Just Journalism accuses the BBC of downplaying Hezbollah’s history of violence. They cite two pointedly non committal BBC articles about Hezbollah, save the brief, hastily written afterthoughts.
‘The US and Israel view Hezbollah as a terrorist group.’ and: ‘Hezbollah’s military wing is proscribed in the UK as a terrorist organisation’
In case BBC viewers don’t know, Hezbollah is a genocidal Iran-backed Islamist terrorist organisation hell-bent on finishing off Israel for starters, and the rest of the western world for mains.
The ideology of Hezbollah has been summarised as Shi’i radicalism. Why the BBC wishes to play down such a threatening, terrible thing we can’t be sure, but the matter of intimidation looms in the background menacingly.
A B-BBC reader alerted me to this JPost article about recently declassified information concerning Hezbollah’s alarming rearmament campaign in south Lebanon.
The comments below the article unanimously feel that, in the eyes of the world, Israel is presumed guilty even before any event occurs, let alone a trial or a Goldstone-style report.
Echoing the successful strategy used by Hamas in Gaza, preparations in Lebanon, for the media war at least, take shape.
“Hizbullah has embedded its weapon caches, bunkers, command-and-control centers and missile stockpiles – and stationed its armed personnel – in and alongside hospitals, mosques, schools and homes.”
“Hizbullah and Hamas terrorists place themselves and their weapons in the heart of populated residential areas and launch rocket fire from there against Israel’s civilian population. When Israel is forced to come to the defense of its citizens, noncombatants on the enemy side, cynically placed in the line of fire by Hamas and Hizbullah, are unfortunately killed.”
The BBC knows that something of this sort is happening. Here’s an article from last April, painstakingly non judgmental and liberally sprinkled with quote marks, but it states that Hezbollah is arming with “improved” missiles, with Syrian and Iranian backing.
If the MSM plays this down, it paves the way for a repeat of the condemnation and outrage that cascaded down upon Israel from the BBC and media worldwide during Op. Cast Lead.
If, on the other hand, the BBC were to bring these latest developments to the attention of its audience, the situation would have to be looked at from a Western perspective by the British Broadcasting Corporation this time round.
“With the UN dominated by states that are both hypercritical of Israel and unwilling or unable to make moral distinctions between democracies and dictatorships, it is highly unlikely that any significant public acknowledgement of Hizbullah’s moral abuses will be forthcoming.”
“But the IDF is right to make the effort. Indeed, it needs to broaden its outreach, and ensure that this information is made available as widely as possible – to the media, no matter how unenthusiastic the reception, and in smaller briefings for key politicians and officials.”
If you’re waiting for it to make headlines on the BBC, don’t hold your breath.
The BBC is more interested in stories that cast Israel in the usual, questionable light; such as “Israel admits Gaza flotilla raid ‘mistakes’ “ and another boatload of humanitarian aid that Israel won’t allow to dock in Gaza. From Gaddafi, with love.
“Where South Lebanon is concerned, nobody can now say that they were not warned as to the nature of the looming confrontation”
Unfortunately, as it is left to such pro Hizbollah entities as the BBC, et al to re – report such articles (the beeboids in Jerusalem CAN NOT have missed this) the only conclusion an unbiased observer can carry away from this is that the BBC wants to bury this news item.
There are some very sinister motivations at work here.
I will forever remember during the last war with hezbollah and seeing the hysterical lebanese father parading his child in front of the rabid press pack and when the child didnt show the required angush and pain the doting dad grabbed a piece of loose flesh on the childs arm and twisted it savgely untill the kid cried. The sight of many infants with just a trickle of blood from the scalp being touted around as victims whn in fact the easy way to create a victim is to use a razor blade to cut the scalp, the blood flows copiously enough to create fake a victim of the IDF but heals very quickly.
I also saw the supposed victims of IDF bombs clearly showing signs of having been deceased for some time and stored in a hospital freezer and brought out to be paraded around.
This time the civilian population will be closely embedded into the hezbollah positions, women and children dead or soon to be dead will be the poster children for the new war.
