Once more on the subject of “Spooks”

Following a special double episode of the hit BBC television series “Spooks” in which the bad guys turned out to be the Israeli Mossad (see my previous article) you’d think they would take a break. But instead, the episode aired last night on BBC3 (next week on BBC 1) in which the bad guys are initially fanatical Christian fundamentalists also turns out to have an Israeli angle.


The really bad guys in last night’s episode manage to trick the Mossad into thinking that the show’s hero, an MI5 agent, is some kind of anti-Semite, so the Mossad sends in a crack assassination team of around six men armed with easily-identifiable Israeli pistols. (“Ooo! Jerichos – they must be Israelis!” declares one of the crack MI5 team.)
Fortunately, the tall blonde heroine this season (who in the previous episode snarls out the phrase ‘Yemenite Jew’) uses her martial arts skills to disarm most of them, while unarmed hero Adam deals with the rest. The one surviving member of this “elite” unite of bumbling Jewish terrorists is called off following a phone call made by MI5 boss Harry to his Israeli counterpart, the cultural attache at the Israeli embassy. (Harry threatens to have all the Mossad agents in London deported if they don’t stop shooting at MI5 officers right now. And no, I’m not making this up.)
You would think that the Mossad would be running out of trained (albeit rather inept) assassins, having lost an entire squad last week to MI5, but there seems to be a limitless supply of these types floating around London, ready to be picked off by MI5 each week. This is now three weeks in a row that Spooks is staying focussed on the Mossad theme.
The writer of some (all?) of the most recent episodes is a Lebanese-born author named Raymond Khoury. I wonder if he has a political agenda that we’re not aware of.

10 Comments on "Once more on the subject of “Spooks”"

  1. Lynne T | 25/10/2006 at 13:00 |

    But Eric, hasn’t the BBC acknowledged that its idea of “impartiality” is to be partial toward certain “causes”?

  2. Richard | 25/10/2006 at 16:11 |

    This is another example of the subtle but pernicious self-censorship that is now so prevalent in the West, and particularly rife in the BBC and Channel4. So the BBC needs bad guys for our lads and ladettes to take on, in the good old Dick Barton fashion.
    If they are nutters, then it is OK for them to be Muslims, but if they are serious, committed and pious members of a foreign government, then Muslims is the one thing they cannot be, lest, horror of horrors, the likes of Bunglawala start writing to the Guardian using the dreaded word “Islamophobia”.

  3. paul stein | 25/10/2006 at 18:28 |

    Of course, if we were to follow the example of Islamist protest at anything that offends or shows Muslims in anything but the most saintly light, we would have taken to the streets by now burning effigies of anyone we could think of. Might be worth a try to see if the pro-Muslim/ Arab/ Palestinian media the invent reasons for Jewish protest?

  4. According to a BBC website which lists the credits (that’s the script-writers) for Series 5 (episodes 1 and 2), the writer is a Ben Richards. I don’t know whether or not Raymond Khoury (a Lebanese Catholic who’s written books on the Knights Templar — I believe the Templar were antisemites) should take all the blame for this travesty or not…If you go by the BBC credits, then it’s Ben Richards.

  5. According to the credits on the BBC website here, the writer for episode 7 was Raymond Khoury. This is the same episode in which, according to the BBC site, “The team soon realise they’re actually dealing with an Israeli plot”. Khoury is also credited here as the writer of the previous episode. The BBC is not yet saying on their website who wrote the episode aired this week.

  6. Michael | 25/10/2006 at 23:03 |

    Eric
    What do you expect from the BBC?
    Surely, this isn’t line in the sand stuff at all unless you mean overt “out there” dissemination.
    Get real, the layering of anti-semetic thought and ideas over an extended time, by AP press, Reuters and the BBC for at least a decade.
    It is orchestrated by people in situ who share a worldview and idealogy.
    It is all so persuasive to people who don’t think or look behind what they see.
    Which is most of the populace and the young the next generation of voters.
    The media consider it their duty to change society and the way it thinks into what they think is right and fair.
    Israel mustn’t exist then all the problems of the world will go away.
    After all they are a bunch of theives and have been since the begining of time.
    so let’s change public opinion against Israel as they haven’t been beaten militarily up to now.
    Sorry for such a long post but the root is the key.
    Everything else is just talk.
    and that’s cheap.
    MikeNZ

  7. What is this, a world wide plot of of non-jewish overlords plotting world domination through subtle manipulation of the media? Do you realise what you guys sound like? Next it’ll be be a secret cartel of gentile bankers oppressing the jewish man.

  8. Sally Port | 29/10/2006 at 09:27 |

    Eric,
    The BBC have now crossed the line from anti-Zionism into something approaching antisemitism. It’s time this increasingly despicable organisation, which flouts its Charter time and again, was made to fund its own propaganda. It’s time it had a complaints procedure that is truly independent and neutral. I made an official complaint to the BBC several years ago re a series of nakedly anti-Israel broadcasts by reporter Orla Guerin. They refused to consider the complaint, telling me that since I had complained about more than one news report the problem appeared to lay with me rather than with the reporter!
    So long as they remain the arbiters of allegations of bias made against their programmes there will be no remedy for this anti-Israel venom of theirs.

  9. What’s happened to the witch Guerin? Blown up in Iraq?

  10. Dear Eric
    Only just caught up with your comments re Spooks. I was disgusted at the anti-semitic episode aired last week (you can read make take on my blog). I only managed about 20 minutes last night before switching off so missed the Israeli angle, but it doesn’t surprise me at all.

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