In the case of Omar al-Mishrawi, as with the death of Muhammed al-Durrah, the BBC leapt to conclusions about who caused the death of a Palestinian child…blaming it on Israel without proof.
The BBC knows full well the dramatic power of such images and the effect of such lucid and emotive language in its reports upon perceptions of Israeli actions that people will have when Israel is painted in such a bad light…and yet they recklessly, deliberately, pack their reports with prejudicial images and words that are almost designed to incite anger against Israelis and foment further violence.
We don’t really need to know the contents of the Balen Report…we can see for ourselves that BBC reporting from the Middle East is so blatantly partisan, so dangerously anti-Israeli that it can only have the effect of encouraging ani-Semitism around the world.
The fact that the truth eventually comes out many months later is of no consequence…the damage has already been done. The BBC knows this but carries on regardless filling the airwaves with its partisan reports.
Here is the truth of what caused Omar al-Mishrawi’s death Via Elders of Zion:
UN clears Israel of charge it killed baby in Gaza
Jerusalem had been blamed for death of BBC correspondent’s son during mini-war, but otherwise critical report finds shrapnel from Hamas misfire responsible
The UN report suggests the three members of the Mishrawi family were killed by a rocket fired by Palestinians and not by an Israeli airstrike.
“On 14 November, a woman[actually the aunt of the child], her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in al-Zaytoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel,” the report states.
The three people killed were Jihad al-Mishrawi’s son Omar, his sister-in-law, Hiba Aadel Fadel al-Mishrawi, and his brother Ahmad.
Here’s a flavour of the BBC’s coverage:
The BBC’s Jon Donnison reported of Omar that “He only knew how to smile,” but he was now only “A hideous tiny corpse. Omar’s smiling face virtually burnt off, that fine hair appearing to be melted on to his scalp.”
“Most likely is that Omar died in one of the more than 20 bombings across Gaza that the Israeli military says made up its initial wave of attacks. Omar was not a terrorist.”
@BBCPaulAdams
Paul Adams Spare a thought for Omar, 11-month son of our BBC Arabic Service colleague in Gaza, killed in today’s Israeli air strike.
“BBC journalists tweeted that those killed in an Israeli airstrike included the sister-in-law and 11-month-old son of a BBC Arabic Service journalist, and that the journalist’s brother was seriously wounded,” Human Rights Watch stated in a November 15 press release.
From The Washington Post :
‘An Israeli round hit Misharawi’s four-room home in Gaza Wednesday, killing his son, according to BBC Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar, who arrived in Gaza earlier Thursday. Misharawi’s sister-in-law was also killed, and his brother wounded. Misharawi told Danahar that, when the round landed, there was no fighting in his residential neighborhood.
“We’re all one team in Gaza,” Danahar told me, saying that Misharawi is a BBC video and photo editor. After spending a “few hours” with his grieving colleague, he wrote on Twitter, ”Questioned asked here is: if Israel can kill a man riding on a moving motorbike (as they did last month) how did Jihad’s son get killed.”’
On the Wednesday before last, soon after Gaza’s latest war erupted with Israel’s killing of Hamas’ military commander Ahmed al Jabari, Jihad burst out of the edit suite, screaming. He sprinted down the stairs, his face ripped with anguish. He’d just had a call from a friend to tell him the Israeli military had bombed his house and that his eleven month-old baby boy Omar was dead.
A 2006 BBC report into its coverage of the Israeli/Palestine conflict said this:
An independent report on the BBC’s coverage of events in the Middle East has concluded that the BBC consistently does not provide a full and fair account of the conflict but rather, in important respects presents an incomplete and misleading picture with little history or context of the conflict leading to bewilderment of the viewers.
I guess nothing much has changed in the way the BBC reports events from there.
Y’see,
All those harmless Hamas rockets fired at Israel DO kill people…take note BBC.
Now then, what is getting me, is how the father of this victim, and at 11 months old, he IS an innocent victim, lied, and twisted the truth for political means, or at the very least, did not disclose the truth about what happened.
