Amid all the excitable nonsense being talked about dead Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh I think the BBC has topped the lot. In an interview broadcast on Radio 4’s PM programme last night broadcast (at 17:35 mins) one interviewee explained that up to one million Jews worldwide might be on hand to assist Mossad in executions. That would mean about one in every dozen Jewish people worldwide is a secret assistant to assassins.
Now I must have more than a dozen or so Jewish friends. So which is it? Maybe I know two? It makes you think doesn’t it?
The next time I am at a friend’s child’s bar mitzvah the likelihood is that on at least 10 separate occasions during the day I’ll be helping myself at the buffet beside, or dancing opposite, someone who secretly helps in assassinations. Which will certainly make me more circumspect about my dance moves, not to mention barging in at the buffet queue.
Most people are terrible at keeping secrets, and Jews are no different from anyone else in this regard. So the idea that up to a million of them keep this secret knowledge strikes me as not just one of the most ridiculous, but in the present climate one of the most dangerous, ideas for the BBC to pump into circulation. Yet it typical of the lather nearly all the press have got into with this Dubai business.
If anyone is interested in a more balanced and factual view of things, can I heartily recommend the indispensable Tom Gross here, not least the section “Has Israel been set up?“
