 Welcome to a Friday night edition of Tiskey Sour. We have two huge stories for you tonight, although one of them clearly more significant than the other. Unlike the BBC bulletin today, we aren't going to start with the row between the Royals and the BBC, although we are going to cover that. We're going to start with a much more significant story of the day, which is the ceasefire in Gaza. Obviously, an enormous relief that those airstrikes in Gaza are going to stop, but this is not the end of the occupation nor apartheid, and it is not the introduction of peace, essentially. Is it? We're going to be talking about that. I've got a great guest. I'm also joined tonight by Navarra Media's Royal Correspondent Ash Sarkar. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm out of breath because I literally ran from a train that was three hours late, and sat outside Milton Keynes for an hour and a half to be here. The Queen threw everything she had at me to try and stop me from telling you the truth about the Royals, but not even the monarchy could get in my way. That's what we like to hear, and I'm sure our audience will be very, very appreciative of you making that sprint home. As ever, you know the score, do share the show link and keep your comments coming on the hashtag Tiske Sauer. At 2 a.m. on Friday morning, local time, a ceasefire broke between Israel and Hamas came into force. By then, Israel's bombardment of Gaza had killed 243 people, including 66 children. Over that same period, Hamas rockets killed 12 people in Israel. These were the celebrations in Gaza City last night. So some chants you would have heard there. God is greatest. And greetings to Isel Din Al-Qasam Brigades. Now, the Al-Qasam Brigades are the military wing of Hamas. At lots of the celebrations today, there were people chanting about Hamas. One of the big stories from this past 11 days is that they have increased their stature in Palestine. We'll be talking about that in one moment. There were, of course, also celebrations at Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem. Those were celebrations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. However, already by today, Israeli police had once again stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. Now, if you want to know the significance of that storming, remember that it was the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque that originally provoked rocket fire from Hamas. It's the most symbolic place in Palestine. And the third holiest site in Islam. There were some differences. The actions that provoked the rocket strikes, the police went actually inside the building. This time around, they stayed outside, but still a very, very provocative action to take immediately after a ceasefire was called. To discuss those latest developments and what happens next, I'm joined now by Mohammed al-Safin, a senior producer at AJ Plus. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Can I start by asking you, has anyone gained anything from this 11-day war? Obviously, there's been an enormous human cost in particular for the people of Gaza. But coming out of this 11-day war, are there any forces in Israel and Palestine who feel like this went well for us? We come out of this stronger than we went in? It's difficult. You look at Gaza and you see the amount of destruction that the Israeli military wore on Gaza with U.S. and European support. And it's difficult to say that anyone came out of that with any gains. The thing to remember is when colonized people fight back, the measure of what the success is and isn't is going to be a bit different. And the reason you're seeing so much celebration in Gaza after 11 days of the world seeing this unimaginable destruction rain down on their heads is people feel like they've survived. They've survived. They've stayed resilient against an enemy that in the past has literally ethnically cleansed them from their homes. 80% of Gaza's 2 million people are refugees. They're not refugees from some faraway land. They're refugees from towns and villages that they can literally walk to if they could, beyond Israeli military checkpoints and border wall around Gaza. There's generations of trauma here and there's generations of yearning to return to these homes. So Israel in the past has succeeded in completely destroying these homes, destroying these villages and forcing these people out. The fact that Israel is able to pound them over and over and over again backed by the U.S. Empire and backed by the European Union. And yet these people stay resilient and these people kind of continue to fight back despite the huge disparity in power. That's what people are celebrating. On the Israeli side, the Lord talked about the optics of this for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And I think that tells you all you need to know. In Israel, the talk in Israel is much more concerned with how this lines up for the next Israeli government versus the physical destruction that we've seen in Gaza. Were there any conditions on the ceasefire as far as you understand? I mean, I know it's officially an unconditional ceasefire, but there are some that it's disputed now because Hamas is saying they received guarantees that Israel would remove, I quote, its hand from Sheikh Jarrah and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Israel is saying, absolutely not. This was just an unconditional ceasefire. We haven't made any concessions whatsoever. Do you have any understanding of which one of those is closer to the truth or what's going on there? No, I mean, in previous rounds of fighting, the ceasefire has never ever been clarity. You've, on the Palestinian side, there's always been insistence that there were some demands in the past. It was to loosen the blockade on Gaza and allow people to live more freely. And usually Israel would kind of loosen the screws a bit before tightening them again. What's interesting is that, you know, whether or not this was a term for the ceasefires that was agreed to or not, the fact that Hamas is talking from Gaza about conditions in Jerusalem rather than Gaza I think is very telling. I mean, there's, for the first time I think in Jerusalem in the West Bank and in other parts of Palestine, including what we call Israel that's where one and a half million Palestinians of Israel live. There's a sense that Palestinians have a force that's willing to fight for them wherever they are. Again, a huge disparity in power that we see. But we have to remember this is a fight against ethnic cleansing and colonialism. So to go back to your question, unsure of what the terms for the ceasefire were, but it's interesting that Hamas has put up these demands which I think are relatively reasonable to stop ethnic cleansing in Shefjadar and stop storming the Luxembourg. And we've spoken with people in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, in Gaza over the past couple of weeks and one of the sort of common threads and indeed diaspora Palestinians and one of the common threads is that over the past two weeks there's been a sort of level of unity among Palestinians which hasn't been seen for a while. And I wonder if you have any idea of where you think that might go next. There's definitely a sense of unity and optimism that I don't remember feeling in my lifetime amongst Palestinians. And I think the biggest draw of that isn't in the West Bank and Gaza but inside Israel itself, where one and a half million Palestinians who live legally as second or third class citizens according to the laws of the state of Israel, there was an uprising and that has never happened before in the entire history of the state where that