17 May 2007 | Comment
It is unlikely that the contents of the memo leaked by David Keogh and Leo O’Connor, for which the two men were jailed last week, will ever be disclosed. The British government has a long tradition of covering up its Middle East embarrassments. O’Connor’s barrister remarked during the trial that the war in Iraq was the most controversial foreign affairs involvement of this country since Suez, but more than 50 years since Anthony Eden invaded Egypt, there are still documents which Whitehall refuses to release.
While working last year on a BBC series about the Suez crisis, I applied to the Cabinet Office under the Freedom of Information Act for the release of all withheld documents. It was a bit of a fishing expedition (just the sort of journalistic abuse of FoI that Lord Falconer despises) but well worth doing. I hoped that the Cabinet Office might consider the 50th anniversary of Suez an important enough occasion for putting all documents in the public domain. Some documents were released, after a six-month wait, but nothing revelatory. I was also told that a number of documents would not be disclosed as they related to “security matters” or would “prejudice” international relations.
“We acknowledge that release of information relating to the Suez crisis may add to the understanding and knowledge of this subject,” wrote the Cabinet Office’s Histories, Openness and Records Unit. “However, in favour of withholding this information we consider that, in this case, the effective conduct of the UK’s international relations, and its ability to protect and promote its interests abroad, would be compromised if we released the information … it is strongly against the public interest to damage our international relations in this way.” It appears the same mixture of imperious and Alice-in-Wonderland logic which led the judge to censor reporting of the trial last week is also at work in the Cabinet Office.
It took years before the full truth of Suez emerged, and decades before the document revealing the secret agreement between France, Israel and Britain to invade Egypt was disclosed – and that was only because the Israelis still had a copy. But it seems remarkable that there could be documents whose content is so inflammatory that it could still damage international relations. Suez, clearly, cannot yet be consigned to history. It’s still live – at least as long as Britain meddles in the Middle East.
The irony is that Anthony Eden did not just discuss the possibility of bombing an Arab broadcaster – as President Bush was once reported to have contemplated – he actually did it. Eden was obsessed with the influence of the Voice of the Arabs, the most popular radio station at the time in the Arab world. It transmitted from Cairo and Eden believed that it was damaging British interests in the Middle East. The one and only time he met President Nasser, he asked him to tone down the propaganda.
As Britain prepared to invade Egypt in 1956, the Voice of the Arabs was one of Eden’s first targets. Planners hesitated when they believed it would mean bombing the heart of Cairo and killing civilians. But when they realised that the transmitters were outside the city, they went ahead. They didn’t, however, do a very efficient job: the Voice of the Arabs was up and running again within days. Eden’s plan was to broadcast his own propaganda in Arabic from Cyprus. He requisitioned another Arab radio station and a number of inexperienced Foreign Office Arabists were flown in to man the station – renamed the Voice of Britain – but it was not a success.
History repeats itself, tragic and farcical both times around. Little is learned except that embarrassing and illegal activity must be kept out of the public domain, apparently for all time.
1 May 2007 | Comment, News
The BBC have fought me from ditch to ditch using a top class legal team and every litigation tactic available. This is an organisation of enormous repute devoted to providing impartial news coverage and comment to Britain and indeed the world. How strange that it is fighting so vigorously to keep its secrets to itself. What is going on?
The simplest answer is that given by David Davies MP, who said the BBC was guilty of ‘shocking hypocrisy’. It uses the Freedom of Information Act widely in pursuit of its own journalism but is unwilling to accept its own responsibility, as a public body paid for by the public, to publish material critical of its own standards of impartiality. In fact, it’s a bit more complicated than that and the complications expose some important issues about the BBC and about public policy on freedom of expression more generally.
First, I should explain why I have been willing to fight this case personally for the last two years, representing myself before the Information Commissioner, the Information Tribunal and the High Court. Although I am a lawyer, my field is not public law and I do not present cases in court. So I have been through a pretty steep learning curve. Why have I taken this on and what do I seek to achieve?
