by Felix Quigley
15 May, 2009
As stated last night Maurice Boland the Irish Jewish man who resides in the south of Spain and runs a radio station (called Talk Radio Europe)interviewed Kamal Saleem.
Much information about Arafat´s PLO was put out by Saleem and it was strange that Boland seemed to me to be uneasy with Saleem.
After all Boland is Jewish and is I would have thought a supporter of Israel. So when Saleem was exposing the real terrorist nature of the Palestinians and the Palestinian movement then why not be supportive.
Even before Saleem came on Boland had stated that Saleem´s views were not those of the station. Is Boland afraid of upsetting Islamists? Understandable if he is. But not good!
Saleem gave many leads that Boland did not follow up very hard.
He made heavy work of Saleem being recruited as a child, 7 year old, and used in a specific action, hence the name of the book “Blood of Lambs”.
We have pictures on our site which shows this is a common thing in the PLO.
Saleem stated he heard Arafat say that the Arabs above all must capture Jerusalem. Very apt as the interview took place in the Pope´s visit! But not followed up by Boland.
By the way the Pope´s visit was actually pretty well ignored by Boland´s station, except for one notorious BBC extract used by Howard Brereton which claimed that the Jews were driving the Christians out of Jerusalem (along with Muslims!)
Boland ever since the Gaza War has been on a dumbing down mission on his station, he refuses to confront the extremely biased against Israel reporter Stephen Ritson, and in his morning show from 8 to 10 Boland has employed a man called Jeremy who must qualify as not so much the King of Trivia but the Emperor of Trivia. His programmes are idiotic and a total insult to human intelligence! That in my opinion IS Boland and the direction Boland gives to HIS station.
In any case there was barely concealed hostility from Boland to Saleem.
I was not imagining this because when Saleem waved goodbye at the end of his interview Boland continued talking to his listeners. Then a strange, but actually disgustingly strange thing happened.
Boland claimed that the interview made him uneasy and that he believed that Saleem was a phoney, and in summing up at the end never a terrorist at all.
But he did not say it to Saleem´s face!
This was reminiscent of 2 things
1. When Stephen Ritson threw a Jewish woman called Naomi off his programme and Boland did not defend Naomi… I do not know Naomi but she told listeners before that she was present in 1947 in Israel and that things were so bad she had to flee to Cyprus. So Ritson threw a Holocaust Survivor off his programme because all present in Israel in 1947 to 49 were indeed fleeing from the Holocaust.
2. During the Gaza War a few months back Boland wanted to put the commercial interests of his station first. So he sought to close down the debate on Gaza. This however gave the green light to Ritson who is very biased against Israel. I realized Boland was doing this when he did an interview with Ian O´Doherty but then refused to broadcast the interview. O´Doherty was an opponent of Hamas.
Though many things came out last night in the interview which Boland did with Saleem it all centred on this question
Saleem insisted that present Muslim violence and hatred of Christians and Jews comes from the prophet Mohammed and from the Koran itself. Saleem referred to the part where the Jews are hiding behind trees and the trees are shouting out etc etc. But he was insistent that the Koran itself was the problem
Boland took the opposite view totally. He said the Koran was good just that a minority was misinterpreting it. He seemed to have it in his mind that there is no difference in this regard between the Torah, Bible and Koran, thus between Jews, Christians and Muslims. So Boland was echoing the line of Bush when he appeared morning after 9.11 and amid the cinders referred to Islam as the “Religion of Peace”.
And that is where the issue was left.
So we can see now that there is little difference between Boland, who is Jewish and nominally pro Israel, and Ritson who appears (actually to me quite obvious) to be full of hatred for Israel.
But re the Koran that is Boland´s opinion, and nothing more. In order to test this opinion, that Islam is a Religion of Peace, just as much as is the New Testament with its main figure head Jesus for example, we have to actually test the Koran.
Rather than take Boland´s word for it, actually a prejudice and just his opinion, we have to do some research on the Koran itself.
Is Saleem right, or is Maurice Boland who echoes Bush right? We will see.
What gets me re Boland is this. Boland obviously was hostile in the interview to Saleem. That is fine. But when the interview was over Boland had no right to say he thought Saleem was phoney in some way. Saleem had answered every question, notably one on statistics, when he referred Boland to the Pew website. Boland actually owes Saleem an apology and probably owes Ian O´Doherty an apology as well.
But let us not deflect from the central issue. What about the Koran and Islam. Is it really a religion of peace?
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