Harry's Place

“The FCO know this full well”

nice conspiracy theory.

It’s worth noting that Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hizballah’s second in command, explicitly rejected the division into political and military wings just a few days after Rammell et al. asserted it. So this minion that has been speaking to the BBC is only repeating the line. Hizballah is led by a single, governing Shura Council, which itself is current led by Hasan Nasrallah. This structure is neither secret nor ambiguous.

I used to like Natalia’s reporting when she was doing the bit from the ’stans. Some of it was very brave – or at least sounded so.

But more recently, the United Kingdom government decided to distinguish between the two faces of Hezbollah – by talking to its politicians while keeping the military wing on the terrorist list.

But Mahmoud, the fighter, says the UK is fooling itself by making this distinction.

I have this strange feeling of déjà vu!

“We are all part of one resistance” We are also “all Hezbollah now”, according to everyone’s favourite semi-sane prof, N. Finkelstein. How nice.

‘ “Hezbollah will become a purely political party only when Israel ceases to exist,” he said.

The FCO know this full well. Don’t expect them to stop pushing the line that such a distinction exists, though.’

So can I take it that the destruction of Israel is official British FCO policy?

No, that’s not what I’m saying.

So why are they pushing a blatantly ridiculous and ficticious distinction? What’s the end aim?

Ya IsraeliNurse …

You may be certain that the FCO will hate Israel and work unceasingly for Israel’s destruction until and unless the Israelis discover an ocean of bargain-price oil under Tel Aviv or [this is more likely] discover an economically-viable substitute.

One recalls Maggie T’s firm belief that there were ‘reasonable’ Khmer Rouge as well as nasty ones. You know, urbane Bow Groupers not crude bovver-boy Monday Clubbers.

Good luck searching for ‘moderate’ Hezbollah and Hamas!

Talking of moderates, craven dhimmis and those awful embarrassing non-moderates who stop everyone joining hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’, those dreadfully opinionated people at Jihadwatch report that the smooth-looking but straight-talking Geert Wilders has caused quite a stir but comparing the entire Dutch political and media elite to a witless-but-forgiving Durch female journalist hostage who was gang-raped by Afghan Taliban but found lots of excuses for them [a female Fisk, although the ludicrous Fisk was merely knocked about ...]

Check it out, if you dare …

Sometimes a post gets the comments it deserves.

So Mike, do you think the FCO are correct in treating Hezbollah’s political and military wing as separate entities?

Or are we just limited to ‘meh’?

Put a sock it in, Mike.

Israelinurse,

So can I take it that the destruction of Israel is official British FCO policy?

I am shocked. This is so unworthy of you. Surely you are aware that the FCO has a long and honourable tradition of loving Israel and adoring Jews, a tradition they shout from the rooftops, nay even unto fitness clubs.

“I am shocked. This is so unworthy of you. Surely you are aware that the FCO has a long and honourable tradition of loving Israel and adoring Jews, a tradition they shout from the rooftops, nay even unto fitness clubs.”

The FCO is not in the business of promoting Israeli foreign policy, thats the job of Congress.

Some of us have not deluded ourselves into thinking the current Israeli PM has any legitimacy when it comes to dencouncing acts of terrorism. This is a man who has celebrated the murder of British soldiers on numerous occasions and is in no position to lecture the British government on anything.

This is the website for his much loved Menachem Begin Heritage Center. Jihadist propaganda if ever I saw it.

http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/PM+Office/Authorities/begincenter.htm

Numerous high level Israelis haved mocked the deaths of innocent British soldiers (putting up statues and having big rallies to celebrate the bombing of the King David Hotel etc) and then they turn round and tell us we are soft on terror. I hold these people in complete contempt because of their double standards.

Hizbullah is an anti-semitic terrorist organization. It is no better or worse than the racist Jewish terrorist organizations of years ago.
Until Netanyahu says something like that, which he wont ever, he can go elsewhere for special sympathy from Britain.

Yes, the FCO has an appalling record, no doubt the “Tory” will remind us of their activities in September 1938 ?

I am sure then the “Tory” will remind us of the consequences of the MacDonald white paper of 1939, yet another FCO master piece?

“So Mike, do you think the FCO are correct in treating Hezbollah’s political and military wing as separate entities?”