The new buzzword of the day at BBC (Ivory) Towers – “may well”:
“Israel admits Gaza flotilla raid ‘mistakes’ “
The UN Human Rights Council may well launch its own study, though Israel does not trust this organisation and may well refuse to have anything to do with it. Pressure is on Israel to make its investigation credible.
Justice Turkel is seeking to give his inquiry real investigative teeth. Here he may well be backed by the Israeli courts. This though may still not satisfy the Turks who have nailed their colours to a fully-fledged international inquiry.
🙂
‘Send us your views. We may well read them out [various criteria first being met]’
Bio,
Pressure is on Israel to make its investigation credible.
BBC subtext:
Without pressure, the Israeli investigation would not be credible.
The bias is implacable.
To the average BBC reporter it is all a game played according to the unreal rules of the liberal world view -West bad everyone else good. They just don’t really take it seriously so anything that conflicts with their view ( the Hizbollah arsenal in Lebanon) will be ignored. I doubt they are intimidated more like deluded.
But the endless sniping at Israel and sympathy for those opposed to Israel does give those determind to destroy that country a feeling of justification and more dangerously a feeling of invincibility. I fear it will lead Syria for instance to overate it’s chances and attack along with Hizbollah. Both these “states” will not be fighting to survive but Israel will and the result will be a devastating defeat for Syria in particular. The Liberal media will bear some responsibilty for the deaths and destruction. Can you imagine the wailing from the BBC when Israeli tanks are on the outskirts of Damascus.
The endless demonisation of Israel might not have seemed such a good idea then.
You are right of course, the BBC will have blood on its hands because they did not expose the war plans of the axis when they could.
The BBC is playing its part in the build up to a conflict where the death toll could be huge, the cycle of appeasement never ends, the lessons of not standing up to warmongers and hate merchants are never learned and caught in the middle are ordinary people.
In the coming war the civilian population and the ‘military’ of hezbollah will be mixed together, there will be no distinction between fighters and women and children and civilians, hezbollah resupply units will wear the red cross/cressent and use ambulances to ferry troops and ammo.
Civilians will be used as sandbags/human shields based on the belief that every single person from mothers with babes to old gimmers desire to become martyrs. Cameras will be focused on dead civilians and if none are available then the hospital coolers will provide them to be paraded in front of a stooge western media again and again, in through the front straight to the loading dock and back round again!
The western collaborators will be only too keen to air hezbollah propaganda in full, the next war will see the media being used as never before. Israel is being set up for a war in which the civilian population will need to be killed in large numbers and should the IDF not oblige the hezbollah will oblige using the logic that every civilian wishes to be a dead martyr so it really matters not whether they are terminated by the IDF or hezbollah because the stooge media will report every death as the sole fault of the IDF who have turned into blood soaked baby killing psychos.
In the weeks leading upto the conflict the morgue freezers will be filled with civilian martyrs preferably young children actual victims of first cousin marriage but just waiting to be portrayed as victims of IDF wanton cruelty.
There is no maybe about the next war, its simply a question of when hezbollah have rearmed and how quickly hamas can get arms after the blockade is broken. You see hamas is the knife in the back when the attack comes form the north, its being planned and the tactics are obvious but the BBC will see nothing and hear nothing UNLESS its evidence of IDF ‘crimes’.
The indefatigable Israelinurse of CiFWatch has written more on this.
In 2006 during the Hezbollah war, rebranded by the media as Israel’s War on Lebanon, the British media concentrated on Israel’s conduct, treating its self defensive measures as acts of aggression, and casualties of a war instigated by Hezbollah were regarded as Israel’s crimes, in the usual manner.
Israelinurse happened to be on the receiving end and she describes the bit that the media overlooked.
Something she mentions in her article particularly highlights the way Israel alone is singled out for negative reporting.
“After all, the contravention of UN resolutions is a favourite subject for many a Guardianista but only, it seems, when Israel is supposedly doing the contravening.” (Just substitute BBC for Guardian)