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What was the full context of Snow’s comment, maybe he meant practitioners of terrorism?

Irrespective, the connotative differences between militants, terrorists, guerillas is akin to the diffeerences between killers, assasins and murderers - i.e. hardly any.

Indeed, i would ask, though, would terrorist be correct, as in, is the aim of this group to instill terror in the populace, or is it to impose military costs on the Indian government (in which case guerillas is the correct term).

My recollection of listening to radio 4 news was that as the confusion developed, eventually they started to mention the Jewish centre for what it clearly was. In the context of the ongoing situation, where the nature of the perpetrators was in doubt, they stuck to largely factual reporting.

Jon Snow is an implacable foe of both Israel and truth. His use of ‘practitioners’ connotes a surgical strike to excise a disease, i.e. Jews.

The wonder of the internet and free speech is that, with very little digging, you can find out the real news (and much more) much faster than by watching television or buying the papers. So ditch your TV sets and cut your paper bills for Xmas, Lent or any other reason, e.g. common sense.

I noticed BBC’s regional news bulletin ‘north west’ tonight managed to call a terrorist a terrorist while the mumbai attacks were developing, we’ll see if the characteristic northern plain speaking carrier over to national when the rest of the BBCs news operation moves up to Manchester. As for jon snow being highly regarded, many people think he’s a total dick for not wearing a red poppy on camera in rememberance week, he says he agrees with the objectives of the poppy campaign & wears one off camera but takes it off for the show *because people expect him to see him wearing one*, like it’s his job to confound the viewers expectation of what newsreading is all about.

Actually, listening to some of their reports, it seems “gunmen” was the chief word used by C4 News.

As for a Poppy, I don’t see why a news reader should wear one…surely its a personal choice?

Red Deathy is partly right. When an atrocity is at its early stages, it is pretty dismal to see utterly unfounded speculation dominate the coverage.

But after a few hours, it was clear what the terrorists were up to, and why they were acting as they did.

It was very quickly noted that the terrorists were likely to be jihadists. Although there was some confusion over their countries of origin, the attack was thought to be connected to Kashmir, and possibly to be connected to intercommunal violence. The hotel and tourist sites were hit because they symbolised ‘western decadence’, and to damage India’s tourist industry.

But - as David Aaronovich asked in The Times yesterday - why the Rabbi?

To anybody with any familiarity with Islamist political theory, the answer to that question should be clear. Read Qutb, read Mawdudi, glance at any Islamist website, read the speeches of Hezbollah or the Hamas Covenant. Killing Jews, because they are Jews, is one of the central purposes of Islamism. This is, after all, an explicitly genocidal political theory.

I don’t think I saw a single commentator make this simple observation. I don’t know why.

Possibilities are:

- obviousness: no need þo point it out

- bewilderment: as if this was an inexplicable, random act

- indifference: they killed 200 people, if they had a special reason for playing ‘hunt the Jew’, that was a minor detail of the whole event.

It was his wanky explanation of why he didn’t wear one that grated on me.

I noticed BBC’s regional news bulletin ‘north west’ tonight managed to call a terrorist a terrorist while the mumbai attacks were developing, we’ll see if the characteristic northern plain speaking carrier over to national when the rest of the BBCs news operation moves up to Manchester.

I can 100% onfirm that BBC national news did use “terrorist” on at least one report. I remember hearing it and thinking, “Blimey, I’ll mention that on HP”.

From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5248330.ece :

T. K. Bhat, who lives close to the Chabad house, said: “It could be that the attitudes of the Chabad, which gives the sense of an elite club for Jews alone, is part of what provoked the terrorists to target them for the attack.”

Snow’s reading an script most of the time, I dunno how much input he has into it’s contents. The unscripted bits like that quassam rockets interview certainly challenged the role of newsreader.

Maybe what Snow was getting at was that with only two dead Frummies, maybe four more dead Jews elsewhere, these Jihadis just weren’t very good at it and needed more practice?

David T.,

yes, really, it’s the job of Panorama, or maybe Newsnight, now to do a post shooting match in-depth report to tease these points out, whether it will is a different matter. teh proof of the pudding will be an in depth documentary, and how it covers the Jewish centre angle.