On the basis that Hezbollah are now an established part of the Lebanese political scene, I think it’s legitimate to look at whether there are non-headbanging elements who can be nurtured. I certainly think this is more likely than the FCO being some kind of anti-semitic conspiracy.

To be honest, my empathy with this post went with the rather grubby insinuation about a female journalist brave enough to go and interview someone in the dead of night who belongs to a group with a track record of kidnapping journalists. I wonder how many people here would have the same kind of guts.

“Yes, the FCO has an appalling record, no doubt the “Tory” will remind us of their activities in September 1938 ?”

Whats this? Some twisted way of saying Britain owes Israel something because of Nazi Germany? Thats a piss take surely? The FCO in 2009 must bend to Israels will because of WW2..

“I am sure then the “Tory” will remind us of the consequences of the MacDonald white paper of 1939, yet another FCO master piece?”

Do Jews and Arabs still use British diplomacy from 60 plus years ago as the reason they continue to blow each other to smithereens?

Hell of a lot easier than to just stop shooting each other dont you think?

You twits, what is the point of having a blog when you don’t have free speech?!?!

The FCO is great at not taking Arab terrorists at their own words cf. Hamas and its charter.

Do Jews and Arabs still use British diplomacy from 60 plus years ago as the reason they continue to blow each other to smithereens? Tory

Why not tosser? Your references to the King David Hotel are as old.

Tory,

The FCO is not in the business of promoting Israeli foreign policy

I was talking about promoting the interests of the UK now, which do not include appeasing genocidal terrorists like Hezbollah.

I was not talking about the interests of Israel or those of Jews in the 1940s.

It seems obvious that you are still raging about the legitimate Jewish struggle for independence in the 1940s. Perhaps you could apply for a job in the FCO. Or perhaps you already have one.

Quick, Tory, in Exeter a killer of Nbele, Afrikaner and Sudanese civilians is remembered. There will be Cypriot or Greek officials who celebrate the murders of squaddies.

Please explain why any national group should value foreign soldiers over their own 60 years after the fact (at least no squaddie has been murdered since by an uppity Jew, unlike in Norn Ireland whilst Gerry Adams is feted). Then offer an apology for squaddie complicity at Ben Yehuda Street.

Lastly explain why you’re a Jew-baiting twunk.

“very fluffy piece” – David T.

Usually, this kind of prose appears in a certain kind of fiction and is frequently accompanied by such phrases as “I’m yours, take me!” Or, “Your place or mine?”

(This should not be construed as an invitation …)

Moderation queue, hop to it.

As I’ve said before, I have stronger reasons to loath the celebrations of the Mau Mau than the likes of Tory do towards Lehi or Etzel, as my mother was ages with and living a few miles from Michael Ruck (and her family knew victims at Lari); but if I went on about it with the same passion I’d rightly be called a racist.

Tory you wrote:

“Whats this? Some twisted way of saying Britain owes Israel something because of Nazi Germany? “

You really should exercise your pet loathing of Israelis elsewhere

It is a pity that Tories like you don’t actually have much sense of history, or you might have grasped that in September 1938 the British foreign office aided the destruction of Czechoslovakia, which precipitated the Second World War.

Given your obvious ignorance of basic European history I am not surprised that you didn’t understand the reference to the MacDonald White Paper, which amongst other things, restricted immigration to Palestine.

Now why was that an issue in the 1930s?

Oh even you, Tory, will remember Hitler? and how Jewish refugees were desperate to leave Europe and the only place that would take them, in any number, was Palestine.

Thus by implementing the MacDonald White Paper the British foreign office guaranteed, by their policies, that some European Jews would eventually be murdered by the Nazis, as they couldn’t flee anywhere else.

Not that I suspect that would trouble you too much, but it is an indicator of Tory thinking and the political cretinism which has long dominated the FCO.

“Tory”, you should sign up for the FCO, you’ll feel right at home there.

Put a sock in it, Mike.

“You really should exercise your pet loathing of Israelis elsewhere”

“Lastly explain why you’re a Jew-baiting twunk.”

How predictable, a perfectly legitimate point about Netanyahu’s obvious double standards is met with insinuations about anti-semitism. You really have bought it all hook, line and sinker haven’t you? That somehow *that* terrorism was OK, but *this* terrorism is never OK. That is very much the definition of blind fanaticism of course.

