Rolled-up Trousers

Make tea for Mr Murdoch, not war

Vince Cable wasn’t with the programme. Rupert Murdoch should have government ministers declaring love for him, not war with him.

The decision of whether Murdoch can take over all of Sky has now been passed over to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, who once gushingly said we “wouldn't be saying that British TV is the envy of the world if it hadn't been for him [Murdoch]”. This doesn't just seriously similarly call into question his bias towards Murdoch, but also his taste in telly.

Murdoch’s Sun newspaper backed the Tories at this year’s election. Peter Mandelson said this was because the two had done a deal for “favours”. Lord Mandelson would know about such things.

What politicians of all stripes should be doing on this is not declaring love or war, but declaring their interest and bowing out of the decision. As Hunt himself said earlier this year about Ofcom’s ruling that Sky had to cut its charges for Sky Sports:

“For matters of policy, we think it should be ministers who make the decision but for matters like competition issues, it is very important that is made at arm's length to politicians.”

The SNP are promoting Scotland. Somebody call The Bill!

Ofcom last week dismissed the claim that Scottish Television's output had been influenced by the Scottish Government through sponsorship of programmes.

The money came from the Homecoming budget, which promoted Scotland amongst the diaspora worldwide in 2009.

What got me about this was how the SNP was supposed to have benefited. Government money cannot be used for party political purposes and no one could point in this instance to how the SNP gained. Advertising of this nature has been half as much under the SNP as it was under Labour. What we were told was that Scottishness was being promoted, and jings, crivvens, by jove, gosh, the Bill was knocked off the schedule and Scottish programmes were on instead.

Said the Tories at the time in February:

“The Government has a multi-million-pound advertising budget. It must be used for the public good not party political advantage.

“We also need to know whether the SNP Government had a role in removing popular programmes, like The Bill, from our screens.”

Labour and the Lib Dems also joined in. They seem to think that just because a programme is Scottish, it’s an SNP thing. Yet they will all claim to be Scottish parties, and bristle at any slight comment which may question their patriotism. 

By their works ye shall know them.

One final thought - this complaint to Ofcom came in the lead up to the general election, a campaign which was defined by the leaders debates between the Tories, Lib Dems and Labour. So at the same time as those three were being boosted by basically free advertising on the BBC, ITV and Sky, Ofcom were deliberating this frivolous complaint about the SNP.

Cybernattering

I should not be amazed at what can constitute news, but was still surprised to see an innocuous get-together that I partook in with fellow SNP bloggers in April being presented as some sort of conspiracy.

This high powered meeting featuring a "close confidante of First Minister Alex Salmond", was so much part of the SNP grand plan that one of the people at the blogger's breakfast was Labour's Yapping Yousuf! More on the meeting with the organiser SNP Tactical Voting

The internet is a nasty place. I know this possibly better than most. You need a thick skin in public life so am sure Jim Murphy didn't take too much umbrage to being called a c*** by the blogger formerly known as Wardog and didn't need the matter escalated to national attention.

It seems from this affair though, and the fate that has befallen Mark MacLachlan, that if you go after senior enough politicians and journalists, there will be comeback. 

As I've indicated above, this isn't just an SNP issue. I think the level of interest on this is because the 'cybernats' are so at odds with the SNP hierarchy (a phenomenon I think indicated in Annabel Goldie's comment in this article). My experience in seeing how the SNP press operation work is that they don't get anywhere near as personal and nasty as I've experienced from the sharp end of Labour HQ briefings. I'm not saying the SNP are perfect, just much better.

The unionist commentators taking so much exception to cybernat activity find them odd since they don't see nationalist views expressed commonly elsewhere. The SNP won in 2007 not just with no support from a single newspaper, but against the open hostility of a number. This has continued, and has led to the phenomenon you see at the bottom of online newspaper articles.

That said, unacceptable comments are unacceptable comments. I'm not a fan of anonymous blogging, and certainly you shouldn't say anything you don't want attributed to you later if you get exposed. Frankly, I don't really see any value in newspaper comments sections. Rarely is there ever a nugget in there, and the facility exists I suspect to keep online hit rates up. More on this with Joan McAlpine.

Overall, I'm not sure what to make of the Wardog and Montague Burton development given the kinds of things people say about me under the cover of anonymity on the internet. I suppose since they can be found out, they better watch out. Given the level of lunacy, obsession and incitement apparent in some of them, if they are in employment somewhere, they should probably be careful too.