Dunno about that really ohad. Eyewitnesses often say some strange things, especially when asked silly questions.

“armed militants”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7760278.stm

“terror attack” but “militants” and “gunmen”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7757500.stm

“gunmen”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7756200.stm

“gunmen”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7756073.stm

“gunmen” and “the militant group Lashker-e-Toiba”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7762058.stm

This uses the word “terrorist” but only when quoting Indians

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7758437.stm

“gunmen” although they do quote a Jew using the T word

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7758930.stm

“Audacious Mumbai attack”, “Islamist militant groups” but not terrorists

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7757871.stm

“gunmen”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7758430.stm

The Times quote is explained by the fact that sheera frenkel, the stringer who wrote this piece, is somebody who supports a ‘one state solution’ and is opposed to Israel’s existence (I’m not kidding.)

Incidentally, it’s fascinating that the one context in which the British press always unfailingly use the word terrorist is when referring to the Irgun Tzvai Leumi and the Lehi. Wonder why that is. I asked a guardian correspondent about it once and he was man enough to admit that he could offer no coherent justification or explanation of this.

Deathy

Yes, we’ll see.

I wondered if people were, you know, kind of embarassed to draw attention to it.

It was certainly a footnote - five killed out of 200 or more - but it was a notable one. What made it notable, was the ideological importance of killing Jews to these terrorists.

Aaronovitch here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article5269730.ece

“So, why kill the rabbi? There is a branch of apologetics - which I take crudely to be the belief that the crime is the fault of the victim - that assumes a milder form, and which I’ll call explanetics. So the explanatists view of the Mumbai massacres last week is that the cause lies in what concretely has been done to, or in the vicinity of, the young, cool-looking men with the grenades and the machineguns. “

Undoubtedly the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack were terrorists. They are also militants. They may also be part of a larger guerrilla movement but we don’t know if they are or not yet.

To my mind terrorism is a operational strategy or tactic chosen to achieve a political goal. Very rarely is terrorism used without a real aim beyond the attack itself. The attack on the Chabad house was obviously one of those rare occasions. From what I can tell as a target it has little worth, it isn’t famous, none of the people in it were famous and it isn’t a bustling public space. It sticks out like a sore thumb when compared to the other targets chosen. It seems to have been picked as it is the most likely place in Mumbai to find Jews. This seems more likely to be driven by ideological hate than anything else.

The Times quote is explained by the fact that sheera frenkel, the stringer who wrote this piece, is somebody who supports a ‘one state solution’ and is opposed to Israel’s existence (I’m not kidding.)

Where’s your evidence.

Dunno about that really ohad. Eyewitnesses often say some strange things, especially when asked silly questions.

Note that the Times chose to use that quote as the closing paragraph of a 6-paragraph article about the toddler escaping.

“The message from the funeral at Kfar Chabad on Tuesday was one of
revenge - but not through violence. Rather, revenge that answers brutal,
pointless Islamic terrorism with the light of loving-kindness.

“I vow that we will avenge the deaths of Gabi and Rivki,” announced
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Chabad’s educational arm, from
New York, referring to Mumbai emissaries Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his
wife, Rivka.

“But not with AK-47s, not with grenades and tanks. We will take revenge
in a different way,” Kotlarsky said.

“We will add light. We will add good deeds. We will make sure that there
is not one Jewish man who does not put on tefillin. We will make sure
that there is not one Jewish woman who does not light candles.”

The Rabbi’s wife was five months pregnant.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1227702405874&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The problem is that the evidence is based on my having met her and discussed these things with her in real life in Jerusalem at various events, and on our having a number of mutual friends who would confirm all this. So you can believe me or not. But would your old buddy Weiss lie to you? Dont be a shmerel!

Aw, ok.

Who is she? What can you tell us about her.

It was such a remarkable thing to say - it implied that the general consensus in Mumbai was that the Jews basically had it coming to them.

Now if that’s true, then we ought to know it. It is a pity, but you can’t pretend that people don’t feel like that, if they do.

