicus curiae” (or friend of the court), asked to submit some observations to the ICC regarding prosecutor Khan’s request for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.

          On June 27 the ICC authorized the UK to submit written observations regarding the Court’s jurisdiction over Israeli nationals within the context of the Oslo Accords. Other interested parties could also submit observations until July 12, 2024.

          Since that ICC order, a general election in the UK has swept the Conservatives from power, and the nation is now ruled by a Labour government with an overwhelming majority. The question must arise as to whether Britain will continue to press its previously held legal opinions on the ICC.

          Shortly after Kahn had applied for his arrest warrants, Andrew Mitchell, deputy foreign secretary in the UK’s previous administration, told members of parliament:  “As we have said from the outset, we do not think that the ICC has jurisdiction in this case. The UK has not recognized Palestine as a state, and Israel is not a state party to the Rome statute.”

          At the time Labour neither endorsed nor rejected this position, but on June 23 David Lammy, now Britain's foreign minister, said: “Labour would comply with an ICC arrest order for Netanyahu” should one be issued.

          On June 28 The Guardian, a left-wing UK newspaper regarded as markedly anti-Israel and close to the Labour party, reported: “The decision to allow the UK to submit arguments in the case has caused concern among some international law experts that Britain’s intervention is politically motivated and an attempt to reopen legal issues many argue have previously been settled.”

          This report could possibly be the precursor to a decision by the new Labour government to withdraw the legal objections the UK intended to lodge with the ICC concerning the issue of international arrest warrants against Israel’s prime minister and defense minister.

          What is the legal case the UK wished to submit to the ICC?

          It specifically aims to address “whether the Court can exercise jurisdiction over Israeli nationals in circumstances where Palestine cannot exercise criminal jurisdiction over Israeli nationals pursuant to the Oslo Accords.”

          In its submission, the UK intended to refer to a 2021 decision by the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber which specifically left open this particular point, stating that it would consider it, should it ever arise in the future.

          The Guardian says that a former ICC official familiar with the 2021 case has said the jurisdictional issues had been resolved and, if challenged, would be “dead on arrival”. It quotes one legal expert who claims “it would beggar belief” if the judges decided that Palestine, an ICC member state, “could not ask the court to address atrocities committed on its territories because of a moribund Oslo peace process”. Another believes the UK’s attempt to challenge ICC jurisdiction using the Oslo accords was “deeply troubling and unjust”.

          More to the point, perhaps, was the comment by Clive Baldwin, a senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch:

 “The next government will need to immediately decide if it supports the ICC’s essential role in bringing accountability and defending the rule of law for all.”

          The application to be placed before the ICC by Britain turns on a rather abstruse legal issue. It has nothing to say about the grounds quoted by the ICC’s chief prosecutor for applying for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant in the first place. If the ICC judges eventually determine that they have the jurisdiction to do so, the validity of Kahn’s application will also have to be determined.

          Kahn’s warrant application, with its implication of an equivalence between the crimes of Hamas and Israel’s defensive response, and the supporting arguments for the application in respect of Netanyahu and Gallant, raised instant objections across the world including from US president Joe Biden.

          “The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous,” he said. There was “no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas”.

          It was the Hamas-inspired term “collective punishment” that Khan used in his application, stating as a fact that Israel indulged in “collective punishment of the civilian population”. This is an unproven subjective conclusion, emanating from Hamas’s anti-Israel publicity office, and assiduously disseminated to the world’s media. Khan substantiates it by accusing Israel of “deliberately” starving the Gaza population, “wilfully” causing them great suffering, serious injury and death, and “intentionally” directing attacks against them, murdering and persecuting them.

