What makes Jerusalem so holy? - BBC News

The BBC ponder this question in this report http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26934435

Can you guess which religion is put last in the report? Yes that's right, the oldest of the three religions.

But it's the passage on Judaism that interests me as a whole.

'The wall

The Jewish Quarter is home to the Kotel, or the Western Wall, a remnant of the retaining wall of the mount on which the Holy Temple once stood.

Inside the temple was the Holy of Holies, the most sacred site in Judaism.

Jews believe that this was the location of the foundation stone from which the world was created, and where Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Many Jews believe the Dome of the Rock is the site of the Holy of Holies.

Today, the Western Wall is the closest place Jews can pray to the Holy of Holies.

It is managed by the Rabbi of the Western Wall and every year hosts millions of visitors. Jewish people from all over the world visit this place to pray and connect to their heritage, especially during the High Holidays.'

How's your logic? '... the Western Wall, a remnant of the retaining wall of the mount on which the Holy Temple once stood... Many Jews believe the Dome of the Rock is the site of the Holy of Holies.'
 

 If the Western Wall is a remnant of the retaining wall of the mount on which the Holy Temple once stood, and no doubt about this is expressed here (if there was doubt then the institutionally anti Israel BBC would shoehorn a weasel word conditional term into the description of the Western Wall), then geography would make it pretty clear where The Temple was and what is there now.

It fits the BBC's anti Israel agenda to discount Israel's claim on Jerusalem. And this is something that they do as often as possible.

The BBC don't explain why The Jewish Temple is no longer there. But then the BBC also manage to avoid reporting that despite associating themselves with the view that Israel is an apartheid state, Israel has ceded control of the holiest site in Judaism to a Muslim entity.

Perhaps the BBC could contrast this action with that of the Jordanians who occupied the eastern part of Jerusalem from 1948-1967 and during that period expelled Jews from it, ethnic cleansing, destroyed synagogues and made it all but impossible for Jews to visit even the Western Wall. The BBC could do this, but to do so would be to go against their settled anti Israel narrative and letting the light of facts onto this subject is not in the interest of the BBC or its Muslims Arab fellow travellers.

The BBC's obsession with promoting hatred of Israel and increasing Muslim immigration into the UK is at least partly responsible for the rise in anti-semitic feeling in the UK and beyond. When Jews start once again to be persecuted in the UK, it is the BBC who will share a large part of the blame for creating the atmosphere that this anti Semitism flourished in.

The BBC report that Merkel to speak in Berlin against anti-Semitism

The BBC report that:

' German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to speak at a mass rally against anti-Semitism later, amid a sharp rise in attacks on Germany's Jews.

The event in Berlin comes 75 years after the outbreak of the World War Two, in which six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany.Mrs Merkel has vowed to do everything she can "to ensure anti-Semitism doesn't have a chance".'

Of course as this is the institutionally anti Israel, and sometimes borderline anti Semitic BBC, they also add that:

'The surge in anti-Semitism follows the summer's conflict in Gaza.'

What the BBC should add is that it's their and other's blatantly anti Israel coverage of the conflict in Gaza that has exacerbated the rise in European anti Semitism, that and the increasing Muslim population in Europe.

Hidden at the end

this BBC article entitled 'Iran nuclear: Curbs on uranium enrichment begin' starts 'Iran has begun curbing uranium enrichment under a deal which will also see international sanctions eased, the UN nuclear watchdog (IAEA) says.

Earlier, centrifuges used for enrichment were disconnected at the Nantaz plant, Iranian TV reported.'

Hidden away right at the end of the report is this somewhat important passage:

'Sounding a note of caution, former IAEA deputy director Olli Heinonen said that if Iran decided to renege on the deal, it would only need two to three weeks to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.'

As it's just Israel that needs to worry about Iran's nuclear arsenal, why should the BBC worry?

The BBC's anti-Semitic past

Thanks to a contributor to Biased-BBC, I have found a fascinating article from The Independent. It's from 1993. The article is entitled 'Why the BBC ignored the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism in the top ranks of broadcasting and Foreign Office staff led to the news being suppressed, says Stephen Ward' and contains a huge amount of interesting material. Here are a few extracts:

'ANTI-SEMITISM in the higher ranks of the Foreign Office and the BBC during the Second World War led to a policy which suppressed news about Germany's attempt to exterminate European Jews, new research will show this week. 

...

... both Foreign Office and BBC officials held a low opinion of Jews, and believed this was shared by the public.

They deduced that saving millions of Jews would not be seen as a desirable war aim by the British. At other times they justified suppression of details of the atrocities by arguing that they would not be believed.

News reports could only be carried if, in the view of the BBC and the Foreign Office, they were well-sourced. If the sources were Jewish, they tended not to be believed.

...

The BBC accepted unquestioningly the Ministry of Information's advice that anti-Semitism was rife in Britain, and felt it was not its role to do anything. On 17 November 1943 the director-general, Robert Foot, issued a policy directive . . . 'that we should not promote ourselves or accept any propaganda in the way of talks, discussion, features with the object of trying to correct the undoubted anti-Semitic feeling which is held very largely throughout the country'.

...

At the very end of the war, Richard Dimbleby made his historic broadcasts from the concentration camp at Belsen. In the light of the BBC's wartime policy, it comes as no surprise that these broadcasts mention only in passing the Jewish identity of victims, or that Belsen's gas chambers and the sheer numbers of its dead so shocked the BBC newsroom that they refused to use Dimbleby's reports until they had seen them confirmed in newspapers.'

Shocking isn't it, but does the BBC's current attitude towards Israel have its roots in this anti-Semitic outlook?

Another matter that strikes me, and it is something that I have remarked upon before, is that the BBC's favourite left-wing 'comedians' (including Jeremy Hardy and Mark Steel) love to remind people that the Daily Mail once supported Hitler and so its views are not worthy of respect now. Since we can read that the BBC once supported the minimising of the coverage of Nazi Germay's anti-Semitism and killing of Jews, can we apply the same stricture to the BBC? If not, why not?