Peter Reynolds

The life and times of Peter Reynolds

Posts Tagged ‘Israel

I Trust the BBC Much More than Any Other Media Outlet

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Look at who’s attacking it – the Telegraph along with the rest of the press, the Conservatives, Nigel Farage, Reform and Donald Trump. It’s not difficult to know who to trust!

It’s the Daily Telegraph that leads the assault on the BBC and there couldn’t be a sharper contrast between these two news providers. I was brought up seeing my father read the Telegraph every day and I followed him. For most of my adult life it was by far the best newspaper, both for the sheer quantity of news it published and the middle road it took between the Times, which could be very dry and the tabloids, which have always been a trivial form of entertainment rather than serious information. In the last few years, however, it has descended into the gutter and now ranks alongside the Daily Mail as not just trivial but mendacious.

To be fair, the Times has also deteriorated. Now much more readable, it has frittered away its reputation for accuracy and can no longer be considered reliable. It’s instructive that its current editor, Tony Gallagher, is a former editor of the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and the Sun. Another valuable insight can be gained by reading the comments on the Telegraph and Times websites. They show a readership that is predominantly further to the right even than the publications themselves. This is alarming.

I now read both the Times and the the Guardian but I trust and respect the BBC’s journalism far more. I don’t understand why the BBC pays so much attention to the press. It is a dying medium, moving ever further to the authoritarian right on a daily basis. I would like to see the BBC stop following the press, stop allowing it to set the news agenda, stop reviewing the newspapers. Newspapers have nothing to offer the BBC and are a negative influence on its work.

Of course, I have my own issues with the BBC, its pro-Israel stance and failure to report fairly or accurately the Palestinian point of view. The Centre for Media Monitoring report of June 2025 analysed 35,000+ pieces of BBC content showing that Palestinian deaths are treated as less newsworthy. There is systematic language bias favouring Israelis and an almost complete suppression of genocide allegations with interviewees cut off as soon as they mention the word. Palestinian voices are suppressed with hardly any representatives given an opportunity to speak.

The other issue on which the BBC is failing badly is drugs policy. It simply isn’t covered While there are many reports of the ‘War on Drugs’, law enforcement activity, drug deaths, violence and gang warfare, never ever does the BBC look at policy. On any other issue, when a major problem is identified, there would be interviews with experts, analyses of policy options, etc. There is a complete blackout in the BBC on drugs policy. Some of this can be explained by the terrible truth that politicians don’t want to talk about it,. In fact they will do anything to evade the subject, only ever telling us that they are ‘tough on drugs’. There is a ‘group think’ in British politics and media that believes prohibition is the only option. They are too cowardly to look at the alternatives.

But I back the BBC. I want to see it toughen up. I want to see it do better on Israel and on drugs policy but overall no other broadcaster comes close. The people now attacking it: the Telegraph, the rest of the press, the Conservatives, Nigel Farage and Reform – well that just confirms it, I know exactly which side I’m on!

Written by Peter Reynolds

November 12, 2025 at 6:08 pm

The Greater Israel Project. Netanyahu’s Real Agenda

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Greater Israel

Netanyahu and his ultra-Zionist regime are pursuing the ‘Greater Israel’ project (Eretz Yisrael HaShlema). This claims the entire area from the River Nile, north-east to include the southern part of Turkey and south-east to include Iraq, Kuwait, west to include a large part of Saudi Arabia and about two-thirds of Egypt. This is based on the Zionist belief that around 2000 BC Abraham said ‘God’ had told him he and his descendants have the exclusive right to this land as defined in the Torah.

This includes annexation of half the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, the Sinai, Jordan, Gaza, the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon. Even the island of Cyprus is included in their ambitions. There is uproar in Cyprus right now from the native inhabitants as great tracts of land in the south of the island are being bought by Zioinist Israelis.

Ridiculous you may say and I would agree with you it seems so but Netanyahu has repeatedly shown his map of his ‘Greater Israel’ in public briefings confirming his government’s intent. Google it. You can see him holding a map with the area shaded in green.

There is also the ‘Ben Gurion Canal Project’ to cut a canal from Ashkelon, just north of Gaza, down to Eilat at the northern tip of the Red Sea. This would bypass the Suez Canal, just in case that ambition cannot be realised.

This is the reality of the ambition of the regime which is crazed with blood lust, expansionism and Zionist supremacy. Everything it is currently doing in Gaza and the West Bank is part of the process.

