Between the lines at the BBC

If you were only half-awake you could hardly have missed the wildly fictional slanting being given to reality by the guest on Radio Four's Today programme earlier this week.

But the positive outcome of this is that it prompted the following letter, a flawlessly succinct description of 63 years in the history of Palestine and the scenario as it stands:

Dear Editor, 16 February 2011

Yesterday, whilst listening to John Humphreys interview Israeli deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, on the Today programme, I had a distinct feeling of living in a parallel universe. Danny Ayalon's shameless comments bore no resemblance to the facts on the ground. Mubarak was a principal collaborator in the Israeli suppression of the Palestinian people and his downfall represents the loss of one of Israel's key aides in the incarceration and economic ruination of Gazans. A real democracy in Egypt will challenge the maintenance of Israel's military occupation of Palestine. So Israel and USA will be doing what they can to prevent a genuine democratic election in Egypt. If they fail to get their own candidate elected (so much for their love of democracy...) will sanctions will be applied to Egypt as they have been in the case of the democratic Gazan elections?

One would never have guessed from Mr Ayalon's dulcet tones that Israel has been illegally occupying Palestine for the last 63 yrs., building large towns and industrial complexes on stolen Palestinian land, imprisoning Palestinians behind a monstrous wall and prohibiting their movement through the use of military checkpoints. Not a hint that Israel is cleansing the Bedouin from their historic villages and lands, illegally detaining and torturing Palestinian minors inside Israeli jails, enacting racist laws against their Arab citizens,refusing millions of Palestinian refugees their legitimate right to return to their own lands, dragging Arab families out of their homes in E.Jerusalem to house Jews from E. Europe and USA.

As for assisting the Palestinian economy - take an investigative team and ask the Palestinians how prosperous they are under Israeli occupation. Children in the West Bank are as malnourished as the children of Gaza.

To crush people to this degree and then expect them to come to the negotiating table without pre-conditions is cruelty indeed. Innocent listeners could never have guessed that the seductive tones of Ayalon concealed oceans of Israeli inhumanity and criminality. What is disturbing is the complicity of the BBC and John Humphreys in this monumental dissemblance.

This week Judith Keshet, an Israeli Jewish woman, founder of Machsom Watch, is visiting the UK to speak of her work supporting Bedouin whose villages in the Negev have been illegally destroyed 11 times in the last few years . Why not interview her? There are honest Israelis who are willing to tell the truth about their government's scandalous inhumanity.

Anne Candlin