And to the chap or chaps moving off the net to phoning people and organisations that know me warning them about my dangers - hello.

DEC appeal farce: Comment of the day...

.. goes to Adrian Wells of Sky News. Announcing his channel's solidarity with the BBC, he said:

"We have to, as an international channel, focus on our primary role and that is to report the story and not become the story."

Mission accomplished?

You can tell how unpopular the decision is even within the BBC. The 10'oclock news and Newsnight both showed clips of the advert in their news items about the episode, with website and phone number clearly on display in the bottom-righthand corner.

BBC must air the DEC appeal

The BBC have royally messed up with the farcicial decision not to broadcast the Disaster Emergency Committee's appeal for Gaza.

Thirteen of the UK's leading charities have come together to do a joint iniatiative for the region which was already a humanitarian catastrophe, even before the three week bombing by Israel. 80% of the people there were dependent on UN food because of the twenty month Israeli siege, with the UN running out of food in December.

Since then, 1300 dead, many more thousands injured, even more homeless. These agencies want to tackle this. For the BBC to question whether aid can be distributed, and in effect accuse the country's leading charities of lying about their abilities, is extraordinary.

The main reason the BBC have cited though is the impact this would have on their impartiality. I'm afraid that's totally shot to pieces now, but I don't think anyone can ever feasibly argue again that it's in favour of the Palestinians. It's bad enough they have contributed through their (lack of) reporting to a climate where they clearly have no recognition of the situation in Gaza. To now not just ignore the suffering, but to stop urgent assistance from being collected, is disgusting.

Anyone that would have complained to the BBC because they broadcasted the DEC appeal, would have been an inhuman voice not worth listening to. Pandering to the worst elements of society is an abdication of backbone and principles. Surely the BBC has better guidelines than that.

Racists on This Week

Why is Martin Amis still viewed as a serious commentator? Here he is in an interview with Johann Hari regurgitating nonsense about Muslim birth rates and how they pose a threat to Europe.

Despite this, he was on This Week chatting on the sofa with Andrew Neil about the US primaries. Mind you, they also had Jade "poppadom" Goody on the final segment of the programme, so maybe some researchers were having a bit of fun.

When is someone off the record?

Strange story on the front page of the Scotsman today. They've got Samantha Power, one of Barack Obama's people, calling Hillary Clinton a "monster":

"We f***** up in Ohio," she admitted. "In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.

"She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything," Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.

Now to me, that comment should be off the record. The Scotsman put in an explanation at the bottom of their article saying that this disclaimer only works if it's stated at the beginning of an interview that this will be the nature of the conversation. However, in practice I've seen it work plenty of times that a conversation is fully quoted but if someone wants to go off the record for a moment - and they say it quite clearly - that this is respected.

I suspect that if this had been a Scottish politician, the Scotsman wouldn't have gone to town on it in quite the same way. The fact that they will not be getting regular access to the Obama camp anyway led them to take the decision they did.

Mehdi Hasan on the media

One of the rising stars in the media is interviewed in the Independent:

Hasan believes that television is less hostile towards Muslims than the print media, and is keen to lay the blame for Islamophobia at the door of ignorance rather than racism. "Over the years, at the BBC, ITV and Sky, I have worked with countless producers and reporters who had never met a Muslim before they met me," he says, "or if they had, it was invariably an unrepresentative and loony extremist who they were interviewing or profiling for a story."

Hasan calls for more moderate Muslims in Britain to abandon traditional career paths towards medicine or engineering and to instead join the media and help influence the industry's coverage of issues such as terrorism and integration. "I see people like myself – who happen to be both a professional journalist and a practising Muslim – as a bridge between the Islamic community and the media, and by extension between Muslims and wider society," says Hasan.

Belief in climate change

The BBC has decided to cancel Planet Relief, which as it sounds was a planned night of campaigning similar to Comic Relief, but for the environment. The decision appears to have been prompted to avoid criticisms of bias. Which is a bit like them cancelling Lenny Henry et al with the rationale that there are people that blame those suffering in the less developed world for their own plight.

But let's say for argument's sake that the climate change sceptics have a point. I think that Pascal's Wager applies to this scenario. There is too much to be lost by carrying on the way we are, and nothing to lose by being greener. Actually, everyone wins by changing course. There is nothing at all wrong in saying that we want to clean up the world, have more breathable air, and conserve energy. All of these things are noble pursuits, regardless of how important you think it is to do them.

