We get bombarded with casualty figures from Gaza by the BBC in every other sentence it seems…initially their preferred source was ‘Palestinian medics’, then the ‘Health department’ in Gaza’, and now the one they opt for is figures given by the UN.

But you might ask, where does the UN get its figures?….from Palestinians, as BBC Watch details:

Documenting the BBC contribution to political warfare against Israel

Readers no doubt recognize the names of the two highlighted NGOs above – Al Mezan and PCHR. They are two of the “primary sources” upon which UN OCHA recently told BBC Watch it relies for casualty figures in the Gaza Strip.  Describing them as “United Nations” figures, the BBC in turn quotes and promotes those UN OCHA statistics without any independent verification of its own and fails to inform audiences that they are sourced from political NGOs.

The fact that the BBC is providing publicity, promotion and amplification for political NGOs engaged in anti-Israel campaigning through ‘lawfare’ to influence public opinion is one which is completely incompatible with its commitment – and obligation – to impartial reporting.

The same UN which yesterday had to admit Hamas had used its facilities to hide missiles:

Agency Demands Full Respect for the Sanctity of Its Premises in Gaza

Something the BBC barely mentioned in its reports…even after the discovery they were using this less than informative description:

“Israel accuses Hamas of hiding its military infrastructure within the civilian population.”

UNRWA is in essence a UN provided political advocate for Palestinians demanding the ‘right of return’ for them…and hence the destruction of Israel…as admitted by a UN official on the BBC:

Who We Are

The United Nations General Assembly adopts resolution 194 (III), resolving that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest

UNRWA deals specifically with Palestine refugees in its five areas of operation in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Its role encompasses assistance, protection and global advocacy for Palestine refugees.

Despite that being on their website apparently any such ‘right’ was removed in 1965:

The right of return, Prosor reiterated, would “flood Israel with millions of refugees, and drown the Jewish state by sheer numbers.”

Right of return, he said, is actually a euphemism for the destruction of Israel.

UNRWA is responsible for helping fuel this “fiction” of the right of return to Palestinian children through their textbooks and schools.

“It’s worth noting that their mandate to resettle refugees was removed in 1965,” Prosor said. “They have perpetuated the problem instead of solving it.”

The Palestinians themselves have stated:

For most Palestinians the right of return for the up to six million
      refugees who are ancestors of those who made the exodus from Palestine
      that followed the creation of Israel in 1948 is an absolute.

“Israel wants the Palestinians to admit Palestine is the home of the Jews.
      It wants us to give up on the right of return,” says Fadel Taha.
      “Palestine is for us and for our grandchildren and can only be liberated
      by resistance. Oslo and Madrid [peace conferences] brought only shame. We
      don’t believe in negotiations.” says Abu Ahmad Fadel Taha, the
      leader of Hamas in Ain al-Hilweh.

Tom Gross reminds us of the close relationship between UNRWA spokesman, Chris Gunness, and the BBC, especially the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen:

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness is a British citizen, who previously worked for 23 years as a foreign correspondent and in senior editorial positions at the BBC and has a decades-long record of bias against Israel. Gunness is close friends with the BBC’s notoriously anti-Israel “chief Middle East correspondent” Jeremy Bowen.

I revealed Gunness’ close friendship with Bowen in a dispatch in 2009, here.

Nor is the BBC finding space in its attacks on Israel this hour, to mention that Israel thwarted a major terror attack this morning involving 13 Hamas gunmen who infiltrated into Israel by underground tunnel from Gaza.

From 2009:

REVEALED: UNRWA SPOKESMAN WHO LIED ABOUT ISRAEL PREVIOUSLY WORKED AT THE BBC WITH JEREMY BOWEN

I have previously outlined on this website the concoctions of the well-funded UN body UNRWA which have resulted in defamations of Israel and physical attacks on Jews in many different countries around the world.

For example, UNRWA has now admitted that their claim that Israel shelled a school in Gaza in January and killed 32 Palestinian civilians is completely false. The shell in question, it turns out, was in response to Palestinian mortar fire at civilians in Israel and killed nine Palestinian adults, none of whom were in the school. Seven of those killed were armed operatives and two were civilians.

