I watched Newshour – 12.30 to one o’clock BBC Two – today. The report by ACRI, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, about the alleged abuse of the human rights of Arab children in custody by the Israeli police was frightening and thought-provoking. It was followed by the BBC presenter, Jonathan Charles interviewing an expert, Professor Joan Freeman, an eminent child psychologist, on the report.
Professor Freeman is an acknowledged expert on gifted children, and has written many books on the subject, and lectures extensively on the subject. Here she was invited to offer her expert view on allegedly traumatised children in what is effectively a war zone in an occupied country, Israel/Palestine.
The whole tenor of this studio analysis left me profoundly uneasy, yet I cannot say exactly why, since I have no expertise in this complex subject. Others may have a more considered views.
(Iman and Imam – a slight variation in spelling but a vital distinction in meaning. Iman means faith, Imam means leader, something not always recognised by Western journalists and commentators. Panellist Ajmal Masroor is an Imam and a politician.)
Does UK behaviour contribute to terrorism – are we partially responsible for home-grown terrorists?
My reflex response is Yes, with the rider that UK behaviour is one of the principle causes of home-grown terrorism, but since that is begging the question, let’s listen to some of the arguments.
The forum is Sunday Morning, the replacement for The Big Debate, which I criticised in its initial format and structuring, but which has since improved significantly.
The other significant contributor to home-grown terrorism and to conflict all over the globe, is of course, religion, a fact which is usually glossed over, even on a programme like Sunday Morning, which has a religious basis. What the major world religions have demonstrated, over the millennia, is an undoubted propensity for attacking and killing each other.
The main players in this endless blood feud are the Christians, the Muslims and the Jews, all three of which are derived from the same root traditions.
A departure from this unholy trinity was of course the conflict following the partition of the India into India and Pakistan in 1948. Buddhists, while regularly persecuted by others, rarely, if ever, have been the aggressors. We might of course add the behaviour of Japan under Hirohito and the Shinto religion, but this owes more to the militaristic, nationalistic, quasi-religious cult of the Bushido (dreamt up by a converted Japanese Quaker with an American wife and living in Philadephia) that exploited Shinto and Buddhist religions, and the emperor.
But let the participants in this little aspect of the great debate speak for themselves -
Posts