group of Palestinians that the Israeli establishments kind of convinced themselves have been cowed and don't identify as Palestinians. The official Israeli discourse doesn't refer to them as Palestinians, they refer to them as Arabs kind of like identity free, generic Arabs living in Israel. We saw police stations all over these towns and villages burned Israeli police stations. We saw the Palestinian flag raised everywhere. We saw direct confrontation with Israeli police. For the first time ever the Israeli you know the Israeli government sent the border police which is used to guard the occupation in the West Bank or to enforce occupation in the West Bank, sent it into Palestinian cities inside Israel. So the city of Lid which had an uprising which for two nights the Israeli Jewish mayor of Lid said they had lost control of the town. They sent six battalions of Israeli border police from occupied West Bank into Lid. So beyond that there was a general strike earlier this week that was observed by everyone in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and in 1948 Palestine and that's also unprecedented. So that sense of unity is you know we'll see where that goes but definitely something that hasn't happened for did happen over the last week. I mean it's difficult isn't it to know because I mean obviously it's if you see something that hasn't happened before that is of course a reason for hope if you're seeing a unity among Palestinians both inside historic Palestine and and in diaspora communities that's that's something that you know that opens up opportunities at the same time you know we're in exactly the same situation as before which is you've got one power with overwhelming force which seems to be backed basically unconditionally by the the world superpower which is the United States and you know as much as we look at these signs of hopes basically Netanyahu or whoever replaces him if there's another general election I mean they're not going to be in a mood to make any concessions and as far as Israel's concerned they're going to still be fairly comfortable they can continue as as normal. Do you think that's a fair assessment or do you think there are you know cracks in the hegemony of Israel in the region? No I think it's a fair assessment in the region itself but you touch on an important point which is that Israel is backed by the United States it's its military guarantor it's gives it diplomatic cover I mean over the course of this mini conflict in Gaza the United Nations Security Council tried four times to release a resolution calling for a ceasefire and was blocked every single time by the US where every other member was before the ceasefire and the US supposed it. So the cracks I'm beginning to see are in the US this is I don't think we're going to see any huge changes anytime soon but for the first time you have members of Congress calling Israel an apartheid state on the floor of Congress talking about colonialism the need to defund the occupation the need to limit the sales of weaponry to Gaza to Israel sorry so you know short term nothing is going to change today or tomorrow but we're on a trajectory that will be interesting to look at. In terms of the international picture there was another line that was coming out from from Hamas which you know I didn't quite understand the background for so I'm hoping you're going to be able to help me so they were saying or they were claiming that one consequence of this 11 day war is that it will put an end to the process of normalization between some of the Arab states and Israel. Does that ring true to you and why would that be why would this 11 day conflict have stopped that move towards normalization by some of the Arab Gulf states and Israel. I think the hope behind that statement is that well we have to go back to the context in which the normalization deals were made with these Arab countries and that was another Trump administration where for years the Israelis the Israeli right wing especially which is actually the Israeli mainstream today the Israelis the Americans under Trump and some of the Gulf Arabs have decided that had decided that the Palestinian cause was was was now no longer relevant and that the Palestinians have been cowed they were disunited divided amongst factions divided geographically and there was no there wasn't a hot conflict anymore there's no reason for Arab states not to normalize with Israel and accept as part of the region I think what Hamas is maybe hoping for with this is you know a popular pressure on some of these governments to see you know especially what Israel has done in Sheikh Jarrah what it's done in Jerusalem and what it's done in Gaza over the last week just kind of recalibrate that that the way Israel is seen by people in the region I mean it's it's tough to say that I have to remember all of these countries the Gulf Arab countries making normalization deals with Israel or autocracies so it's it's difficult to see how much they actually would respond to popular pressure if that came out yeah absolutely the idea now it's an issue so they're gonna have to listen might not apply in in those particular states and finally I want to talk about you know what what would be the way forward from this position and here I'm thinking about you know the the Labour Party in the UK or most sort of like liberal mainstream politicians what they say at this point is the ceasefire is over now let's reboot the peace process let's restart negotiations for a two-state solution and you know the way that's often responded to is like look you're living in the past the peace process has been dead for decades a two-state solution is now you know implausible out of the question so I don't know where you stand on that and also you know what you think the demands of you know people who support Palestine and the international community should be what what you imagine people in Palestine will be demanding for themselves what if we're going to be hopeful what are the next steps yeah I mean the idea of a two-state solution for those unfamiliar was to divide the land right yeah so you'd have Israel and you'd have the Palestinians and the West Bank and Gaza making the wrong state over there the problem is ever since these that process began in the early 19th talking 30 years now Israel has continued to eat into that land so when when you know when negotiations began about creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank there were 200,000 Israeli settlers living there today there's more than 600,000 Israeli settlers one in 10 Israeli Jews live on the land that you know the international community says will become a Palestinian state eventually the Israelis themselves have given up that pretense we saw you know during the Trump administration the Israelis were very close to formally annexing most of the West Bank into Israel and leaving behind kind of several density populated Palestinian urban centers to kind of administer themselves while taking all the land around if you look at a map of the West Bank now with the settlements that are on there the settler only roads the Israeli military infrastructure in the West Bank 60% of it is completely off the list of Palestinians only 12% of it is under nominal Palestinian authority and even that 12% is you know sees daily Israeli military incursions in there and is not allowed to grow out of growth there's no there's no natural growth for that land so in terms of just the geography the idea of a two-state solution is is virtually impossible and I think most people have given up on that now the Israelis themselves are talking about just you know annexing the land and taking it and taking it