Octulips.

Some poor lady in California has just given birth to eight little blooms, apparently.

Let’s hope all of them make it to the spring; they’ve arrived a little early.

But I’m not sure it was so sensible for someone trying to conceive a family to have been necking Baby Bio – I think she’s obviously got the wrong end of the training cane.

Little Shop of Horrors indeed. Crikey.

Word.

Down.

Microsoft Arse is what it should be called; I’ve long said it.

Having to make a load of templates in the damned thing. >GAAKKK!!<

Cack-handed crap. Unintuitive, artificial… – NOW what’s it done?! AARGH!)

—
At least I’ve turned some entirely pointless frustration into some purposeful frustration. Maybe. This morning I was considering banging my head on the bedside radio, listening to Beeb DG, Mark Thompson, make a giant political mountain out of the DEC appeal molehill.
I know that the situation’s a minefield for journalists, but Mr T’s managed to do more to politicise the BBC’s decision by not showing the thing. It would have been so much easier to argue against any criticism the other way. It would have slipped past with less fuss, I think.
Think about it. Is he ultimately worried that there’s a risk of condoning aid getting to huge numbers of women and children if Auntie runs the appeal – because of who they are? Because of where they find themselves?
Who could argue sensibly against the Disaster Emergency Committee’s aid? If they’d never been broadcast by the Beeb before, then making this the first ever would look a bit partisan, to be sure. But they’ve been screened after the Ten and the Six and in all manner of other BBC slots umpteen times over the years – and understandably. UK people see need and tend to give, recession or not. And the DEC know what they’re doing, or so the BBC always appeared to think before.
Arguing against the DEC’s aid aims in Gaza is to essentially declare some version of the idea that Gazan’s wholesale ‘brought this suffering on themselves’ and so are unworthy of the help. Disqualified. All of them.
Is that how humanitarian aid is apportioned?
The thing is, now there’s a political lobby trying to bully the Beeb into screening the bleedin’ thing, I kind of think they have to stick to their guns, days into the bickering, or they’ll look persuadable in all directions. People certainly know about it now.
It seems like a toughie, but I’ve spent less time figuring it out than I have trying to figure out Microsoft Bloody Word.
It’s all very well coming up with something that technically works, but proper solutions are shaped around human beings.

Balance.

Interesting. Tracking some of the responses to Channel 4 News’ interview with Mark Regev and some of Jon Snow’s blogging about the situation in Gaza – as well as some of the reactions to the Beeb’s increasingly publicised stance on the DEC Gaza appeal – there are more than a few typed voices singling out issues of bias against Israel and blindness towards Hamas. Some outright slamming of C4 for living in a ‘left wing bubble’.

Interesting too is watching that C4N interview again. Mark Regev was for much of it more controlled in his manner than I remember, and I can see how someone rooting for his point of view would read bias into Jon’s energy and line of questions.

My point here is point of view. We bring our own filter to everything always.

Even trying to be objective, far away, I came away from Thursday’s piece feeling angry – piecing together the scenes of utter destruction with an apparent arrogance of tone from the representative of those who wrought this particular round of destruction. Did I leap a little further than the facts alone, in front of me on the TV, should have taken me?

If I’m doing it, living miles from the conflict with no direct involvement, how much is everyone on the ground filling in perception and fueling passions with their prejudices?

—

Jonathan Miller’s report on the misuse of certain weapons in ‘civilian’ areas had been discussed in that interview with Mr Regev, being cited by the Israeli spokesman as a case of naiivety.

“Of course the people your respected reporter spoke to couldn’t say what they really thought – Hamas is an intimidating military regime.” He said. “Do you deny that Hamas is an intimidating military regime?”

“So you’re saying their injuries, which they told us were from Israeli weapons, were actually from Hamas fighters using intimidation?” Jon replied. “Are you saying Hamas used the white phosphorus and flechette weapons?”

“No, I’m not saying that, you’re putting words into my mouth, sir. I’m saying Hamas uses intimidation and you therefore cannot be sure what people tell you in Gaza.” Mark Regev replied.

The order and precision of the dialogue I’ve put here isn’t accurate, but this is some of what was exchanged. And in a subsequent report on Friday night’s programme, Jonathan Miller spoke to some Gazans who said that Hamas had indeed intimidated their way into some people’s homes in order to launch rockets from them – even shooting one witness’ son in the leg when he begged them not to turn his family home into a military target.

—

But here’s the thing.

My view of either of these people doesn’t change their humanity. Doesn’t alter it one jot – in the outside world. To the reportable truth. But it does in my head.

