. Delighted to read that Egypt is not prepared to take any nonsense from an Irishwoman who was found sneaking into Hamas controlled Gaza. Treasa Ni Cheannabhain, her daughter and an Egyptian niece were allowed back into Egypt on Thursday but she was immediately taken in for questioning. On Saturday, she said she was given a choice by the Egyptian authorities – to come before a military court, or to return to Gaza indefinitely. She has chosen to face the court (!) rather than spend more time with her dear Hamas buddies. She crossed over into Gaza illegally from Egypt last Saturday after being refused legal entry by Egyptian authorities. On Sunday, Egyptian forces resealed the Gaza border, nearly two weeks after its Israeli-built barriers had been blown apart by (sic) militants. Egyptian border officials refused them re-entry, even though Ms Ni Cheannabhain is married to an Egyptian citizen. They had been distributing money to Palestinians collected by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Just a few questions. For starters, this story is posted by the BBC in their Northern Ireland news section. Last time I checked MY Atlas, Galway is in the Republic of Ireland. Isn’t this one more instance of the BBC doing its level best to imply that Northern Ireland is somehow not part of the United Kingdom – which would mean it holds the same view as Irish republicans? Next, Hamas openly seek the destruction of Israel and engage in continual acts of terror. Yet the BBC avoids all mention of this merely indicating that Ms Cheannabhain wanted to dispense “charity aid” amongst the terror supporting population of Gaza. I also note that the BBC refers to Hamas “fighters” – cat got their tongue when it comes to saying the T-word?
Don’t quite understand this one.
Ok, the Galway thing is maybe a bit wrong, but if anything it displays an unbelievable anti-Republican bias by lumping Galway in with the United Kingdom instead of filing it under ‘Europe’. Probably just an oversight or case of lazy journalism though, or just to make the site easier to navigate.
But the bit that really confused be was your whole Hamas rant. Surely whether all Palestinians are Hamas-supporting terrorist maniacs isn’t really relevant to a story about someone crossing the Egyptian border illegally. In fact, mentioning the T-word at all would be implying that the Gazans somehow don’t deserve aid, which is hardly an impartial stance to take.
Angry Young Alex,
The BBC knows that Galway is not in the United Kingdom, Yet it posts this story in the Northern Ireland news section. Why? Because it seeks to convey the impression NI is not British. It’s a regualar thing, not a one-off. So, next time you see a story about Le Havre posted in Midlands News, ask why.
Hamas are terrorist scum. The BBC refuses to call this this. Hamas were voted into power by Gazans. Hamas seek the destruction of Israel. The idea that those poor kindly Irish girl was there – Mother Theresa-like -to distribute alms to the pooor is a joke. And yes, the Gazans don’t deserve any aid whilst they support and vote for Hamas.
Wow, maybe the BBC has a secret agenda and is attempting to break NI away from the rest of the UK!
Can I borrow one of your tin-foil hats please?
David Vance writes:
Last time I checked MY Atlas, Galway is in the Republic of Ireland. Isn’t this one more instance of the BBC doing its level best to imply that Northern Ireland is somehow not part of the United Kingdom –
Anonymous writes:
The BBC knows that Galway is not in the United Kingdom, Yet it posts this story in the Northern Ireland news section. Why? Because it seeks to convey the impression NI is not British.
Two other possible reasons why this story is labeled Northern Ireland spring to mind:
1. Because it was written in the Belfast newsroom.
2. Because the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign has a branch in Belfast (but not one in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Birmingham etc).
These seem to me rather more likely than the motivation suggested by Vance & Anon.
In any case, their theory doesn’t stack up. Labeling a story about a Galway woman ‘Northern Ireland’ doesn’t in the least suggest NI isn’t part of the UK. If anything, it suggests Galway is part of the UK.
But I guess accusing the BBC of having expansionist designs on oyster-rich bits of the Republic doesn’t fit the narrative.
BBC NI are reporting on southern issues because of the peace agreement.
its reciprocal , with southern TV news now reporting a lot more on Northern issues as well.
also the BBC NI office now has an obligation to report on southern issues precisely because all northern citizens , from both sides, now have the right to claim Irish citizenship, if they wish to do so.
but its not all one way – on the economic front, Aer Lingus recently shut down flights to Britain out of Shannon, in favour of Belfast. again, this is all part of the cross-border agreements.
