Don’t know about you but I find that trying to get any balanced news from the BBC on Israel is pretty much impossible. I see that Hamas terrorists have killed an innocent Israeli man by another indiscriminate mortar attack so favoured by these savages, sorry I meant oppressed militants, right? But just reflect on the way the BBC reports this killing..
“Palestinian militants frequently fire rockets and mortars at Israel from the Gaza Strip. The attacks often provoke retaliation by the Israeli military.”
Of course Israel will seek to prevent Hamas killers from murdering its citizens, which decent government would not? But that sentence is, in my view, carefully calibrated to subtly suggest a moral equivalence between the two sides, between the terrorist and terrorised. It’s the whole “cycle of violence” drivel that Al-Beeb propagates continually. The fact of this story is that Palestinian terrorists indiscriminately murdered an Israeli civilian. End of. But we would not want to see Palestinians getting a bad press, eh
I just read the BBC report on the terrorist attack on Israel and could not believe that the BBC decided to embed almost at the top of the report such a unwarranted slur on Israel, the report infers that the Israelis were the receiptents of this attack for previous retaliatory that the Israelis may have launched against ‘Palestinian militants’.
This unsubstatiated claim on it’s own is enough to persuade anyone that the BBC has huge credibilty in claiming to be impartial on it’s Middle East news coverage, without the added and possibly more cynical attempt by the report to gloss over the death of an Israeli.
My apologises, I did mean to say ‘huge credibilty problems’
Spot on, David Vance. As I pointed out on the Bowen thread, the BBC is trying to indicate that there are no guilty parties here, and terrorists are the same as those who defend themselves against terror. Retaliaton is the wrong word for a military that does everything humanly possible to pinpoint terrorists. The BBC, of course, if it can’t quite make the case of Israel being the guilty party here, settles for next best by maintaining that both sides are equally justified in their attacks.
Still, I guess it’s an improvement on the way the BBC usually portrays Israel – as blindly atacking Gaza for no reason. Now maybe if we keep hammering at the BBC it will eventually start to produce unbiased reports on this conflict. But since that means calling terror by its name and exposing the genocidal intentions of Hamas and other Islamic terrorists, it’s highly unlikely.
Rockets and mortars virtually every day is described as “frequently” I suppose that’s technically correct but it is certainly misleading.
“Constant” rocket fire on Israel would be closer to the truth.
Interesting to compare two photos of the house damaged when the Israeli, Jimmy Kedushim, was murdered by Palestinians using mortars:
http://www.jpost.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7393067.stm
The photo in the Jerusalem Post of the damaged house has medics clearly identifiable as Israeli and with this caption:
Rescue workers evacuate the mortar fire victim
The BBC chose an AFP photo of the same house but without the Israeli medics and with this caption:
Israel has retaliated to these attacks in the past
Of course, in the absence of any evidence to the contary, the house could be Palestinian, and an example of Israeli “Retaliation.” But that’s the BBC – finding every way it possibly can to minimise or even obliterate evidence of Palestinian terror.
Er… make that contrary.
It’s perfectly obvious that the BBC wants us to see the violence as nothing more than an endless “tit for tat” in which no one party is to blame. Seriously, has the Beeb ONCE referred to Israeli operations as “self defense”? I don’t think they have.
The trouble with the leftoids at the Beeb is that they just don’t have the kind of objective sense of value judgment required to portray reality as it really is. They’re continually trying to force square pegs into round holes in the hope that eventually, reality will reshape itself into the straight edged, symmetrical wonderland most of us quit dreaming about when we’re 16.
The second photo in this article is another example of how to use photos and captions to report objectively and clearly on an attack:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1209627049041&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The anti-Israel BBC hacks and editors should study these photos in order to see what objective journalism looks like as opposed to their careful, sly propaganda through distortion and omission of facts.
“Israel has retaliated to these attacks in the past” –
can’t these wankers write one correct English sentence?
I am waiting for Abu Alex to come to the BBC’s aid with one of his dim-witted excuses.
I know this happened a couple of months ago, but has anyone else mentioned this?
http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2008/03/sky-news-interviews-khaled-meshaal.html
I only just came across it, and thought it was interesting, despite the many questions that were not asked.
Iran’s proxy Hezbollah continues with its attempt to overthrow the government of Lebanon and establish a Shia state there, as a springboard for attacking Israel – and the BBC website still relegates it to a sidebar.
Why? Because it doesn’t fit their narrative that anything wrong in the ME is Israel’s fault – but give them time …
Nearly Oxfordian | 10.05.08 – 12:40 pm
Weird, I’d only just noticed that, even though I pasted the caption in, when I read your comment. Yes, you don’t retaliate “to” an attack. That caption was not written by a mother tongue English speaker. It was most probably written by a Palestinian or a lefty Israeli.
Good of the BBC to inform us that Israel gets its retaliation in while we’re still trying to absorb the information about the latest terrorist attack on an Israeli.
Can’t they even grant us a decent pause?
Bryan: you are making some gross assumptions about English education.
libertus | 10.05.08 – 5:11 pm
In that case you omitted inverted commas around “education.”
The preposition “to” is misused a lot by Jews and Arabs in the Holy land. Dunno about Arabic, but Hebrew has a less complex use of prepositions compared to English. That’s why I assumed whoever wrote the caption was from the Holy Land.
“Hebrew has a less complex use of prepositions compared to English”
Totally untrue – I wonder where you got that from. It’s just as complex, simply different. Many direct English verbs correspond to indirect ones in Hebrew, and vice versa.
