Ross Kemp In Israel

Part 2 of Ross Kemp in the Middle East aired tonight, this time with Kemp investigating in Israel - speaking to victims of suicide bombers and rocket attacks, as well as extremist settlers.

Like in Part 1, the documentary appeared to be quite balanced and objective; however there were once again obvious flaws, and important issues ignored.

Of those I noticed last week, only one was addressed in this episode: the reason for the blockade/security fence, to prevent suicide bombings. This was still something that should have been mentioned in Part 1 to provide context, as in this episode he only referred to the West Bank fence, not the Gaza one. In fact, Kemp should have asked Palestinians what they think about the fact that the fence has drastically reduced suicide bombings and terror attacks in Israel.

There were two main flaws overall in the documentaries, and they're big ones.

The first is that Kemp spoke a lot about division in Israeli communities, and how this posed as an obstacle to peace negotiations; however he did not properly look into the divisions between Hamas and Fatah, and how they torture and kill each other.

The second is that Kemp seemed to equate the extremists on both sides, and claimed that hate on both sides is an obstacle to peace. Equating suicide bombers and Palestinian extremists who want every Jew dead, with Jewish settlers who are simply building shacks on hillposts is utterly ridiculous. As for hate, I did not see one Israeli in the programme say anything about hating the Palestinians or wanting them dead. The settlers in the programme may have seemed a little crazy, but their actions weren't physically hurting anyone.* Murder is much worse than robbery (especially robbery of the kind where you're taking back what you think belongs to you.)

Hatred on the other side, though, is a completely different story, and one that needs investigating. Like I pointed out last week, Kemp did not sufficiently investigate Hamas tyranny in Gaza, or look at the contents of their official charter. Most importantly, he did not look into the brainwashing of Palestinian children that takes place in their schools, or the intrinsic antisemitism they are taught by extremists in control of their education.

Still, I commend Ross Kemp for his efforts, and we can't expect him to do everything! At least he is one journalist who approached the situation in Israel with an open mind and the objective of being, well, objective. In that respect, his documentary is possibly groundbreaking.

Now we just need a documentary about Hamas, and perhaps when people see the truth about them, we can try to come up with a realistic solution to peace in Israel rather than hypothetical talks with terrorists who don't want to talk and just want to kill.


*I am aware that there are settlers who have attacked Palestinians, but the ones Ross Kemp was referring to were not violent.
If I'm being totally objective, perhaps Kemp could have looked into allegations of crimes the settlers have comitted, but I doubt he would have found out anything much. The Palestinians accuse the Israelis of a lot of things that aren't true.