Breaking my Christmas silence because of this BBC item. “Six Palestinians killed in West Bank, Gaza attacks” Oh really? Just killed as they walked about their daily business, eh? You have to read down to discover that those killed were “militants” or, to be more accurate, murderous Palestinian terrorists. The BBC does mention in passing that the IDF had responded following the “killing” of an Israeli father of seven by Palestinian “militants” but lest we start to feel even slightly sympathetic towards Israel it finishes with a flourish reminding us that the violence comes a day before the anniversary of the Gaza war that killed some 1400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. Dont’cha love the way that BBC deliberately conflates the number of Hamas Jihadists with genuinely innocent civilians to get to their magical Hamas approved 1400. Always good to bash the Jews at Christmastime, right? Revolting.
BETWEEN THE LINES….
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Absolutely blatantly biased – same as the skewed analysis of the poor people of Bethlehem oppressed by the wicked Israelis. Nothing about how the local “religion of peace” adherents undermine the Christian presence there. The bBBC sent along some dewy-eyed kid girl reporter. “in-depth” coverage indeed….
Davieboy
Even at this stage the BBC can not bring itself to name the Israeli.
that is amazing, it’s almost pure bias =-O
Go here all ye who doubt:
Click to access WestBank05.pdf
Would al-beeb dare talk about Muslim persecution of Christians?
Another bleeding heart Bowen piece on those poor Gazans
Apparently Israel has a legal responsibility for them. Nothing is offered to support this assertion.
The big question is when will the BBC cover the views of those who aren’t pro-Gaza, and in a neutral manner?
For the last year the BBC had at least ‘balanced’ their articles on Israel/Palestine with the Israeli version of the death toll in Gaza.
Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans were killed in the violence between 27 December and 16 January, though Israel puts the figure at 1,166. Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers were also killed.
I say ‘balanced’ in inverted commas merely because it didn’t matter what the article was about, the BBC would make a point of inserting it. Now it looks like they’re not even bothering to do that – just taking the Palestinian version of events.
The BBC follows up with Palestinian leaders condemn Israeli raid in West Bank They just don’t condemn the murder that led up to it.
There are some internal inconsistencies. What BBC report would be complete without them?
“Palestinian sources in Nablus say two of those killed were militants from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the militant faction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party”.
“The faction was one of two groups which said they had killed the Israeli settler, a father of seven, two days ago – the first fatal shooting of an Israeli by militants in the occupied West Bank for eight months”.
Yet the BBC says, “Thousands of people later attended funerals of the suspected militants“.
BTW the BBC still hasn’t found a way to give the victim a name. They probably claim that is balance because the killers are also unnamed.
For the record:
Victim – Rabbi Meir Chai
Killers – Raed Sukarji, Ghassan Abu Sharkh, and Anan Subih.
Ghassan Abu Sharkh’s brother, Nayef, was a former commander of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in Nablus and was killed by the IDF in 2004.
The Palestinians say they were militants (I doubt they used that word) yet the BBC only suspects?
The BBC couldn’t spare staff to attend the Rabbi’s funeral where they would have heard ‘Chai’s 16-year-old son, Eliyahu, eulogized his father and urged fellow Samaria youngsters not to avenge the attack”.
“Dad wanted to learn Torah and pray, and if we want to perpetuate his memory, we need to do these things, not take revenge,” said a tearful Eliyahu. The difference between us and them is that we are human beings, we do not just shoot them in the heads for no reason. We are Jews, holy.”
Instead they heard, “Many of them vowed to “open the gates of hell” against Israel” and that was the message they broadcast to the world.
The latest Jeremy Bowen propaganda deserves a line-by-line fisking but I’ll stick with errors of fact.
Between 1120 and 1135 on 27 December 2008 the Israeli air force attacked the Arafat City police headquarters in Gaza, and at least three other police stations.
It was the start of an offensive that lasted for three weeks.
The Reality: On 18 December Hamas declared the end of a six-month ceasefire with Israel and on 24 December began an intensification of rocket fire towards the country’s towns. Bowen falsely implies that Israel started the shooting.
The Israeli army says it killed 1,166 Palestinians. The Palestinian health ministry’s count is about 1,500.
The Reality: THe BBC conveniently has a window with the various claims. Bowen’s figures are almost 100 higher than the claims of the Palestinian Human Rights Center (PCHR) that the BBC has consistently relied on. Where did JB find the extra deaths.
In November only 275 aid trucks were allowed in, the lowest number since the crisis began, according to European diplomats. This month the Gaza power plant has been running at 62% of capacity; 90% of Gazans suffer power cuts of four to six hours a day.