          Khan simply makes these assertions without offering any proof that the actions he lists were deliberately, wilfully or intentionally directed against Gazan civilians by Israel – mainly because there is none. There is, on the other hand, considerable evidence that they were nothing of the sort, and that Israel took extensive steps to mitigate and minimize the effect on civilians of its anti-Hamas actions. Kahn sidesteps the fact that the reason civilians were in the crossfire was because Hamas – not Israel – put them there, embedding its fighters, its weaponry, and its command centers in the heart of the civilian population, both above and below ground. Hamas had ensured that Israel could not possibly attack it without incurring highly regrettable civilian casualties and deaths. But pursue, attack and punish the perpetrators of the horrific pogrom of October 7 it was the bounden duty of Israel to do in defence of its citizens.

          Khan accuses Israel of starving Gaza’s civilians, of attacking those queuing for food and of obstructing delivery of humanitarian aid. He says Israel has imposed a total siege over Gaza that involved "completely closing the three border crossing points… for extended periods”. There has been no “total siege”. Since the beginning of the war, according to Israeli statistics, well over 18,000 trucks have crossed from Israel into Gaza carrying, inter alia, some 400,000 tons of food and over 23,000 tons of medical supplies.

          In fact it is Hamas that has been obstructing the delivery of aid and stealing civilian supplies for its own use or selling them on the black market at inflated prices. According to an analyst at the Washington Institute, Hamas is estimated to have made some $500 million from this. When Israel has opened fire around the aid trucks, it has been against Hamas terrorists trying to steal their cargo.

          Whether or not the new UK government pursues the legal argument initiated by its predecessor, the ICC judges will have to consider the validity of Khan’s case against Netanyahu and Gallant. It is only to be hoped that on this occasion non-politicised commonsense will prevail.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online as "Will Labour continue Britain's Conservative party-led ICC challenge?", 8 July 2024:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-809297

Published in Eurasia Review, 12 July 2024:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/12072024-will-labour-pursue-britains-icc-challenge-oped/#google_vignette

Published in the MPC Journal, 14 July 2024:

https://mpc-journal.org/will-labour-pursue-britains-icc-challenge/

The Iran-Hezbollah game plan

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 1 July 2024

            Ever since October 7, egged on by Iran, Hezbollah has been escalating its cross-border clashes with Israel, while its leader Hassan Nasrallah has been stepping up his blood-curdling rhetoric, predicting Armageddon if Israel were to launch all-out war.  Yet the truth is that Iran-Hezbollah would like nothing better.  They have sound strategic reasons for not initiating formal armed conflict. So their tactic has been to ramp up the provocation, daring Israel to strike back and trigger war.

            Iran learned a lesson from its abortive attempt at overwhelming Israel’s defenses on April 13.  In its first-ever direct aerial assault, it sent some 170 drones, over 30 cruise missiles, and more than 120 ballistic missiles the 1,000 kilometers toward Israel.  The Iranian leadership no doubt expected a massive military and propaganda triumph. 

 In the event  the operation was a miserable failure.  To supplement Israel’s Iron Dome defense, America and Britain sent jet fighters to help shoot down the missiles.  At the same time Jordan refused to allow Iran to use its air space for the operation, while several Gulf States, among them Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, passed on intelligence about Iran's plans.  As a result about 99% of the aerial armada never reached Israel, and Iran learned that not only the West, but much of the Middle East disliked and distrusted it.

Fearing wholesale lack of support if any formal Hezbollah-Israel conflict were seen as Iran-instigated, Iran-Hezbollah has, in the words of the English poet, Alexander Pope, been “willing to wound and yet afraid to strike.” 

On June 18 the Israel Defense Forces announced that a plan for an offensive to push Hezbollah further back from the border had been approved, but that a diplomatic solution was still the preferred option.  The next day Nasrallah gave a televised address lasting more than an hour. 

 In previous wars with Israel, he said, Hezbollah had only hoped to be able to strike Israel’s Meron air base.  Now, he claimed, the whole of Israel was within its range.

"And it won’t be random bombardment,” he threatened. “Every drone will have a target. Every missile will have a target."

Boasting that Hezbollah had a large stockpile of drones, a “surplus of fighters” and unspecified “new weapons” that would be unveiled in due course, he said Hezbollah was manufacturing military weaponry in Lebanon and, despite Israel’s attacks on weapon-carrying convoys in Syria, had continued to receive weapons from Iran.