In the head of the Gazan Hamas freedom fighter, the Israeli occupiers are genocidal aggressors to be resisted in all possible forms. It is a glory to die in the pursuit of that freedom, all civilian infrastructure can be apportioned for the struggle however it’s needed, and anyone from the bitter rival party, Fatah, could well be a collaborator and might well need to be shot in the name of security and the ultimate good for Palestinians.

In the head of the Israeli defender, the Hamas terrorist is an indiscriminate killer, in power by military coup, using civilian areas as weapons caches and human shielding, who will never accept the democratic right of Israel to live in peace and who will never stop mindless murder unless stopped once and for all. However bad the death of children sounds, the Palestinian people either voted for these self-proclaimed extremists or refused to organise themselves a better democratic alternative, and so brought a measure of this on themselves.

So are we stuck forever?

Surely not. The key is still responsibility. Proportionality.

—

Both sides have inculcated some ugly normalities in their views of the other. Enough to hide the humanity and common sense going on, on either side of the wall.

Ultimately, both party leaders appear care little, in tactical terms at least, about the death of children in the struggle – a dreadful thing to say, unhelpfully loaded, but observationally true to the outside world. Yet we can never solve a crisis of passions without asking why each side feels those passions. Why these ugly cultural normalities took root. Why is the word. And that word is only a link word to actual dialogue – because it must be followed by listening.

Democracy and nuclear capability each bestow on Israel an expectation of a high moral standard. But not an empty piety. To an Israeli official spokesperson I would say that if Israel thinks Hamas is beneath speaking to, she should ironically have the superior confidence to talk to them. What would there be to fear? If Israel knows what it’s doing, it will know that the superior strategy is dialogue. Winning over your opponent.

Instead it has always chosen military strategy. More than that – and this is, I believe, Isreal’s core cultural problem – it has always defined itself by military strategy. Best form of defense is offense.

Occupied land, blast walls, initiated wars, check point choking, daily humiliations. All of it sounds strategically legitimate if you believe you are at war. If you define yourself by the fight. By the enemy. As might suicide bombing, to someone’s particularly ugly normality. Hamas’ very creed is to destroy Israel – it couldn’t exist at all without its enemy. It sends its sons and daughters to blow themselves to pieces fighting its enemy. So we’re back to a stalemate of definition. If those understandings of each side are the only truth of them. Back to an ugly balance of pain and blame.

All these political tactics and cultural outlooks do is breed fighters. Angry killers, defending their right to exist at any cost.
Dialogue, on the other hand, means having the guts to see your opponent as human. If you once do that, rather than villifying them into hateable cartoons, the military conviction to kill them begins to break down. If you define your identity by hating them, there’s no way you can talk to them. Because you won’t know who you are any more.

And you’ll be admitting you’ll have to live with people who see the world differently to you.

—

If, despite the stalemate of cultural outlooks, both parties really do want to see something other than total annihilation of the other happen, in the game of who goes first, Israel has always held the controlling power. By far.

If I were talking to the UK’s democratic partner in the Middle East, I would say to her that Israel needs to depower Hamas by gradually showing its violent methods to be void. Defunct. Out of time.

By opening the flow of movement, by aiding in the rebuilding of Gaza, by ultimately opening talks with Hamas leaders – who are the elected representatives of Palestinians in Gaza right now – Israel will begin to take the heat out of the rockets.

By using its great power to humanise the empoverished Palestinians in its own mind, Israel will begin to build peace. By treating them not as victims or villains but partners in the region, it might start to build real security. By giving back some of the land that is blatently contentious, by trying to build dignity into its dealings with its neighbours, by coming ever closer to being able to say sorry for certain things, Israel will begin to silence its critics around the world.

By defining itself by the fight, by always claiming moral high ground but refusing to dismantle its own war machine – the machinery of intimidation and humiliation and provocation – Israel fuels the militant opposition. And then blames it.

Who shoots a human shield to get at the terrorist hiding behind it? Someone who sees the military victory as more important than the human concerned.

If leaders can one day be found in the Kenesset who will begin to voice a whole new lexicon of dialogue with the situation – rather than voting for spectacularly disproportionate death tolls – less and less people outside the situation will be able to say: ‘what is Israel really up to?’ Because it will be obvious. Israel will be actually doing something about the situation.

—

But, back on planet Earth, where big dreams begin, the human reality is that tone of voice is as vital as choice of words in communicating. My job tells me this every day. If I were in charge of Israel’s security, I might be be keeping Mark Regev away from cameras and microphones.