and letting the Palestinians in the remaining cantons deal with with themselves so looking forward I think there's there's calls now there's there's the idea that the way forward isn't to focus on dividing the land but on creating some kind of system that replaces the current one where the current one is as human rights watch just displayed is apartheid right there's a there's a formalized system of apartheid there's a formalized system of discrimination and the call I think for many people going forward is to end that and replace it with a system that guarantees the quality and freedom to everyone living on that territory if you look at you know the entire time that the peace process negotiations were going on there was no pressure put on the Israelis by you know the United States or the Europeans who are Israel's biggest diplomatic military and commercial partners and without that kind of pressure Israel is continuously rewarded for taking more land rewarded for you know deepening the occupation so without any kind of pressure to end that from the outside it's the Israelis are not going to be in any mood to to concede hmm no absolutely absolutely so we should be pressuring our governments to make Israel follow it international law it should be fairly simple it's not a radical demand Mohammed al-Safim thank you so much for for joining us this evening we really do appreciate it thank you guys we have a particular story about an ap journalist in one moment first of all I want to bring ash in to talk a bit about how this conflict's been covered in in the UK this time around and if you think that essentially you know now the ceasefire has been called once again we won't hear about the oppression of the Palestinians in in the British media do you think that now they'll think you know job done essentially it's over we don't need to hear from Jeremy Bowen in Jerusalem anymore well we do have a media culture which seeks to normalize the oppressive activities of the Israeli state as much as it can so during these periodic bloodbaths which spring up every few years we know that there are figures within Israeli government and defense circles who refer to the occasional bombardment of Gaza as mowing the grass so it's that image of regularity of you know asserting a particularly violent kind of authority is that when those things happen there are attempts to weave a narrative of both sides to cover the conflict only when you see signs of Palestinian resistance some of which is violent and to as soon as there is a ceasefire start talking about a peace process which hasn't existed in any meaningful sense for decades in a two-state solution which the most powerful party involved has absolutely no interest in pursuing so that's the bedrock of British media coverage and I've got no doubt that that's the norm that it will revert to but here are some of the things which are different this time around in terms of how the bombardment of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah and the apartheid conditions between the river and the sea overall have been understood by I think certain demographics within Britain and also the US I think that one of the really important things that's happened to political culture is Black Lives Matter because I think it did two things the first thing is it really did popularize and entrench a certain understanding of asymmetric violence where the more violent party is the state all right that is the kind of central narrative of Black Lives Matter and particularly after the murder of George Floyd it is something which I think has really asserted a kind of cultural dominance if it's not been reflected in politics proper as much as we would perhaps like to because that's the first thing and then the second thing is that the way in which images from Gaza and from Sheikh Jarrah and you know from Lod have been distributed again it's very very similar to the kind of ecology of images that people become used to seeing through Black Lives Matter so you do have I think a bit of a generational shifting of the dial and politicization with regards to this issue and the need to express solidarity with the Palestinian people in resisting their own oppression and I think that Black Lives Matter was such a huge part of that and I'm curious to see whether that will remain whether it will have some resilience and robustness or if it will fall victim to the kind of you know very short-term memory that can happen on social media so I think that's something to really look out for I think also the third thing is that it's become visible in new spaces so football is bringing out the Palestinian flag from the Leicester players who brought out the flag when they won the FA Cup at Wembley to Pogba and Diahalo being handed a flag by spectators in the terrace and you know displaying it around the pitch again those are images of solidarity coming from really the heart of where the national culture is and I think that that kind of media veil of silence that complicity in acts of Israeli state violence will become harder to maintain because of that generational shift and because of where it's happening in the culture. Let's hope so. The next story we're going to see something that will hopefully provoke some of that pushback you're talking about before we do that if you're enjoying the stream please do hit the like button it helps us on the algorithm. One thing that enables the continuation of Israeli occupation and apartheid is an unwillingness on the part of most western media to call it out for what it is that's why some people for Israel's bombing of the associated press offices could have been such a mistake could a news organization which had its offices destroyed really go on to cover for the Israeli government and to present the occupation of Palestine as an even fight between two sides or would they grow some balls would the fact that they their offices have literally been bombed by the aggressor by the occupying force mean that they start to cover this this this occupation not just as a passive voice something was bombed passive voice someone was shot passive voice you know deaths were caused without ever really naming what's going on well the evidence is in and it turns out that Israel can do pretty much whatever they want and still have the western press defend them that's because one of the first actions AP has taken since that bombing of their own offices is to fire a journalist for past comments criticizing Israel this is Emily Wilder she is Jewish and was hired by associated press on the 3rd of May 16 days later she had her job terminated after being told she had violated AP's social media policy and according to the Washington Post who spoke to Wilder she has still not been told why so the Washington Post report Wilder was not told which of her social media posts had violated the company policy she said just that quote I had showed clear bias unquote a spokesperson for the wire service confirmed that quote she was dismissed for violations of AP's social media policy during her time at AP so what had Wilder tweeted during her time at AP to get her fired now remember she'd only been there for 16 days so it's quite easy to look you don't have to trawl through through much twitter history and I did that today none of it struck me as particularly controversial in fact it's mainly retweets some of it is criticizing the media coverage of Israel's war on Palestine we can look at some of those retweets now you can see which of those you think got this journalist fired from Associated Press and so one of the retweets showing you how a New York Times abstract was edited over the course of about 24 hours and you can see from