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is of great concern to me. I am Jewish, and although my Jewish background has been only of peripheral significance during most of my life, I have strong feelings that the world owes the Jewish people the right to live in their own country in peace and security. But for the whole 50 years of its existence Israel has been threatened with annihilation by its enemies. Of course, the Palestinians must have their state too. It is tragic that the obvious two-state solution has been so hard to achieve.
Public opinion in the world outside the US has shifted strongly against Israel since 2000. Many people say that this is the consequence of Israel’s actions. Israel’s defenders say it has not received a fair hearing in the media. They are especially worried by the BBC’s coverage. The BBC is trusted throughout the world as an institution devoted to the highest standards of impartiality and so BBC coverage adverse to Israel is perceived as particularly threatening.
And I mean physically threatening. Threatening to Israelis certainly, but also to European Jews who have experienced a much increased level of anti-semitism over recent years. Anyone going to a synagogue in the UK for the first time is shocked by the level of physical security deemed necessary. A recent Parliamentary report on anti-semitism in the UK called on media organisations to reflect on their responsibilities.
Whatever your views on Israel and on the BBC’s coverage of the conflict, everyone must surely agree that it really does matter whether that coverage has or has not been impartial. But sadly the BBC has so far responded to criticism of its impartiality on this subject in a way which has been more political than professional. First it reacted simply by defending its journalists in general terms without descending into the detail. Three serious reports by BBC Watch submitted in 2002-3 went largely unanswered. Finally, it did the right thing and brought in a senior TV news editor, Malcolm Balen, to conduct a serious review. The BBC’s top Journalism Board considered his report in 2004-5 and took a number of important decisions in response to his critique. But the BBC has repeatedly refused to publish Mr Balen’s report – although it had publicised his appointment.
Instead of publishing the Balen report, the BBC Governors appointed a group of the great and good to do a quick report, which was published, on three months’ current coverage during a relatively uneventful period in the Middle East – they were not asked to go back to the critical period of 2000-4. They asked for the Balen report and eventually the BBC reluctantly gave it to them but they were forbidden to tell the public about it.
It is hardly surprising that all this has created mistrust and cynicism about the BBC’s motives. That is what secrecy does. The BBC of all institutions really should know better.
The BBC’s ideological, intellectual and legal defence of its position is full of irony. All turns on the freedom to impart and receive ideas guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The public policy purposes of Article 10 are the same as those of the Freedom of Information Act. The BBC says these same public policy purposes support the exception on which they rely in declining to release the Balen report. This exception is for information held for the purposes of journalism. The BBC says this covers not just primary information collected by journalists and unpublished editorial material but reviews of broadcast output considered by those charged with maintaining the BBC’s standards of impartiality. The BBC says that this is necessary in order to protect BBC journalists’ freedom of expression.
But it cannot possibly be right that the BBC’s obligation to ensure impartial coverage must be policed only in secret for fear of prejudicing the BBC’s own editorial independence. If that was right we should have no public reports at all on the subject – maybe we shouldn’t even be talking about it. It would mean that there is a fundamental contradiction between the public’s right to know what the BBC, as a public body, is doing and the BBC’s editorial independence. Maybe the whole idea of a public sector broadcaster is a contradiction. It gives ammunition to those who think the BBC is an arrogant, unaccountable bureaucracy which cannot reform itself and should be abolished.
So far the Information Commissioner, the Information Tribunal and the High Court have all looked at this case. The Commissioner was against me – but he did not know that the Balen report had gone up to the Journalism Board and may have thought it was primarily a tool to help practising journalists. The Tribunal was in my favour. But now the High Court has decided on a literal interpretation of the statute that I did not have a right of appeal to the Tribunal after all – ‘most odd’ said the Judge. So the matter goes back to the Commissioner. In the meantime I have asked the new chairman of the new BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons, to intervene.
