A farcical attempt to deflect attention

The Times has an appalling piece today from Israeli Ambassador Ron Prossor, who seeks to deflect attention from the United Nations Human Rights Council's report on its alleged war crimes in Gaza with an attack on the UNHCR itself. He struggles to do anything except accuse the body of hypocrisy and anti-Israeli bias, somewhat handicapped by the fact that the report's author, Richard Goldstone, is Jewish and neither anti-semitic nor anti-Israeli.

Most farcically, Prossor writes:

Difficult issues, including the use of white phosphorus, as reported by The Times, will not be ignored.

Which translates as: OK so we lied about using white phosphorus but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't believe us when we say we made every effort to avoid harming civilians.

Careful now!

The BBC is so obsessed with balance that its director general has shot himself in the foot defending its preposterous ban on the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Gaza.

Mark Thompson said: "After consultation with senior news editors, we concluded that to broadcast a free-standing appeal, no matter how carefully couched, ran the risk of calling into question the public's confidence in the BBC's impartiality in its coverage of the story as a whole ...

"We will continue to broadcast news about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and, if appropriate, to cover the work of the UK NGOs on the ground. We cannot, however, broadcast anything which we believe might compromise the impartiality of the BBC's journalism."

I've added the italics to show how weak the justification is. As the Guardian's Marina Hyde says, the BBC is "a bit jumpy" after the Ross/Brand affair:

You will scarcely find an employee who will not speak of a risk-averse culture, with some judging it a worse paralysis than in the wake of the Hutton report.

Which is saying something.