The sensational and false claims of UNRWA led to headlines around the world such as “UN accuses Israel of herding 110 Palestinians into a house then shelling it, leaving 30 dead” (London Daily Mail Online UK, Jan 9 2009 11:59AM GMT).

The false reports led to anti-Israel riots and attacks on Jews in all six continents of the world.

A JOINT WAR CRIMES ALLEGATION BY UNRWA AND THE BBC

Now, it turns out that Chris Gunness, the UNWRA spokesman who went on several different international TV networks in January to accuse Israel of “war crimes” on account of the supposed school incident, is in fact a former BBC journalist and a close colleague of the BBC’s notoriously anti-Israel Chief Jerusalem Correspondent Jeremy Bowen.

In a diary article which Jeremy Bowen posted on BBC online, he states:

“I just broke off writing for a couple of minutes to take a call from Chris Gunness, who is the spokesman for Unrwa, the UN agency that looks after Palestinian refugees.

“He was ringing to say that Unrwa wanted an investigation into whether Israel has committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Civilians are protected by the laws of war.

“I have known Chris for years, as he used to be a BBC foreign correspondent. He wanted to make sure that we knew he was using the phrase for the first time. He said that the attack this morning on a UN school in Gaza looked as if it was a war crime.”

Tom Gross continues:

In three occasions in the past when I have criticized the BBC, the BBC online editors have then subtly changed their website so as to delete the part I criticized without letting readers know it had ever been there in the first place.

For the record, at the end of this dispatch, I attach Jeremy Bowen’s full diary entry (in which he makes the remarks above), together with two biographies of Chris Gunness. Gunness worked for the BBC for 23 years in senior editorial positions in both television and radio.

So it turns out that the UNWRA spokesman condemning Israel for “war crimes” that in fact never happened, is a former BBC World Service correspondent and producer who is a close friend of the current BBC Chief Middle East Correspondent who helped spread these allegations. Can it be that the false claims about Israel coming from two august institutions, the BBC and UNWRA, are in the hands of two friends who might just have a world view not sympathetic to Israel?

The BBC World Service and UNRWA are both funded by the British government. UNRWA receives huge amounts of money from many other countries too. Earlier this month, the Obama administration announced it would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the considerable funds it has already supplied UNRWA, an organization accused of allowing the promotion of suicide bombing and martyrdom to be taught at the schools it pays for and administers.

Have a read of this item from the BBC on ex-Gitmo detainee Moazzam Begg. Note how it finishes by letting us know that Moazzam “has never previously been charged with an offence.” Beggs is one of their poster boys. I recall doing a BBC interview with him some years ago and he was afforded the kid gloves treatment even as I was attacked. You can bet your bottom dollar the BBC will be in tears should he be convicted of these alleged crimes of terror.

Off into the wide blue yonder … and do remember not to stay out in the sun too long. Detail the bias here!

Anyone else catch the second episode of “Too much Immigration” featuring Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford “exploring the impact of immigration in the UK by bringing both sides of the debate together, pairing Brits opposed to immigration with immigrants.” on BBC 1 last night? It ended with the several cynical Brits all converting to the idea that immigration is a good thing for the UK. Even Mohammad, a Somali man living here with 7 children, on benefits, and who refused to enter a Sikh temple and help out handing out food to the vulnerable was seen as a top chap. Pure propaganda from the BBC, using the populism of the hosts to placate the concerned.

And so a five hour ceasefire is agreed between Israel and Gaza. The BBC breathlessly informs is this will provide the people of Gaza with at least a little respite. As for what it does for the Jews? Well. F*** them seems to be the BBC editorial line. What a loathsome broadcaster.

The BBC reports that a British computer expert who admitted supporting terrorism through the internet has been sentenced in a US court to 12-and-a-half years in prison. Babar Ahmad, of Tooting, south London, had admitted conspiracy and providing material to support the Taliban. Yet on the Today programme this morning, again in the 6.30-7am slot, we had a BBC correspondent giving us a VERY sympathetic piece on Ahmad. He was allowed to tell us how distraught he himself felt after the 9/11 attacks (yeah, right) and how he did not believe that Jihad meant killing innocent people. The impression was left that the bad Americans had jailed another “innocent Brit” in the form of jihad crazy Babar from good old London town.