Guilty: first Scots Islamic terrorist facing 15 years

The Herald butchered my letter today, taking out any meaning, which was to complain about their outrageous front page coverage of the Siddique trial yesterday. Their edited version took out the criticism of their coverage. Here's the original letter:

Sir, I was taken aback to read your front page feature this morning talking of “Islamic terror”. This oxymoronic phrase has long since left the discourse in virtually every other newspaper in these isles.

The adjective is just wrong, there is nothing Islamic about terrorism. The Muslim community is constantly asked to disavow these acts, and we are not helped when this kind of language is used linking us right back to it.

I’m no lawyer, but Siddique was not convicted with any crime of “Islamic terrorism” as your article stated, just offences related to terrorism pure and simple. Although as Siddique’s defence team highlighted, arguably only a Muslim would face the Terrorism Acts for what he did.

See the Sunday Times front page

Mustafa Arif has shown himself very confident in his lawyers and the steadfastness of his internet hosts by publishing the front page of the Sunday Times that News International demanded I remove from my site. He says:

Why have News International decided to pick on Osama? One can only assume they didn’t appreciate the criticism. Surely, a large multi-national media company ought to be thicker skinned than cry foul over the musings of a minor blog?

I like to think of this as more than just a "minor blog" but thanks anyway Mustafa!

Sunday Times

News International have been in touch to complain about me using copyright material in this post.

The material in question was an image of their front page that day, which accompanied the expose of how poor their lead story was.

I'm not an intellectual property lawyer, and don't want to go to the expense of pushing this, so all other News International front pages have been removed from this website.

I will add though that we live in a sad state of affairs where they can be up in arms about further publicity of a front page which has already been seen up and down the country, while there is no recourse on their rank rotten journalism.

UPDATE: Shouldn't grumble too much, we also live in a country where people are prosecuted for telling the public that the government wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera, with no action against those that actually wanted to do the crime.

Bunch of foreigners tell us how to run our schools

I was psyching myself up for a demolishing of the Daily Express's latest Islamophobic tirade, but found that Five Chinese Crackers has already done it.

Given the abject lack of bloggers who ever put forward a decent view when it comes to Muslim affairs, the find (hat tip to Islamophobia Watch) is a welcome one.

The topic is the MCB's report which contains eminently sensible proposals that would help integrate Muslims better into the state school sector. With all the fussing over faith schools it is forgotten that 97.5% of Muslim kids do not actually attend Islamic schools. The guidance will only help teachers in dealing with issues that inevitably arise. As the report says:

However, other [schools] have not been responsive to legitimate and reasonable requests ... such as collective worship, communal changing, swimming, halal meat and sex education. Unfortunately, Muslim pupils are sometimes placed in situations where they feel pressured into acting contrary to their beliefs and conscience, and also experience Islamophobic sentiments and comments.

This is a sentiment that chimes with me. Despite this, the government has found fit to dismiss it, no doubt to the pleasure of the BNP who don't have to provide commentary when linking to Daily Express articles.

It seems from this episode that the right-wing want to have it both ways. They don't want Islamic schools, and they don't want recognition of Muslim beliefs and practices in other schools either. Contrived dramas like this from the Express again only reinforce the fact that significant elements of this country have moved on from condemning Al-Qaeda to a witch-hunt against the Islamic faith itself.

(Muslim) man kills family

Criminals who happen to be Muslims can't just be criminals today, they have to be "Muslim criminals".

Take the tragic deaths of Caneze Riaz and her four young daughters who were killed by their husband and father Mohammed Riaz. He doused them in petrol and set them ablaze while they slept in Blackburn last year before jumping in the fire and killing himself.

Another non-story from the Daily Mail

A father and two year old daughter went swimming only to find that they couldn't get in because there was a private booking there. It seems that the council were to blame for having the wrong information on their website:

Mr Williams, 34, bitterly criticised Manchester City Council yesterday after it admitted that advertising for the session, on its website and on leaflets, had been misleading. 'I can understand why Muslim women need to have this kind of session, but the council should not be advertising it as parent and toddler,' he said.

The Daily Mail however blames Muslims:

The incident is the latest in a series of rows between local authorities and the public over swimming lessons for ethnic minority groups.

Except no one was actually rowing with the council over hiring the pool out to a third party.

