The Jerusalem Post reports: “BBC sorry for calling Jerusalem capital of Israel.” The Post gets in its licks providing the details on a few of the Muslim NGO’s and spokesmen whose ruffled feathers the BBC has rushed to soothe:
The Institute of Islamic Political Thought is run by Azzam Tamimi, a Hamas supporter and a member of the Muslim Association of Britain, part of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Tamimi spoke at Saturday’s anti-Israel rally in London’s Trafalgar Square. He blamed the British for their role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and vowed to return to his mother’s house in Hebron, which he said could never become a “Zionist place.”
To huge applause, Tamimi called Israel “a racist entity that sees us [Palestinians] as subhuman while they see themselves as superhuman.”
Tamimi told BBC in an interview in 2004 he did not recognize Israel’s right to exist and would be willing to become a suicide bomber. Last year, Merrill Lynch pulled its sponsorship from an event hosted by the London Middle East Institute because of Tamimi’s participation.
The Muslim Public Affairs Committee has faced continuing allegations of extremism and anti-Semitism. In 2005, during the last general election in the UK, the group campaigned against pro-Israel and pro-Iraq war MPs, and attempted to slur one MP by claiming she was a Jew. It eventually apologized when they learned the candidate was not Jewish.
Last year, The Observer discovered that the committee’s co-founder, Asghar Bukhari, had funded Holocaust denier David Irving.
The Friends of Al-Aksa states on its Web site that the first Jewish commonwealth lasted “only 98 years – from 1020 BC to 922 BC,” and that after the destruction of the First Temple, “all Jews are either killed, exiled or taken prisoners. This marks the end of Israel after 400 years of its inception.”
The Leicester-based organization had its bank accounts closed by the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2005.
The Muslim Association of Britain accused the bank of being a tool of the pro-Israeli lobby. “It appears the Royal Bank of Scotland is being used as a tool against those that express sympathy with Israel’s victims,” a representative of the Muslim Association said. “No bank or institution should be allowed to get away with such anti-Palestinian or anti-Muslim bias.”
Do read the whole thing. (Thanks to reader William Katz.)
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