“Isn’t this one more instance of the BBC doing its level best to imply that Northern Ireland is somehow not part of the United Kingdom – which would mean it holds the same view as Irish republicans?”
No.
I’ve met Protestants from Belfast who support a United Ireland, but even they’d know that Galway is in the Republic.
This is pretty thin stuff from Vance. Aren’t there any more Moslems to defame?
David has cross posted this on JWF and ATW, but JWF had already posted it himself, before David posted it, but he didn’t think to read before posting it. All this cross posting is a bit like spam!
Perhaps the BBC wanted to post it in the NI section for people like me, who don’t consider themselves British, but who must accept it due to democracy and as the majority of people here identify with Britain.
Almost, and I say, Almost, half the population here class themselves as Irish, and if David is to be believed most of the majority who vote DUP see themselves as Ulster nationalists anyway…..
Certainly the DUP and other ‘unionist’ parties have no trouble going south of the border,and involving themselves in cross border bodies, why IPJ got a parking ticket there not so long ago-(he’s down on his luck)and the fellas da is awfully pally with Bertie Ahern, its this new spirit of coperation and peace that David still hasn’t got his head around that is the problem. No one says NI is not part of Britain, all we have to do is look at the currency in our hand.
Anyway, I’m not getting in to a fight over it, I pay my licence fee same as anyone else, and due to closeness and perhaps even entering into the spirit of co operation that we are in the BBC NI posted somethings re the republic or its citizens in the NI section, perhaps on a good neighbourly way? It’s hardly a big deal.
Do the BBC have the same view as Irish republicans? Presumably by that you mean terrorists and not those who would like to see a UI. I’d like to ask the BBC if they had a terrorist agenda, they certainly never gave the impression they had any terrorist agenda on display through out thirty years of conflict, but perhaps David knows differently. He’s well in there, he’s on BBC NI radio and television enough to have some insider knowledge, though why anyone who speaks so lowly of the organisation goes on it is a mystery to me.
Good news David is British, for he does his fair share of Brit bashing.
As to this stupid woman – if she is married to an Egyptian, she ought to have known better and deserves all she gets. Infact I’d say JWF put it very well a while back.
I enjoyed John Reith’s comment on this thread insofar as it demonsrates the cringing stupidity of some BBC apoologists. Permit me to explain.
1. Anyone with even the slightest grasp of political geography would know that Galway is not in Northern Ireland, so why did the BBC not recognise this? Simple, because some within it are unsympathetic to the simple truth that NI is British.
2. The Irishwoman (sic) belonged to the Irish branch of the Hamas Appreciation Society. There is NO link whatsoever to NI. For poor old Reuth to mangle fact to sustain a BBC fiction is hilarious.
3. Interesting that Aussie Bystander knows unionists who support the end of the union. More comedy from the trolls here.
4. Typhoo wonders why I appear on the BBC – as I will in around one hours time. The answer is because a/ I am invited and b/ To clearly put across my views, which are inevitably diametrically opposed to the leftistl agenda endorsed by the BBC. If I chose not to appear, that would mean that only the left of liberal view would prevail. Is that fair and balanced?
David Vance wrote “Anyone with even the slightest grasp of political geography would know that Galway is not in Northern Ireland, so why did the BBC not recognise this? Simple, because some within it are unsympathetic to the simple truth that NI is British.”
So presumably if RTE put a story from Coleraine in the Irish Republic section of its website it would be implying that the Republic was part of Northern Ireland? Or would Mr Vance be feeling that they were claiming Coleraine for the Republic? I suspect he would take the latter view
Yes, but wd RTE cherrypick the stories about aggrieved Hamas-supporters from Coleraine?
bob: Who knows, but that is a quite different argument, and one where I tend to agree with Mr Vance.
Aussie Bystander wrote:
“I’ve met Protestants from Belfast who support a United Ireland”.
You have? When? I’m asking because I don’t believe you.
Anonymous, you’ve got it the wrong way round.