“Oh even you, Tory, will remember Hitler? and how Jewish refugees were desperate to leave Europe and the only place that would take them, in any number, was Palestine.”

I do not not understand why Modernity is suggesting I have a problem with the state of Israel. I have been nothing except a staunch supporter of Israel and its right to defend itself from terrorist groups.

I know about the Emergency quite well actually Alec. Then again, Kibaki and Odinga aren’t telling the FCO how to define a terrorist. Of course, Kenya was the home of the Mau Mau, Stern came from Poland or Russia didnt he?

Netanyahu is a supporter of terrorism against British soldiers. These were acts of terrorism against the very same troops who had fought against Nazism. I do not understand why those FACTS scare some of you so much. Weren’t the pictures of the people who killed Lord Moyne put onto bleeding postage stamps? Sounds like a death cult to me chaps. And we all know thats bad dont we? Oh wait, its only bad when Palestinians do it.

In such a context, I will be damned if the FCO has to take orders from such people when it comes to terrorism.

Alec
I presume that’s the moderation queue, and you’re not experimenting with some weird free jazz comic timing.

Have a lovely evening.

I’d imagine that most modern Israelis are not exactly “proud” of events like the King David Hotel bombing, but that, considering British treatment of Jews during WW2 in particular, British colonialism’s role in fucking up the entire Middle East in general, and Britain’s current global irrelevance, most modern Israelis don’t think about it very often either.

Tory, you’re forgetting the most important difference between current attitudes towards the Mau Mau and the KDH bombing. One took place at the Equator, the other didn’t. Simples!

Netanyahu is a supporter of terrorism against British soldiers.

The KDH bombing took place five years before he was born. How could he possibly be a supporter (present tense) of that?

These were acts of terrorism against the very same troops who had fought against Nazism.

Like those officers who joined forces with the Arab League, which was also riddled with former Nazis, to efface a UN mandated state? Or Eddie Brown and Peter Madison who assisted in the mass murder of Jewish *civilians*, not insurgents? Apologize, apologize!

Weren’t the pictures of the people who killed Lord Moyne put onto bleeding postage stamps?

Yeah, but US Postal workers are still killing people… who knows, maybe they’ve shot Jewish women. Now, rip down that statue of Buller!

Sounds like a death cult to me chaps.

Er, no it doesn’t. It sounds like putting the pictures of figures from a dirty little colonial war on stamps (and, only when it involved Jews kicking the British Empire’s arses, d’you get upset). D’you know what a death cult is?

And we all know thats bad dont we? Oh wait, its only bad when Palestinians do it.

You belong in a time when Jews were called the Palestinians.

What Shmuel said. If Tory’s wishing to distinguish himself from a pinstriped Jew-baiter from a Michael Dobbs book who believes that Jews should be grateful for not being killed but crammed into concentration camps on Cyprus, he’s failing.

Mike, have you not heard? The tag-line’s been replaced by “Liberty, if it means anything at all, is the right not to have to put up with the same kak day in day out”. Your supercilious dismissing of the hypocrisy in everyone but yourself is the same today as it was yesterday and will, presumably, be for ever more.

What someone did in Situation A, if it is praiseworthy, does not excuse them in Situation B, if it is worthy of criticism (cf. Andrew Coates defending Ken Coates from charges of pedalling modern antisemitic calumnies ‘cos he’s a committed Leftist).

You do this a lot… when presented with the suggestion that admirers of anti-Israel groups are dippy little power-worshippers, you issue fiats that their critics should only think what you decree and then – with an oldness which would embarass Noah – ask when they’re going off to fight/report. But, if you insist, here is someone who has done just that, and would very firmly disagree with you.

Further up the scale in distraction are the likes of that nasty little creep, TheWhiney, and the even more disgusting, Ben White, who – went presented with evidence that “anti-Zionists” are, in fact, murderous racist scum – desperately try to change the subject.

Nice caption under the photo at the BBC story linked:

“Hezbollah behaves as a normal political party and has a powerful militia separate from the state”

Who writes these captions, the Ministry of Truth?

On the basis that Hezbollah are now an established part of the Lebanese political scene

Pity Lebanon then. It seems those freedom fighters from Hezbollah are also a bunch of drug dealers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/29/curacao-caribbean-drug-ring-hezbollah

‘Hizbullah is an anti-semitic terrorist organization. It is no better or worse than the racist Jewish terrorist organizations of years ago.’

