UK needs fundamental constitutional change, not merely ‘reform'

The National

a day ago

Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage have at least three things in common. Each one of them tacitly (if not openly and enthusiastically) supports the Israeli government's ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. Each one of them shuns support of the democratic right of the people of Scotland to exercise their sovereign right to self-determination via their elected parliament. Each one of them supports an archaic electoral system that sustains privilege and the self-serving influence (if not corrupt influence) of the wealthy British establishment while seeking to condemn (as 'illegal immigrants') those desperately seeking asylum (many doing so as a consequence of UK Government imperialistic decisions).
READ MORE: John Swinney addresses Scottish absence at Israel 'collective action' conference
This self-righteous political and moral hypocrisy is reflected in the slanted decision-making of our self-proclaimed 'impartial' broadcaster, the BBC. While confessing to the 'atrocious failure' to declare that a young boy providing a perspective on current life in Gaza for the Palestinians was the son of a Hamas government official, the BBC continues to platform fanatical Israeli government officials (including a Prime Minister indicted for war crimes) as well as representatives of the IDF, which has been responsible for horrendous devastation including the truly atrocious massacre of more than 50,000 civilians.
While foreign journalists are banned from reporting from Palestine, it is seemingly acceptable for BBC journalists to report from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, effectively providing unbalanced coverage of the hostilities. While the BBC is always careful to label Hamas as a 'terrorist organisation', it is content to repeat the bias inherent in words such as 'war', not 'slaughter'; 'detainees' or 'prisoners', not 'hostages'; 'the right to defend itself', not 'genocide'.
Britain's sad demise, including the despicably widening wealth gap, will continue whoever is Prime Minister at Westminster. The UK does not need reform, it needs fundamental constitutional change.
Stan Grodynski
Longniddry, East Lothian
THE BBC's admission that it breached editorial guidelines by failing to disclose the parentage of the child narrator in Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has been leapt upon by critics as if it invalidates the entire documentary. In reality, the boy's narration was scripted, so his role was that of a voice actor, not an editorial contributor. While the omission of his father's Hamas affiliation warrants correction for transparency, the scale of the reaction is revealing.
This level of forensic scrutiny is not applied evenly. When Israeli officials deny allegations of war crimes or genocide – even when such denials are contradicted by independent investigations – the BBC and UK Government frequently accept these statements at face value, or present them uncritically alongside claims from human rights groups as though they carry equal weight. That's not balance, it's complicity in the laundering of impunity.
READ MORE: 'Call it genocide': MSF paediatrician on UK's Gaza inaction
It is deeply troubling that a documentary giving voice – even a scripted one – to Palestinian children in a war zone is treated as more suspect than repeated denials of atrocity from a heavily armed state power.
If the BBC were as fastidious about vetting official Israeli claims as they are about the family ties of a 13-year-old narrator, we might get closer to genuine impartiality. As it stands, this episode has become a politically distracting piece of nitpicking deployed to undermine testimony from the ground and defend the indefensible.
If editorial integrity matters, it must be applied consistently. Otherwise, it becomes just another tool for silencing the oppressed while shielding those with the power to destroy.
In the interests of editorial transparency, I should add that although these are my own words, they were typed by a friend whose DNA matched on Ancestry.com with a guy whose uncle was head of crop rotation for the Baader-Meinhof Gang. (That's not true – but you see what I did there?!)
Ron Lumiere
via email
THE documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone was pulled by that 'impartial' bastion of political correctness commonly known as the BBC. There has been more hoo-ha about the MasterChef host who acted in a misogynist way towards females on the cooking programme than about the war crimes carried out by the psychopathic society in Israel. Children queuing up for water in a hot country, where they are in the process of being exterminated, BOMBED, with their wee bodies cut into pieces and bloody body parts scattered so their parents don't have a whole body to bury.
READ MORE: BBC breached editorial guidelines in Gaza documentary, review finds
Yet, on the contrary, I, wearing a Palestine Action T-shirt, will get arrested, like the demonstrators in London (and elsewhere) when I turn up this coming Saturday to protest at the war crimes being carried out by the UK Government. We no longer have democracy anywhere in Britain.
It is time the domination of the UK Government, and the USA government, by a foreign state comes to an end. I did not vote for Labour Friends of Israel, Scottish Friends of Israel or Glasgow Friends of Israel. Or, for that matter, Benjamin Netanyahu.
And now a former Israeli Prime Minister actually admits that what the Israeli government is planning to do: confine all the inhabitants of Gaza, is confining them to a CONCENTRATION CAMP. Ehud Ormak's words, not mine.
STOP NOW THIS DISGUSTING BEHAVIOUR BY ISRAEL.
Margaret Forbes
Blanefield