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Regarding Dan Cruickshank
Last uploaded : Sunday 8th Jun 2003 at 23:13
Contributed by : Allan Levine

 

Subject: This Week and Dan Cruickshank - Road to Armaggedon/Raiders of the Lost Art
(To the BBC)
Dear Sir or Madam,

Congratulations on another week of spinning misinformation about events in the Middle East, and as per usual, with Israel portrayed as the villain. Interviews with Palestinians claiming that they already have taken steps to implement the Road Map, while Israel has done nothing, goes unchallenged. What have the Palestinians done, except repeat what they said they were going to do at Oslo in 1993 and carried on exactly as before?

A guest on your 'This Week' programme last Thursday claims "thousands of Palestinians have been murdered by Israel to a loss of a few hundred Israelis" also goes unchallenged. The actual number of Israelis killed since this present conflict began is about one-third of Palestinians. If the Palestinians ceased their militance and terror their would be zero on both sides. If your guest has a problem with their not being more Israeli deaths to satisfy his sense of right and wrong, then every conflict must be a problem for him.

Your journalist Dan Cruickshank either shows his abject ignorance, or deliberately sets out to villify Israel in Saturdays programme. Insinuating that 'Palestinians' were 'driven' out of their homes in the 1948 War of Independance, as if Israel created these refugees. In the first place there were no 'Palestinians' in 1948, only Arabs living in Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and those that left Israel at the time did so at the request of the Arab Nations who were about to attack Israel, to make their optimistic conquest easier. Those that stayed have become full Israeli citizens, and number over 1.2 million. How many Jews are tolerated by the Palestinians, or could survive without protection of the IDF?

I defy you or your 'journalist' to find any archive of the time that shows where Arabs were made refugees or driven out by Israel, much less reference to a resident who was called a Palestinian. The West Bank and Gaza were lands controlled by Jordan, and Egypt until 1967.

No mention of the fact that there is no bona-fide Muslim holy site ANYWHERE in Israel referred to in the Koran. In fact Jeruslaem, the so called '3rd holiest city' for Muslims is also not mentioned once. Whereas the Old Testament is mostly an account of events taking place just in Israel and Jerusalem.

Is it likely that the BBC is going to show up the strategy of Arabs and militant Muslims in regard to Israel, whether in politics, conflict, religion, in light of the wealth of facts to the contrary for their claims? News abounds about the Road Map for peace, is it not newsworthy and significant that despite almost every nation's flag flying at Aqaba, the noteworthy exception was Israel's?

I rather suspect you will continue to appeal to the Muslim spin, after all, you are unlikely to endanger your radio, cable, and journalistic income generated by Arab states, not to mention the volume of Muslims living in the UK. Simple arithmetic and history shows that with so few Jews in the world, they are an easy minority target. Goebbels would be proud of you.
Allan Levine
Surrey
***********************
Subject: The Road to Armaggedon - Raiders of the lost art
To the BBC

Dear Sir or Madam,

Perhaps you can explain why Dan Cruickshank was able to do better journalism on this, the second of his documentaries, than on the first? Does he realize how hypocritical he showed himself to be?

In the beginning of this documentary he expresses relief at seeing the US tank guarding the Iraq museum, yet he showed the Israeli forces guarding Jewish sites in the West Bank as an 'unholy' occurence. Is it just because he has interest in the Iraqi artifacts, and none at all in the Jewish sites, that has has no empathy? Even though he visited Joseph's tomb, that had been left unguarded and saw himself the subsequent desecration and destruction by the Palestinians, he made no equation.

He described the tunnel under the Western (wailing) Wall as a new excavation, done to incite Palestinians. In fact it was an archaeological re-excavation of existing tunnels dug over 2 thousand years ago - a find he should respect and uphold.

The irony of his realization that the Iraq troops had used the museum as a fortress, even though he had first believed the Iraqi curator that it was not, as against his willing acceptance of the Palestinian version of how Israel had shelled the Church of the Nativity against a 'few' Palestinian gunmen holed up there. No mention of how the Palestinian gunmen desecrated that site, besides purposefully using it to create a 'world' situation that would villify Israel, as so many of their other 'creations' are designed to do.

I wonder how many Jewish and Christian sites there will be left if Israel was not protecting them. Do you think it is an accident that the Dome of the Rock - the site where Mohammed is 'supposed' to have risen to heaven, is situated on top of Temple Mount - one of the holiest sites in the Jewish religion? Especially considering that Israel or Jerusalem was not even mentioned in the Koran. How many more 'holy sites' will the Muslims 'discover' and build on top of if Israel doesn't protect them?

I think Dan Cruickshank should have a rethink, and do some proper investigation before he dares to make any more documentaries, and I hope you will forward my comments to him.

Allan Levine


     

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