If the BBC wanted to imply that NI wasn’t part of the UK, it would file Northern Ireland stories under ‘Europe’. What the BBC is actually doing is lumping parts of the Republic of Ireland in with the United Kingdom, probably the last thing any Irish Republican would agree with.
Now if you consider blowing up a FENCE to be an act of terror, you need to take a long hard look in the mirror. For us normal people, “terrorist” is too strong, negative and emotive for an impartial description of a mere act of criminal damage.
Note that, as well as not mentioning Hamas’ links to terror, the BBC omits the various Security Council resolutions against the Israeli Occupation. If it had, you would scream that the BBC wanted to make Israel look bad. It omits irrelevancies, especially those that could show one side or the other in a less than neutral light.
For the same reason it also fails to mention Egypt’s abysmal human rights record, VAT levels in Ireland or the fact that the other day a bloke in Nairobi hit his thumb with a hammer and was really annoyed.
Note that, as well as not mentioning Hamas’ links to terror, the BBC omits the various Security Council resolutions against the Israeli Occupation.
Angry Young Alex | 10.02.08 – 6:05 pm
The BBC also consistently omits Security Council resolution 1701 against Hizb-allah in Lebanon calling for the unconditional release of the IDF soldiers being held hostage and the disarming of said terrorist group.
The BBC also fails to remind you that the firing of unguided missiles by Hamas from unoccupied Gaza into Israeli civilian areas is a crime against humanity and a war crime under the Geneva Conventions as denounced by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
The BBC also consistently omits to remind you that the “Palestinian Authority” has not ever taken steps it agreed to in all the previous “peace accords” such as disarming terror groups such as Fatah’s own Al-Aqsa Brigades and halting the indoctrination of Jew-hatred in its schools.
So what exactly is your point?
That the BBC omits a lot of stuff that isn’t really relevant to the article and might prejudice the reader, and that we shouldn’t read much into the absence of TERRORIST in capital letters.
Angry Young Alex,
I’ve replied to some other of your recent posts, including the one where you insist that Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel. Please scroll down and look for recent unread comments on other threads.
That the BBC omits a lot of stuff that isn’t really relevant to the article and might prejudice the reader
It’s the BBC who decides what’s relevant or not and most of the time those decisions are instrumental in actually prejudicing the reader.
We call it bias by omission.
For example omitting to mention that an IDF incursion into Gaza is a response to rocket fire gives the impression that the rocket fire is in fact a reaction to incursions and prejudices the reader into believing that the IDF kill “Palestinians” for no good reason.
Saying that Hamas “does not recognise Israel” while omitting to tell the reader that Hamas’s charter actually calls for the destruction of the state of Israel is highly relevant.
I fail to see the relevance to this particular article. At no point does it give ANY background information connected to the conflict, so the fact that it omits to call Hamas terrorists is totally counterbalanced by all the things it omits to call Israel as well. Sounds entirely neutral to me.
Galway is not in the home counties. That is the most likely cause of the error.
David Vance | 10.02.08 – 8:49 am
As I write, there’s a link on the Northern Ireland page to a story from BBC Sport saying that Giovanni Trapattoni has agreed to become manager of the Republic of Ireland team.
Better break out the Lambeg drum: the Union is in peril.
Did anyone catch the Channel 4 documentary “Inside Hamas” that was screened last night? Although broadly and predictably pro-Palestinian this was a very good film in the sense that it tried to portray objectively (I wonder if Beeboids have ever chanced upon that concept) what was going on in Gaza. The picture is not pretty – what we saw was a society moving inexorably towards anarchy and fundamentalist repression.
But what astonished me were the pictures, many of which have been screened across the Arab world. These showed various forms of brutality – kids being whipped and beaten, people being shot, interviews with victims complaining bitterly about Hamas aggression etc. Nothing strange in this, you might think, except for this: why does the vile BBC never use these pictures, which I presume are available for distribution? Let’s imagine if there was footage of Israeli policeman willfully beating the crap out of children with heavy sticks while they were praying: you can bet your bottom Euro that the vile BBC would use this footage to stoke up as much anti-Israel hatred as possible…. but when it comes to Hamas – nothing. In fact, when was the last time you heard that propagandist Bowen commenting on the repressive measures of Hamas? Never. And nor will you. Why the **** not?
