What prompted BBC Radio to remove its February 10 edition of “Thought for the Day?” If you want evidence that presenter John Bell talked about an Israeli-Arab allegedly “conscripted” by the IDF and later “imprisoned for refusing to shoot unarmed schoolchildren,” all that’s left are the comments it generated from angry listeners.
The IDF does not in fact conscript Arab-Israelis (though some serve voluntarily), and Bell’s claim that IDF officers are ordered — under penalty of imprisonment — to ‘shoot unarmed schoolchildren’ is simply outrageous and libelous.
Comments to BBC: click here
[UPDATE 2/15: BBC has issued an apology.]
Here’s a transcript of Bell’s session:
Thought for the Day, 10 February 2005 John Bell
Two years ago, in a Lebanese restaurant in Vancouver, I talked to a
waiter called Adam who was an Arab Israeli.
That means that he was of Palestinian Muslim stock, born in the
state of Israel and, like his Jewish compatriots, he had been
conscripted into the Israeli Army.
There he had distinguished himself as a good soldier and was made a
corporal. He was also imprisoned for refusing to shoot unarmed
schoolchildren. And one day, when off-duty, he saved many lives by
killing a suicide bomber who entered the bus on which he was
travelling.
At the end of our conversation, he asked ‘How old do you think I
am?’ I was sure he was 29, but I said 27 to flatter him. ‘No,’ he
said, ‘I am only 19. But this is what happens when you have been
through what I have been through.
It will not be in his singular life that the memory and the pain of
the conflict he has witnessed will die. His stories will be recounted
by his children and by his children’s children. And with each
retelling some animosity will surface. For Adam’s history will be in
their genes.
I say this today when many people will rightly be celebrating the
accord between Palestine and Israel agreed to on Tuesday.
For as with any peace agreement or truce, it is not so much that the
devil is in the detail. The devil, if we must use that term, is in
memories of hurt and feelings of revenge which will not be requited.
What is sectarianism in Northern Ireland, what is white-settler
animosity in Wales, what is racism in British cities if not the
expression of people on whose memories is etched real and false
information about an enemy which created mayhem in the past and
might do so again in the future?
The sins of the fathers…. as an old scripture says… are visited
on the children.
And in Israel-Palestine where the pain of history is physically
manifest in everything from a ruined temple to a half-built wall, a
handshake and two signatures can never be enough.
There is no quick fix, no kiss and make up opportunity. Dealing with
the genetic and psychological legacies of a brutal past is a spiritual thing.
It cannot be enforced by agreement, predicted by science, or enabled
by logic.
It needs imagination, sensitivity, humility and all the virtues
which cannot be gained through reading or conjecture. And maybe, in
place of the wild war music it needs the kind of mantra which Desmond
Tutu so winsomely taught his hurting compatriots:
Goodness is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Light is
stronger than darkness. Life is stronger than death.
copyright 2005 BBC
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