Hamas must be so pleased that they have embedded Jeremy Al Bowen and Lyce Doucet in the BBC. The latter’s venom towards Israel was visceral on the Today programme this morning  – just after 6.30am. She trotted out what Israel said with regard to the accidental killing of the 4 young boys on the beach in Gaza and then immediately cast doubt on the veracity of it herself. I appreciate that Israel gets VERY little sympathy amongst the MSM here in the UK (The Daily Mail being an arch offender at the moment) BUT the BBC pretends it is a trusted and neutral source of news when in fact it could not bend over any further to propagandise FOR Hamas.

Jonathan Freedland, who just a few minutes earlier Mishal Husain told us worked for the Guardian and the Jewish Chronicle but didn’t mention the BBC, pops up, yet again, on the BBC:

The Long View

Jonathan Freedland examines the current anxieties surrounding the teaching of history through the prism of history textbooks from around a century ago with his guests in front of an audience at the Chalke Valley History Festival.

What is the balance to be struck between dry facts and flamboyant descriptions? Should British history imbue children with a sense of patriotism and chronology?

This turned out to be just another excuse to deride Britain, Empire and all that….

Apparently British history is not something to be proud of…such abhorrent behaviour…how do you teach such history when there is so much revulsion towards Britain’s past?….for example Britain looted, oppressed and impoverished India and no Indian can talk positively about Britain because of that legacy.

Or so we are told by William Dalrymple.  William Dalrymple who is pro-Muslim, pro-‘native’, anti-British.

Why would the BBC choose him as their impartial voice of history and reasoned debate?

The other guest speakers were in a similar vein, the whole programme being, as said, a vehicle to rewrite history and to bash Britain.

Janet Daley suggests that such self-loathing by British intellectuals (Orwell too denounced such an attutude) allows others to provide a different narrative…and when the BBC is also promoting an anti-Israel, pro-Hamas terror narrative who can doubt she isn’t right?

British guilt over jihadis is for dummies

In order to persuade young Muslims that their allegiance belongs here, this country will have to question its own casual self-loathing

If we expect law-abiding, loyal Muslims to handle this problem, we are going to have to give them a lot more help. The parents and the mosques and the communities can condemn as much as they like – and to their credit they have done a great deal of that over recent months. But these are displaced people themselves who need support in order to understand the values of British culture. In order to persuade their sons (and some of their daughters too) that their allegiance belongs to this country, Britain will have to question its own casual self-loathing. And the West will need to consider the larger consequences of its cynical isolationism.

Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, is demanding a ceasefire:

H/T  Is the BBC Biased

On the Today programe we had a strange lttle report that came from nowhere, (0835) bearing little relation to anything in the news ( the charity commission story is well out of date) and seemingly inserted at the instigation of the BBC’s climate activist Roger Harrabin in order to continue his personal campaign against Lord Lawson’s Global warming Policy Foundation.

It was purely a series of smears oozing out of Harrabin’s report…the GWPF had  a ‘simple message’…don’t bother stopping greenhouse gas emissions, it is a political organisation (knowing nothing about science) out to destabilise the climate debate and derisively questions climate scientists integrity.

Of course the likes of Harrabin think there is no debate to be had and to allow any scepticism at all is to ‘destabilise the debate’….which is no debate at all as we know from the BBC itself which, under pressure from Harrabin and his mates, has been persuaded and gulled into closing down all debate on the science….as for the scientist’s integrity…..

Harrabin does praise the GWPF….but only as a device to slip in the notion that the ‘science’ is now more robust than ever as scientists improve their work.

Harrabin tries to smear the GWPF and link it to the ‘Climategate’ emails:

Lawson, who launched the foundation in November 2009 to exploit the controversy surrounding the so-called ‘Climategate’ e-mails that were hacked from the University of East Anglia, has made vigorous efforts to dispute the science of climate change.

