The Promise.

Image by ChrisYunker via Flickr

 This superb attempt at explaining part of the background to the continuing festering hostility between the Palestinians and the Israelis has finally come to an end. Channel 4 must take great credit for being brave enough to show the series which would certainly not have been aired by the BBC and predictably a representative from the Israeli Embassy has condemned the programme as being antisemitic and one sided.

 That atrocities were, and are, being committed on both sides is irrefutable but the major incidents shown in the series were all based on historical fact and the programme makers clearly took enormous care in researching the facts and, in my opinion, gave the viewer, for once, an unbiased version of events and enabled them to be more informed and educated on the situation.

 This is what the media, at its best, should be prepared to do - to truthfully  present the facts, without comment or bias and to leave the public to draw their own conclusions from the information provided. I was fortunate enough to have an elder cousin, now sadly dead, who I admired greatly who became a professor in history at Glasgow University. When he died one of the most moving obituaries that I read was from a former student who said that he taught his students to never believe what they read in the history books but to do their own research, if possible, by studying contemporary records and sources and drawing their own conclusions on events.

 At first I thought that the main character, "Erin" - a student filling  in her gap year by staying with the family of a friend with duel nationality who had been called up to do her national service in the Israeli army -  was not only naive but also that her role lacked any kind of credibility. It was only as the series developed that I realised that she was being used as a device by the programme makers to represent the vast majority of the British public who know nothing and care less about the events or the history of the area, which has perhaps the potential to have more impact on our lives than anything else in this century. 

Related articles

• Peter Kosminsky: Britain's humiliation in Palestine (guardian.co.uk)

  Finally I cannot help but reflect that the series draws on an extract from Pity the Nation called The Keys of Palestine written by Robert Fisk in 1990 who has been unquestionably recognised as perhaps the greatest living journalist, writing on middle-eastern affairs today. Not surprisingly Fisk who was then writing for The Times fell foul or Rupert Murdoch for his ability to reveal the truth, and now writes for The Independent.