Scots sympathy for all victims of war should be heard in our media
THE world remains transfixed by the continuing tragedy in Gaza, and it is becoming starkly apparent that there is a clear hierarchy of sympathy in the Western media, a hierarchy which can only be described as racist. This hierarchy has been evident for a very long time but the difference in attention and sympathy given to victims of violence on either side of the walls, wire, and exclusion strip separating Gaza from its close neighbours in southern Israel has brought it into stark relief. Innocent civilians have suffered on both sides, children have died on both sides, and continue to die in Gaza, but in Gaza for the most part they suffer and die away from the eyes of the Western media.
Equally the Western media paid far more attention to the war in Ukraine while the war in Yemen has gone unreported for the most part. The Western media gives preferential attention to the suffering of white people with a European culture than it does to brown people who are Muslim. This is a long-standing pattern which has been evident long before Hamas launched its attack on the homes of Israeli civilians living close to the border fence containing Gaza - a territory described as the world's largest open-air prison.
The recent outbreak of hostilities in Israel-Palestine has made this disparity in treatment impossible to ignore. People turned out in their hundreds in Edinburgh to show support for Palestinians (Image: Jane Barlow) We have been subjected to a media onslaught demanding that we must give full and uncritical support to Israel in its campaign to root out Hamas.
Israel constantly assures us that it does not target civilians, but it's very clear that Israel is quite prepared to accept a high level of 'collateral damage' as it pursues Hamas. There is a very fine line between not targeting civilians and not caring if civilians are in your way. That's a line that the Israeli army habitually erases as it bombards one of the most densely populated territories in the world.
It needs to be stressed that there is no justification for the hate-fuelled killings and kidnappings carried out by Hamas on innocent people, but the entire region has been locked in a dismal cycle of retribution and counter-retribution for decades and what is currently transpiring in Gaza merely ratchets up the hatred by several more notches. In Scotland, as in many other European countries, there has been considerable sympathy for innocent Palestinians - and not, it must be said, for the terrorist tactics of Hamas - which has clearly caught British political leadership and much of the British media unawares. Many people in Scotland do not feel comfortable being exhorted to give their full and uncritical support to an Israeli government, which does not apparently care about the innocent civilians who get in the way of its military objectives in Gaza while it imposes policies which are functionally indistinguishable from apartheid on the millions of Palestinians under its control.
Meanwhile, Palestinian communities inhabited by Palestinians who are Israeli citizens routinely complain that they are discriminated against when it comes to government spending and the provision of services.
Why is the BBC ignoring Scots solidarity with Palestinians?
Over the weekend there were demonstrations across Britain calling for an immediate ceasefire and showing solidarity for the innocent Palestinians caught up in this war. Thousands attended a demonstration in Glasgow with other demonstrations taking place in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Inverness. Yet none of this was mentioned at all on BBC[1] Scotland, whose news bulletins that weekend focused on BBC Scotland's traditional obsessions: the fitba and the weather.
The BBC's news website did mention that protests had taken place across the UK, but although it said there were demonstrations in London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Belfast and Salford, there was no mention of the events which took place in Scotland. You might think this was all the more relevant given that members of the First Minister's family are currently trapped in Gaza where they are rapidly running out of basic necessities. Given that the weekend saw Scotland being assailed by Storm Babet, which caused massive flooding, disruption and even deaths, BBC Scotland should of course have reported on the weather.
Children at a Palestinian solidarity rally in Edinburgh (Image: Jane Barlow) But it's long past time that questions were raised about the inordinate amount of time and attention that BBC Scotland's "news" programmes devote to men kicking a ball about on a football pitch. Why does BBC Scotland routinely devote as much as a third or more of its news programming to sports?
Surely these should be hived off into a separate Scottish sports programme, leaving the news for real news, and not for reporting on pastimes and hobbies. Although there's a clear macho hierarchy at play here, too. What BBC Scotland gives us is news for boys not news for grown-ups.
It's all part and parcel of the BBC's infantilisation of Scottish issues. By feeding us a diet of football, weather and stories about cute wee animals, the implicit message from BBC Scotland is that events in Scotland are essentially trivial and unimportant. The Scottish Cringe is alive and well on a broadcaster which we must call the BBC in Scotland, not BBC Scotland.
A referendum on the monarchy, anyone?
Independence Minister Jamie Hepburn has said that in an independent Scotland there could be a series of referendums on constitutional issues to give the people the opportunity to decide whether, for example, they wish to retain the monarchy or would prefer a republic.
He made the comments during a packed-out fringe event at the SNP[2] conference last week, which focused on what the Scottish constitution would look like as an independent country. It's pretty certain that Scotland will never get the opportunity to have a say on the monarchy as long as it remains a part of the British state, which fetishises the monarchy in the same way that it fetishises the flag and the armed forces. Irrespective of your views on the monarchy, this is a concrete example of a fundamental difference between an independent Scotland and the UK.
In Scotland, the people will be the ultimate authority.