12/07/2014 Dateline London

Hello and welcome to Dateline London.

The United States and peace, or rather the obvious lack of it,

The balance between security and snooping.

Does Britain's National Health Service have an answer?

My guests are Nabila Ramdani, who is a French`Algerian journalist.

The killings of three Israeli teenagers

Rockets fired into Israel, bombing attacks on Gaza.

Then after a few days, the United States announced it would

Is Washington asleep when it comes to the world's most

You may say, we do not look to Russia, the EU, Tony Blair, these

people still look to Washington for guidance, but they have been

incredibly slow? What can they do? In the end, you ask the question, I

could ask the question back. What is it really that Washington can do? It

is sadly cleared after 45 years, Washington can bring a tremendous

amount of pressure to bear when both sides are interested in talking. You

can get a deal. Then one of the parties get shot. You can invite

Arafat to talks. And then the other person is voted out of office. How

far can Washington go? John Kerry said, my goal is to create new

talks. He failed completely. What is the failure head, or is it because

both sides are in a place with political leadership, and in a very

perverse sense to those of us outside, can they get something out

of this? It is clear that Netanyahu gets something out of this. The

Foreign Minister broke up, not the coal issue, but the voting bloc that

they had. Before this advance began, Hamas had joined forces with another

organisation. This was going to change the whole picture, but not

really. Hamas felt like it had made it says isolated. `` like it had

made itself isolated. I do not think that any outside force can get in

here and do anything. It is down to the peoples involved. They need to

say, our political leadership is leading us down a corridor from

which the only exit is in a coffin. From the outside, perhaps one would

say that both sides are looking for some kind of victory, where victory

is clearly impossible. The Palestinians are not going to go

away, and Israel is not going to go away, so they have got to deal with

each other. To answer your preliminary question, I would

contend that Washington is not asleep, but pretending to be.

Relaxed indifference has been America's default position on this

conflict. Washington may be concerned about the murder of

Palestinians but it is far more concerned about the maintenance of

the Israeli security state. A great deal of American firepower and money

makes sure it is as strong as possible. President Obama knows that

Israel's rockets, pancreas, warheads, and Di Resta said, will

keep Israel well ahead of Palestinian rockets. It will

continue the killing. We have heard the news, more than 100 Palestinians

have been killed, the vast majority of them innocent civilians, women

and children. There is a humanitarian crisis going on.

Israeli MPs are now calling for electricity, water supplies, medical

supplies to be cut out. In the face of such a grim, grim reality, we are

hearing the Prime Minister of the Prime Minister after Israel saying

that he will not stop, he will not be stopped by international

pressure. He is threatening a ground offensive. This is a sinister

display of smug invincibility. If the Hamas people stop firing

rockets, would that not be a game changer? It is easy to portray Hamas

as a terrorist organisation. Nobody would condone firing rockets into

Israel might under any circumstances, but the threat of

Israeli life is met with the actual loss of considerable civilian lives

in Gaza. Nobody should underestimate the savagery which underpins this

round of violence. The sequence of events was the three Israeli

teenagers were abducted. Palestinians would dispute that. The

sequence of events can even go back to me when three Palestinian

teenagers were shot dead at a checkpoint. We do not even know who

murdered the Israeli teenagers. Hamas in fair that this was an

help. Let him finish. When the help. Let him finish. When the

Palestinian teenager, in revenge, was abducted and murdered in a

terrible way, there was this global lab Lawrence. Rather than taking

that moment, the Hamas leadership, it started to lobbying the rockets.

Is that a fair point? That is a fair point. But those behind the

killings, the gruesome murders of three Israeli youths, they are still

unknown. The only democracy in the Middle East should bring the

criminals, deal with them through the rule of law and due process, and

not have Netanyahu called for blood and revenge at the very funeral of

those teenagers. Alex? I am not Israeli, Jewish Palestinian. As an

outsider to the conflict, I do not think that there is an equivalence.

Israel shields at civilians with military tools. Precisely. Where are

the shelters in Gaza. Forgive me, I was not finished. In contrast with

Hamas, the shield terror tools with civilians. They push civilians to

the front, they put them on top of billions `` buildings. Gazza is one

of the most densely populated places on earth. There is nowhere else to

go. Not when you're talking about getting outside of Gaza. Israel has

developed tools that displayed by sight, sound and noise that there

are about to strike a building. Hamas push people into those areas

to ensure there are civilian casualties. Apologies for cutting

your head. I wanted to agree with you. Israel is a democracy. Hamas is

a terrorist organisation. That is a fact. Also, you said, is Washington

asleep? What about the Arab silence? It is deafening. We are

talking about the West. There is not much we can do. Yesterday, President

Hollande was on the form with Netanyahu. That is all they can do,

beyond the phone to him and say, please, a lot of people are being

killed. Let's go back to Michael's point. It does serve a lot of

interest to see this conflict continue, does it not? It serves

some people within Israel and some people within the Palestinian camp

as well? This current crisis is about not tit`for`tat between Hamas

and Israel. It is about the wider picture. It is about a free and

independent state for the Palestinians, the brutality of

military occupation, 47 years, it is about pathway policies, exemplified

by the wall separating communities. It is about illegal land grabbing

and illegal settlements built on stolen land. It is about the

day`to`day humiliation and oppression. It is about the of Gaza.

