Depicting Gaza and the West Bank as if they were English suburbs blighted by ‘neighbours from hell’ typifies a huge flaw in the BBC’s biased coverage of the I/P conflict.
Jon Donnison is one of the worst offenders. After reading yesterday’s report on Gaza (blogged yesterday by David) one could take away the impression that the blockade was merely a hardship that Israel imposed at random upon innocent people just because it could. For some inexplicable reason a terrible misfortune seems to have befallen the Palestinians. Neither they themselves nor the BBC appear to be aware of why they are suffering this unfair siege. Bad karma? Behaving badly in previous incarnations? Or just the pure evil of the Zionists.
When he mentions that Israel has eased the blockade, he can’t resist qualifying it, and reminding us, “exports are still banned and most people are not allowed to leave the territory.” just in case we started to stop hating Israel.
Stranded in the middle of a list of hardships is a reference to “near-daily rocket and mortar attacks last week,” which omits to explain where or by whom; then there is this throwaway remark: “Israel and neighbouring Egypt shut down Gaza’s border crossings when an Israeli soldier was captured in June 2006. “
An Israeli soldier “was captured?” Oh, what a silly accident that seems to have been! How careless, to get yourself captured! But who captured him? Jon Donnison doesn’t say. What has happened to him since? Jon Donnison doesn’t think we’d be interested. Instead he wants us to know some UN-sponsored statistics about the damage and destruction caused by the blockade, and for good measure throws in some extra bits about Operation Cast Lead.
An explanation of sorts comes at the end. By way of providing what the BBC is so famous for – ‘balance,’ here is Israel’s side:
”Israel says the restrictions are necessary to pressure militants to stop firing rockets from the territory.”
Puhlease don’t exaggerate Jon.
It’s not good enough to present Palestinian society as though it were downtown Slough in an economic downturn. Palestinian standards need to be understood before anyone can begin to comprehend what Israel is dealing with. If we’re to get the full picture we must be told more. Apart from describing the antics of the Islamist extremists that run Gaza, what about the PA reaffirming the death penalty for Palestinians who sell land to Israelis. Will there ever be the death penalty for people in the UK who sell property to neighbours from hell?
The Israeli soldier who “was captured” has a name that the BBC are very loath to mention – Gilad Shalit.
Of course by naming him we recognise him as being a human being, something that must go against the BBC Journalists’ Handbook as far as Israelis and Jews are concerned.
No mention either about the war crime and crime against humanity as set out in the Geneva convention of denying Gilad not even one visit by the Red Cross, or the war crime of using him in propaganda videos.
And talking about war crimes, where is the BBC report on phosphorous bombs fired from Gaza at civilians, not as in the case of the IDF’s use of white phosphorous to create a smoke screen, but with sole intention of terrorising, and where possible causing injury or death to those civilians.
Meanwhile, one would think the BBC, “the world’s largest news gathering organisation”, would be capable of finding people like this to talk to:
What Gazans think of Hamas
Well, exactly. The name Gilad Shalit is so well-kown by now that to call him a captured Israeli soldier does not only demonstrate the typical BBC distancing of itself from Israel, it’s also lousy journalism. Anyone reading that could be forgiven for thinking Donnison was talking about another, less well-known soldier.
Someone should tap this pathetic excuse for a journalist on the shoulder and tell him that it’s OK, enough time has gone by and he’s now allowed to mention Gilad Shalid by name without appearing – shock, horror – to be sympathetic towards the Israelis. Unfortunately there are no editors at the BBC with the basic journalistic ethics required to do that
And some of us actually pray for the release of Mr Shalit. some time soon, please God.
Then there’s this:
Fighting Hamas with cars
The BBC cannot tell us the facts about Gaza and Israel and the Palestinian situation because we would be exposed to the truth and that would shatter the carefully built myths about the conflict.
Years have been spent delegitamizing Israel in an ochestrated propaganda campaign, from the reason for the anti suicide bomber wall that has saved hundreds of lives to the truth about the Palestinian gangsters/warlord clans and their real motivations.
The truth would destroy the BBC narrative, it would destroy the perpetual victim Palestinians and it would stop the most important aid layer cake that has made a lot of people very rich.
The truth is that ever since the corrupt UN included islamist/third world nations in the upper reaches of the UN management bodies these new managers have brought a racist/kneejerk/nasty/hate filled/corrupt ideology to the new world government with whole sections of the UN run by scumbags unfit to run a kiosk.
This new ‘inclusive’ strategy has simply been a disaster bringing in gangsters and third world hatreds and given them an air of authority.