this the original headline police entered the compound and fired rubber tipped bullets anger was already building in response to looming expulsion of several Palestinian families from their homes in the city becomes over over the course of 24 hours guards and militants fired rockets towards Jerusalem and the Israeli police fought with Palestinian protesters in an escalation of violence after a week of increasing tension so you can see you've got an original headline which is showing that Israel is the aggressor and then suddenly it changes to the Palestinians are the aggressive I do recommend following that Twitter account because it is always very interesting to see how those abstracts change another retweet was from an Al Jazeera producer this said if you're reporting on Israel Palestine looks like a ping-pong game this happened on the Israeli side then this happened on the Palestinian side with zero context analysis history or bigger picture then it's bad journalism and you were doing your audience a disservice that was another retweet which was criticizing the media's coverage of Israel and Palestine now the spiciest tweet that she wrote herself which I presume is what lost her the job with AP was the following objectivity feels fickle when the basic terms we use to report news implicitly stake a claim using Israel but never Palestine or war but not siege and occupation are political choices yet media make those exact choices all the time without being flagged as biased now that tweet was sent on May the 17th two days before she lost her job now in case you wonder you know how could a tweet that anodyne get you fired from a job at the associated press well the background here is it seems that the firing was a result of a right wing campaign so a right wing online campaign who took issue with the fact that when a student at Stanford University Wilder had been an active member of the group's Jewish voice for peace and students for justice in Palestine we can go back to the Washington Post again so they write on May 18th the Stanford College Republicans flagged a post that Wilder made in college characterizing her as an anti-Israel agitator and criticizing the associated press for hiring her in the old post Wilder described Sheldon Adelson the late Las Vegas businessman and staunch Israel supporter as a naked mole rat looking billionaire in subsequent days conservative outlets including the Federalist Washington Free Beacon and the website of Fox News published stories calling out the wire service for Wilder's hiring and attempting to tie it to the Israel Army's recent destruction of the Associated Press's Gaza Bureau during an attack on a high-rise building that Israel claimed also housed military intelligence for Hamas the militant Palestinian group that controls Gaza the wire service said it was unaware of Hamas's presence in the building Wilder believed the Associated Press acted in response to those high-profile pieces of criticism she was told she said that a review of her social media activity was initiated by the Associated Press after her old post had been publicized. Ash I want your thoughts on this so in the past week Associated Press have literally had their offices bombed by Israel and also fired someone for what to me looks like I mean a correct tweet actually to talk about how the mainstream media covers Israel and Palestine can have political implications she's lost her job what do you make of this I think this demonstrates everything which is cowardly craving and craving and self-serving in our industry and I really cannot over egg my criticism of the Associated Press in this matter firstly it is a terrible terrible precedent to set that somebody cannot enter journalism if they have ever been politically active that is a terrible precedent to set because then what you're asking of people is to not cultivate an active interest in the world around them and to only go into journalism not if they're interested in social matters politics the economy but because they want to become famous and because they want to make lots of money by climbing to the top of the tree all right so that is a terrible model to set in journalism secondly it is not an expectation which is evenly applied and Astead Herndon who works for the the New York Times said this very well which is there is an entire subgroup of journalists who have entered the industry because they started out as right to wing hyper-partisan hacks and opinion writers and then they've made the journey into the establishment media whether that's uh the nyc or something more like the Associated Press or the Washington Post precisely because their presence indicates diversity of opinion so this is one of the things that the free speech wars and the council culture moral panic has done it has forced establishment media outlets into having to make these quite high profile hires of right wing fire brands in order to prove that they're not biased except that doesn't go the other way and I'll tell you a little story about this um Michael I was supposed to do a column for an international news magazine which shall remain nameless but it does publish both in Britain and America and I was uh tapped up uh they were in the middle of sorting out my contract and then a new more right wing opinion editor came in and gutted me got rid of me said two left wing two bias couldn't possibly but at the same time I looked and they were snapping up every single right wing fire brand they could so that demonstrated diversity of opinion that that demonstrated um not being pressured by uh you know the kind of moral outrage on Twitter and council culture but me I was a step too far so we know that there are differences in terms of how being perceived on the left is treated in terms of bias and you know not being objective and not being um impartial enough and how people on the right are treated in the media that's endemic and then you've got the specific issues to do with Israel and Palestine so one she was completely right Emily Wilder was completely right that more often than not you don't even hear the word Palestine and that is an active political choice you know you think about where the discourse is here in the UK in America because of those close geopolitical ties between America and Israel it is even worse it is even worse the lack of recognition the lack of reality in American media about the nature of the occupation and the nature of the ethnic cleansing I think is is to an extent that we can't even imagine so for you know Emily Wilder to say something which is so completely anodyne it does actually stick out in that context because it is so much worse and I think that that's the thing that we need to recognize is that this absolutely is not an anti-Semitic conspiratorial ooh there's the Israel lobby it's not that what there is is a geopolitical closeness between America and Israel and actually if you want to talk about outsize influence and politics you could talk about America's outsize influence on Israeli politics but what that means is a particular cowardice and a particular bias of running through establishment media outlets which makes them particularly vulnerable to right-wing attacks on the basis of not being sufficiently pro-israel or on the basis of being suspiciously progressive or suspiciously left-wing I mean I would say I don't think talking about talking about an Israel lobby is always anti-Semitic sometimes it can bleed into it of course I guess what I'm saying is that that's not always I think people sometimes have in their heads you know in the simpsons where they've got that you know send up of the republican party and it's in Mr Burns's mansion and they're