Instead what do we get from the vile BBC? What we get is the mantra that Israel is to blame for everything. Yes, it’s the joos’ fault, of course. Arabs (and especially Islamists) are of course incapable of moral choice or ethical behaviour, which is the sole preserve of white men (and of course joos).
Vile, disgusting organisation.
Allan@Oslo:
“”I’ve met Protestants from Belfast who support a United Ireland”.
You have? When? I’m asking because I don’t believe you.”
It happens to be true. Its a small minority view but it exists (but obviously its not one to be shared with those fun-loving Orangemen)
There are quite a few Protestants who lived outside of the six counties on Partition who are perfectly happy to be Irish citizens to this day and have no desire to rejoin the Union.
But obviously if you discount that those people exist and think that Protestants in Northern Ireland are all swivel-eyed Bible-thumping ultra-loyalists, then it goes to show how little you really know about Northern Ireland or Britain for that matter.
The Channel 4 Hamas documentary was at the very least an honest attempt to give an account of what’s happening. No Pallywood stuff at all, no presenter emoting to the camera, in fact no real sense of having one’s emotions manipulated at all.
How vary different from what we’ve come to expect from the BBC. And I didn’t have to pay a penny for it that I didn’t want to (by buying products advertised on C4).
How vary different from what we’ve come to expect from the BBC. And I didn’t have to pay a penny for it that I didn’t want to (by buying products advertised on C4).
Phil | 11.02.08 – 11:44 am | #
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/apr/25/citynews.broadcasting1
Hey, that’s great news S-J!
Now the principle’s established, can the Beeb hand over more tellytax loot to C4 so they can make more documentaries like the one on last night? I’m sure that the Beeb can carry on providing the nation with peak-time cookery programmes, which seems to be what it’s good at nowadays.
Phil I genuinely think a better use of the £100m that goes to BBC3 would be to give it to C4 so they can do it properly.
I’m sure that the Beeb can carry on providing the nation with peak-time cookery programmes, which seems to be what it’s good at nowadays.
Phil | 11.02.08 – 1:51 pm | #
I happen to think C4 do this rather better than the BBC too, although we did give them Jamie Oliver.
Phil I genuinely think a better use of the £100m that goes to BBC3 would be to give it to C4 so they can do it properly.
I’m sure that the Beeb can carry on providing the nation with peak-time cookery programmes, which seems to be what it’s good at nowadays.
Phil | 11.02.08 – 1:51 pm | #
I happen to think C4 do this rather better than the BBC too, although we did give them Jamie Oliver.
Dr R syas: “Although broadly and predictably pro-Palestinian this was a very good film in the sense that it tried to portray objectively… what was going on in Gaza. The picture is not pretty – what we saw was a society moving inexorably towards anarchy and fundamentalist repression.”
How was it pro-Palestinian then? At least its not just the BBC which is a target of your nonsense.
John Reith | 09.02.08 – 11:19 pm |
But I guess accusing the BBC of having expansionist designs on oyster-rich bits of the Republic doesn’t fit the narrative.
Oh, no! Does this mean that Ireland might be subject to their own equivalent of Matt Frei’s low-budget dog and pony show? And you say it’s nothing sinister….
Aussie bystander: if there are a few surviving Protestants in the Irish Republic, it is because between 1921 and 1922, literally hundreds of thousands of Protestants fled from the Free State to Ulster and Great Britain. I happen to favour Irish nationalism and to think that British rule down the centuries has been one of the worst abominations in the history of Europe, but that does not alter the fact that Irish Protestants had good reason to fear Catholic rule. The biographies of people as different as Oxford professor Nevil Coghill (the friend of Tolkien and CS Lewis) and Lord Haw Haw traitor William Joyce show this common feature of the Protestant flight from Ireland. So don’t come, ninety years after the fact, and invent a peaceful home-living Protestant minority in Ireland. It has as much to do with real Protestantism as Noam Chomsky with Hebraism.
Joel
It was “pro Palestinian” in the sense that it recognised Pals’ quest for statehood as morally just (something I would not disagree with) and sympathised with the broad aims of Palestinian nationalism.
Your dumbed down response suggests you work for the vile BBC. Come Dancing, perhaps? Or Question Time?