If you tuned in to the Today programme at 08:41 today you would have had a fascinating insight into the evolution of the anti-Israel movement as supported by the BBC. Biased BBC’s Alan carefully notes..
You may be surprised as they were talking about Sudan….but if you listen you might think they were talking about Israel and the Palestinians. There has been a long civil war in Sudan with over 2 million dead and it finally resulted in the creation of South Sudan which split off from its northern Islamic neighbour recently.
South Sudan is mostly Christian.
The report started off with Mike Thomson giving us the run down on events in the region….though in a somewhat one sided manner. Thomson failed to mention some important facts….that Sudan had forced the closure of South Sudan’s oil pipelines, was bombing her oil fields and was using the Heglig region to launch attacks against South Sudan.
Thomson told us that Sudan’s President made a speech calling for the liberation of certain areas from the ‘insects and vermin’ of South Sudan and that the only language they understood was that of bullets and bombs.
Now where have we heard such language before, could it be from Hamas and Fatah?
Thomson then tells us that the South Sudanese president issued these ‘chilling words’….’the government of Khartoum has declared war against the Republic of South Sudan.’
Why would Thomson characterise these words as ‘chilling’….are they not fact? Is he blaming the South for the violence perpetrated upon it?
The report then switches back to the studio with Humphrys interviewing Baroness Cox who has just been to Sudan. Humphrys opens by saying ‘in proportioning blame you are more sympathetic to the North than to South Sudan.’
Baroness Cox soon puts him right telling him ‘Not at all’ before going on to explain at length what she calls the ‘barbarous policies’ of the North. She tells us that the area of Heglig was used as a base for attacks against South Sudan and that the South were therefore justified in taking action against it.
She states there is no moral equivalence between the two states as Humphrys tries to blame the South for the violence…she says the North is the major perpetrator of violence.
Humphrys asks ‘has the creation of the South made things better or worse?’…forgetting there has already been a war that killed 2 million. Cox says the South desperately needed independence.
She states that Khartoum is running a racist policy, wanting to turn the North into a United Islamic Arabic state and expelling anyone with relations in the South…it is carrying out ethnic cleansing.
The whole charade seemed set on blaming the South for all the violence and excusing the North’s actions. You can see the genesis of the anti-Israel feeling at the BBC in Humphrys approach…asking is the creation of South Sudan a problem?, missing out important reasons that explain the South’s actions as well as the inversion of truth when Thomson quotes the North’s president calling for the extermination of the South but says the South’s President’s own words were ‘chilling’….despite just being a mere statement of fact.
All this and more you can see in the reporting of the Israel/Palestine conflict where one side is the villain and the other the blameless victim of Jewish aggression….the attempt to make some moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians whilst all the time not reporting Palestinian violence nor their real beliefs about the future of Israel’s existence….that is they aim to wipe it out.
Of course the North is Muslim….which could go a long way to explaining the BBC’s attitude.