like gentle and too evil and then people have that idea of like that is how it works I think that in terms of biases and in terms of you know prejudicial treatment it's actually a lot more nebulous and a lot more subtle it doesn't have to be a conspiracy for it to be the result of lobbying pressure and also that kind of cultural structure you get around how America views and talks about her allies you know I think that's a very important point to make I do want to focus on one one more element of this story which I do find is so chilling I've mentioned it already but I want to you know really emphasise this which is that AP Associated Press will not tell the person they've just fired what tweet they're firing her for it's really really remarkable so Emily Wilder we've read to you before the Washington Post you also spoke to SF Gate after the firing and said they told me that I violated their social media policy and would be terminated immediately but they never said which tweet or post violated the policy I asked them please tell me what violated the policy and they said no this is extraordinary because one I mean I don't know how you justify it and I don't know how you justify not telling her what the post was right you know if you believe in the professional development you know if you can say you know the most sympathetic explanation we can possibly have of this is that Associated Press you know they're not they're not politically motivated they just say look because we're the Associated Press it's a bit like the BBC we have to hold ourselves to a standard of impartiality which is higher than anyone else at all and this junior journalist remember she was entry level essentially she'd only been there for 16 days they could have said look we're sorry this tweet was was kind of fell foul of that you know you should take a lesson here which is that if you want to work for something like AP or Reuters or BBC you're going to have to be super super careful now that would require them to tell her what rule she broke and how they've done the precise opposite which is to say we're firing you but you're going to have to guess why now that's the the sympathetic explanation it falls apart because if they were doing this to say you know you might be a good journalist but just hasn't worked out what we're going to help you grow doesn't work because they haven't told her the explanation of this which is more sinister is that they got rid of her without really any objective justification for political reasons and they don't want to tell her precisely what tweet it is because they don't want to have to justify their decision because obviously if they say this is the tweet we fired you for then they have got to stand up and say yes we think this tweet is a fireable offense because XYZ they're not telling her why they fired her so they don't have to explain it so it is it's basically them saying we are making this decision but we have absolutely no confidence whatsoever that we can back it up which is terrible it's also worth noting this journalist has been made unemployed she doesn't have a job now let's go back to the SF gate for another quote from her she says it's devastating of course I love journalism and part of what I think makes me such a capable powerful journalist is how much I care about the people I write about particularly the marginalised that's why I joined the Associated Press and they saw me as capable this is of course a really hard situation and I'm not sure what's going to happen next now Ash I want to bring even one last time on this story because I feel like you know the real danger here is not so much well I mean it partly it could be that there's a purge now of progressive journalists from companies such as Associated Press probably more likely is that anyone who works for a company like the Associated Press is going to be terrified of saying even very very you know tepid things about global conflicts also the implication here is in much of the write-ups is that one of the reasons she is being kicked out from this job is because of her past political commitment so we might have lots of people absolutely self-censoring at fear of ending up the subject of a right-wing mob and then getting getting fired how how big a worried you think it is that people are just going to bite their tongue when it comes to issues like this I think when it comes to self-censorship in this matter that is of course a huge issue because what we've seen here is the success of right-wing cancel culture because once you have it essentially as a precedent that you can get a journalist fired because of them retweeting material which essentially acknowledges Palestinians as human and that's about it well how many other journalists are going to be in the firing line you're going to end up with an incredibly homogenous and also a you know homogenously pro-Israel journalistic culture that is not something which is good for the industry at all I think also the second thing and this is also something to worry about a bit is what this is going to do overall in terms of making people feel that there aren't trusted shared sources of information because it's not just this one journalist who's affected by her being fired although of course she's you know the worst affected by it it's also all those people who would think that you know well there are problems with the establishment media you know problems with the Guardian there are problems with the NYT or there's problems with AP but ultimately I rely on them because they're a trustworthy accredited source of information the more you get this kind of pandering to a right-wing outrage mob the more you break down that shared space where we come together we consume information we make sense of it and that is part of what drives politics the idea of shared conversational space and I think that this kind of panicky action by a media outlet which has just had its offices bombed right a war crime by the IDF is is awful it's unjustifiable oh sorry and there's one last thing that I want to say Michael and that is the irony that there is no one in the industry of journalism who is more venerated more worshiped than George Orwell right you've got the statue of George Orwell outside the BBC all of these free speech you know evangelists and anti-cancel culture types would profess to you know lionize George Orwell and within that George Orwell being this almost secular saint for the industry of journalism what's erased is that he was an active part in political movements during the Spanish Civil War and even when he came back to this country he was shopping communists to MI5 which I would not recommend but he was an active political player and yet he's been stripped out of all of that to be turned into this almost completely bloodless symbol of elite journalistic interest and I just think there's a certain irony there George Orwell would be rolling in his grave if he could see what happened to Emily Wilder absolutely absolutely let's go to some comments Conor McGowan with 621 thank you very much got my first jab today I wanted to thank Navarra media for showing a glimpse into issues usually obscured Conor also wants to suggest Ash interview Grant Morrison for downstream one to consider Ash interesting Randi with 20 quid asks I imagine you you're aware of the fact that Lula de Silva recently announced his attention to run against Bolsonaro for the Brazilian presidency next year in an interview do you have any plans to cover this soon absolutely we do we'll look for the moment to do it potentially when he launches his formal campaign but we'll keep our eyes on that story and obviously Lula extraordinarily popular