References

‘It’s Time to Confront Israel’s Version of “From the River to the Sea”’, The Nation, 22nd Nov 2023. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/its-time-to-confront-israels-version-of-from-the-river-to-the-sea/

‘What is the ‘Greater Israel’ movement?’, The Week, 18th Oct 2024. https://theweek.com/world-news/what-is-the-greater-israel-movement

‘Netanyahu says he’s on a ‘historic and spiritual mission,’ also feels a connection to vision of Greater Israel’, Times of Israel, 12th Aug 2025. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-says-hes-on-a-historic-and-spiritual-mission-endorses-vision-of-greater-israel/

‘The “Greater Israel” Plan Has a Colossal Reach’, Fair Observer, 19th Dec 2024. https://www.fairobserver.com/politics/the-greater-israel-plan-has-a-colossal-reach/

‘Greater Israel—From the Euphrates to the Nile’, Times of Israel, 8th Jan 2024. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/greater-israel-from-the-euphrates-to-the-nile/

‘Greater Israel’, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Israel

Written by Peter Reynolds

August 13, 2025 at 12:57 pm

Posted in Politics

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Starmer Fiddles While Israel’s Genocide Gathers Pace

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Possibly the best insight into what is really going on in Gaza is the video released yesterday from outside the areas where huge quantities of aid are stored waiting for the IDF to let it in.

It shows Israeli parents bringing their children to sit in the road to block lorries carrying aid to starving Palestinian children.

Israel is a perversion of humanity.

It is a moral imperative to recognise Palestine to advance its cause in the face of Israel’s genocide. But Starmer is a self-declared Zionist, a disciple of the death cult that prescribes death or forced displacement of native peoples to make way for Israel. He has repeatedly supported Israel’s war crimes, openly calling for it to cut off food and water to the besieged Gazan people. He provides surveillance flights over Gaza to assist the IDF with targeting civilians and he tacitly supports ‘settler’ terrorism in the West Bank.

Starmer’s future is clear. He will end his days in whichever prison cell the justices in the Hague send him.

Written by Peter Reynolds

July 26, 2025 at 3:43 pm

Posted in Politics

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The Future of the Land Between the River and the Sea

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‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!’ is a legitimate, non-exclusive ambition for freedom of the Palestinian people. It’s nothing like the exclusive, racist and hate filled Israeli slogan ‘Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty’, as enshrined in Netanyahu’s Likud Party constitution.

For all decent people, it makes no difference if you are Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Atheist, Israeli, Palestinian, British, American or a Buddhist from Outer Mongolia. To borrow from Martin Luther King, what matters is the “content of your character” and your actions.

The content of Israel’s ‘character’ and the history of its actions since its inception in 1948 are so disgusting, so barbaric that despite enormous support from the West, it has now descended into such sordid inhumanity that, unless it makes radical change, I don’t think it has any future.

Obviously a place is going to have be found for Israeli citizens, irrespective of whether they are Jews or not. The only solution that makes sense is the formal re-establishment of Palestine under supervision of the UN and the world community. Extraordinary safeguards will have to be put in place to protect the rights of all citizens, preserve their religious freedom and ensure there are no reprisals and no return to the sort of supremacist, apartheid society that Israel established.

Clearly this will not be an easy or trouble-free process but a line has to be drawn under the disaster of the past 77 years and the people of the region given a chance to live in peace, mutual respect and, in time, some sort of harmony.

Written by Peter Reynolds

July 23, 2025 at 5:00 pm

Posted in Politics

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A True British Hero for 2025

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This man is a British hero to compare with any of our political or military icons. This is true courage in the face of tyranny.

Never in my lifetime has Britain been closer to fascism. Yvette Cooper, like all home secretaries, acts against the interests of the British people with increasingly authoritarian policies. Placing Palestine Action protestors in the same category as the 7/7 or Manchester Arena bombers is ridiculous and undermines the rule of law.

As feared but as Court of Appeal Justices promised wouldn’t happen, this absurd law is now being over enforced. All and any protests in favour of Palestine and against Israel’s genocide are effectively banned.

Written by Peter Reynolds

July 21, 2025 at 12:12 pm

State Political Violence is Terrorism

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With thanks to Tayab Ali, head of International Law at Bindmans LLP

When Israel steals land, occupies territory, subjugates an entire population and kills them with impunity, it’s called “the right to self-determination.”

When Palestinians resist military occupation, it’s called “terrorism.”

When Israel bombs hospitals, flattens homes, and kills tens of thousands of civilians, it’s called “defence.”

When tens of thousands take to the streets to protest genocide it is labelled a hate march in support of “terrorism”.

When a far-right extremist murders an MP, it’s reduced to just “murder” with no ideology, no wider context.

When a pro-Palestinian chant is raised, it’s accused of “glorifying terrorism.”

When Israelis say from the River to the Sea it’s glorious assertion of biblical “identity”.

When Palestinians say from the River to the Sea it’s genocidal “terrorism”.

When Israel and the US illegally bomb Iran it called “preemptive defence”.

When a protest group supports Palestinian rights, it’s proscribed as “terrorist.”