This issue is important for the health and the reputation of the BBC in the long run and indeed for the global reputation of Britain as the land of ‘fair play’. Certainly I have received a fair amount of internet and email support from those who see the whole thing as the work of perfidious Albion or of engrained European anti-semitism. Not that it is easy to wholly discount some underlying element of this. The reactions of a couple of my colleagues were interesting. One said knowingly – ‘You’ll never get it you know!’ Another – ‘I hope this doesn’t mean you’re turning into a Zionist nutter!’
I live in hope that this saga will prove to be a bit of a British muddle which will finally get sorted out in a suitably British way rather than some Kafkaesque conspiracy of which I, and freedom of information, are victims.
25 Apr 2007 | Comment
Last week, Germany, in its capacity as president of the EU, attempted to outlaw Holocaust denial in the EU. In the end, the resolution that emerged was the classic result of hard-fought compromise – that is to say, nobody got what they wanted. States that already had a Holocaust-denial law, such as Germany, Austria and France, did not manage to foist one on countries such as the UK and Ireland, who claimed to be worried about freedom of speech and inquiry. Meanwhile, those countries that did not have laws concerning the Holocaust now find themselves having to pay lip service, as members of the Union, to the watered down proposal – criminalising “trivialisation” of the Holocaust.
Even if the majority of nations in the EU do not sign up to this (and they have every right not to), damage has been done to the EU’s self-image as protector of human rights and free speech, and it is unsurprising who was among the first to point this out.
Step forward the man in the beige anorak.
Speaking to Spanish TV earlier this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran did not hesitate to pick up on the EU’s stance. Of course, Mr Ahmadinejad has form on this: he is the man who responded to the Mohammed cartoons controversy by sanctioning an exhibition of viciously anti-semitic Holocaust denial cartoons, with the expressed attempt at exposing the west’s “hypocrisy” on the portrayal of taboos.
We can agree or disagree on whether he had a point at the time. Personally, I don’t think he did: In terms of taste and offence there’s a difference, not least of historical distance, between mocking a centuries-dead religious leader and an abysmal event from which many still literally bear the scars.
But when one looks at events in Luxembourg over the past week, and Mr Ahmadinejad’s response, one cannot help but see he has a certain logic on his side when he asks: “Does [the] EU consider questions as a crime? Today, anywhere in the world, one can raise questions about God, prophets, existence and any other issue. Why historical events should not be clarified [sic]?”
We all, of course, can imagine where these questions lead (if you can’t, ask David Irving). But how many of us can bring ourselves to disagree with Mr Ahmadinejad’s words above, however much we may be suspicious of the sentiment? If the EU can allow people to raise questions about one thing, then why not another?
We may write off the resolution as a gesture (though, again, David Irving might have something to tell us about that), but even in the gesture, the damage is done. The EU is seen to be the superpower that protects the sensitivities of Jews, but not those of Muslims.
And Ahmadinejad has been quick to take advantage. At a time when already too many in the Middle East see the EU as in the pocket of Israel, this at best pointless resolution will only serve to drive yet more into the arms of the Iranians, who, after the propaganda victories of the second Lebanon war and the hostage crisis, are more and more managing to portray themselves as the champions of the Middle East’s Muslims.
Originally posted on Comment is Free
17 Apr 2007 | Comment
When Ariel Sharon declared his intention to withdraw Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2004, the Palestinian leadership was quick to declare its readiness to manage security and political affairs in the Gaza Strip.
After Israel’s withdrawal in 2005, a new front opened between the Palestinians and Israel, with Palestinian militants launching attacks on Israeli towns close to Gaza. The Gaza Strip itself descended into political and social chaos, with killing, destruction and kidnapping dominating the headlines of the daily Palestinian newspapers.
Since the withdrawal, the number of Palestinians killed by Palestinians has reached 240, and there have been 85 reported cases of kidnapping. The press coverage of Gaza has reported the situation as either the ‘tragedy’ (according to the Arabic press) or the ‘internal war’ (according to the foreign press). So where do we stand now? And how can a nation live in such a situation?