The Reality: There has been a 900% increase in humanitarian aid in 2009 compared to 2009. In November 2,559 truckloads of humanitarian aid were transferred to the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom cargo terminal and the Karni conveyor belt. Almost 10 million liters of diesel fuel for the power station and over 1,100 tons of cooking gas were delivered to the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom crossing and the Nahal Oz fuel depot
But Israel, legally speaking, still has the responsibilities of an occupying power, even though it no longer has a permanent military presence in Gaza.
The Reality: Israel has no civilian or military presence in the Gaza strip. The sole exception is the one Israeli soldier held captive there. The Hague Convention or 1907 states
Art. 42.
Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.
The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.
Israel no longer has any policing power in Gaza. So how can it legally speaking have the responsibilities?
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Not a fisking, but I’d say Jeremy Bowen must be confident that the audience is with him, because he has given up pretending to be impartial. He may as well brag obsequiously to the Palestinian people like Alan “I’m telling your story” Johnston.
So, though the guns are quiet, the conflict is still there, ‘and if anything it is keener?’
(“If anything” typifies Bowen’s cliché-ridden parlance, i.e. padding out his voiceovers with “franklies” or “quite franklies” as if he’s about to let us in on some special Bowen knowingness.)
He doesn’t even bother to justify saying “if anything it is keener.” So we’ll never know what evidence he has for saying it.
All three sources he quotes disagree over the exact numbers of Palestinians killed, but somehow Jeremy is sure of the number of civilians and children.
So Israel is causing Gaza’s children to experience psycho-social disorders. If you’d been nurtured on the Hamas Bunny and were lovingly taught that nothing could be better for a right-thinking nine year old than to go to paradise, you might expect to have a nightmare or three; or a slight psycho-social disorder, but Hamas must be devastated that their darling little human shields are wetting the bed and suffering from depression and aggression all because of Israel, which, “Legally speaking” takes responsibility for the wellbeing of all Gazans.
Although Egypt wants no truck with Hamas, must Israel really do everything it can to make sure the people of Gaza don’t suffer any inconvenience merely because of their pledge to abolish Israel? and must Israel really lift the blockade so that they can do that more easily?
(Legally Speaking, I wonder how Gilad Shalit ‘got into’ the hands of Hamas?)
Actually, today, for the first time ever on BBC news 24, I saw a report on the psychological effects of continual rocket attacks on the children of Sderot. A report by Tim Franks that actually showed a sympathetic version of something to do with Israel.
Well I’ll go to the foot of our stairs. Perhaps his mentor Jeremy Bowen was, quite frankly, looking the other way.
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As reported yesterday, the tunnels into Egypt are used for the suggling of luxury goods into Gaza!!!
I didn’t know you can you buy luxery RPGs?
Why haven’t the BBC bothered to identify how many of the 1400 (alleged) casualties were actually Palestinian malitia?
They imply all these casualties were innocent civilians!
Shoddy lazy reporting by the BBC. Where does our 3.2 billion go?
The Palestinians have a totally different definition of civilians than does the IDF. The Jerusalem Post noted the difference even while fighting raged.
The Palestinians define a civilian narrowly as wearing uniforms and carrying weapons – so when a fighter is out of uniform he is theoretically a civilian. If the same fighter travels between two areas but leaves uniforms and weapons behind and picks up fresh uniforms and weapons at destination he is then considered a civilian while in transit.
In addition if the fighter is not actively involved in fighting when targeted the Palestinians consider him a civilian.
Women and children are another area of dispute. Thus a woman or a youth under 18 is listed as a civilian no matter what they were doing. It should also be taken into account that the majority of Palestians are under eighteen with the median age of 15 years. In other words in any given engagement the chance of hitting a child is higher than in Israel. This is increased by Palestinian encouragement of children close to military activities. They are used as couriers, lookouts and human shields. Sometimes they are given weapons and suicide explosives in the belief the Israelis will hesitate to fire. Check out this video.
Middle East Photo Gallery
Israel considers a civilian anyone who does not belong to the armed forces – unless they are actively involved in fighting. It also considers a combatant someone who is actively involved in planning the fighting, even if they are not armed.
The BBC is well aware of the problem but we can only assume from trhe ritual cut-and-paste of Hamas casualty figures that they tacitly accept and propogate the Palestinian narrative. Gaza Conflict: Who is a civilian? While the BBC turns itself into a journalistic pretzel to avoid using the word ‘terrorist’ there seems to be no guidance on the word civilian.
Does anyone have some information on this area?