None of the Jewish organisations such as the Irgun attacked British civilians -which is the hallmark of terrorism. Buses in London were not blown up by Jews. The Jews did not have an ultimate aim of destroying the UK. Cafes in Manchester were not blown up by Jews.

The Jewish organisations such as Etzl and Lehi attacked British soldiers because the British were actively preventing the escape to Palestine of Holocaust survivors, as they had been for since before the war too. The British reacted to this by interring members of Etzl and Lehi in concentration camps in Africa.

‘In such a context, I will be damned if the FCO has to take orders from such people when it comes to terrorism.’

Yes, well that’s precisely the silly orientalist, colonialist attitude which got Britain into such a mess in the Middle East in the first place. In fact if I remember correctly, it’s even rather a good paraphrase of the response of the commander at the KDH when the Jews telephoned to give advance warning of the bombing.

Time the FCO got into step with the real world.

Koppers, what about this? It’s the third series of The Wire!

Nursey, d’you have any idea why Tory doesn’t seem too concerned that the British Government now works with former terrorists from Norn Ireland?

Alec, as usual I can’t even understand 75% of what or who you’re on about. However I find the way a very experienced and interesting journalist has been described here, a little bit cheap and sexist to be honest.

As for the rest of the lunacy in this comments box, I think I’ll just leave you to it. Or do you think Rockall666 speaks wisdom?

Mike, I find your persistent need to deflect attention from power-worship before murderous antisemitic scum, as always, unsavory. Just as I find your perfect disconnect between Tory’s Jew-baiting and the drawing to attention of attested power-worship before murderous antisemitic scum darkly funny.

However I find the way a very experienced and interesting journalist has been described here,

What, including the bit where she was called quite brave?

a little bit cheap and sexist to be honest.

Gives a kiss, sugar tits.

Come off it, Mike.

Tall, immaculately dressed and articulate, the man did not fit my image of a fighter.

Did she seriously think all freedom fighters were grubby monosyllabic dwarves? If not, what is she getting at with that description?

What’s the point, Mark? In response to an article in which the reporter is at pains to present murderous antisemitic scum as urbane and good-looking, and who expressly admit their belief they’re in an End Times battle with the state of Israel, the only affect that Mike can muster is when he calls this observation sexist.

The conclusion? Mike’s moral compass is completely and utterly fucked.

I wonder if Mike would find it similarly sexist to draw attention to Malcolm Caldwell’s finding the North Korean female uniform “quite attractive”.

Oh, look, here he is deflecting attention from Caldwell’s obscene genuflection before Pol Pot.

I often feel that Israel is the iconic Jew (not a new concept) and just as throughout the ages people have hated Jews for their refusal to disappear and knack of doing very well in many spheres of life so Israel sticks in the craw of some people. The FCO has always had an Arabist tradition and the fact that Israel not only survives but probably says No a lot to the FCO with what they perceive as arrogance. Which then goes back to the idea I think they hold “Well they are all Jews – what do you expect”. I feel the Establishment wants to bash Israel as revenge for all the Jews in their lives who bettered them.

Its strange to record that Blair was a very strong Zionist and friend of Israel as is Brown.

The FCO cannot understand an ideologue, who’s rhetoric is not just ‘playing to the crowd’ but part of a wider weltanschuung. Presumably FCO believe, by insisting on the this fallacious division, they can make it real and thus ‘deal’ with the ‘moderate genie’. An imaginary co-opting into venal routinised politics.

Anyhoo, the FCO should have been rebuilt from the floor up after 1939

Alec -I have absolutely no idea, and to be honest, I don’t really care.
What I do care about is that a bunch of British FCO officials (not to mention a motley bunch of MPs & peers) are playing with fire and meddling in a very lethal situation. Not lethal for them of course; they’ll be drinking G&Ts at the club whilst more Lebanese people opposed to an extremist Islamist bunch of thugs taking over their country get shot or car-bombed. They’ll be muttering ‘tut tut’ when they read in the Times that Hizbollah is pounding Israeli villages such as my own with Iranian made rockets. And predictably, they’ll be throwing the word ‘disproportionate’ around when my country defends its people.
I say this with great sadness, as an Israeli of British descent -British policy in relation to Israel is and always has been self-interested, badly informed and amateur and quixotic.