Ever since the UN expanded to be all inclusive, its reputation has taken a nose dive with tinpot dicatators and petty third world tyrants thieving and cheating and using the UN as a piggy bank and a hate pedestal. Sadly for us the UN once a great hope of first world civilisation has turned into a dirty grubby corrupt sleazy circus.
Now the BBC is a fully paid up member of the new UN world order, it does not see the irony of that mad jerkoff imadinnerjacket preaching peace and love to the UN while women are being tortured and killed in the most evil ways imaginable. It cannot see that including the worlds worst states in running the UN is not democratic and wonderful and will teach these scumbag states the wonderous nature of first world ways, NO folks all it achieves is the lowering of the UN into the third world cesspit politics that will destroy us all.
In fact the BBC is the mouthpiece of the new world government and the new world order, no wonder then that they cannot tell us the truth because if they did the UN reputation would be destroyed in short order.
Just an added thought, after the international drugs trade the most profitable criminal activity is the AID industry fraud, there are billions to be made by those rabble rousing gangsters who can turn out a rage mob, the opportunities to get rich are incredible, more Swiss accounts have been filled with stolen aid than by drugs profits.
If the BBC told the truth about the aid fraud then nobody would ever give any money to charity again.
The blogs are alive with these reports, quoting one of them:
“The Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported that Ambassador Abdullah Abdullah insisted that “the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations…are not a goal, but rather another stage in the Palestinian struggle … to isolate Israel, to tighten the noose on it, to threaten its legitimacy, and to present it as a rebellious, racist state.”
“Of course, Abdullah’s remarks were not reported by the mainstream media, because they were spoken and reported on in Arabic.”
Now, if only for our £3.5 billion we had an un-biased public service broadcaster with Arabic language skills….
Here’s a thought – do any of the bbc’s middle east reporters actually speak and understand Arabic?
Aleem Maqbool and Jeremy Bowen’s wife.
The BBC seem to always adopt the passive voice when referring to action taken by Palestinians against Israelis but the active when the other way around…
Re the ‘Property Law for Foreigners’, oddly I can find no mention of this piece of racially discriminatory legislation on the BBC. The BBC preferring instaed to give airtime to those who vilify the ‘apartheid state’ of Israel.
For the latest on poor ignored Gilad Shalit look at this http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-film-is-this-trailer-for.html
Two more interesting posts on Hamas and Gaza that the BBC will not be reporting coming on my site tomorrow.
The BBC is about to increase its attacks on Israel now that the UN has released yet another report condemning Israel. This time, some UN “fact-finding mission” is releasing a report saying that Israel violated international law when they went after that “peace” flotilla.
The BBC is asking for comments from the great unwashed, and I submitted the following (there seemed to be some server error so I don’t know if it actually got through – perhaps others may have better luck):
Why didn’t these UN people investigate whether or not Turkey’s backing of the flotilla violated international law? On one level, this was a case of one country with an officially peaceful relationship with Israel attempting to violate its territorial control and aid an organization dedicated to its destruction. Furthermore, why isn’t the UN looking into what Hamas is doing to the people of Gaza? Is Hamas totally innocent? Even the BBC is aware that the UN works closely with Hamas in running schools which use textbooks teaching children to hate Jews and wage war against them. Is the UN hiding something from the BBC?
Why isn’t the UN looking into that, and why isn’t the BBC asking that question? This all seems very one-sided.
Ah yes, the UN Human Rights Council consisting mainly of Arab countries and such guardians of Human Rights as Libya, Bahrein, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan…
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/membership.htm
You know, it’s funny, the BBC didn’t mention that at all. Curious.
The BBC shut down that comment function pretty fast. I guess they were bombarded with the usual screeds and got what they wanted.
Banned Speech: The UN Council That Created the Goldstone Report
The BBC Panorama programme “Death on the Med” was a welcome deviation from the BBC’s usual policy of bias against Israel, but it is clear that this was (for whatever reasons) an aberration. The way the BBC reports the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is nothing short of criminal. One can expect this type pf partisan distortion and bias from a useless left-wing rag like The Guardian but not from a supposed impartial public broadcaster like the BBC.
I recall that the BBC’s motto is, “Nation shall speak peace unto nation”. In the case of giving Israel peace, the BBC has failed miserably. Shame on the BBC.
The BBC has no shame.
BBC wilfully violates own charter in blatant display of bias over UN report slating Israel
I don’t believe I have ever heard the BBC offer even the mildest criticism of the UN. The BBC raises the UN to the level of a deity – which for the BBC it is, I guess:
*Top-heavy, unaccountable, huge government.