One reason Harrabin might not like the release of CRU emails…the Tyndall Centre being set up to promote the science of global warming:

Why Tyndall sponsored CMEP

Email 2496 explains why the Tyndall Centre funded the Harrabin/Smith seminars – the Real World seminars of the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme

Mike Hulme:

Did anyone hear Stott vs. Houghton on Today, radio 4 this morning?  Woeful stuff really.  This is one reason why Tyndall is sponsoring the  Cambridge Media/Environment Programme to starve this type of reporting at source.

The Tyndall Centre seeks to influence the debate and policies surrounding climate change:

Vision

To be an internationally recognised source of high quality and integrated climate-change research, and to exert a seminal influence on the design and achievability of the long-term strategic objectives of national and international climate policy.

Guess handing Harrabin a wodge of money for his own climate propaganda unit, the CMEP, was just part of that operation.

Bob Ward, climate propagandist, claims that the GWPF has no scientific credentials:

This was a complete mismatch. Professor Hoskins is a scientific expert, while Lord Lawson instead heads a campaign group which lobbies against the Government’s climate change policies.

However the GWPF has many scientific advisors and is set up on a similar basis to the Tyndall Centre…just pointing in a different direction.  Curious how Harrabin and Co can’t stomach the climate sceptic GWPF but not only work closely with the Tyndall Centre but took money from it as well.

Curiously the BBC has no problem with one of its journalists being funded by a clearly partisan organisation:

‘The BBC is aware of the funding arrangements for the Real World seminars. They have been considered against our editorial guidelines and raised no issues about impartiality for the BBC or its output.’

Then we get to the real source of this latest story…that same Bob Ward…that non-scientist whom the BBC has decided is allowed to comment on science whilst refusing to allow Lawson in to discuss the issues about climate…based on Ward’s campaign to get the BBC to do exactly that.

Now we learn that he has launched yet another campaign and another complaint against the GWPF…and just by coincidence Bob Ward’s old mate, Roger Harrabin, pops up to do a hatchet job on the GWPF.

Harrabin tells us that:

The Charity Commission investigated the Global Warming Policy Foundation following a complaint by Bob Ward, a science communicator who works with Lord Stern’s climate change team at the LSE.

He also complained that the foundation breaches charity rules by “continually disseminating inaccurate and misleading information”.

What he doesn’t tell us is that the Grantham Institute that Ward works for, is itself a highly politicised organisation that campaigns relentlessly on climate change….funded by money from Big Oil….and that Bob Ward isn’t a ‘science communicator’…that might indicate he knew something about the science…and he’s not a scientist, especially not a climate scientist, he is a propagandist who has also worked closely with the insurance industry in regard to risk and climate.

Just so you get a measure of the ‘man’ that is Bob Ward here’s his objective and intelligent take on the GWPF:   ‘a rather disparate band of mostly old, white and male contrarians.’

It’s a small world…one that hasn’t got any warmer in 17 years….and they still can’t explain that.

The GWPF is an educational organisation:

THE GLOBAL WARMING POLICY FOUNDATION IS AN EDUCATIONAL CHARITY. ITS MAIN PURPOSE IS TO ADVANCE THE PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF GLOBAL WARMING AND OF ITS POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES, AND ALSO OF THE MEASURES TAKEN OR PROPOSED TO BE TAKEN IN RESPONSE TO SUCH WARMING.

Harrabin seems pretty keen to let you know his thoughts on the subject with 4 tweets all in a row:

I’m not the only one to find the BBC’s obsession with the GWPF odd:

 BBC ‘Today’ Programme Obsesses Over Climate Sceptic Group

BBC Radio 4’s flagship ‘Today’ programme this morning dedicated a whole feature on the charitable status of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), despite management effectively ‘banning’ its head, Lord Lawson, from the airwaves.

The story focussed on the fact that the GWPF will relaunch in September with separate charitable and campaigning wings, following a ruling by the Charity Commission that it should not use charitable money for campaigning. A report also appeared on the BBC News website.

The decision to report the story has left the GWPF especially mystified as it was first reported in the press over two months ago.