Look familiar? That’s not Israel or the West Bank but Northern Ireland
What’s in a name?
Build a wall and it seems the most pressing problem is how to define what that wall is intended to do….what to name the construction…..all very difficult if you have an agenda whilst trying to appear not to have.
In Northern Ireland walls that keep the warring parties apart are ‘Peace Walls’…and they’re still being built….as this BBC report from 2013 reveals:
New ‘peace fence’ at St Matthew’s Church in east Belfast
and here explains the history of these ‘Peace walls’ as the BBC is happy to call them:
Peace walls were first erected in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s as a temporary measure to minimise violence between nationalist and unionist communities.
Four decades later many are still in place.
Belfast’s ‘peace walls’ treble after ceasefires
Funny that the BBC, so willing to recognise that the walls in NI are there to stop terrorism and violence, but can’t bring itself to admit the same motivations are what caused Israel to build its own ‘Peace Wall’.
The BBC’s advice to journalists on what to call the security barrier?
Barrier
BBC journalists should try to avoid using terminology favoured by one side or another in any dispute.
The BBC uses the term ‘barrier’, ‘separation barrier’ or ‘West Bank barrier’ as an acceptable generic description to avoid the political connotations of ‘security fence’ (preferred by the Israeli government) or ‘apartheid wall’ (preferred by the Palestinians).
The United Nations also uses the term ‘barrier’. It’s better to keep to this word unless you have sought the advice of the Middle East bureau.
Of course, a reporter standing in front of a concrete section of the barrier might choose to say ‘this wall’ or use a more precise description in the light of what he or she is looking at.
By using such non-descript terms the BBC is in fact using ‘terminology favoured by one side’…the Palestinian terrorist …because the bland, inoffensive, anodyne phrases strip the ‘Barrier’ of all meaning….and imposes another…the suggestion that this is about ‘separation’….feeding into the activists loaded ‘favoured terminology’ of Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state.
This is a deliberate attempt by the BBC to play down Palestinian violence…just as it does with Palestinian rockets…invariably described as ‘homemade’ and ‘inaccurate’…the intention being to suggest they are essentially harmless and not a justification for Israeli retaliation.
Stripping away the real reason for the construction of the security barrier, to stop Palestinians bombing Israelis or shooting at them (hence the concrete sections), is a political intervention by the BBC on behalf of the Palestinians.
The BBC is hiding the fact that Israel has been under attack for over 60 years and is using language favourable to Palestinian terrorists.
(Remind me…why did the BBC spend £300,000 hiding the Balen report? Does it say in effect ‘BBC News kills Jews‘? Just which journalists and management are being protected?)
Perhaps the BBC should take note of what a Palestinian called the ‘Separation Barrier’….
Mohammed Assaf, winner of the Arab Idol says:
‘There are many ways to make a difference in life, but my way is as an artist,” said Assaf, a graduate of Palestine University who has just become a UN youth ambassador. “I’ve always wanted to make my voice heard around the world, to sing about the occupation, about the security walls between communities, and about refugees. My first ambition is a cultural revolution through art. Palestinians don’t want war – they are tired of fighting.”
‘Security Wall’….So called because it provides security to Israelis from Palestinian terrorism.
Simple really…unless you have a political agenda and want to send a message.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-24856275
As far as I know, civilisations over the millenia have constructed walls, barriers to defend their civilisations. The Chinese and the Romans did much the same but the bigotted bbc seems to think that the Israelis must expose their naked breast to be pierced by the barbarians. islam is a band of brigands, regardless of how many are supposed to follow their belief system. The ersatz journalists at the bbc would do well to educate themselves in world history before they presume to pronounce on how countries might comport themselves.
As far as I am aware apartheid South Africa never built a wall.
Excellent point. I wonder if that old fart Roger Waters has ever protested about the Northern Ireland wall?
No, thought not.