politician in Brazil because of basically lawfare he wasn't able to stand in recent presidential elections that's now been overturned he can stand against Bolsonaro and he is the one person in Brazil who is best placed to beat him so it's a good news story essentially although a lot of things can happen between now and any potential general election um Bliddiff or Bliddiff with 23 pounds has big up Michael ash team Navarra and fantastic guests as always my first paycheck today since January redundancy so double super chat to make up for the missed months keep up brilliant work and excellent journalism that's such a lovely comment and thank you so much we really really do appreciate it speaking of fantastic guests and brilliant journalism I do want to direct your attention to a video I watched earlier this week which was by or in part by our guest who we've we've just been speaking to it's a video from AJ plus about why Israel is an apartheid state super informative give it a watch but not until you've finished watching tonight's show let's go on to our next story we're going into the beef between the royals and the BBC I think we can get an image up before starting this segment now Martin Bashir's 1995 interview with Princess Diana was hailed as the scoop of the century and even people who were too young to remember watching the original show I include myself in in that category most of you will likely have come across this particular clip do you think mrs parker bowls was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage well there were three of us in this marriage so it's a bit crowded probably one of the most famous lines ever aired on the BBC however that interview once hailed as the BBC at its best is 25 years on creating quite a crisis for the public broadcaster that's because in a new official report the judge lord Dyson has found that Martin Bashir who conducted the interview had used deception to secure the interview with princess Diana now the deception included showing Earl spent so that's princess Diana's brother forged bank statements which purported to show payments were being made by newspapers to former members of his staff he also forged documents which suggested Diana's staff was selling stories about her to the press so these were to say look you can trust me I'm giving you inside information and also what that did was increase the idea among Al Spencer and most likely we think Diana as well that people in her staff were colluded with the press against her so to essentially make her suspicious of other people and trust him they were a fabrication now lord Dyson in the report found this was against the BBC's own policy of treating contributors fairly he was also pretty damning about a BBC investigation at the time which exonerated Martin Bashir that was after similar allegations were made against him in 1996 so when newspapers had reported about these forged documents they found that actually he hadn't done anything significantly wrong Prince William has responded to the report let's take a look I'd like to thank lord Dyson and his team for the report it is welcomed that the BBC accepts lord Dyson's findings in full which are extremely concerning that BBC employees lied and used fake documents to obtain the interview with my mother made lurid and false claims about the royal family which played on her fears and fueled paranoia displayed woeful incompetence when investigating complaints and concerns about the program and were evasive in their reporting to the media and covered up what they knew from their internal investigation it is my view that the deceitful way the interview was obtained substantially influenced what my mother said the interview was a major contribution to making my parents relationship worse and has since hurt countless others it brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC's failures contributed significantly to her fear paranoia and isolation that I remember from those final years with her but what saddens me most is that if the BBC had properly investigated the complaints and concerns first raised in 1995 my mother would have known that she'd been deceived she's failed not just by a rogue reporter but by leaders at the BBC who looked the other way rather than asking the tough questions now those were pretty strong words by Prince William the future king although if we've still got a monarchy by them we'll talk about that later in this show and suggestions that for sure his dishonesty led to Diana's paranoia I think when that clip will what moat stood out he's saying this contributed to in part the breakdown of of my parents marriage I'm not sure quite if the timings you know work out there but anyway that's that's his perspective on what happened now of course the battle between the royals and the Beebe has stoked a lot of coverage and also political interventions now the BBC of course has many enemies there are lots of people who quite like the opportunity to bash the public broadcast at Diana you know in contrast evokes probably greater affection than any other public figure in recent British history it's given all that then no surprise whose side the prime minister would fall down on when asked about the Dyson review I am obviously concerned by the findings of Lord Dyson's report I'm very grateful to him for what he's done I can only imagine the feelings of the of the royal family and I hope very much that the BBC will be taking every possible step to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again now Boris Johnson of course should know all about the ethics of journalism is deeply committed to them that's despite being sacked himself from the times after fabricating a quote that was in his previous life as a journalist although I suppose in both jobs he did lie for a living ash should we care that Martin Bashir lied to get an interview with Princess Diana and that for 25 years the BBC failed to properly investigate it well look you can care or not care as much as you like with this one but I do think it's politically significant because of the problems it presents for the BBC because Martin Bashir was investigated three times before the Lord Dyson report happened and lots of doubt was cast on the methods by which he obtained the interview relatively quickly after that panorama first aired and so it was looked into three times the investigation was helmed by Lord Hall who at the time was the director of news and he then became director-general and there was also a cover-up operation which involved you know being evasive with the press you know sort of misleading them saying that all these rumors were just the work of jealous colleagues in the industry and all those things we now know to be on true and what this hints at is what we know to be a systemic problem within the BBC which is that when it looks at its stars coming under attack for their integrity the BBC would rather protect those stars than necessarily hold them accountable and this has got unfortunate resonances although it's of course a lot less severe and the damage that was done a lot less bad but it does have unfortunate resonances with that look the other way policy that surrounded Jimmy Savile so that is a problem for the BBC what else is a problem for the BBC is that it lets tabloids off the hook for some of the more egregious and aggressive ways in which they pursued Princess Diana in which they pursue celebrities and anyone in the public eye uh overall so you've got this you know quite unfortunate element of the story which is that what Martin Bashir did which is have these fraudulent documents made so that he could show them to Diana's brother Charles Spencer and sort of get this