You’re a really brave guy Alec, sitting hunched over your PC on the hottest night of the year, throwing insults facelessly at someone who really doesn’t care.

Meanwhile this a little of Ms Anteleva’s resume. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/7334433.stm

Out of the two of you, I think I know who I take seriously.

Shmuel – “I’d imagine that most modern Israelis are not exactly “proud” of events like the King David Hotel bombing, but that, considering British treatment of Jews during WW2 in particular”

You mean providing a haven and shelter for Jews fleeing Hitler – and in larger numbers, if I remember correctly, than France, Belgium and even Poland combined? That is not even counting those allowed to flee to Palestine. That treatment you mean?

Yeah. The bastards.

“British colonialism’s role in fucking up the entire Middle East in general”

You mean creating modern, functioning nation states, introducing modern education, modern health care, civil justice, you know that sort of thing? Sure. Really f*cks people up doesn’t it?

“and Britain’s current global irrelevance, most modern Israelis don’t think about it very often either.”

They don’t think about it because Britain is no longer powerful? Well that would be an anti-Semitic smear if it came from someone else. But it is interesting that you are willing to remember and condemn alleged British misdeeds from well before the KDH bombing but excuse the bombing itself. This is tribal justice isn’t it? Where a murder by one member of the tribe of someone outside is trivial but a stubbed toe inflicted on a member is a crime crying out to Heaven.

Nice.

if you thought the article was ‘fluffy’, you should have seen the tv version! it was on news24 yesterday.

also on the tv segment was a clip of the british ambassador saying she was dealing with the political branch of hizbullah because she wants to encourage the democratic overtures it has shown by standing for election.

even for the british foreign office, that just sounds dumb. and so it proved to be, as natalie antaleva so very easily juxtaposed the ambassador with the hizbullah guy saying that there are no separate ‘political’ and ‘military’ wings – and made her look like a right cretin.

RE: my empathy with this post went with the rather grubby insinuation about a female journalist brave enough to go and interview someone in the dead of night who belongs to a group with a track record of kidnapping journalists. I wonder how many people here would have the same kind of guts.

If she actually did what is alleged — i.e. found excuses for the lowlifes who gang-raped her — then she may have guts but surely no brains.

And the “Fisk” analogy stands. I also remember some similar type (a brit writing in australia) who admonished an australian who was kidnapped in Iraq and then called his captors “assholes” after he was freed. Mark Steyn (whose politics i often loathe but who can turn a phrase like no other) referred to that incident as “the man was kidnapped; when he returned, he found that his country had stockholm syndrome.” You have to laugh or else you’ll cry.

Out of the two of you, I think I know who I take seriously.

Maybe so, but her superior resume surely doesn’t mean that she should be beyond criticism – which seems to be the berkish argument you were making.

‘So Much For Subtlety is far too polite. Mort Sahl’s comment to ‘Exodus’ producer director Otto Preminger “Otto – Let my people go!” comes to mind.

Note to the history: No one apart from Hitler wanted war in 1938; “right left or centre” (Nancy Mitford). None of the Commonwealth countries (who would provide the bulk of ‘British’ forces in the subsequent World War) supported engagement in Europe (Paul Kennedy). Britain is an island (Times Atlas). It shares no borders with Europe. No one who parrot’s the ‘Chamberlain Appeasement’ line can explain how this war was to be fought with whom and to what end; Hitler was not Hitler in 1938. His career got into its stride later. Any ‘war’ would have been maritime (interference with the legitimate trade of neutral countries such as the USA with its profoundly anti-British press led by W R Hearst and Henry Luce)) or arial bombardment, which was technically impossible as well as quite likely ineffective. Czechoslovakia, an invented country (as was Yugoslavia, at Paris in 1919 by Woodrow Wilson) had a large minority German speaking population who resented Czech domination and wanted reunification under German rule. These ethnic Germans were subsequently ‘ethnically cleansed’ by the Allies after 1945; some put the figure of people affected at eight million, which would make it the largest enforced migration in history. In 1940 the ‘Slovaks greeted the ‘invading’ German tanks in German and waving swastika flags and had subsequently a terrible anti-Semitic war record. Czechoslovakia broke up at the first opportunity in 1991, following the post Soviet period.