At the beginning of the second intifada, when Israel killed a Palestinian or foreigner, Israeli propaganda tried to play down such incidents. But when armed Palestinians abduct a foreigner, Israeli propaganda attempts to cast the incident as if it’s the end of the world, which motivates Palestinian leaders to appear on TV demanding both the release of the hostage and the capture of the kidnappers.
Since the kidnapping of the BBC reporter Alan Johnston on 12 March, numerous declarations have been made by Palestinian politicians, starting with President Mahmoud Abbas and ending with the Legislative Council Member Hassan Kreisheh, who stated recently that the new Palestinian Minister for the Interior Hani Qawasmi failed in his position by not securing the release of the British reporter.
But Kreisheh did not criticise the minister for the interior for the ‘internal war’ which has resulted in so many deaths. Gaza has become a theatre for the political chaos and the contradictory declarations of its politicians. It is my view that failure has infected all levels of Palestinian society, and not only the new government.
The one hopeful aspect of Johnston’s kidnapping is the high level of outcry for his release from normal Palestinians. Civil society organisations too have initiated many petitions for his release. This response shows the level of Palestinian despair at the current moment.
Since the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on 25 June 2006, Israel has killed more than 500 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and it still holds more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Even if Israel released 1,000 Palestinians prisoners today, we’ve still already lost 500 Palestinians. If the capture of other Israeli soldiers is followed by the killing of another 500, then we have lost. Palestinians are unable, and even unqualified, for kidnap and exchange deals: we are not Hezbollah, nor Al-Qaeda.
Lately, the term ‘Palestinian national interest’ has been deleted from the resistance dictionary. Personal interest takes precedence. Kidnapping in Gaza is carried out for monetary gain, not out of any sense of resistance to occupation.
There is an armed element that refers to itself as ‘resistance’ but most Palestinians see it as nothing more than a group of thugs who are out for personal gain, and do not care how much they tarnish the reputation of Palestinians, or the amount of harm that may arise from their actions.
The Palestinian Authority has not improved security and safety for Gaza’s citizens, nor even for foreigners, in spite of the Arabic norms and traditions of hospitality that encourage respect, help and protection for guests.
The day after Iran’s President Ahmadinejad released the 15 British servicemen he had alleged were found in Iranian waters, the British consul went to Gaza to meet the Palestinian Prime Minister Ismaill Haniyah in an attempt to secure the release of Alan Johnston. So far, nothing seems to have come of this meeting.
In my opinion, Britain must increase its efforts to obtain the release of the British reporter and to eliminate the kidnapping phenomenon in the Gaza Strip. The British government has been considered one of the greatest supporters of the Palestinian Authority since the Oslo accords of 1993, and also supports Palestinian civil society organisations.
It is not right that we, Palestinians, kidnapped one of its citizens. If the Palestinians and our government continue sliding into the political and security chaos, then this is a sign for a dark future. The Gaza Strip is in much need of international organisations these days, particularly humanitarian aid and press coverage. The Palestinian Authority must provide protection to those who offer help to the Palestinians.
Johnston’s kidnapping was the second such incident this year. In a very disturbing development, the Foreign Press Association has advised its members to ‘re-evaluate the necessity of travel to Gaza’ after the BBC provided evidence that Palestinian militants may be planning to kidnap foreigners.
The current chaos in Gaza directly affects journalists, and inevitably the information the international community receives. The Palestinian Authority has shown that it cannot manage the conflict in Gaza and therefore the chaos continues.
Of course the international community wants to help, and there are always engaged journalists willing to risk their lives to gather real information and show it to the world. However, there are limits and the Palestinian Authority should consider that Gaza is getting out of control. If something is not done, there will be fewer and fewer journalists willing to engage with the situation of the Palestinians, as the danger makes it too difficult to report.
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