Thursday, January 7, 2010
Good for him! Sounds like quite a letter. It would be nice to see it in full. Pianist Kissin protests against BBC anti-Israel bias
The Russian-born pianist Evgeny Kissin, who became a British citizen in 2002, has accused the BBC of "slander and bias" against Israel, broadcasting material he describes as "painfully reminiscent of the old Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda".
Mr Kissin, 38, who until now has not generally been known as politically engaged, has written to the director-general of the BBC, Mark Thompson. According to a close friend of the pianist, he has decided to become "actively involved in exposing and countering the evil propaganda of certain British media and especially the BBC."
Mr Kissin's decision to use his fame and artistic renown to protest to the BBC on Israel's behalf contrasts with the criticisms against the Jewish state regularly voiced by musicians such as Daniel Barenboim, who holds Israeli citizenship.
In Mr Kissin's letter, he accuses the BBC's Persian Service of a "blood libel concerning Israel's alleged harvesting of Palestinian organs and blood for future transplant".
He continues: "It beggars belief that the British taxpayer should be funding an organisation which is aligning itself with Iran's despotic leader in its antisemitic propaganda. Other print media like the Guardian, which erroneously printed this libel propagated by Israel's enemies, have since apologised. I am not aware of any such retraction from the BBC."
Mr Kissin, who was a child prodigy in his native Russia and is now widely recognised as one of the greatest living pianists, intends from now on to speak out against media bias against Israel, which he sees as both fuelling and being fuelled by antisemitism.
In his letter, he says that when he became a British citizen he was "inspired and proud to belong to the country of Winston Churchill, who famously said: 'There is no antisemitism in England because we do not consider ourselves more stupid than the Jews'. Above all, the BBC and especially its World Service, had always been a beacon of light, of truth and objectivity to those of us behind the Iron Curtain, in the 'Evil Empire'. Reaching out to far corners of the world, it was the voice of a country which for us was a model of democracy and human rights."
He concludes by asking: "Is it not time for the BBC to return to the values for which it was so much respected, before it finds itself in the garbage of history, together with Pravda, Tass, Volkischer Beobachter and Der Angruff?"...[More.]
Well he'll never be invited back for a BBC broadcast of any kind. This is the form of the new Nuremberg laws: speak out against antisemitism and get banned.
I am very impressed with Kissin's letter. Never expected anything like that from him.
I wrote about that in my blog (mostly in Russian).
This has actually happened on political blogs here in the US.
It's amazing that people speaking out against bigotry are confused with actual bigots - or - there is a "fairness" and "balance" doctrine in some peoples' heads that somehow equates the two or demands that for every bigot banned from a website a person who argues with him must also be banned.
Note: In my personal experience this can go beyond trying to maintain a "balance" between proPalestinian and proIsrael posters and includes the banning of people who suggest that Jews exert "undue influence" in the US and those who argue with them.
Why on earth would any political board try to maintain a "balance" between racists and antiracists?
On a more philosophical level the Hitchens interview with Michael Totten is dealing to an extent with this issue I think, and with the limits of tolerance.
It's easy to see, studying post-Holocaust Europe, how a dread of repeating the Shoah would lead people to an increased desire to understand and respect others.
However, there seems to be some confusion. In the case of Islam for example it's a misplaced notion that extreme reactionaries represent the majority and that we must therefore respect extremists in order to avoid offending "the other".
Similarly a law has just been passed in Ireland making it illegal to disrespect religion! in which case it seems to place the Catholic Church beyond legal reproach.
By the same token there is lingering European antisemitism plus the expediency, echoed by former CIA agent Scheur, some "realists" and certainly by some in the oil industry who have adopted an Arabist or pro-Muslim point of view simply because there are so few Jews and so much oil is located in the Middle East.
There's also an aspect of European Orientalism which celebrates the surface beauty and romance of certain Middle Eastern cultures and this plays into centuries of disdain for Jews who have hardly been portrayed in such a flattering light, and in fact have been savagely portrayed as hook-nosed vampires or worse.
Much of this is subliminal but it's all being reinforced by major media outlets including the state-sponsored BBC, and that makes it truly frightening.
That letter is brilliant Solomon. Thanks for posting it!
Show COMPASSION for the victims of Pan Am 103
http://www.boycottscotland.com