Oh, I see, he’s Muslim, fighting the good fight against Israel, and all that, PLUS he is a BBC journalist…I guess it just goes with the territory.
This was his own son for gods sake.
it is literally astounding the lengths the bbc go to.
i have just heard a ahem “coded” 5live news? report over kidnappings/held against their will at a (say it quietly shh islamic) school in Lancaster.
yep! teenage girls locked up by their own taliban …
i mean teachers,
lots of hush hush, tread very carefully, and cultural sensitivity … WHAT IS THIS CRAP!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-21740704
apparently it is sex attacks too! you wouldn t know by listening to bbc radio news
Hiya, soz to go O/T but The Sun picked up Question Time story as an *exclusive* today > http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/4835346/Question-Time-girl-works-for-Labour.html , no hat-tips….
Yes…a good spot by you originally….and at least it’s out there!
Cheers for the original story from us.
We should be pressing for the creation of a neutral BBC ombudsman.
Most media are very slow to admit to mistakes. Can anyone remember the BBC voluntarily admitting to any such a mistake of fact on any subject? I don’t mean after the exhaustive Byzantine complaints procedure.
The absolutely last thing we should do is be pressing for an ombudsman, or any other kind of public sector quango!
Just take a look at the issues with the local government ombudsman if you want the evidence for this!
An Ex council chief exec is appointed by the Local Government Association to judge in their favour, and the poor people who believe that their is someone who they can turn to in the event of maladministration are in for a real shock. The LGO finds for next to no one, the success figures are less than 1% no wonder there is a campaign to have them abolished and nothing put in their place, as this is effectively what we have now.
An Ombudsman for the BBC would essentially be equally as bad a facade to protect the BBC enabling them to tell you that they were completely impartial because of the low number of complaints against them being upheld.
The last thing we want is an Ombudsman looking over any public body they should all be abolished.
Unless an obudsman has real power to effect change, or management is required to take their recommendations seriously, it’s pointless. Both the NY Times and the Washington Post, to name just the two biggest papers in the US, have had ombudsmen for years. At both papers they’ve admitted Left-wing bias on more than one occasion, but that just made the WaPo double down on it. Only in the last few weeks has the NY Times finally removed the kid gloves and made a gesture towards serious journalism in their coverage of the President.
In the UK the Ombudsmen have the power – although several public bodies have the right not to take any notice, on the spurious basis that an unelected official should not be able to over rule an elected body, even though it’s the unelected unaccountable apparachiks maladministering!
I suspect the USA being a more free country than the UK would not allow the editor or owner of the NY Times or Washington Post to select the Ombudsmen themselves from amongst their own staff as is the case in the UK.
The papers definitely choose their own ombudsmen, but it’s not from within their own ranks. That would be too obvious. But even so, they’re really there as a sop to complainers more than anything else. Not unlike the BBC airing the occasional complaint or allowing people to express their opinions in a comment feed. “There, we’ve listened, and others can see/hear the complaints. Job done.”
The papers themselves usually take about as much heed as the BBC does to independent inquiries. They either don’t accept the recommendations, or pay lip-service to them and nothing substantial changes.
I think people need to understand the twisted thinking of the left wing mind a little more.
The left wing fascist is not anti semitic per se, and will wreak physical and verbal violence on anyone he or she believes is. This is of course what the thinking is all about, depriving anyone else from thinking or expressing their beliefs.
The problem in their twisted thinking comes from ‘the Heirarchy of isms’ which places Pakistani Moslem men at the very top and other Moslem men not far short of them. Thus Jewish people although included in the heirarchy are trumped by the Muslims, who must be allowed to do exactly as they please and never ever criticised*. So the left wing fascist can support the views of the Nazis when it comes to killing Jews & Gays, because the Heirarchy of isms tells them not only that it’s OK, but that they are obliged to do so!
This comment was heard from a head teacher of a primary school canvassing on behalf of the Labour party in a by election.