kind of you know weigh in and earn her trust is that that's quite a tabloid technique so it wouldn't necessarily be unusual for a reporter who works at one of the red tops to operate in that way except now you've got this moment of opportunism from those tabloids the same ones which absolutely hounded Diana particularly in the later years of her life being able to say oh look it wasn't us we would never do something like that it's that naughty naughty BBC and by the way that's why you should get rid of my license fee right it's quite it's quite useful and a politically convenient narrative um to to you know bang the drum on at this time and then you've got the third thing which is what does this present for the royal family well it's something of a lifeline because they've not had a great year when it comes to uh the presentation of their family life on one hand you do have a season of the crown which focused with laser um you know with laser like focus on the marriage of Charles and Diana the fact that he was having an affair all that time her isolation her eating disorder her struggles with mental health and that breakdown of the marriage and that is of course one of the most watched television shows in the world so you had a renewed focus on Charles who was of course a future king and that relationship with Camilla and how it first started so that wasn't great for them you then also have Megxit the break of Megan and Harry from the royal family here in Britain in order to join a much more diverse but no less elite form of aristocracy in the United States you know the Oprah's and the Ellen's and the Obama's and all of that and what's really interesting to me is that on the same day you have Prince William putting out this statement where he's saying um that BBC interview was responsible for the breakdown of my parents marriage uh it contributed to the paranoia and the fear of my mother in her later years you've got Harry on this new Apple TV series called the me you don't see essentially undertaking a broadcast therapy session in which he talks about the aggressiveness of the paparazzi the fact that his father failed to protect him sufficiently from the intrusions of the media and also in very candid ways about his mother's death and the parallels that he sees between the circumstances in which his mother died and the way in which his wife was treated not only by the British tabloids but also by the institution of the royal family itself so being able to sort of turn around from that and go no no no it's that all the BBC is is very useful for an embattled royal family which is having to work quite hard to maintain its myth of being Britain's first family the epitome of all that is moral good and self-sacrificing in this country so this is a story which has come at the bad time for a BBC and a good thing for everyone else in in the story a good time for everyone else yeah everyone else in the story I suppose is the key part of that that analysis right not not ever because for me something that strengthens the royal family and weakens the BBC and strengthens the tabloids I mean that's kind of a depressing picture isn't it yeah I mean one thing that the the timing seemed a bit odd to me the fact that now everyone is sort of blaming Martin Bashir for the breakdown of Prince Charles marriage and you know her her break with the royal family it's like it does a he'd already done an interview with ITV where he talked about cheating on Diana you know he'd already aired his laundry and as far as I understand she wanted to do an interview so Martin Bashir basically used deception and dishonesty to make sure he got the interview and no one else did but she was going to speak to someone anyway and she had some laundry she wanted to air I mean look that's precisely the case like Diana was under a lot of pressure to go quietly all right first there was pressure to stay in the marriage despite the fact that it was entirely loveless that you know both of them had had affairs and they couldn't stand each other there was an awful lot of pressure for that and then when it came to going okay there will be a separation between a future king and you know future queen consort while you may as well go quietly you won't have HRH anymore but you will still be Diana comma princess of Wales can't take that away from you Diana was never going to do that she was absolutely never going to do that I think she was too wounded she'd sort of been you know put through the mangle of the most dysfunctional family on the planet and she was like absolutely not I'm putting it out there and I think that this it was well as Prince Harry's interview with the me you don't see it speaks to the fundamental ambivalence that the royals have when it comes to celebrity and leaning into celebrity status so Diana obviously was a master at conducting the media and inviting certain certain kinds of attention so you said Prince Charles did that interview with ITV what was it that Diana did that very night I've got no idea she wore the famous revenge dress and she was pictured in this very body hugging number with the off the shoulder and is since become an iconic moment which completely outshone Prince Charles' interview with ITV that night so you did have this real courting of attention at times in which it was you know suitable for her you also had you know Prince Charles playing that game all sorts of negative briefings about his wife when they were you know still married but hating each other about you know her fitness to to conduct her duties about her mental health when it comes to you know William and Harry again courting the media when it suits them you've got Harry who I think is sort of doing this millennial rebrand I think it's really interesting the way in which him and Megan sort of speaks to some cultural changes when it comes to talking about race masculinity and mental health but it's still very much courting a very candid a very personal kind of media attention so it's not him saying stay away I want to be out of the limelight it's going I want to do this in a different way Prince William rumour has it that some of the negative briefings about Meghan Markle were coming out of the camp of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and there have been many rumours about why that is the case and I absolutely will not say them on here because I don't want to get sued by the royal family but all I will say if you do some googling you can get get a little whiff a little whiff of these rumours and it's not just the younger royals who play with celebrity status and press attention you've got to think about why is it we have such you know an image of the royal family being in this first family and the queen as a grandmother of a nation well really she comes to the throne right at the time where television was beginning to explode as a dominant cultural form in this country and that's why we have such I think a strong image of her she's beamed into all of our homes she's not just on the bank notes but she's you know been able to be one of the most powerful forces in British and I think in the global broadcasting and that's quite a deliberate choice by the royal family so there's never been I think a neat distinction between who's the royal family they're all about duty and stuff up a lip and self-sacrifice and you know serving the nation and and the kind of glamour but you know cheap potentially seedy world of fame and clout chasing and celebrity these two things have always gone hand in hand to some degree and as the culture of celebrity has evolved as the culture of celebrity has come you know now there are all these expectations attached to it about how