*Unlimited access to unearned money
*Corrupt to the gills
*Unable to be reformed
*Filled to the brim with appeasing leftie activists
So it’s par for the miserable course that the BBC would cheerfully accept any report that comes out of that foul organisation, especially an anti-Israel report.
After the flotilla there was such a huge fuss about Israel’s co-operation with the UN inquiry and the appointment of David Trimble and Ken Watkin as international observers. The BBC should have made it clear that this UN Human Rights inquiry was a different inquiry altogether, one which doesn’t appear to have consulted Israel at all.( You can download a pdf from the BBC website “report in full”)
The Human Rights judges responsible for this one are:
Chairman:
Judge Karl T. Hudson-Phillips, Q.C., retired Judge of the International Criminal Court and former Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago.
Sir Desmond de Silva, Q.C. of the United Kingdom, former Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Ms. Mary Shanthi Dairiam of Malaysia, founding member of the Board of Directors of the International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific and former member of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.
The report, which I haven’t had time to read fully includes :
“It was not generally contested that there was an interception by Israeli forces of a flotilla of ships and that the ships were carrying cargos of a humanitarian nature.”
I thought the Mavi Marmara was the one flotilla ship not carrying humanitarian aid, just ‘human rights activists’ and would-be Shaheeds.
“It is the view of the Mission that the Israeli forces should have re-evaluated their plans when it became obvious that putting their soldiers on board the ship may lead to civilian casualties.”
They’re saying that after the Zodiac boats were repelled with water hoses and pelted with anything else the activists could lay their hands on, the Israelis should have given in and gone away in case any civilians got hurt. This report is mad. Can these judges really be judges?
The other UN inquiry, which no doubt most listeners to the BBC will confuse with this one, will surely not accept at face value everything Turkey says, and is less likely to have such a one-sided outcome damning Israel.
Worth reading the ITIC report linked fom here in full:
New Turkish book on Mavi Marmara verifies IDF version
Specially the footnotes:
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/hamas_e131.htm
1 Numerous slingshots of different kinds had been brought on the ship. Also found were marbles, stones, and nuts and bolts prepared in advance for the confrontation.
2 The description of advance preparations for a violent confrontation with Israel matches the information in our possession. The preparations for fighting included the assignment of posts, preparation of weapons, setting up communications between the operatives, and establishing medical services for the operatives.
3 One hundred iron bars of different lengths were found on board the Mavi Marmara. They were made from the ship’s iron railing. Also found were 50 improvised clubs, as well as standard-issue clubs brought on the ship and hidden inside rolled-up blankets. Yildirim’s remark that the operatives do not even have “one pocket knife” is a blatant lie.
4 Şefik Dinç writes that, speaking at a press conference called on board the ship prior to that, Bulent Yildirim had said that “we will resist passively”.
5 Yildirim’s public statements, aimed at Western target audiences and human rights organizations that joined forces with IHH, are characterized by toned-down terminology, with such phrases as “humanitarian purposes” and “passive resistance”. Şefik Dinç is correct in pointing out that there is a considerable discrepancy between those statements and IHH’s actual behavior, as it was witnessed by Dinç.
6 Taking soldiers hostage in violent confrontations is not a new tactic of IHH. In January 2010, IHH operatives engaged in a violent confrontation with Egyptian security forces who refused to let them enter the Gaza Strip, during which hostages were taken by IHH operatives. Bulent Yildirim described the incident as follows: “…They [Egyptian security forces] detained seven of our members. We reacted to their attack. We took seven Egyptian soldiers captive. We released three soldiers who were injured. We kept four soldiers. We were willing to release them in exchange for the release of our people. After the first attack, the Egyptian soldiers surrounded us on sea and on land. We were under siege, [in a situation] where they could attack us again” (on5yirmi5.com, January 5, 2010; http://ihh.org.tr/12630, January 6, 2010).
7 According to our information, IHH operatives and their supporters fired live ammunition as soon as the first soldiers descended from the helicopter. One IDF soldier suffered a knee injury from a non-IDF weapon as soon as he came on board the ship. IDF forces were forced to return fire using live ammunition since they were attacked and their lives were clearly at risk.
8 According to our information, IHH operatives used three weapons taken from the Israelis against other IDF soldiers. It appears that two of them were thrown into the sea, as were one or two non-IDF weapons, at least one of which was used to fire on the commandos descending from the helicopter.
9 The IHH’s version that shots were fired from the helicopters at the Turkish operatives is not true. IDF soldiers on board the Mavi Marmara were forced to shoot specifically at the operatives who attacked them, when their lives were at risk. No shots were fired from the helicopter.
Bio,
Thanks for posting that. The BBC will report this book, of course, to show that not all Turks support their rotten government.