Saturday, August 4, 2007
It's unlikely he was much of a foe. Damian Thompson on the Telegraph blog:
My guess is that this is the one area where the BBC is genuinely alarmed by the consequences of its actions. Its reporting of the Middle East has been so relentlessly pro-Palestinian for so long, and that coverage is so influential, that it finds itself an actual player in the conflict, as opposed to an impartial observer.
The BBC is now regarded by Palestinian factions as a sympathetic but naive middleman to be manipulated at will, rather as the Catholic Church in Ireland was manipulated by the IRA during the Troubles. I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to call Johnston a friend of Hamas; but it is possible that he was a victim of this dynamic.
At any rate, don’t expect the Balen Report to be published any time soon.
And don't miss Stephanie Gutmann's comment in the thread. A snip:
This is of course especially true when your life literally depends on the good graces of your primary sources...
Indeed, whether scholar, reporter, or dhimmi bystander (or defense attorney), it's not long before understanding and appreciation of a group or individual's complexities seeps into sympathy and justification for what they do.