Israel effectively controls the key to what David Cameron called an

open`air prison. Do you agree with quite a lot of that? Listen, in

Israel, I get e`mails about this from friends. The peace camp is

still there. It is in the Gasparotto. It is also about the

failure of several generations of Palestinian politicians to deal with

what is real and what is possible within the conflict. Palestinian

politicians have given 78% to Israel. It is about time that Israel

was criminalised and treated like an international pariah for its

continuous Madars. `` Madars. Possibly the stupidest thing the UN

has ever done was to see to the PLO, you are the sole legitimate voice of

the Palestinian people. It condemned the Palestinian people to politics

built on 1`party state. There was no possibility of dissident voices. All

of the money that was coming from international organisations went to

the PLO. It does not work that way. That is why there has not been, I am

sorry to carry on, but it gets to me. There has to have been a better

way, besides violence, as you have so accurately portrayed

international condemnation. It means nothing. Of course it does. We are

celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights act in America. It

would have served the Palestinian people better to take a non`violent

path and accept the pain that comes with it than continue to fight. You

can have the final word. In the face of claiming casualties, we are

hearing someone talking about Palestinian violence. This is what

this is all about, the PR spin on this.

The British parliament this week decided to rush through new

legislation to protect the security of the United Kingdom, or

Do we feel safer in our beds knowing that telephone and internet records

will not be destroyed and that they could, possibly,

There are number of parts to this, but one is the case to push things

through, which a number of MPs, who may agree to the legislation, there

are very worried about this. I agree with this point. Knee jerk

legislation is generally bad. Knee jerk legislation in the face of a

court decision which tells you you're doing something wrong, which

tries to plaster over the accusation you're doing something wrong, that

is very bad. We are becoming a surveillance society. That was the

response of the Law Society to the current proposals. They are

concerned about the point you make. Legislation concerning individual

freedom and privacy ought to be subject to proper scrutiny. We are

told this is urgency legislation. Any right`thinking person might

answer, weird as the emergency? You need to put the legislation about

later the day, tell Cabinet about it at ATM on Thursday and put the whole

bill through on Tuesday. There is nothing that warrants running

through a bill like that. In the absence of compelling arguments for

it, one fears that it is the accumulation of greater powers for

the state quickly. The other thing that people worry about is that we

have to trust the intelligence services up to a point. That is what

we are told. When people are running things through for emergency

reasons, people wonder where the emergency is. Average citizens like

us, we are between O'Rourke and a hard place. Where is the emergency?