Chamberlain (that alibi of a great nation – the USA) was far from inept; a skilful and ruthless politician sometimes plausibly compared to Margaret Thatcher. British war preparations, following a long period of disarmament, would be ready by 1941 (see Orwell) according to Chamberlain’s re-armament timetable. Britain was never and has never been a major power and has had to face the fact (since Elizabeth I) that it can never fight a large scale war abroad without allies. These did not rush forward in 1938.

People in Northern Ireland, just as elsewhere, do not like nor do they deserve to have their characteristic speech mocked by literation. Calling Northern Ireland “Norn” Ireland is belittling and objectively disgusting. Perhaps that was the intention.

Mark
It wasn’t. But the only quote any of her detractors were using to prove the “fluffiness” of her case, was the one line of description of her interviewee.

Vildechaye
Not sure what you’re on about, but you may have juxtaposed my point with the odd meanderings of Rockall666.

What is your point Alec? We are not talking about criminals or organised crime – Hezbollah could be part of the alliance which forms the next Lebanese government, yet they are involved in the sale and distribution of illicit drugs.

It is not only the FCO whose policy of conflation are potentially damaging. Amir Taheri writes in yesterday’s Times that Obamas intention of addressing “Islam” has dangerous implications:

Obama is the first major Western leader, after Bonaparte, to address Islam as a single bloc, thus adopting the traditional Islamic narrative of dividing the world according to religious beliefs. This ignores the rich and conflict-ridden diversity of the 57 Muslim-majority nations and fosters the illusion, peddled by people such as Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that Islam is one and indivisible and should, one day, unite under a caliphate.
…
By adopting the key element of the Islamist narrative, that is to say the division of humanity into religious blocs, Mr Obama also intends to send a signal to the Middle East’s nascent democratic forces that Washington is abandoning with a vengeance George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda”.

He goes on to say why Obama’s turning from supporting democracy to supporting stability will not create stability.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6410051.ece

You’re a really brave guy Alec, sitting hunched over your PC on the hottest night of the year, throwing insults facelessly

What is that I always say about knowing when the vulgar Leninists are narked when they tell you how unliked you are? Accept it, Mike. People speak in different tones to men and women. Malcolm Caldwell’s remarks about North Korean uniforms is rightly ridiculed, just as Antelava’s about how good-looking this murderous antisemitic scumbag is. If you’re such a prude that you object to this, goodness knows what you feel in the far more het-up conversations about I/P in general.

Here, as always, you are engaging passive aggressive mode to deflect attention from the fact that there are murderous antisemitic scumbags who believe they’re in an End Times battle with the Yahood: and that some commenters feel all power-worshippy at that. Seizing on one turn of phrase or minor comment, and worrying it to death rather than discuss the prime issue is a classic definition of trolling.

at someone who really doesn’t care.

Yet you’re responding to me, which makes you… what? Or, will you now scratch your head and pretend not to understand the question?

Koppers, it was a joke. We hadn’t had a reference to The Wire for some weeks, and David Simon was on Nightwaves last night.

Alec
“Seizing on one turn of phrase or minor comment, and worrying it to death rather than discuss the prime issue is a classic definition of trolling.”
Physician heal thyself. You and others have fixated on the line, “Tall, immaculately dressed and articulate, the man did not fit my image of a fighter.”
What else in her piece do you object to exactly?

“If you’re such a prude that you object to this, goodness knows what you feel in the far more het-up conversations about I/P in general.”
Like most sensible people I tend to avoid them these days. When someone who has fought for Israel like SO Muffin can be called “Kapo” by the more-Zionist-than-thou loonies who seem to wash up here these days, I think it’s fair to say that their educational value to the interested outsider has gone.

“You’re responding to me, which makes you… what?” Someone who pities you.

It wasn’t. But the only quote any of her detractors were using to prove the “fluffiness” of her case, was the one line of description of her interviewee.

Err… what!?

All we have here is a passing observation that her description of a Hezbollah member was fluffy.

It’s really stretching it to argue that this constitutes an attack on her reporting in general.

No, read what was actually said: “There’s a very fluffy piece on Hezbollah at the BBC.”
Alec goes on to describe the reporter as, “a dippy little power-worshipper”.

I think one can construe that as an attack on the reporting.