Israel

Years ago, there was a cliché phrase that seemed to be repeated far too much: "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." We need to relearn this for the benefit of society as a whole and for business in particular as comment-lite and narrow opinion is promoted as the norm across the whole spectrum of media.

The proof of Al Jazeera's mission to produce and broadcast material containing truths that many would prefer to keep secret is in the fact that it has become the poster-boy for the motto "you know you are doing something right when everyone hates you." As more and more pressure is brought to bear on a news network that is, today, a beacon of balanced reporting, even more than the now frequently partisan BBC, Al Jazeera finds itself the bit of news that produced an unguarded admission: Israel is working towards becoming a regional power by political collusion with several Arab states. It's a back-door assault on the GCC and, through that, the Arab League. That's not something Israel would have wanted the world to know until its scheme was more advanced.

Yesterday, Hamas, which now has effective political control over those parts of Palestine that Israel does not occupy, issued a landmark statement which announced its new Charter. It was an amazing document, with almost everything that Israel could reasonably expect from a peace treaty, except the inevitable refusal to acknowledge an Israeli state as a legal entity, while acknowledging it as a fact. It was such a departure from the previous position, that only the most radical and racist Israeli could possibly dismiss it out of hand. So Israeli president Netanyahu did just that. The BBC simply gave this extraordinary news such a low priority that it does not appear on any of its early mobile screens.

The news has become so driven by rapidly changing stories and sound-bytes that serious issues are increasingly hidden away or barely reported. One such issue is Egypt's resolution before the UN Security Council which condemns Israel's illegal settlement building outside its UN approved borders. Outgoing US President Obama, with only days remaining in an unremarkable double term in leadership, had made it known that the US intended to abstain, a radical course of action : historically, the US votes against any vote critical of Israel. But the vote has been postponed and the first signs of future President Trump's foreign policy have been telegraphed.