British reporter who exposed BBC documentary’s Hamas links faces vandalism David Isaac
https://www.jns.org/british-reporter-who-exposed-bbc-documentarys-hamas-links-faces-vandalism/
British investigative journalist David Collier learned while in Israel last week that his car had been vandalized outside his London home.
He received a “frantic call” from his wife in the early afternoon of May 27 about the incident, in which a chemical, perhaps paint thinner, had been splashed on his vehicle in five or six places.
It’s not the first time his car has been vandalized. A few weeks ago, Collier discovered that someone had keyed the driver’s side of his car. Keying is when a sharp object is used to scratch a car’s exterior, damaging the paint.
Collier dismissed the first incident as perhaps the work of a drunk stumbling through the neighborhood. The second incident left no doubt in his mind that he had been targeted. The Metropolitan Police drew the same conclusion, “logging it as a racially aggravated attack,” he said.
Collier, still in Israel, spoke to JNS while waiting outside a store selling self-defense products in the hopes of finding something he could legally bring back with him. There are strict rules in Britain against selling such products. “No self-defense equipment is allowed in the U.K. I can’t even hold pepper spray in my own home,” he said.
“I could put in an alarm, like a button. And after I press it the police will come 15-to-20 minutes later when I’m already dead,” he said.
Collier said he receives death threats “almost daily,” but noted that one in particular, shortly before the vandalism, “unsettled” him. The message: “‘We know where you live,’ or, ‘We know where your home is. You will be dead soon.’ That’s what he said. I did bring that up with the police at the time,” he said.
Collier, an investigative reporter who hasn’t shied away from danger during his decades of reporting, most recently caused waves when he exposed how a BBC documentary about the Gaza war deliberately failed to disclose that the child narrator was the son of a senior Hamas official.
The revelation turned into a scandal and the BBC was forced to apologize. BBC Chairman Samir Shah, speaking before the U.K. parliament’s Culture, Media & Sport Committee on March 4, admitted the documentary was a “dagger to the heart” of BBC neutrality.
Collier, twice assaulted on the street a few years back while investigating hostile anti-Israel events in the United Kingdom, told JNS, “The escalation does follow the BBC documentary exposé because that did increase my exposure somewhat. So it may be connected to that.”
Collier said he has no plans to move because of what happened. If there’s another attack, or an escalation, he will “reassess” accordingly, he said.
He does worry about the chilling effect such Islamist intimidation tactics will have on others.
“I’ve been doing this a long time. I’m a fighter. So this isn’t going to intimidate me,” he said. “I’ve never been more at peace, more certain in my place and happier with what I do than I have been in this battle.
“But how many people are looking at me, saying, ‘Oh, I’m not going to speak out. I’m not going to get involved.’ This is effectively how Islamists take control. It’s through this process of intimidation, of silencing the opposition.”
Collier noted that his case reflects a larger phenomenon in which Islamic society produces self-appointed enforcers.
“For whatever reason, unlike in Western society where we tend to believe that the cream rises to the top, that people who are good at what they do and work hard, will succeed, the reverse tends to be the truth within Islamic society,” he said.
“You look at examples in the Middle East. It may be more when we’re dealing with Arab culture, but then you look at Pakistan and you’ve got the same kind of problem. So there is something within their society where you have these self-appointed people who basically decide that they will tell everyone exactly what Islam is, that they will hurt anyone who disagrees with them. They will become the enforcers,” he said.
“I’m not putting it down to religion. Whatever the reason, it’s tragic really,” he said.
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