Yesterday's Channel 4 Insider programme was most illuminating. Zubair Mulla exposed that there is a chemical in this country that is killing 60 people a day - a daily toll equal to the 7/7 bombings. Doctors and ambulance people are complaining that 60-70% of their time is being taken up dealing with the effects of it.

Worse still, the government is afraid to do anything about it because the people contaminating the country with it are such a powerful lobby.

The programme was talking about alcohol.

Quick comment on the Sunday Times article about my supposed comments on Islamophobia and the Holocaust last week. Under the headline Treatment of Muslims 'echoes Jews under Nazis', the newspaper averred that:

ONE OF Scotland’s most prominent Muslims has compared the treatment of Asians in Britain with that of Jews in Nazi Germany.

Except I didn't, and as Martin Sullivan at IW pointed out, if you read my actual comments in the article, you'll see I didn't. The headline of the article contains quotation marks, but again, as you'll see, there is no such quote contained therein.

Bled to death

The Sun have been particularly active with the Muslim stories of late. One of their favoured themes has been halal meat, which they say involves animals being "bled to death" - see the stories about halal food in Reading schools and about McDonalds planning halal "Big Meccas" (the proper Arabic name of Makkah would have been even better here).

From the former article:

Islamic law insists on halal meat, produced by slashing an animal’s neck with a single cut. Animals are not stunned beforehand.

Parents are furious at the revelation. One said: “I have nothing against halal meat — especially for religious reasons — but my daughter is Christian not Muslim.”

Emmm your point then mate? You want meat slaughtered according to Christianity?

I don't know where the Sun coined this "bled to death" phrase, but it tends towards an interpretation where a minor incision is made while mad mullahs stand around waiting for the animal to die writhing in pain. In fact, the meat is not halal unless the animal dies instantly. If it suffers then it simply isn't, pardon the expression, kosher.

O, Muslim town of Bethlehem

The Daily Mail discovers that life is not great in Bethlehem:

The town's Christian population has dwindled from more than 85 per cent in 1948 to 12 per cent of its 60,000 inhabitants in 2006.

There are reports of religious persecution, in the form of murders, beatings and land grabs.

Meanwhile, the breakdown in security is putting off tourists, leading to economic hardship for Christians, who own most of the town's hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops.

The situation has become so desperate that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, are to lead a joint delegation to Bethlehem this week to express their solidarity with the beleaguered Christian populace.

The town, according to the Cardinal, is being "steadily strangled".

They identify the problem, but its cause?

The sense of a creeping Islamic fundamentalism is all around in Bethlehem.

Let me say this. The head of the CoE and the Catholic Church better not be going over there only to condemn "Islamic fundamentalism" and to ignore the wall running through the living room. There have been all sorts of strange pronouncements from both churches regarding Islam in recent months, but such an act would be simply beyond the pale.

• BSSC exposes Telegraph journalist Con Coughlin
• PP on Blair being the problem, not Muslims
• Nether-World: Palestinian takes UK govt to court over arms to Israel

Got this reply from the BBC regarding my complaint that they used a backdrop of the Dome of the Rock for a purely Israeli political story:

I was sorry to learn you feel it was inappropriate to use a shot of the Dome of the Rock as a backdrop during reports from Jerusalem.

We are well aware of the controversy surrounding this area.  In the past we have regularly reported on it and pointed out that Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967.  It annexed the area in 1981 and sees it as its exclusive domain.  Under international law the area is considered to be occupied territory.  We were not attempting to make any kind of political point with the backdrop.  Quite simply Richard Miron was reporting from the area and this was simply used a backdrop to where he was reporting from.

Gonnae lay off the Muslim stuff?

The Muslim stories have calmed down a bit.

But the BBC for one have persisted, with the story of the 70 airport workers in Paris who have been suspended for suspicion of terrorism. The headline however says "Paris airport bars Muslim staff" i.e. signifying that they have suspended staff for being Muslim. They've done nothing of the sort.

A few years ago there was a debate about whether the oxymornic term "Islamic terrorist" was apt - how can you describe a terrorist as Islamic? They are terrorists pure and simple. Now it seems to be simplified to just calling them Muslims.

I hope questions are being asked in France though as to the likelihood of 70 people being involved in a terror plot either coordinated or unlinked. The BBC reports: "Airport officials say some of the workers had frequently visited Pakistan and Afghanistan the previous year". It seems that the smoking gun these days as far as accusations of terrorism are concerned is a visit to Pakistan. For your information, I haven't been since I was two.

