The BBC’s approach to the I/P conflict is to assume there’s a unanimous consensus amongst its viewers and listeners that Israel is guilty on all counts.
Dissenters like myself take the view that the BBC taints the news it brings us by using a combination of devices.
A distancing, dehumanising approach to Israeli individuals, the exaggerated human interest treatment of Palestinian victimhood, the omission of vital context and historical background, and undue prominence given to unverified statements from Palestinian spokespersons; to name but a few.
All this reinforces the perception of Israel’s unreasonable conduct, and rationalises the guilty verdict.
There has been a lot of news about the merits or otherwise of giving large amounts of aid to needy countries. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, say some, and aid inevitably gets into the wrong hands, causes corruption, and creates dependency and hampers self determination and enterprise.
One group, however, is so needy and so deserving, that the urgency of their predicament supersedes such considerations, causing all doubts to melt away. Which brings us to..
The Flotilla.
When the flotilla approaches Gaza, people wonder what will happen. What will Israel do?
What will the BBC do?
An organisation with the reosurces of the BBC should be able to call and test this for waht it is – an attempt to radicalise anti-Isreali opinion in Turkey. A country with a secular constitution that is under attack by Islamic extremists flush with money from Saudi Arabia (funding a bizarre Mousqe on evry corner building programme in Istanbul).
That the BBC does not speaks to bais or incompetence. Or both.
The BBC is probably not even aware of it. There is very little BBC reporting from Turkey. The BBC supports Turkish entry to the EU but doesn’t report it from Ankara but from Brussels.
Turkey, a country with about 80 million people, a formidable military and on the border of Europe and the BBC haven’t a clue what is happening there. The BBC is useless.
Leaving aside the PR aspects, I’ve thought of that my self. Gaza doesn’t have a proper deep water port. When Galloway did his latest Viva Palestina stunt they had to land at El Arish and then go overland. We saw how that worked out.
They wouldn’t even contemplate entering via Israel.
How do they plan to unload tens of tons of building material and hundreds of passengers? How will they feed them (take food from the starving Palestinians?) and house them. Seriously does Gaza have 500 or even 250 hotel rooms?
In the Galloway case it was all bravado and bad or even no planning. In this case I suspect the whole idea is for the IDF to stop them and gain propaganda points for the cause.
BTW getting back to the BBC It doesn’t look if the flotilla is getting much publicity from the usual suspects, even from the Beeb or the Guardian. A quick Google suggests BBC foreign languages are giving much more publicity than BBC English.
Fancy restaurants and Olympic-size swim pools: what the media won’t report about Gaza
It seems that BBC world service has been reporting it though.
“The BBC World Service even led its world news broadcasts with this story at one point over the weekend.”
The BBC isn’t interested in this yet. Wait till Thursday. If Israel does anything to prevent the flotilla reaching its destination, no doubt the BBC will tell us half the story.
Coincidentally, Hezbollah is about to hold a bunch of events celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The BBC, of course, focuses on just how much the Lebanese people view Hezbollah as their saviors from Israeli oppression.
It starts out with a quote from a local talking about he felt like he was living in a “prison” until Hezbollah kicked out the nasty Israelis. The whole article is just like that.
What the BBC doesn’t want you to know is exactly why Israel was in Lebanon in the first place all those years ago. As far as the BBC audience is concerned, Israel was just a brutal oppressor, invading Lebanon out of sheer mendacity and Zionist expansionism. In reality, Israel was responding to the endless rockets since the summer of 1981 from the PLO in Lebanon.
I know, because I was in Israel in the summer of 1981, and remember the hundreds of rockets. Israel started a bombing campaign, and only then did the international media report anything. The PLO (founded in 1964, before the ’67 war and “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza) had been ramping up the violence in the West Bank and elsewhere, and were sending lots of katyusha rockets into towns in Northern Israel. Eventually Israel got fed up and started bombing.
The border skirmishes continued until Israel finally invaded southern Lebanon in June 1982, in order to root out the PLO. Unlike the BBC Narrative, Israel was not occupying the place just for the hell of it, nor did they invade just because they’re bullies and wanted the land. Lebanon was in the middle of another stage of their endless civil wars at the time, and the south was basically up for grabs. Hezbollah was formed to fill the vacuum.