Nearly Oxfordian | 10.05.08 – 6:39 pm,
I don’t really want to get into this, it’s way off the subject of BBC bias.
Well, you brought it up, you made a categorical statement that happens to be totally off the wall, you decline to answer the question about where you got this from – I think it’s fair game.
And it wouldn’t be the most OT topic we’ve had here.
OK, fair enough. I’ve taught English on an informal basis to Hebrew speakers in Israel and they had much difficulty with the prepositions. Though my Hebrew is not great, I find the prepositions straightforward, though the pronunciation is admittedly more complex in Hebrew than in English.
Well, I speak Hebrew very well so I do find the prepositions straightforward, but I find the English ones equally so for the same reason 😉
I am interested in your statement re pronunciation. Other than the difference between the 2 shvas, Hebrew vowels are ‘simpler’ than English ones, in that most are short and less prone to variation, imo.
I was thinking of things like
Using x – English =
Using in x – Hebrew
and
I went TO the house/home – English
v.
halakhti EL ha-bayit
OR
halakhti ha-baytA – Hebrew.
I was talking about prepositions specifically – for example:
beeJerushalaim
behTel Aviv and
bahshamaim
all spelt with the same ‘bet’ and all meaning ‘in’, but pronounced differently.
Same with conjunctions, come to think of it:
Twenty-five is esrimvehhamesh
while twenty-eight is esrimoohshmoneh – both of course meaning ‘and’.
Now the arms of Morpheus beckon and I must be off. We’re ahead of you in time here and Sunday is a working day in Israel, damn.
I was talking about prepositions specifically also – namely, IN and TO 😉
Pronunciation can be complex, yes; but wasn’t it your thesis that Hebrew prepositions are less complicated than English ones?
I have shown examples of
(a) Hebrew using a preposition where English does not;
(b) a Hebrew preposition morphing from EL to the suffix A –
and I haven’t even touched on the morphing between
EL and LE-
BETOKH and BE-
and the like.
Khalomot paz!
PS.
Bah does not mean ‘in’. It means ‘in the’.
I was sent this through the post. Please allow me to share it with you;
Tel Aviv more crowded than Gaza
A note on crowded places
The canard that Gaza is the most crowded place on earth continues to circulate.
The UK politician George Galloway wrote in The Glasgow Record last month that the Gaza Strip is “the most densely populated piece of earth on the planet.” Galloway wrote that 1.5 million Palestinians live there. Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist currently teaching at Princeton, wrote March 26 that Gaza is “one of the most densely populated places on earth, with 3,823 people per square kilometre.” Kuttab’s figure is in line with recent Gaza population estimates of 1.4 million.
If Galloway’s estimate of 1.5 million Gaza population is correct, this is almost 4,200 people per square kilometer. The Central Intelligence Agency projects that the Gaza population will reach 1,537,269 in July. This would bring the density to 4,270 people per square kilometer.
Both Singapore and Hong Kong have more than 6,000 people per square kilometer. Tel Aviv has more than 7,000 people per square kilometer. If you count the suburbs of Tel Aviv, the metropolitan area with its population of 2.3 million has a density of more than 5,000 people per square kilometer, which is considerably more crowded than the Gaza Strip as reckoned by Galloway or Kuttab or the CIA.
Selected estimates of population density:
Tel Aviv
7,445 people/sq km
(385,000 people, 51.8 sq km)
Tel Aviv metro area including suburbs
5,050 people/sq km
(2.3 million people, 453 sq km)
Gaza Strip per CIA projection
4,270 people/sq km
(1,537,269 population July 2008, 360 sq km)
Gaza Strip per George Galloway
4,167 people/sq km
(1.5 million people, 360 sq km)
http://docstalk.blogspot.com/2008/05/tel-aviv-more-crowded-than-gaza.html
Anybody who is REALLY willing to support Israel should donate to this site which is a support network for the IDF personnel. I’ve just sent off $120 (£60 – 60th birthday).
https://www.online.mod.gov.il/pages/payment/acceptE.asp
Fair enough – but some of us who ‘really’ support Israel, do so in other ways.
“Palestinian militants frequently fire rockets and mortars at Israel from the Gaza Strip. The attacks often provoke retaliation by the Israeli military.”
Wasn’t the phrase “provoke retaliation” used extensively to defend Israel during the conflict in the Lebanon?
As for the fact that the retaliation was included, not only was it entirely accurate and strangely prophetic (“Israel’s army said the air strikes were retaliation for the mortar attack, which was claimed by Hamas.“), but isn’t it a little hypocritical for you to insist the BBC leaves out Israel’s history of attacks, yet regularly insist that they include previous Palestinian attacks as background?
This I will give you: the sentence “ousted their rivals from the Fatah movement” is a mess.
Oh, this is rich: Abu Alex preaching about hypocrisy!
Is there part of my post you disagree with?
The bit about hypocrisy for a start.
I’ll give Bio first go at tearing the rest of the nonsense to shreds, because I admit freely that he has a marvellous way with words, writing more elegantly than I can ever aspire to – and a great deal more patience with the drivel you post. If he hasn’t done so by late tomorrow, I’ll have a go myself.
Yes, Biodegradable is very good, but sadly does seem to have less free time than you or I.
I have plenty of free time Alex, but I’m not willing to waste any more of it on you.
Feel free Nearly Oxfordian 😉
ive been on an intravenous infusion of blended palestinian baby after my subarach. yum.
poor plucky sharon being internally invaded by the those wretched palestinians
Anonymous | 19.05.08 – 10:09 pm
Not an antisemite, of course. Just voicing legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies.