A reader has asked me to draw your attention to something that the BBC is unlikely to explain.
A Qassam rocket has landed perilously close to a nursery school in a Kibbutz in the Hof Ashkelon area north of Gaza Strip, injuring a girl and an adult.
Squabbles amongst the leadership of the BBC’s favourite terrorist organisation have led to a new wave of provocative acts against Israel. I refer to escalating missile, mortar and raiding attacks, and what DEBKAfile calls “murderous kidnapping operations inside Israel”.
That, of course, was the widely reported incident in which an American woman was murdered and her companion was injured. Incidentally, on a previous thread, I commented:
“On BBC News 24, the anchor woman was interviewing the Jerusalem correspondent. (I think it was Jon Donnison) She kept on asking if he would agree that the woman’s injuries were surprisingly trivial under the circumstances. I have no idea what she was getting at. Surely she wasn’t implying that the victim was exaggerating, or hiding something?
A most peculiar line of questioning I thought.”
Having read the report on DEBKAfile, which describes the incident as a botched attempted at a kidnapping, I think I see what she was getting at after all. Of a policy eerily reminiscent of the way our own police play down certain sensitive issues, I quote: “Israeli police officers spoke vaguely about exploring different paths of inquiry and cast implicit aspersions on her testimony.”
Casting implicit aspersions. That’s what the BBC did too, but why? Does Jon Donnison know more than he’s letting on, or what? Where’s Julian Assange when you need him.
According to DEBKAfile, Israelis are acutely aware of, and constrained by, the international outcry – “disproportionate force!” This now affects their response to provocation. At one end of the scale Israeli police play down the severity of incidents. At the other, it was these concerns that led to a policy of deliberately sending their precious soldiers into a war zone on foot rather than striking from the air, something that Col. Kemp pointed out repeatedly after Operation Cast Lead.
From DEBKAfile, another example:
“Monday, Dec. 20, saw not only a 10-mortar barrage from the Gaza Strip, but three Palestinians armed with long knives trying to assault an Israeli soldier at Givat Zeev. They fled when he cocked his sidearm.
The soldier took care not to shoot and injure any of his assailants – and so bring Israeli anti-terrorist authorities a valuable asset for interrogation – because he was afraid of sharing the fate faced by some of his comrades – trial by the military prosecutor and the media for responding with “disproportionate force.”
However, take a look at how the BBC reports this escalation of “tensions”. In an article by Jon Donnison headed “Israeli air strike on Gaza as tensions rise” he concentrates on Israel’s retaliation, and plays down the incidents that provoked it. For example:
“The rockets fired by Palestinian militant groups into Israel rarely cause injury or damage, but they do cause widespread fear.”
The rockets certainly cause widespread fear, but they do cause injury and damage, and I’m sure the militant groups would be delighted if they caused more. They rarely do only because the Israelis have taken the trouble to protect people. The kindergarten is a bomb shelter.
“They are not fired by Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza, but by smaller militant groups. Nevertheless Israel says Hamas is responsible because it controls the territory.”
“Israel says?” I think most people would say that Hamas does bear responsibility, unless they were trying to defend Hamas. And why “nevertheless?” Is Jon Donnison saying that he doesn’t think Hamas is responsible? By Jove, I think he is!
“The Israeli military says the air strikes were in retaliation for the firing of 13 rockets and mortars at Israel this week.
Israel Radio says the rocket fired by Gaza militants on Tuesday landed near a nursery school. No serious injuries were reported.”
No serious injuries, so that’s okay then.
The article concludes with the return, after a short absence from every single Israel-related BBC web article, of the death toll from Operation Cast Lead, and another statistical comparison of “Palestinian” and Israeli deaths and injuries, courtesy of the UN.
I do realise that the intricacies of power struggles within the Hamas hierarchy are of little interest to the BBC audience, but surely turning the incident upside down in your impartial report is going a bit too far.
