The BBC’s initial report on Scarlett Johansson, Oxfam and Soda Stream was this:

Scarlett Johansson quits Oxfam role over SodaStream row

 

And it ended with this fine bit of journalism:

However, away from the factory, Reuters quoted one unnamed Palestinian employee as saying “there’s a lot of racism” at work.

“Most of the managers are Israeli, and West Bank employees feel they can’t ask for pay rises or more benefits because they can be fired and easily replaced,” he added.

 

Now however the BBC has got off its backside and actually done some work:

SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum on West Bank factory

The BBC’s Kevin Connolly spoke to the CEO of SodaStream, Daniel Birnbaum……where we are told that Palestinian workers receive exactly the same pay and benefits as Israeli workers….and in this report by Connolly on Today we can hear a Palestinian foreman at the factory telling us he is happy to work there….it’s an excellent place to work he says…they ‘give us good opportunities.’

 

So that’s a Palestinian ‘boss’, on equal pay and benefits, with opportunities, who has been promoted and is happy to work there.

 

Yeah….I can see why they’d like to close that factory down…the 500 Palestinian workers are suffering racism, intimidation, low wages and poor conditions.

 

What I can’t see is why the BBC would decide to report such negative comments without any proof whatsoever especially as the reporting of any issue from this region is highly sensitive.

 

The BBC censors any news that it believes will have a negative impact upon the image of Muslims in this country in the interests of ‘cohesion’ and yet is prepared to print what are no more than ‘Elders Of Zion’ type lies about an Israeli company regardless, or rather in full knowledge, of what the consequences are……a negative image of Israel, endorsement of Palestinian terror as ‘justified’ by Israeli ‘oppression’ and eventually the delegitimisation of Israel…and of course its eventual elimination as a state.

 

From BBC Watch:

At no point in this report is any attempt made to inform readers of the context of Oxfam’s record of politically motivated campaigning against Israel. Likewise, at no point is any attempt made to explain to audiences that Oxfam’s stance is the result of its alignment with the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) and that the aim of that movement is the dismantling of Israel as the Jewish state through a campaign of delegitimisation.

“With pressure imposed by the international community through a BDS campaign a la anti-Apartheid campaign which brought Apartheid South Africa to an end, we believe that Israel itself can be transformed into a secular democratic state after the return of 6 million Palestinian refugees who were ethnically cleansed in 1948, a state for ALL of its citizens…therefore, we think that one of the major tools of the struggle towards a secular democratic state is BDS.” Haider Eid, 2009

“So BDS does mean the end of the Jewish state…I view the BDS movement as a long-term project with radically transformative potential… the success of the BDS movement is tied directly to our success in humanizing Palestinians and discrediting Zionism as a legitimate way of regarding the world.” Ahmed Moor, 2010

 

 

 

Here is another recent example where unsubstantiated and charged rumour gets a good airing as ‘news’:

 

Israeli troops kill Palestinian in West Bank

We get a lurid report based mostly on Palestinian witnesses…….

 

Palestinian man has been shot dead by Israeli troops in the West Bank.

Palestinian medics identified him as Mohammed Mubarak, 22, a labourer from the Jalazun refugee camp near Ramallah.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said its soldiers had opened fire on a “terrorist” after he attacked an army post near the settlement of Ofra.

But Palestinian witnesses told the AFP news agency that Mubarak had not been armed, and had been harassed by the troops and made to remove his clothes.

A Palestinian Red Crescent spokesman said he was found with three bullet wounds in his back.

Palestinian Housing and Public Works Minister Maher Ghneim called for an investigation into the “cold-blooded killing”.

 

 

So the Palestinian ‘witnesses’ tell us that the man was stripped by the Israelis and then shot in the back…and the BBC is happy to report this sort of explosive material.

 

This is a photo of the ‘stripped’ man with gun: (via BBC Watch)

 

The BBC eventually gets around to giving a fuller version of the Israeli side….

The Israeli military insisted its soldiers felt “an imminent threat to their lives”, adding that a weapon and 12 bullet casings had been recovered.

Ohad Shoham, the soldier who says he shot Mubarak, told Israeli Army Radio the Palestinian had fired a gun.

He was the first Palestinian to have been killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank this year.

 

 

Here is the Palestinian’s gun…in another photo not provided by the BBC….

From the Jerusalem Post: 

IDF troops shot dead a Palestinian man who opened fire at an army post in the West Bank on Wednesday.

The man, named by Palestinians as Muhammad Mubarak, 21, from the Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah, fired a dozen rounds at the outpost northeast of Ramallah near Ofra before he was cut down by return fire by the troops, according to the IDF.

The army said that the man died at the scene, and that it did not know how many times he was hit.

 

Here are photos from Mubarak’s Facebook page:

 

Note weapon in photo 3rd from left on bottom row….same one/type as used by Mubarak.

Hand made only by Palestinians:

 

The BBC then add, as usual, the death toll for a chosen period…..apparently we are supposed to weigh up the deaths on both sides and any imbalance will indicate the level of Israel’s murderous oppression of Palestinians…..

 

Twenty-seven Palestinians were killed in 2013, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, three times as many as in 2012.

In the same period, the group said nine Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were killed by Israeli forces, while Palestinians killed three Israeli civilians and three Israeli security forces personnel in Israel and the West Bank.

 

What’s missing is just how many Palestinians have been killed by other Palestinians in the course of their internal ‘political’ tangles….never mind the Syrian occupation of Lebanon for nearly 30 years…ironically to control the Palestinian terror groups hiding there…..doesn’t get much coverage unlike Israel’s invasion of Lebanon for the same purpose in 1982.

 

Here’s just one example:

In the period around 2007, the Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas waged a violent struggle, primarily in the Gaza Strip. The fighting peaked in June 2007, when Hamas seized control of the Strip. In 2008, the violence abated but did not cease. Throughout the struggle, human rights violations committed by Palestinians against Palestinians increased, both in number and severity.

In 2007, at least 353 Palestinians were killed, 349 of them in the Strip, and thousands were injured, in the fighting between the factions. B’Tselem’s figures indicate that at least 86 of the dead, 23 of them children, were passersby and were killed during street fighting or from gunfire during demonstrations.

 

The other obvious ‘missing’ is just who is attacking who…..the Jews in Israel having been under attack from Muslims for over 60 years now.