When a single Israeli is kidnapped or killed it runs 24 hour news cycles and state leaders condemn it as “terrorism”.

When 50 Palestinians are killed in a single day it is….. “nothing”.

Let’s be clear: more people have been killed by Western state violence than by Islamist terrorism.

Post-9/11 wars led by the US and its allies have caused over 4.5 million deaths. All Islamist terror attacks globally since 1979? Around 220,000 deaths. Yet only one of these is consistently labelled “terrorism.” The other is sanitised as “defence,” “intervention,” or “stabilisation.”

Political violence is political violence. Whether it’s a homemade rocket or a billion-dollar airstrike. The only difference is who has the media, the money, and the power to write the story.

Resist and fight the deep state propaganda machine that keeps you from the truth.

Written by Peter Reynolds

July 6, 2025 at 10:39 am

Tyranny Now Rules in UK, Not Just of Government but of Most of Our Corrupt Israel-Sponsored Parliament

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Damage to property caused by the Suffragettes

In my 68 years, I have never been so ashamed of my country. The decision to proscribe a group supporting the Palestinian cause and to deem it as a terrorist organisation because it has carried out action directly analogous with the behaviour of the Suffragettes, the protestors against the illegal Iraq war and South African apartheid is beyond absurd.

Yes, all these protestors committed criminal offences by damaging property but to decide in 2025 that this puts them in the same category as the 7/7, Manchester Arena bombers or the murderers of PC Keith Palmer is ridiculous. It is more than absurd or ridiculous, it is unjust and, should be unlawful. Certainly the protestors should be tried for criminal damage or whatever crimes are appropriate. The power of their protest is in their readiness to accept punishment for such crimes. If, however, the High Court refuses to halt the outrage of deeming them as terrorists then the rule of law has been subverted by a totalitarian government.

Starmer and his cabinet are already proven to be corrupted by huge amounts of Israeli money and hundreds of MPs on all sides of Parliament are sponsored by the Israeli lobby. Britain’s record in standing up to Israel’s crimes is dreadful but the conduct of Israel since the Hamas atrocity of 7th October 2023 has involved hundreds of war crimes and has now, without doubt, become genocide, the most serious crime of all. The previous Conservative government, led by Rishi Sunak, was bad enough but Starmer is far worse, as Israel’s crimes have become more and more outrageous. Sunak, Starmer and many of their ministers and MPs are fully complicit in these war crimes and justice dictates that some of them should face trial on these issues. As I understand it, war crimes are not covered by Crown Indemnity.

In my view there has not been a more serious juncture in our history since we stood alone against the Nazis in 1940. Israel’s conduct today is of the same nature and Britain’s part in it is a national disgrace. Wherever we go from here, even if the High Court does rein in this latest, disgusting episode, there are senior British politicians who must face trial.

Written by Peter Reynolds

July 4, 2025 at 5:37 pm

Denial of Israel’s Genocide of Palestinians is the Same as Holocaust Denial.

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Except that it is happening right now, streamed live, while our useless, cowardly, so-called ‘leaders’ stand idly by. Never before has such evil been so obvious while those with the power to act are complicit by their negligence.

Written by Peter Reynolds

May 26, 2025 at 5:15 pm

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Prime Minister’s Questions, 13th November 2024. Question on Genocide from Ayoub Khan MP.

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This slippery answer from Keir Starmer shows him acting as an agent of Israel in his attempt to excuse genocide. The atrocity of 7/10 has been rendered insignificant by Israel’s subsequent conduct. Brushing aside the question with such an excuse demonstrates that Starmer is a traitor to British values.

Written by Peter Reynolds

November 13, 2024 at 5:13 pm

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Why is the British Government Promoting and Arming Israeli Extremism?

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Israel is a terrorist organisation responsible for tens of thousands more deaths and infinitely more destruction and misery than Hezbollah and Hamas combined. Why isn’t it also proscribed?

Ministers in both the previous Conservative government and the current Labour government are, without doubt, complicit in many of Israel’s war crimes. Some are directly involved by authorising licenses for arms sales and for undisclosed military support. Exactly what is Britain’s military role is unknown and will probably never be revealed but there is compelling evidence of special forces involvement and assistance with targeting using aircraft based in Cyprus.

It is absolutely clear that Crown Immunity which protects ministers from prosecution does not apply to war crimes.  These include: Rishi Sunak, David Cameron, Grant Shapps, James Cleverly, Keir Starmer, David Lammy, John Reid and Yvette Cooper. There will be many others and officials in the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence.  It is the duty of the current and future government to investigate these crimes and ensure due process. However long it may take, it is essential that these ministers are brought to trial. 

Written by Peter Reynolds

October 7, 2024 at 11:05 am