I guess Omar’s dad will initiate a Jihad against Hamas now? Or not, maybe it is all part of the struggle…
http://honestreporting.com/gaza-child-death-israel-exonerated-by-un-media-ignores/
HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams adds:
“Yet again the reflexive anti-Israel attitude of the foreign media has led to false accusations against Israel. That the media is unwilling to correct the error or to hold Hamas publicly responsible is not only a slap in the face for Israel but also to the readers and viewers who are entitled to proper standards of accuracy from the media. Those media that published a falsehood should hold up their hands and print a retraction immediately.”
You can help force the media to print those retractions by sending your comments to outlets including: the BBC – http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints, the readers’ editors of the Washington Post – readers@washpost.com – and The Guardian – reader@guardian.co.uk, the Daily Telegraph – dtnews@telegraph.co.uk, and the Huffington Post – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/contact/.
Yes, weird how there are no tweets from Donnison or any of the rest of them. Actually, not so much weird as entirely predictable. If they mention it now, they get more complaints about being pro-Israel, which is more important to them than reporting fairly and impartially.
Owen Jones raised the fate of this child as a specific example of Israeli brutality during a QT at the time. Douglas Murray, in the Spectator, is now asking for an apology. Perhaps he should just plead that he was misled by the nation’s broadcaster.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/douglas-murray/2013/03/will-owen-jones-apologise/
“Shouty” is getting torn a new one on The Speccy as we speak…the dopey sod is actually responding (arrogantly, and without apology, it may be added) 🙂
In this case, I don’t blame Jones for the defense he gives there in the comments. After all, the little blot on the landscape was only going with what the BBC told him was true. It’s not his fault that the world’s most-trusted news organization got it wrong.
Note to Jones and fellow travelers:
Well worth a read:
http://bbcwatch.org/2013/03/11/a-reminder-of-the-chronology-of-the-bbcs-omar-masharawi-story/
“A reminder of the chronology of the BBC’s Omar Masharawi story”
[…]
“For clarity’s sake, it is worth revisiting the chronology of the spread of the story.”
[…]
“Within less than two weeks, the BBC had ensured that an unverified story based purely upon evidence-free speculations by its own journalists had made its way round the entire world.
The fact that a story which in no way met the standards of accuracy laid down in the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines managed to get past the BBC’s entire system of checks and balances including the Jerusalem Bureau editor, the Middle East Editor, the Head of News, the website Editor- together with no small number of producers along the way – indicates the existence of an organisational culture which clearly renders the BBC incapable of self-regulation.”
At the very beginning of the last Israeli attack on Gaza, Dennison commented on the Israelis bombarding a Hamas HQ despite the fact that it was only a few hundred yards form a school. It never seemed to occur to him to ask why it was so close to a school. Perhaps this story might help give him a clue ( and the Beeb might pass it on their viewers/listeners):
“Cops uncover ammunition in a school in Galilee”
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=306036
Finally, 5 days after the UN report the BBC produce an article on it:
UN disputes Gaza strike on BBC man’s house
I notice they now spell the name of the BBC Palestinian picture editor as Jehad, and not as previously – Jihad.
3 guesses why they might have done that. What’s next – Geehad?
Now, though, the United Nations says the house may have been hit by a Palestinian rocket that fell short. This is despite the fact that the Israeli military had reported no rockets being fired out of Gaza so soon after the start of the conflict.
It hasn’t dawned on the BBC yet that this rocket was also one that wasn’t fired ‘out of Gaza’ either.
But just in case the reader might be tempted not to vilify Israel they make sure they include:
The UN report concluded that at least 169 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks during the offensive.
It said more than 100 were civilians, including 33 children and 13 women. The report said six Israelis were killed by Palestinians attacks, including four civilians.
Most will recall the picture of the scene in the Gaza hospital during the conflict of the dead child held by the Egyptian minister and the Gaza head of Hamas, where that child too was later found to have died by another short fall Hamas rocket.
Strange that the similarity to the Mashrawi child incident didn’t cause Donnison to remind readers of it in the article.
Strange that is, for anybody not familiar with the BBC.
This certainly answered my issue, thank you!
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