News arrives of last Friday’s motion passed by Britain’s National Union of Journalists calling for a boycott of goods and the imposition of sanctions on the state of Israel.
Among other idiocies in a wide-ranging anti-Israel resolution was a condemnation of Israel’s ‘savage pre-planned attack on Lebanon’ last summer. One can only assume that the resolution in question was drafted by journalists who specialise in areas other than the Middle East. If the attack on Hezbollah forces had been pre-planned it would not have been such a disaster for Israel.
But although the boycott of Israeli produce might not be considered the obvious business of the NUJ, you would have thought that the kidnap and reported murder of one of their own might be? Apparently not. As the Jerusalem Post pointedly notes, the BBC reporter Alan Johnston’s kidnapping in Gaza (he has been in captivity for more than a month) ‘was not on the NUJ’s agenda’.
Meanwhile – updating our story of a few days ago about EU legislators who mistake war and lexicography – the British government has now decided that the phrase ‘war on terror’ has had its day. International Development Secretary Hilary Benn has claimed that use of the term has aided the enemy. We eagerly await a fall-off in attacks as jihadis respond to this act of kindness from Deputy-Leader-contender Benn.
In the Netherlands, meanwhile they are painting arrows in their prison cells so that inmates can pray in the direction of Mecca. But in a newly reported case from The Hague it turns out that some of the directions were wrong. The arrows apparently led the inmates to bow to the West. Doubtless this is upsetting for prison staff and inmates at The Hague. But at least they can console themselves, by surveying Britain’s National Union of Journalists and its International Development Secretary, that they are not the only people whose compasses have failed them.