The BBC has hidden this bit of history from you. Indeed, all of their reporting in the last few years on Hezbollah’s war against Israel actually presents an alternate reality in which those events never happened. They give plenty of space to encomiums of Hezbollah as “resisitance” fighters, but never tell the truth about why Israel was there in the first place. As usual, the BBC demonizes Israel.
Yes David P, this baffling media myopia applies to both the presentation of Israel and Islam(ism.) Vilifying the former and sanitising the latter in spite of all contradictory evidence.
I’m reading The World Turned Upside Down.
Or why Israel has held on to the sheeba farm area (so as to deny a direct link between Syria and Hesbullah)…or that the UN itself does not consider Hesbullah as having the authority to determine whether Israel is occupying part of Lebanon (while still saying Israel is occupying part of Lebanon illegally).
Funny thing is…if the Arabs just put down their guns they would find peace would blossom over night.
Problem is…arabs cant put the guns down. They lack the will to actually want to live in peace with Israel because those who rule the various arab countries realise that Israel is a useful tool to deflect hatred and anger away from how shit their lives are (and away from the rulers).
Mailman
Today’s BBC anti Israeli pro-Hezbollah article
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/middle_east/10152082.stm
Lovely chaps those Hezbollah fellas. Especially that nice holocaust denier Hassan Nasrallah. “The opening of a new war museum…”
From Harry’s Place:
“After Sunday’s visit to Sojod, the students were taken to a newly inaugurated Hezbollah war museum in the nearby village of Mlita, replete with war booty captured from Israeli soldiers and their Lebanese militia allies and a memorial for the group’s dead.
“We hope this tourist jihadi center will be a first step toward preserving the history of our heroic resistance,” Nasrallah told supporters via video link at Friday’s inauguration of the Mlita museum.
In a nod to Hezbollah’s rivals, Nasrallah cited Israeli Holocaust museums to stress the importance of preserving history.
“Everywhere you go there is a Holocaust museum, regardless of (the Holocaust’s) authenticity, accuracy or magnitude,” he said.”
Charming.
The Jerusalem Post is reporting well on this.
The fact that the shops and markets are groaning with produce, that there is a glut of Korean fridges and Chinese air conditioners. Material is pouring through the Egyptian tunnels.
Not a word of this. Not a word..
Not to mention Roots Club
Just thought I’d share this, from Robin Shepherd’s site: It’s about
“a prominent activist aboard one of the ships. “
a Greek university named professor Vangelis Pissias.
Professor Pissias? You couldn’t make it up. Well you could, but who would believe you.
I think someone is taking the Pissias !
The National Review Online has a very satisfying truth piece on the shills for the terrorists in the disgusting Palestinian entity…
Fancy Restaurants and Olympic-Size Swim Pools: What The Media Won’t Report About Gaza
In recent days, the international media, particularly in Europe and the Mideast, has been full of stories about “activist boats sailing to Gaza carrying desperately-needed humanitarian aid and building materials.”
The BBC World Service even led its world news broadcasts with this story at one point over the weekend. (The BBC yesterday boasted that its global news audience has now risen to 220 million persons a week, making it by far the biggest news broadcaster in the world.)
Indeed the BBC and other prominent Western media regularly lead their viewers and readers astray with accounts of a non-existent “mass humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.
What they won’t tell you about are the fancy new restaurants and swimming pools of Gaza, or about the windsurfing competitions on Gaza beaches, or the Strip’s crowded shops and markets. Many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live a middle-class (and in some cases an upper-class) lifestyle that Western journalists refuse to report on because it doesn’t fit with the simplistic story they were sent to write.
Here, courtesy of the Palestinian Ma’an news agency, is a report on Gaza’s new Olympic-size swimming pool. (Most Israeli towns don’t have Olympic-size swimming pools. One wonders how an area that claims to be starved of water and building materials and depends on humanitarian aid builds an Olympic-size swimming pool and creates a luxury lifestyle for some while others are forced to live in abject poverty as political pawn refugees.)
Read the rest @
http://www.nationalreview.com/media-blog/56010/fancy-restaurants-and-olympic-size-swim-pools-what-media-won-t-report-about-gaza/to
If a tree falls in the forest and no one sees it has it really fallen? If a tree falls and is reported in the MSM has it become an important story?
West Bank rabbi bans women from local election
As far as I can find out Elon Moreh has a population of 200 families. What makes this story important?
Does anyone know of any muslim country where a woman could become village “headwoman” ? Big story for the BBC, surely ?