What matters the label, Left Wing, Israeli, Palestinian, to humanity? Nothing. Not a bloody thing.

Of course the BBC should broadcast the DEC’s appeal. It’s the DEC, for God’s sake. It’s children, for God’s sake. The decision not to broadcast it has sounded like one of the most partisan, unbalanced things I’ve ever heard.

Poppet.

Lilly Allen. Never met the girl.

Don’t know any gossip, if there is any. But her new single – let’s just agree, shall we, that the more you hear The fear the more meaningful and moving it seems. Pop at it’s most articulate. Geist of the zeit indeed. I think I love it.

She’s a proper talent, and perhaps a poppet. But nobody’s pop pet.

> OK, WHILE WE’RE HERE…<
Puppet.

Check out Thursday’s Daily Show. Jon Stuart interviewing Gitmo, the Guantanamo glove character.

I don’t know where to go with this.

Lost.

I staggered in from circuits lastnight to catch the end of an interview that Jon Snow was conducting with Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev.

I’ve never seen Jon Snow shut down an interview before.

It should have no bearing whatsoever on the reporting of facts, but the shouty arrogance of the individual in this case began to take over from any fact finding. Began to distract from the debate. The line he took though, heat of delivery aside, was the real thing to make blood eventually boil.

The flat, outright, F**k You denial.

It seemed undeniably there in the flat words, as well as the fired tone.

Not knowing what else to do, I posted something feebly on Jon’s Snowblog at C4:

Lastnight’s interview with Mr Regev was a tough one to sit through, and people will make of it various opposing things, I suspect.

But I suspect too, Jon, that you’d say your concern in your work is simply reporting the truth, as far as we can get at it.

Mr Regev’s aggression of tone is one thing – we can judge it however. But the responses themselves, transcripted, seem to illustrate Israel’s apparently consistent official practice, at least whenever I’m watching – answer direct questions by pointing elsewhere. The question: “Did you do X?” might be met by the answer: “We didn’t start it.”; “Did you do Y?” by: “What about North Korea?”. “Did you do Z” may even just get talked over.

Passion is one thing. It’s obviously hard to hold in, in the face of such events and issues. Nor should it always be, I think. But decisions and actions taken are reportable truth. So too should be responsibility.

As ever, thanks for doing your best in the middle of the issues, Jon. It surely says as much about passion as it does professionalism.

Yes, of course it’s sycophantic – I want Jim to fix it for me to go to the Channel 4 News offices and meet everyone. I want to stand in front of the big man in bright socks, purse my lips awkwardly, and shiftingly tell Jon I think he’s a ruddy hero.
But what I want to know in the real world is: when will a political leader start helping Hamas to stop shooting rockets? And when will a political leader outright condemn Israeli government tactics? Not to do so, on some level, is to not help anyone.

Who knows what I would feel if I were born and raised in an Israeli suburb. But if I was still essentially me, I can only say I’d be very concerned at the way Mr Regev spoke for my country. And insensed at the strategy he represented for my security. I’d be surely be f***ing livid, wouldn’t I? ..Wouldn’t I?

—

Interesting that many other people expressed similar incredulity on Jon’s blog. But it’s true to say that Mr Regev’s views and tone do represent a lot of people. The comments accusing C4 of bias and clear anti-Israeli sentiment are many.

But they all take the same line, essentially: “You just hate us, and we didn’t start any of this.” The answer to over 300 dead children, bulldozed infrastructure, a systematically traumatised population and blanket ban on live reporting in the theatre of conflict seems to be: “Hamas is a dictatorial regime that that rules by military coup and fires rockets into Israeli back gardens.” Without heat or passion, these appear to be the facts on the ground.

That filter is the thing many people look through at the situation – who they think Hamas, or the Palestinians are. That’s enough. They see the rockets land and that’s evidence enough for any reprisal. But have they walked through Gaza and seen it themselves? Have they sat down with Palestinians – or, dare I say it, someone affiliated with Hamas – to talk with them about it?

Bloody f***k, this is hard. This is hard to put right.

Harder to hear, however, is the possibility that the BBC and Channel 4 refused to air a Disasters Emergency Committee appeal on behalf of the people of Gaza, for fear of appearing biased.

Could this really be true?

Excuse me being a child, but why can’t this be about human need, human suffering and human injustice? What difference should a sodding flag make – Palestinian, Israeli, Iraqi or British?

Is the truth completely lost? Can no one speak for it? Because if we choose to hide the truth of one group of people, we surely lose the right to have it disclosed for ourselves.