Still, at least France didn't just bomb the airport. A few days ago the Pakistani government bombed an Islamic school (also known by the evil word madrassah) in their country killing 80 people. All, without any arrests or trials, were terrorists apparently. The danger for the Pakistani government, given how the country is viewed in the West as a hot bed of terrorism, is that the approach they took on this school could be taken on their entire country.

You may have heard of this story by the real outrage it represented - that Prince Charles had to change his travel plans because of it. Camilla meanwhile has being coming under fire from the Daily Express for one for not wearing a poppy. Yesterday they declared "'Islamic' Camilla dumps poppy", because it was chaffing her "Muslim scarf".

Today, they are moaning that "she is wearing one but you can't see it under Muslim scarf". As you can see from the picture, she is wearing the traditional Pakistani daputta. This is a Muslim scarf how? The Express would do well to remember before stoking this Islamophobic and racist nonsense that tens of thousands of soldiers from the sub-continent laid down their lives in WWI for their British colonial masters, and if they're sincere about commemorating the war veterans, then let's focus on that.

Delaying trials for Eid

David Aaronovitch wrote last week in the Times:

I not only think that Jeremiahs such as Liddle, and Melanie Phillips, of the Mail, are wrong, I think their approach could lead us into utter disaster. For a fortnight now we have been discussing veils — so just how many veil-wearing teachers are there? Ten? Five? Just Ms Azmi? What’s the problem for the rest of us once we have (rightly) taken the decision that she cannot teach while looking like a Dalek? Why should a Muslim cab- driver who is (also rightly) being sued for not carrying a guide dog make it to the banner front page of the London Evening Standard? Or a single Muslim chemist who refused to prescribe a “morning-after” Pill get half a page in the Telegraph?

In each case where a minister or an opposition spokesthing has given an opinion on matters Muslim in the past two weeks, I have agreed with much of what they have said, while wishing that they had spread the news more evenly over the national agenda. The interventions in the space of a fortnight, from at least four members of the Government and David Davis, have helped to create an atmosphere of assault. Mr Davis has said, for example, that “there is a growing feeling that the Muslim community is excessively sensitive to criticism”. Maybe, but if everyone says it every day for a week, the sensitivity becomes justified. Try it at home if you don’t believe me.

Unfortunately it came in the same article as this unsubstantiated stat about 12-year-old girls:

...... there are several communities that practise Islam, and in some of them up to one tenth of the girls of school age go missing between primary and secondary school. They’re back in Pakistan getting betrothed ......

On the spate of Muslim stories, Unity and Sunny at PP had good write-ups on the recent story where the Sun claimed that "Muslim yobs" had daubed "F**K OFF" outside the door of British soldiers. Turned out that no Muslim had done anything of the sort. Alarm bells should have been ringing from when the story was first published in the Sun though. Their evidence:

Sources inside Windsor’s Combermere Barracks — where the officers are based — confirmed Muslims had made calls threatening the men.

When someone makes threatening and abusive calls, how on earth do you decipher what religion they are? “Oi soldiers, F*** OFF! By the way, peace be upon you, I’m a Muslim”.

And this week the Scotsman expressed the outrage of Scotland's leading bigoted QC Donald Findlay that a trial was deferred to a later date because two Muslim witnesses were celebrating Eid.

I've now spoken with some lawyers, and indeed trials do get deferred for a lot less. In any case, it is not going to bring down civilisation as we know it, no matter how alarmed readers of the Scotsman get about the "Islamisation of the UK" (their letters page can be a scary place). We're a big country with bags of tradition, we can be relaxed about this.

The reporter did not tell me that one of the Muslims in question was a terror suspect. I stand by my comments in the original article regardless - it is like asking a Christian to come into court on Christmas. It's up to others to determine how much they want to treat Muslims like untermenschen in insisting that they come in regardless.

Absolutely astonishing reply received by Lenin from the BBC as to why they failed to report the story of the BNP bomb factory.

The BBC, the country's leading news broadcaster, said they hadn't heard about it.

It's funny how the most trivial of stories can make it to the top of the news agenda. Just a few days ago we had the non-story of PC Basha who wasn't stationed at the Israeli embassy being lead story. Difference in this BNP case is the police didn't see it fit to leak it to their favoured organs.