This, at least, was confirmed by the UK’s Daily Telegraph which, on June 23, reported that weapons are being flown from Iran into Lebanon and stored at Beirut’s main airport. 

The Telegraph based its report on whistleblowers at the airport who claim to have observed a marked increase in the arrival of weapons and also the presence of more Hezbollah commanders on the ground.  The whistleblowers claim the operation has been escalating since the intensification of cross-border conflict between Hezbollah and Israel post-October 7.

The report claimed that currently the cache of stored weapons includes Iranian-made Falaq unguided artillery rockets, Fateh-110 short-range missiles, road-mobile ballistic missiles and M-600 missiles with ranges of 150 to 200 miles. Also at the airport it is claimed that there are AT-14 Kornets, laser-guided anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), huge quantities of Burkan short-range ballistic missiles and explosive RDX, a toxic white powder also known as cyclonite or hexogen.

The allegations will raise fears within Lebanon that, in the event of war, the Rafic Hariri airport, just four miles from the city center, could become a major military target.

Staff at the airport claim that Wafiq Safa, Hezbollah’s second in command and the head of its security apparatus, has become a notoriously conspicuous figure at the airport.

“Wafiq Safa is always showing up at customs,” one whistleblower claimed. Workers collaborating with Hezbollah, he says, “walk around like peacocks” with new watches and smartphones, and drive new cars. “A lot of money [is] being passed under the table.”

Ghassan Hasbani, the former deputy prime minister and an MP for the Lebanese Forces party, said Hezbollah’s control of the airport has long been a concern for Lebanon, and more so if it becomes a potential military target in a conflict with Israel.

 “Weapons being transported from Iran to Hezbollah across border entry points,” he said, ”…endangers both the Lebanese population and the non Lebanese travelling through and living in the country.”

Taking action, he said, is all but impossible without international intervention to implement relevant UN resolutions. “The entrenchment of Hezbollah is everywhere, not only in the airport but in the port, the judiciary, it’s across society. The public administration now is largely hijacked by Hezbollah…”

Ali Hamieh, Lebanon’s transport minister, said the allegations were “ridiculous” and invited journalists and ambassadors to view the airport. 

Hamieh, who was nominated to the government by Hezbollah, in fact exemplifies the straits to which the once independent sovereign state of Lebanon has been reduced. Hezbollah has acquired an iron grip on the levers of power and, in the process, reduced the nation to penury and political deadlock.

Lebanon has been without a president since October 2022, every possible nominee blocked by Hezbollah and its political allies.  Moreover, compounded by widespread government corruption, the country is experiencing the worst financial crisis in its history.  After prime minister Najib Mikati announced in March 2020 that Lebanon would default on its Eurobond debt, the Lebanese currency began to plummet, leading to hyperinflation. In April 2023, Lebanese inflation hit a high at almost 270%.  It has taken a year to bring the level down to something like 52%, which still means unsustainable price increases for ordinary citizens, many of whom have become virtual paupers.

A further destabilizing factor is the huge refugee burden imposed on the country by the civil conflict in Syria.   Lebanon maintains one of the largest refugee populations per capita in the world – more than 1.5 million, many of them Syrian.

Yet Lebanon, overwhelmed as it is with domestic problems, is faced with the prospect of being dragged into Iran-Hezbollah’s ideological conflict with Israel, and potentially suffer bombardment, destruction, casualties and deaths.  The people of Lebanon resented their sons being recruited by Hezbollah and sent to Syria to support its president, Basha al-Assad, in his fight against his democratic opponents.  How much more would they oppose a call by Nasrallah to take up arms against Israel.  Which is why Nasrallah refrains from taking the decisive step, and would much prefer to point to Israel as the instigator of conflict.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Iran is playing a proxy war with Hezbollah, Lebanese civilians will pay the price", 1 July 2024

:https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-808423