But if you think that this is what Sheera Frenkel thinks, generally - and if you think she has highlighted an unrepresentative quotation from a local for that reason - I’d like to know what she has said or done to give you this impression.

Sheera? She is a young, very personable and articulate US-Jewish lady from Beverly Hills, California, of half Sephardi origin. I think one or other of her parents may be Israeli. She has been working as a hack around town in Jerusalem for a while. She was a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post for a period of time. She recently began working as a stringer for the Times (’bout a year ago, I’d say.) She knocks around the scene of foreign correspondents etc in J’town. I think her ambition is to develop herself as a regional correspondent. And her opinions regarding Israel, as I’ve heard them articulated, are of the ‘post-nationalist’, one state solution variety. More flaky than vicious, i always felt, tho perhaps I’m wrong about this. If this sounds like an odd combination, its less so than you might think.

And that’s all for this instalment, robotai. Do ya think this info comes free? (turns up grubby raincoat, slinks off into the night. A cat howls.)

hahah ta!

Unfortunately in recent years we have become used to leftist media burying their heads in the sand about the threat that Islamic fundamentalism poses, in much the same way as they once refused to report accurately on communist atrocities. But now even conservative media may be doing it too.

Fortunately there are no lefty’s here (ahem, cough, splutter!) who are burying their heads in the sand (or having them buried for them!)

The Right Wing media I listen too - called Mainstream Radio in the USA with overwhelmingly large listener figures - doesn’t seem to have that problem at all.

If you cite MSNBC, CNN, New York Times etc then you will find it little different from the BBC, Ch4, Independent & Guardian

The captions on her flickr photos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sheera/109828793/in/set-72057594077997047/) are very “golly-gee I’m young and just got here” kind of thing. She lives in Nahlaot apparently.

Bunch of stalkers.

That WSJ article claims “They wanted to murder as many Hindus, Christians, Jews, atheists and other “infidels” as they could, “, which no doubt they did. But they also murdered indiscriminately killing Muslims too. What is the WSJ agenda in implying that Islamic terrorists do not attack Muslims?

Poor show chaps.

Does Jon Snow still wear the comedy sox and loud ties?

Channel 4 news used to be OK, if a little self important.

Thought the last couple of times I was in Blighty, I was rather less impressed, they seemed as nearly as BBCish in sentiment and slant, as the BBC itself. I do find the ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ mode of loaded question interview technique….really intensely irritating, whatever my views of the interviewee.

One thing I will say for the Beeb Paxman projects aloof disdain much more effectively than Snow!

What is the WSJ agenda in implying that Islamic terrorists do not attack Muslims?

Islamists do generally attack - as their primary target, indeed - Muslims who are not ‘like them’. The death totals anywhere that Islamists operate, show this to be the case.

Muslims will also have been killed in Mumbai.

However the info on the Mumbai terrorist who shot up the railway and survived, has him saying that they had tried to avoid shooting Muslims.

I followed the Mumbai attacks very closely on the web and in particular Sky News, Fox News and BBC.

It was instantly noticeable that the BBC had already relegated this story to a main headline graphic - that shared time with “Christmas Recipes”, “The latest adventures of Dr Who” and “What will you buy for Christmas” - not the actual stories but made up examples of teh trivia.

Fox and Sky had permanent features on maybe 40% of the visible page with large headlines at the top of the graphic recording the latest.

Both continually featured the Chabad Centre siege. The sub-head never left the page and always had the latest info. They also have a video embedded in the main Siege graphic that featured the Indian troops going into the centre.

Later they both featured pictures of the victims of the Centre.

I remarked at the time how BBC had played-down the attacks in totality. Even on News 24 it was just another news item with extended coverage but just rolling into the genmeral news and getting less each time.

Basically BBC were absolute CRAP and I will never bother with BBC for International news. Of course, they were nver called “Terrorists” even though BBC would introduce a commentator as “an expert in terrorism”. WHat the HELL does a terrorism expert know about disparate gunmen who just happened to start killing people at the same time. Practitioners of the art of killing people!!!