Perhaps it is a secret and we do not have access. Are we living in the UK

in a blanket surveillance society? I am not sure we are. If you look at

the justice system, which is very different in Britain and France,

especially as far as terrorism legislation is concerned. In

France, the investigated judges have access to material that they do not

even disclosed to the suspect and their lawyers. There is much more

transparency in this country. Once you are accused and in the criminal

justice system, but before. You have access to the evidence. You still

cannot get access to tapping evidence in this country. Now, the

EU court, the Court of Justice, the decision or not, they have said that

the retention of data should be proportional. They were not

discussing the actual tool. It is an incredible tool to be having. All of

your phone calls, jury e`mail data. Your web browsing history. Even

Labour, after 9/11, Labour did not push this through. Now we have a

government with two parts, both elected on a mandate of promising

individual freedoms. They are giving us this. Can I play devils advocate,

we know that those who oversee the intelligence services have been very

we know that those who oversee the intelligence services have been good

at this because they have the power is adequate to the job, but

destroying records, if you are not up to something, there is nothing to

worry about, that is the argument? up to something, there is nothing to

worry about, that is We used to talk about the big society but now we are

talking about the surveillance is IT, and I think the British

intelligence can have information about us already, and the emergency

laws are a way of making something vaguely legitimate. `` surveillance

society. It is far more sophisticated now, companies like

Facebook and Twitter have all sorts of information about you already,

and the government and David Cameron is contending, why not them, as

well? He's using terrorism to say that this is aimed at protecting

people from terrorist attacks, and in principle, any principle which

will help to keep the citizens safe is to be welcomed, but this kind of

law, as far as politicians are concerned, and the Prime Minister in

particular, this trend is `` transgresses Civil Liberties, and it

can stigmatise communities. I completely agree, this is also an

lawful, given what we have learned from the European court of justice,

and if you strip out the individual threats and accusations behind these

bills, and look at the principle of what is happening, create fear and

give hope, I have got the answer, that is what he is saying, but he is

and I will deal with it. This is and I will deal with it. This is

perhaps coming from America? Someone has said the United States have

proven that you can have laws like this... There was a story, for every

million bits of information they collect, there is one which is

related to a possible terror suspect. The accuracy is what we

don't know, and that is open to question. We have not had a major

terrorist outrage in the last two years and a few have been stopped,

and I did a documentary about terrorism in this country and I said

good old`fashioned police work, I was convinced by that, and very good

community, that is the most community, that is the most

effective way to stop this kind of event from happening. Dozens of

young men are going to Syria. Why do they need data on everyone? The

problem is, last week there was a big story, Facebook had been

manipulating for research, its uses and motions, by filtering out bad

posts and just putting on the happy ones on people 's news feed. There

is no justification for this. It is like you are bringing in special

powers to cope with a domestic crimewave against people, like

burglars, and arrest people who vaguely look like a burglar. I

agree, this is the deprivation of rights, that is basically what this

is. Benjamin Franklin would have something to say about this, and I

would also agree with you about old`fashioned police work. It will

get harder with this kind of thing, there will be fewer resources to do

actual police work, if they are spending it all on surveillance. If

you are trying to find the needle in the haystack, why grow the haystack?

Why a tumour late in `` white accumulate `` why accumulate

information like this? have the legislation which goes with

it, should we go back to before the Internet? The government is not

transparent, and I think the Americans are better about what they

are doing with their surveillance, we are transparent about what they

collect, but we have no transparency about what they do with the

information. So many British people are now

officially fat that we have seen a huge upsurge in cases

of Type 2 diabetes and The disease eats up 10% of

the National Health Service budget. The most logical thing to do is to

and sugary foods? The most logical thing to do is to

make sure that healthy food is cheap, that people are ready Katie

about eating healthy food, and that people exercise `` that people are

educated about eating healthy food. I firmly believe that the key thing

is education. To take one example, in France, legislation about obesity

comes from the government, they interfere with that kind of subject,

guiding people how they should eat healthily, to the point that you

have it in the curriculum in France, and a lot of effort is made in

relation to junk food, even fast food, McDonald's, it is different in

France, it is healthier there than anywhere else in the world. There

are also efforts in vending machines, selling apples and water

rather than fizzy drinks. There is not the culture of buy one get one

free type of thing. And you do not get a free chocolate bar. So that

retains a sense of choice. It takes generations and generations, to get

that culture going, but with the NHS, what is the plan, to invest

massively in gastric bands for everyone, in order to make cuts on

diabetes treatment? The idea is that it would save money. Why not tax

fatty food and sweets? The argument is made, if you are an alcoholic,

you are treated on the NHS, if you are a drug addict you are treated on

the NHS. And if you are clinically obese, you could be treated on the

NHS, and sometimes you need to have a gastric band. That argument does

not work, people affected by this kind of problem, it is people with a

body mass index of 35 or over, and the numbers are around 850,000

people in this country and we cannot put that extra burden onto the NHS

and have it work. It will not happen. We still have a problem. We

might have a problem, but in any free and educated society, the

number of fat adults is going to correlate with the number of adults

who have chosen to be fat. We know that we should eat well and

exercise, but we don't, bad food tastes good and that is why we are

lazy. That is why I have a spare tyre. We tax alcohol. That is of the

point, rather than taking responsibility for our own choices,

you are saying, don't worry, it is not your fault, the state will deal

with it instead. We will infantilise people, turning adults into

children. More over, in this situation, what you are doing, you

are making individuals compulsorily pay, the taxpayer, for the

consequences of what an individual has voluntarily done. To make

himself that. If only it was that simple. This is more than just a

question of people eating too much and learning to stop. The food

chain, what we consume, it is so corrupted, what gets to the

supermarket shelves is so full of stuff which will make people fat.

People know that fatty food is unhealthy for them. Just look at the

explosion of obesity in India and China. These populations have moved

to the cities, incredible growth in the middle`class, people go to the

supermarket, and what they get is processed food, and do people have a

good choice? Of course they do. I have the best greengrocer in London

and I ate lots of fresh vegetables, I have been in a poorer part of

London, and I have been astonished by how expensive fresh fruit is, if

you are living on the poverty line, if you are working manual labour,

the ready meal is the one which is going to be that you are going for.

If you tax that food, it will become even more expensive. Food is not

like tobacco and alcohol, it is a necessity for life, and the food

chain, what gets to the supermarket is now thoroughly corrupted, and so

it is built into our societies. The lunch bell is ringing, we have got

to end it. That's it for Dateline London

for this week. We are back next week

at the same time. And you can of course comment

on the programme of a clock, swinging back and forth,

it means different conditions for every day, and the wettest of the

weather will be further west. Tomorrow, the pendulum swings the

other way. The brightest of the weather, further west. Damp skies to