The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg is infamous for her terrible insights into British politics. As such, you may be unsurprised to learn that she also has terrible insights into Israel and Middle Eastern politics.
That or – you know – she’s actively presenting a warped view of world events for the benefit of our political overlords:
because we're literally supplying the weapons? https://t.co/mTuyan8Vf7
— Cos (@Algernonentity) October 5, 2024
Excuse me, Kuenssberg?
This is somehow the title of her latest blog:
I’m sorry, but is anyone under the impression that the UK isn’t heavily involved in the Middle East?
We start wars there all the time. According to the website American Security Project, this is a list of all the US’s bases there (and let’s not pretend the UK is anything other than America’s poodle at this point):
Imagine how we’d feel if the above was a map of Europe and the bases were owned by a country you think is our enemy?
If you’ve never imagined the situation in reverse, that’s thanks to the hard work of dedicated propagandists like Kuenssberg. This is how her blog begins, by the way:
“Let’s be real, the war has started,” a former minister tells me. “What happens in the Middle East never stays in the Middle East.”
Oh really? Maybe we shouldn’t be causing trouble over there, then? Maybe we shouldn’t arming Israel while it’s literally invading its neighbours? Maybe we shouldn’t be tolerating the mass deaths of innocents because we’ve decided they’re on the side of ‘terrorists’, even though Israel is literally pursuing a campaign of terror – of ethnic cleansing – of genocide?
Israel just bombed a hospital in Bent Jbeil, South Lebanon. Injuries among hospital staff. The Israeli occupation forces are not allowing ambulances to enter the area threatening to bomb them. They ran out of hospitals to bomb in Gaza now they’re doing it in Lebanon. Diabolical.
— Hadi (@HadiNasrallah) October 4, 2024
This is just Doctors Without Borders pleading for Israel to stop “the mass killing of civilians” and “the destruction of the healthcare system.”
Totally normal behavior for a state engaged in “self defense” https://t.co/5S1RLJ2StD
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) October 5, 2024
100 children in 11 days https://t.co/Qf7VbkKL0e
— Krishnan Guru-Murthy (@krishgm) October 6, 2024
An Israeli shoots a 16-year-old Palestinian girl four times.
Two in the face, one in the neck, one in the shoulder.
Then said it was ‘unintentional’
How do you shoot a child two times in the face by accident?
This was before Oct 7. pic.twitter.com/70RYQOTtk1
— ADAM (@AdameMedia) October 6, 2024
Kuenssberg on Israel: ‘complications’
The current situation is fairly straightforward in that Israel is on a rampage of murder that it can only sustain with the benefit of weapons and money from the West.
Kuenssberg, however, disagrees:
So what can the UK do about a hellishly complicated situation, especially with a new government that is still finding its feet?
This is a tried-and-tested trick of the propagandist – to convince people that nothing positive can happen because the situation is too ‘complicated’.
To be fair, there’s a chance that Kuenssberg actually believes this, as she does seem to have a mind so shallow that an ant could wade through it without getting its socks wet. The British media is full of such nitwits, and many politicians know how to take advantage of their lack of curiosity, as an infamous Nazi once said:
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
Joseph Goebbels
— Alex Kapranos (@alkapranos) March 10, 2023
On Israel, Kuenssberg also seems to believe the following:
The UK is deeply involved in providing humanitarian help in the region
We’re not sure how “deeply involved” Britain could be, given that aid organisations recently said “Israel’s siege now blocks 83% of food aid reaching Gaza”. The organisations include CARE International, Save the Children, and Oxfam, and they further note:
- 83% of required food aid does not make it into Gaza, up from 34% in 2023.This reduction means people in Gaza have gone from having an average of two meals a day to just one meal every other day. An estimated 50,000 children aged between 6-59 months urgently require treatment for malnutrition by the end of the year.
- 65% of the insulin required and half of the required blood supply are not available in Gaza.
- Availability of hygiene items has dropped to 15% of the amount available in September 2023. One million women are now going without the hygiene supplies they need.
- Only around 1,500 hospital beds in Gaza remain operational, compared to around 3,500 beds in 2023 which was already well below sufficient to meet the needs of a population of more than 2 million people. By comparison, cities of similar size, such as Chicago and Paris average 5 to 8 times more beds than in Gaza.
- 1.87 million people are in need of shelter with at least 60% of homes destroyed or damaged (January 2024). Yet tents for around just 25,000 people have entered Gaza since May 2024.
Given her interest in ‘complications’, you’d think that this was the sort of thing Kuenssberg would be interested in pointing out – the complications caused by Israel violating international law. Instead, her interests are as follows:
Diplomatic opportunities
Then when it comes to the diplomacy, a former senior official tells me the UK is “thinking about the off ramps,” – in other words, encouraging all the players, not just its allies, to think about how to bring the conflict to an end, and what a post-war settlement might look like.The UK has specific opportunities – there are things that it can do that the US can’t, with an embassy still in the Iranian capital Tehran, for example, whereas the Americans haven’t had any formal diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980.
Iran has launched missiles at Israel twice in this conflict; once in retaliation for Israel striking their consulate, and once in retaliation for Israel assassinating the leader of their allies Hezbollah. Neither of the strikes were targeted at civilians, in stark contrast to the Israeli attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. As such the idea that this all stops because the British ambassador to Tehran is just really good at diplomacy is a fantasy.
Israel is on a rampage, and it only stops when we stop funding them.
“Diplomacy matters”
If you don’t believe that Kuenssberg and the BBC have the same biases as our imperial US taskmasters, just look at how they interview the two sides:
Laura Kuenssberg practically apologising to the Israeli ambassador for having to ask her about the "awkward" subject of her government's genocide of the Palestinians and the targeting of civilians in Beruit#BBCLauraK complicit!
— Celtic-Mad (@celtic_mad) October 6, 2024
The BBC really has crossed a line today – after the line to Tehran was cut Laura Kuenssberg put the words that the woman she was interviewing didn't want Israel to exist as fact, without the interviewee being allowed the chance for a response to Laura's assertion #bbclaurak
— Cari Barang (@caribarangbaru) October 6, 2024
The Israeli ambassador that is on BBC Kuenssberg's show AGAIN this morning..
Propaganda from a genocidal regime paid for by you, the licence fee payer..
If I had a licence I would be raging. https://t.co/adsewJiphu
— Rik Ferguson (@rik_big) October 6, 2024
Kuenssberg’s piece ends with what must be the most ridiculous point of all:
Diplomacy matters, whether its impact is easy to measure or not. A government insider suggests without the UK, US and Western allies urging restraint on a daily basis, there is a parallel universe where the conflicts might already have boiled over into a war far worse than anything we have seen so far. “Everybody has been working incredibly hard to try and prevent a spillover,” a senior figure says.
That’s right; as bad as things seem, just imagine how much worse things would be if we weren’t urging restraint? All those dead civilians would be twice as dead as they are now; all those blown up hospitals would be craters twice as deep.
If nothing else, the point does reveal something; our government may call Israel its ally, but even they think its capable of even worse than what we’ve seen so far.
And yet the weapons continue to flow on a river of blood and propaganda.
Featured image via the Canary