It’s simple really, the BBC blames ‘hates’ Christians and Jews for all the World Global warming, both World Wars, (all) Global and Sectarian violence, predicted Global populations and opposing the will of Islam. The BBC likes peace walls. New order comedians can make in-house jokes behind BBC media walls knowing that they cannot ever know such grief, despair, envy and violence without (journalists) disclosing that such atrocities rarely get properly aired on the BBC. The BBC have built a ‘filter wall’ that suits their not-so-secret agenda. We are all prisoners.
The BBC would like to criticize Islam but they fear how Muslims will react.
This is quite sensible really, and admitted by the the previous DG of the BBC.
Now one would’nt want BBC talking heads severed from the body, would one?
Allow me to disembowel this rather ill-conceived argument.
a) You missed the quotes around ‘peace fence’.
b) Nobody uses an alternative name for the peace walls. They’ve always been known as that.
c) There isn’t different terms used by the different sides. They all refer to them as the ‘peace walls’.
d) The BBC guide on langiage is evidence of a committment to impartiality.
e) The ‘homemade’ rockets are ‘homemade’. Homemade doesn’t suggest harmless. It might suggest inaccurate. But that can mean random. A homemade rocket could be less harmless than a military grade one because it isn’t manufactured to a standard.
F) The BBC has given a reason why the Balen report wasn’t published. The Information Commissioner and every court in the land concurred. You have no more evidence the real reason was because the report found that ‘BBC News kills Jews‘? than there is that it found that ‘‘BBC News kills Palestinians’. No report on the BBC’s coverage has ever found this. (Outside of Biased BBC of course.)
G) You would happily dismiss any BBC commissioned and conducted report purely on the basis that it was the BBC conducting it. Not so Balen. Why?
Because the Balen report is secret. What are the bbc scared of ?
Whats your problem, do you miss your guilty pleasures of watching the scenes of carnage of blown up buses and pizza parlours. You used to get off on that ?
Those damn Israeli’s , Zionist’s , Jews spoiling your pleasure. Call the fence what you like, it keeps the savages at bay.
Area 51 is secret too. Hence the speculation about its content.
I have no idea what gave you the impression that I support NI terrorism, or have any problem with Jews, Zionists or Israelis. Maybe you have some issues.
The BBC (as anyone who has tried to get an answer to a question about BBC content knows) hides behind the F.O.I. exemption “held for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature”. That effectively covers all output.
Once, I asked what legal advice was given for a particular story where the BBC guidelines insist that legal advice be taken before proceeding (the interview of Maoist fighters considered to be terrorists in India). Not only did the BBC refuse to answer whether the same rules apply to foreign terrorists/criminals as they do to the domestic variety but they refused to answer whether legal advice was asked for. Although the BBC happily uses the F.O.I act for their purposes they interpret it extremely broadly when it applies to their own production.
That, and that alone, was the ‘reason’ the BBC gave for not releasing Balen.
I personally doubt that the Balen Report is damning to the BBC. It was written by a long-time BBC employee who surely knew a cover-up was required. IMHO the BBC is determined that the fee payers/ taxpayers have no insight, at all, into the workings of the organisation they finance. Transparency is for someone else, not the BBC.
Releasing Balen, even if innocuous, would have opened the gates to investigation of all BBC production. Aunty couldn’t allow that.
The how could yu explain all the information that is released under FOI by the BBC? Seems to me tha the act is so poorly understood that some just think all questions must be answered. They don’t.
How did yu get on with your appeal?
I take it English is not your first language?
The BBC will give answers on things like how many teaspoons are in use in the Salford cafeteria. They will give answers on news, art, literature when a Dorothy Dixer arrives. The problem is a question that they suspect might embarass them or be precedent for an embarassing question
Sometimes quite innocent things come up from a question, not so much an exemption as incompetence. I asked for a list of countries that were featured in Middle East business report. Failing that a list of programme titles from which I would probably work out the countries. The answer (not F.O.I) was that such a list does not exist. Is that even conceivable?