much you're supposed to know about them and as we've become more media saturated as a society the royal family have adapted along with that and so I think that that's kind of the interesting thing about the Martin Bishier stuff and the timing with Prince Harry and the me you don't see I've got one question for you though yeah okay so you know how I'm the royal correspondent can you get me like an ass got fascinator and I can wear it for when I'm talking about this stuff absolutely absolutely I just have to say listening to that I was just so impressed then you know when you expected me to know about the revenge dress I was like you I'm not the royal correspondent but you that was that was some good and like well informed analysis I think if you want more of it do make sure you sign up to the Cortado it's Ash's newsletter every Friday today it was about precisely this story so go to navara.media slash Cortado I feel like I'm getting worse at these URLs every show I think I need a holiday so I can just reel them off instead of sort of looking over to my comms doc in a sort of awkward way navara.media slash cortado um let's go straight on to our next story which we're going to do super super quickly yeah the British monarchy has had a tough couple of years when it comes to their standing with the general public from the prince whose friends of a pedophile to the unnamed senior royal concerned about the skin tone of Harry and Meghan's baby the royal family have shamed the nation and have done so at the taxpayers expense it might not be a surprise then that according to a new poll from you gov support for Britain to have an elected head of state has recently rocketed um let's take a look at the poll results um so you can see here it's comparison between the percentage of people who supported an elected head of state in October 2019 and in May 2021 now among all voters who all people polled um 18 percent of people wanted an elected head of state in 2019 compared to 24 percent in 2021 now you might not think that's a huge increase but among certain groups the increase is pretty big so among 18 to 24s um in 2019 19 percent of people wanted an elected head of state that has gone right up to 41 percent in 2021 now that is actually higher than the number of people who would oppose such a 41 percent of people who are 18 to 24 um back an elected head of state 31 opposed the move among Labour voters there has also been an increase in people supporting an elected head of state from 26 to 40 percent um that's the positives if you're a republican like me the disappointment um which is probably not a surprise if you follow um the news on this and public opinion on this the public at large still you know back the royals I don't know why but they they still do let's get up um the general public um although it is moving in in the right direction so among all Britons as I said before 24 percent of people now want an elected head of state but 61 percent of people still think we should have the monarchy down slightly but not very much it's only among the 18 to 24s where there's been that real big difference I told you those numbers already now 41 percent of people want an elected head of state compared to 31 percent of people who want the monarchy it's been a slight drop in support for the monarchy among 25 to 41 year olds that's down to 53 percent but still a pretty solid majority considering only 27 percent people want an elected head of state and once you get into the over 50s those people just really love um inherited privilege I suppose not all of them I said the majority of over 50s do so uh 50 to 64 70 percent of people back the monarchy 21 percent of people don't and among the 65 year olds a whopping 81 percent of people back the monarchy only 13 percent of people want an elected head of state that is up a couple of points since 2019 but you know it doesn't look like anytime soon the older generations are going to be you know calling for the head of the monarch to be chopped off I don't know if that's how we do it these days we can probably do it peacefully um if it does happen ash a move among the young but among the rest of the population you know they're probably not going to be that worried yet do you think the end of the monarchy is still a little while off I think it's a little while off one of the things I'm interested in is seeing how they handle the succession of Charles to the throne because one he will be an old king all right he's not coming to the throne in the prime of his youth so some of the stories which get woven around older monarchs can often be very unflattering because they become an image of the nation um in decline and this is something which happened when Elizabeth the first for instance was aging that then became this very you know kind of macabre and maudlin mood in the culture because you had this you know older woman on the throne and she didn't have an heir and you suddenly have this huge cultural shift towards being like well who are we are we this you know kind of um decaying barren person as well so I think that that's one of the things which is often quite vulnerable about the monarchy the fact that it centers around an individual and that individual is symbolic of the body politic it then means that if they are seen to deviate from the virtues and ideals of kingship or queenship that the monarchy itself can be you know seen to be in a kind of crisis so I think there's a certain vulnerability there but ultimately it is a robust and it is a powerful institution and it is bigger than the individuals who make up the royal family it is a cartel there are so many people involved in maintaining and hoarding all this wealth and all this power who are involved in manipulating the press just enough to manage uh the kinds of scandals which the public always want to consume and in some ways bits of the royal houses want to feed in terms of you know kind of jabbing the one they don't like off the perch or putting somebody back in their place but ultimately it's a game by which everyone is meant to know the rules so I think all those things are still quite powerful or be interesting to me is that kind of generational shift um you know that one which harry and megan even though they are no less elite they are distinct from the norms which sort of govern the british aristocracy is whether that critique of the monarchy which comes from people who are former insiders will have more and more traction amongst younger generations and um you know erode that support for you know a constitutional monarchy even further we've got a couple of comments on the monarchy nishat with 499 i hope the members of the british royal family have healthy and happy lives in capitals as private citizens yes it's 2021 and we still have a hereditary monarchy we absolutely agree with you nishat joshua youngerman says ash at her very best abolish the stupid monarchy two sentences i could not agree with more and john pritchard with a fiver high navar are their plans to upload video content on to spotify joe rogan does so we can help so we can stop youtube hegemony twitch confuses me there's quite a lot going on there um twitch does confuse me but so does spotify videos so i'm not the best person to answer that question but i'll put that in on fox's to-do list to look about whether or not we should be uploading videos to spotify ash um thank you so much for rushing home so you could join me this evening it's been an absolute pleasure as always no thanks for having me i mean i've got my asthma pump here so you can like um but i made it i didn't die it's good to you in the long run you know um you've been watching tisky sour on the varamedia good night