Acharit HaYamim

So this evening I sit down to watch some telly, and see that there is a show called "MI-5" on A&E. It's a British show, and after doing some research I found out that in the UK it's called "Spooks", and is produced for and broadcast by the BBC. It is basically a cop drama about the UK equivalent of the FBI.

Anyway, the episode I watched was entitled "Pro-Israeli Extremist". The plot of this episode was as follows:

Middle East peace talks are being held between the Israelis and Palestinians in London. The chief UN negotiator at the talks warns a friend from the MI-5 to check out an “extremist pro-Israeli group” called the November Committee ("NC"), which she says is out to sabotage the talks. The negotiator believes that a sinister, “neoconservative”, wildly powerful pro-Israel media magnate named David Swift is connected to the group. (As an introduction to Swift, he is seen debating a left-wing MP on a news talk show, who is the head of the Palestine Freedom Campaign ("PFC"). The PFC guy defends the “noble and heroic” suicide bombers of the “resistance” on television while the spooks look on in admiration.) The UN negotiator is then kidnapped, and later found murdered.

Suspicion naturally falls onto the NC, and MI-5 decides to investigate Swift and his connection to the group. It is quickly determined that Swift is in fact a leader of the group, and that he had the UN negotiator killed because she “not only believed in a two state solution, but that the Palestinian state had to be viable.” (In his personal diary the MI-5 finds a list of the NC’s “enemies”, along with a code word describing what Swift was planning to do to them. NABLUS means blackmail, HEBRON means surveillance, and JENIN…well, everyone knows what JENIN means. And it is the word next to the UN negotiator’s name on the list.)

A side plot involves the MI-5 director’s daughter, who is a documentary filmmaker and a member of the PFC, and who has drifted away from her father. Initially, the PFC is also being investigated by MI-5 to see if they are funneling money to Palestinian terror groups, but it quickly becomes apparent that they are the real heroes of the story (although whether or not they are in fact funding terrorists is never revealed) in their fight against the neocons of the NC. However, the daughter is seen dining with Swift, and it is learned that her old boyfriend in Tel Aviv was a member of Israeli Military Intelligence, so the father has her investigated by an agent to see if she is an Israeli plant inside the PFC. The agent penetrates the PFC, where he has conversations like this: “I’m scared of going to the West Bank.” “You should be scared. The IDF frequently mistakes the orange jackets of peace protestors for signs saying ‘Meddling Foreign Busybody – Please Shoot Me.’ But it’s so important for you to go.” “Yes, it is so important.”

The agent eventually boinks her, and also finds out that she has been a loyal PFC member the whole time, and is just trying to do a documentary film on the NC, which is why she organized the dinner with Swift. (She notes that her Israeli Military Intelligence boyfriend was ardently antiextremist – “they’re not all bad,” she righteously notes. “The ones in uniform are,” intones the agent, presumably trying to stay in cover.) The agent realizes that with Swift’s immense power, he will quickly find out her true intentions, and that she is in great danger. Sure enough, as soon as the agent leaves, a thug breaks in to the daughter’s house and threatens to kill her unless she gets her father to stop investigating Swift and the NC.

Meanwhile, Swift continues down the list, “Jenining” anyone who gets in his way.
The climax of the show comes when Swift uses his real plant inside the PFC to try and Jenin the group’s leader who he had previously debated on television. The plant is trying to make the leader’s death look like a suicide, so he has the leader up on a chair with a noose around his neck. When the MI5 agents come in just in the nick of time, the plant explains that he is working for the "neocons" because Hamas killed his sister in a suicide bus bombing in Israel, a group that the PFC supports. “Understands, not supports!” retorts the brave PFC leader, noose still around his neck.

As she arrests him, the MI5 agent gives a speech to the psychotic pro-Israeli about how sorry she is for his sister’s death, but that there are “too many stories of people suffering. That’s why there must be a peaceful solution.” MI5 cannot bring Swift to justice for some reason, but they force him to give up his newspaper and leave the country. Where he will go is a mystery, since “even the country he purports to support” (i.e. Israel) will not take him.

The show ends with the daughter of the MI5 head going back to Israel to make more anti-Israel documentaries. She and her father make their peace, and he tells her that even though he worries about her safety, he is proud of her.

When I checked the comments about the episode on the show's website, there were the obligatory sampling of remarks pro ("The show was excellent with a lot of factual information which is not always shown or told to the public about how Israel really works." - Khalida Akoub, Scotland) and con ("At one point I sat up and thought Spooks was bravely going into the serious problem of Pro-Palestinian groups being used by extremists for filtering money to terror groups and carrying out attacks - as has happened in real life. Alas, it is the BBC we're watching and they played to form by reversing the roles and casting supporters of Israel as the baddies." - Adam Greene, Cambridge).

What startled me was not the level of factual bias in the show. I have watched the BBC for long enough now that I already know the lengths they will go to in order to make the news fit their "moral" outlook. However, I was deeply disturbed by the fact that this was not a news program, but fluff entertainment akin to Law & Order in the US. That they could create such outrageous scenarios featuring the Israelis as the ruthless, psychotic bad guys means that this image is now taken for granted in the British public consciousness. And the fact that no one has made a peep about it, except for the brave Mr. Greene of Cambridge, is further proof. The demonization of Israel by the British media is now so complete that they have moved on to the second step, which is to use those now-universal images as a source of stock characters in television dramas. Much like in the Arab world, where every villain is either an Israeli or a Zionist collaborator/spy, the evil, calculating "pro-Israel extremist" or "neocon" seems to be emerging as a stock in trade character in Europe. It is now the "heroic sacrifice" of Hamas that is understood, if not supported, rather than that of the Israelis, and "Jenin" has now become a synonym for "murder of innocents by Israelis."