David T, I just find it odd that the article does not recognise that Islamists attack Muslims too. To use the word of a captured terrorist to negate my point doesn’t work either, it is nothing more than mere anecdote, and one that may be influenced by torture, politics, or mischievousness. Treating the adherents of certain religions as a monolithic block, as the WSJ article appears to do, is very poor quality analysis at best.

Actually both the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the writer of this piece, Tom Gross, have long campaigned for the human rights of Muslims, and for Muslim victims of terrorism, see for example here from last month.

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000988.html

Tom Gross’s particular WSJ piece was about something else, so why should he have used the limited space in it to mention the topic of Muslim victims of terrorism? Especially as these particular terrorists have said - apparently- that they were trying not to kill Muslims (although no doubt they failed)

It sounds like instead of addressing the important points Tom actually makes, some HP readers are trying to change the subject.

I am reminded of coverage of the 7/7 terror attacks in London in which the BBC had no hestitation in calling them terrorism but in the same bulletin referred to Islamist attacks as having been perpetrated by militants.

I don’t know if the BBC has sorted out its policy on use of the t-word since I posted this a couple of years ago.

Let us not forget that Snow’s “practitioners” were indulging in an activity which the Home Office has decided to refer to as “community resilience”.

David:

“It was such a remarkable thing to say - it implied that the general consensus in Mumbai was that the Jews basically had it coming to them.

Now if that’s true, then we ought to know it. It is a pity, but you can’t pretend that people don’t feel like that, if they do.”

That wouldn’t really square up with the premature jubilation and rejoicing of the locals outside the centre, when they thought that everyone inside had been saved.

But one way the jihadists may seek to benefit from the attack, would be if they try to pretend that the existence of the Chabbad centre was the reason they chose Bombay for the attack.

Further to Mavens comment at 12:57, The BBC are no longer much of a ‘news’ organisation.

They were embarassed by the Mumbai story - almost reluctant to report it. Indian friends of mine noticed this too.

While the Beeb was reluctant to talk about the jewish centre aspect I watched it plastered all over Al Jazeerah. In fact, I would suggest (without irony) that the Al Jazeerah coverage was a lot more accurate and a lot more honest than that of the BBC.

I think Rod Liddle mentioned years back (after he was sacked?) that the BBC news output was increasingly telling people what they wanted to hear (or Beeb thought police wanted them to hear).

I think he was (and is) correct. Docs such as ‘Dont panic Im Islamic’ were just the most obvious examples of this. it enters into their entertainment output too - Spooks and that pretty awful archaelogical series.

Personally I cannot stand the BBC and its arrogance. Its too simplistic (and wrong) to call them raving anti-semites. Its deeper than that.

Matt

Lets remind ourselves.

To the BBC its “JEWISH Settlers” but NOT “Islamic Terrorists” but “naughty people with guns shooting at people”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7762469.stm

Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron have been involved in further clashes with Israeli security forces and local Palestinians…………..

How about if it read

Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron have been involved in further clashes with Israeli security forces and local Muslims (mostly)

Or would that be not allowed. ie its OK to diss Jews but not Muslims.

OK, I realise that Palestinians can be Christians too but I just wanted to emphasise the point.

It sounds like instead of addressing the important points Tom actually makes, some HP readers are trying to change the subject.

Well no, I think if somebody is going to castigate aspects of the media for downplaying the nature of Islamic terrorism and their hatred of Jews then it doesn’t help that they don’t even attempt to draw the distinction between Islamic terrorism and Muslims in general. To then make the claim that they singled out other religions without pointing out that they specifically singled out British and American passport holders, thus indicating that nationality and not religion was the motivation in at least some incidents is blatantly misleading. It’s always a shame when good points are mixed in with bad, and it’s a greater shame when this cannot be pointed out without attempts to second guess an agenda.

In addition to Radio Moscow, ah excuse me the BBC sticking to the Party line that Muslims are never Terrorists, it was interesting to that the so-called Paper of Record, the Almighty New York Times, the Kingdom and the Power, is still covering up the fact whenever Jews are singled out to be killed.