John Ware has responded to points made at Pickled Politics again. This time though he's not included any of my serious criticisms of his documentary.

Maybe he sees it as part of the "personalised invective" against him. I don't think I was personal - I'd attack any lazy journalism. Maybe he just can't answer the points.

Undeterred, hopefully the BBC themselves will finally speak about this soon, rather than just Ware and Panorama defending their work.

Welcome to Herald readers

Joan McAlpine picks up on the issue of there not being enough Muslims in Scottish newsrooms. Whose fault is it?

So what of the Scottish media? I believe it will have learned from this sorry tale. It will be reminded of the need to "assume nothing" and ensure basic fact-checking, something that requires the manpower to canvass a wide variety of sources. The media must also improve and extend its links with the Muslim community at every level. This point is made by Osama Saeed, whose blog – www.osamasaeed.org – offers an interesting Islamic perspective on a range of current events.

Misbah speaks - and leaves the media with red faces

You heard it here first folks.

From the beginning, the friends and relatives of the people at the centre of this have been saying that there is more to this than was being reported.

Even looking at Louise’s own statement from Tuesday is was clear that this was not a case of kidnap as was being portrayed. The fact that Misbah’s own siblings were helping her and their father should have provoked some kind of thinking independent of lazy racism.

I was being told that the family’s side of the story could not be properly told due to media rules. At the same time, there seemed to be no compunction in circulating the cheap-shot accusation of a forced marriage just because the father was Pakistani. I hope the Daily Record particularly are feeling stupid - because they look stupid.

Still, despite Misbah’s insistence that her name is not Molly, and it certainly isn’t Campbell – Louise’s boyfriend’s name – the media are still insisting on not using her real name. It’s still only two syllables, it should not be this difficult.

Keep Comment Free

The Evening Standard has run a story claiming that the Guardian's comment editor, Seumas Milne, is set to get the boot.

This has been greeted with delight by Harry's Place, who along with a number of pro-war, pro-Israeli and right-wing blogs, have had him constantly in their sights over the last few years. They are not used to seeing opinions in the papers other than their own.

The Guardian is unique among British newspapers in that it does give voice to comment that doesn't get aired anywhere else. This is why "leading figures" are gunning for Milne.

Ware hits back?

John Ware has apparently replied to my criticisms of his Panorama film about Interpal. This was posted on the Pickled Politics thread on the topic:

Osama Saeed and I may well look through the telescope from different ends. But the gap between those like us is always going to be unbridgeable if even the most basic facts can’t be agreed. Categorically we on Panorama did not “mock up” the classroom scene at the orphange. The class that we filmed was most emphatically not arranged at our request. We don’t do “mocking up” on Panorama. Neither I nor the producer Tristan Quinn would ever be party to that kind of stunt television. The relationship between Osama’s other “we-now-know” assertions about the programme and the facts is equally non existent.

If this is indeed his reply, then I'm astonished. I really doubt he would accept this kind of answer from someone he'd put questions to.

The "telescope" has nothing to do with it, but it is interesting to see he's admitting a bias on the topic, rather than some kind of objective observer status. The fact is that I've put some rather serious points to him that his documentary, which claimed to show that Interpal had helped build Hamas, actually did nothing of the sort.

As well as saying he mocked up a scene, I've said that that the BBC has been used as a mouthpiece for Mossad propaganda - the film would have been nothing without them (they should complain that they weren't given "special thanks" in the end credits).

He additionally needs to demonstrate why Interpal were uniquely singled out for criticism, when the Palestinian institutions in question have been funded by a host of other (non-Muslim) European and US charities.

Ware also got it very wrong about the songs and about the Hamas flag. He may well say "we-now-know", but he should have known this before he broadcasted.

Response to Ware's response

John Ware has responded to some of the criticisms leveled against him after his documentary about Interpal. It took in points made by AIM magazine, Sunny at Pickled Politics, the MCB and myself.

The main thrust of his film is, as he puts it, that “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”. As such, they are preposterous grounds for a documentary. It is something intangible that nobody could know or prove. Ware has consequently had to clutch at various straws – songs, flags, attitudes - to try and construct a case. He has also employed some very questionable methods.

However, the main point I would put to him is that his documentary was Mossad-inspired propaganda. It depended on material provided to him by the Israeli secret services. He tried to dismiss the links by saying: