Ware responds

John Ware has issued a response to some of the criticisms levelled against him after last month's Panorama film about Interpal.

His response took in points made by AIM magazine, Pickled Politics, the MCB and myself. The whole thing can be read at AIM, but I've pasted the pertinent points below.

6) Sunny Hundal wrote in Pickled Politics: "We didn't bring anything new to the table."

We did - at least according to Kenneth Dibble, Executive Director of the Charity Commission's legal services: what he himself defined as possible "collateral activities" - e.g. those promoting or glorifying terrorist activity - amongst the Islamic charities in the West Bank and Gaza to which Interpal distributes funds. For example, the video of children at the Al Khalil Al Rahman Young Girls' Society being encouraged by adults to sing songs celebrating their deaths and the deaths of Israelis through suicide bombings. This was the same material Sunny himself later describes as "quite disturbing".

Mr Dibble accepted that this "collateral" conduct was not something the Charity Commission had previously taken a view about. But he also said it was "...an issue that you are raising now and if I may say so is quite a pertinent issue."

7) Sunny quoted approvingly from MAB's Osama Saeed who wrote: "Ware's goading of young boys in an orphanage as to how many of them wanted to be fighters was sick beyond words."

Actually, my question to those boys was: "Who would you like to be. Who is your big hero? It's hard to see how that constitutes "goading."

8) Sunny also seems to have agreed with Osama when he said the Palestinian head teacher Fateheya Qawasmeh had "denied that her school had ever been raided by the Israeli army, but he maintained it had, and that a computer seized from there had pictures of violence on it. For Ware, she was lying, and the Israelis could do no wrong."

This misrepresents what we said. It also raises a disturbing question about Osama's understanding of what exactly "objective" journalism is.

The question I actually put to Mrs Qawasmeh was whether the orphanage adjoining her school had been raided - not the school. She denied this categorically. I then turned to the Israelis for their evidence, as you'd expect. They produced a lengthy IDF report dealing with the raid on 12 August 2004, and a badged and labelled computer, which when connected up provided powerful evidence that it had been used by the orphanage, indeed it contained the names of all the children.

9) Sunny wrote that the programme was "very agenda driven journalism."

Having asked the Israelis for their evidence, and having been persuaded by it, we could of course have come away and said: "These guys are Zionists. You can't trust a single thing Zionists say because they're, well, Zionists."

But surely that would have been "agenda journalism" because it demands that information from one side should never be believed [even if it survives scrutiny] whilst the benefit of the doubt should generally be given to another side.

10) The Muslim Council of Britain seems also to have expected us to discount Israeli sourced documents simply because they came from Israelis. It has referred to our "over reliance on partisan Israeli and American sources" which its says "clearly exposed the flimsy basis" of our "arguments against the British Muslim charity Interpal."

In fact many of the documents on which we relied were not written by the Israelis, but by Interpal and the Palestinian Authority. It was the Israelis who seized the documents when they raided a number of charities in the West Bank.

11) The MCB has gone much further than Sabina and Sunny. The MCB has accused me of being "an agenda-driven pro-Israeli polemicist."

This may be just rhetoric but it does echo the MCB's intemperate remarks prior to the broadcast of our previous Panorama "A Question of Leadership" following which it made a series of wholly inaccurate assertions. Each one of them was investigated by others [independent of me] in the BBC's Programme Complaints Unit.

Not one of the MCB's complaints withstood scrutiny. Readers can find the editor's very detailed response to the MCB on this page.

Having reported at length the MCB's many criticisms, we did ask some major Muslim media outlets to carry the BBC's response to them. Regrettably none did.

Regrettably, too, a number of e mails complaining about "Faith, Hate & Charity" have been abusive - and self evidently orchestrated, much like the last time. Why, I wonder, is it proving so difficult to debate these issues without resorting to rhetoric and name calling?

12) But there have been moments of light relief. The prize must go to Mohammed Sawalha, who now runs the "Muslim Initiative" a splinter group from the Muslim Association of Britain. He spoke of my "BBC mask" having slipped, and hinted that my paymasters were not the BBC but the Israeli foreign intelligence service "Mossad". As Mr Sawalha would have it, I am a "Mossad hireling"!

I must be an odd sort of "Mossad hireling" - having pursued in 1989 and 1994 one of Britain's biggest benefactors to Zion - Dame Shirley Porter - for political corruption. Because of my evidence, the then Westminster District Auditor began a lengthy inquiry that ended with Dame Shirley being ordered to pay a £41 million surcharge from her own pocket.

There was no hidden agenda behind this programme. The motivation for all of us involved in making it was straightforwardly the fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict presents the severest test to political Islam's claims to be a faith-based ideology of peace and tolerance.

13) Osama Saeed has also said that the songs sung at the al Khalil al Rahman Girls' Society - which Interpal helped fund - were invented before Hamas.

Actually I doubt that, especially the suicide belt song: "Fasten your bomb belt oh would-be martyr and fill the square with blood so that we get back our homeland." But that's hardly the point, surely? It's the content: "We all sacrifice ourselves for our country. We answer your call and make of our skulls a ladder to your glory, a ladder."

Like many of our critics, a one hour debate on the Islam channel about the programme last week failed to make any mention of the evidence we showed of incitement, the heart of our programme. Several of the contributors also misconstrued the programme's meaning. Sir Iqbal Sacranie told Islam channel that we had alleged Interpal was a "front for a terrorist organisation."

