Threat of Violence

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. – Jane Austen

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the BBC in possession of a tweet must be in want of a way to demonise Israel. – Brian of London

A week ago, thinking to expand outlets for my writing, I asked the Times of Israel if they were interested in a blog about environmental issues and electric cars written by a anthropogenic climate change sceptic.

It took a few days and in the meantime we’ve started and finished a whole war. Talk about war for the ADD generation. Not now, but at some point I’ll start discussing what proportion of the world’s transport runs completely on crude oil  (which pays for all the missiles that fell on us).*

So back to the real topic. As a former subject of the British Empire, I want to highlight what we can learn from one simple tweet from the BBC.

Right at the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defence, the IDF Spokespersons office tweeted the following:

We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead.

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 14, 2012

I didn’t like the message: I replied that it would be more sensible to tell Hamas’s people to give themselves and their weapons up.

The BBC, however, took a different approach and seriously implored Twitter to shut down the IDF’s primary information account for violating Twitter’s prohibition on “threats of violence”.

.@twitter bans “threats of violence”, but will it stop tweets by Hamas’s @alqassambrigade & Israel’s @idfspokesperson? bbc.in/Sso5cD

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) November 15, 2012

For balance, of course, the BBC mentioned the Al Qassam Brigade too because obviously, being as how they’re a bunch of murdering terrorists they sometimes say violent stuff. They actually backed this up with a complete article on the BBC’s website.

It’s almost revolting that I have to point out the difference between the legitimate defensive army of a nation state and a terrorist gang but as Melanie Phillips would say, the world is upside down so I’ll explain the ridiculous.

The IDF exists to threaten violence. It’s very basis and reason for existence is to make a completely unveiled threat that if you attack Israel you will be destroyed. Is that a threat of violence?

Sure there are strong defensive elements like Iron Dome. And they may fly off and set up field hospitals in Haiti but that’s just because they can. It’s not their primary reason for existence.

I’m not even going to point out the implicit threat of violence present in the very existence of the Al Qassam Brigade.

So the problem here is that the morally bankrupt BBC is equating the two. And that makes the BBC no different from something Goebbels would have been happy to create.

Oh, and in most countries 95% of all transport is fuelled by crude oil derived products. That’s just as upside down crazy.