We didn't. Rather we showed that some of Interpal's money had gone to charities like the al Khalil al Rahman Young Girls' Society and that over the years this had helped build Hamas into the popular movement it is today. Nowhere did we suggest Interpal funds weren't going to help pay for their education, or to provide other humanitarian assistance.

What we invited viewers to consider was whether such charities were suitable organisations for British charitable funds to go to, given that violence directed at civilians has been a cornerstone of Hamas's ideology.

The important point, surely, is that these young girls were learning that death - not life - is a goal, and to believe in the illusion of total victory, namely the elimination of Israel. The Israeli occupation may well be the fat on the fire of violent fundamentalism. But isn't it also true that those girls were being given the oxygen to help keep this conflict going for another 60 years?

UPDATE: My response to this can be read here

Comments

[joe90]

Yes, that's right racist moron -
- undernourished children's brain development isn't affected by lack of proper food and diet -
Is that what happened to you to stunt your brain growth?

And as environment is real just opportunity, then it does affect the cognitive, intellectual and creative growth of individuals -

People from well-off backgounds are MORE LIKELY to go to university become pianists and lawyers and artists and suchlike - hence have agreat potential to explore their faculties and who knows what else that is in their heads

- unlike say people from Maryhill, Drumchappel or Govan WHO ARE LESS LIKELY (except for their inhabitants in those parts with all the expensive fancy flats etc!)

As I said,
IQ is a crap measure of anything human, except when it comes to attracting degenerate moral, spiritual and ethical non-entities like naveen who seem to think their social darwinism has something to do with intelligence - if that were the case, then they are a perfect example of proving their own third reich crap theories wrong - a total idiot!

Naveen and his hang-ups about IQ, probably stem from the fact they don't have any, and if they do then they should try using sometime soon -
- their only real connection to anything to do with humanity and civilisation is their negatives of barbarity, ignorance and peddling racism anonymously on the internet (because they are such fine specimen of humnanity, a new master race indeed - unlike the rest of us poorly made humans)

[naveen is a tube]

Yeah and the Royal family are white! The immigration rate from India has greatly reduced in recent times. Its the western countries that are begging for their services. Naveen what exactly is your job that makes you such an expert in IQ, nutrition etc?

[George Carty]

In the 12th century there were three great civilizations: the West, Islam and China. Two of them were trashed by the Mongol hordes. That's why the remaining one (saved by the death of the Mongol Khan Ogodai) came to dominate the world...

[naveen]

Western countries are looking for cheap labour and not specifically for Indians. Now there are Eastern Europeans, there is no need to import Indians and if Indian immigration reduces, that is a good thing.

The WEstern civilisation dominated the world because of the renaissance and enlightenment.

[naveen is a tube]

Yes and it shows this country needed and still needs immigrants for its economy to survive. There would be no NHS (which is the envy of the world) without it. Fact.

[naveen]

sorry you are wrong. there are sufficient UK and European doctors to run the NHS and overseas are not required.Indians are leaving the country.

[naveen is a tube]

You obviously haven't been in many hospitals lately have you, nor do you work in the nhs to have seen the situation for yourself do you?

[naveen]

you are wrong again. I am a qualifed physician and know more about what is going in the NHS than you do. What is in the press is propaganda in the press. There is no shortage of doctors.

[naveen is a tube]

I find that very hard to believe... You should know then about the lack of nhs dentists, and look at the doctors currently working here. Maybe you should take a trip to a hospital like hairmyres and see the number of foreign doctors there are. Oh btw I have many family members who are doctors working in the nhs, who know that people like you talk out their arses.

[joe90]

"West, Islam and China." - 3 great civilisations!

Well, one is an amorphous general direction, the other is a religion and the last one is a sort of state with many nations that grew and shrank and split up over time and wasn't confined to in space and time-

- I can't see any great civilisations here at all - just some moron's assertions which show they're no expert on human culture, which shouldn't surprise anyone

[George Carty]

(rolls eyes)

Of course I meant Western civilization, not the compass direction of "west", and I meant Islamic civilization not the religion of Islam.

[joe90]

Aye right!

And you and that other balloon naveen are perfect examples of so-called 'western civilisation' alright!

Embarrassing big-mouthed racist yobbos that know nothing about what they are talking about, never mind 'civilisation'

Reporter -"What do you think about western civilisation Mr Ghandi?"

Ghandi - "I think it would be a good idea!"

[George Carty]

Joe90, which racist comments have I posted on this forum? Are you some kind of Fanonist ideologue who believes that the West is always wrong and the Third World is always right?

[joe90]

"Fanonist ideologue" - oooh big words from such a tiny mind - who would have thought it possible?

I feel dominanted already and from such inauspicious beginnings way back in the twelfth century, who would have thought it possible?

[joe90]

Perhaps I'm getting you confused with someone else George Carty -
- my sincerest apologies for offending you!

[thabet]

Joe,

George Carty regularly posts on Muslim blogs. He is certainly not a racist and is always courteous and polite. I'm glad you've reconsidered your views on him and apologised.

[joe90]

No problem thabet -
- I am sorry to have lowered the tone altogether - I'm feeling very repentant!

All the best mate!