Let’s think…….
Hamburg/Dresden
D-Day
Nagasaki/Hiroshima
Vietnam
Afghanistan
Iraq
Guess we’d know what ‘you’d’ do.
The same as the Israelis when it comes to defeating terror and a merciless and ruthless enemy which seeks to eliminate you……’never again’ is the Israeli response…and who can blame them.
Pounce originally came up with these figures in the comments and I was reminded of them by Is the BBC biased?:
From their figures, and I haven’t looked at the source myself, it looks like the Palestinian casualties are 14% male under fighting age (up to 17), 18% women, 6% male over age (over 60) and the bulk being 61% of male fighting age…up to 60 years old.
So when the BBC reports ‘X’ number of Palestinians have been killed…just how many are in fact Hamas fighters or commanders?
The figures of course are changing as time goes on and more operations take place but the BBC’s blanket use of the simplistic and misleading description ‘Palestinians’ for casualties feeds into the Hamas narrative and is a highly emotive way of wording their reports…note how in contrast the BBC is very careful to emphasise how many Israeli casualties are ‘military’…
Twenty Israelis – 18 of them soldiers – have died, Israel says, as it seeks to end rocket fire on the country.
Over 500 Palestinians, mainly civilians, have been killed since the Israeli offensive began two weeks ago, Gaza’s health ministry says.
The BBC has absolutely no proof of a casualty’s status…it is relying, as it says, on the Palestinians own figures. Are they likely to be truthful? ‘Mainly civilians’.…at present that is pure propaganda but the BBC doesn’t seem to be too bothered about the truth at the moment.
Any civilian casualty is a terrible thing but the BBC’s pretence that nearly all casualties are civilian when they fail to differentiate between the status of the various victims makes the BBC part of Hamas’ ‘human shield’ ploy….a cynical charade that the BBC turns a blind eye to.
I don’t think there can be any doubt whose side the BBC takes in this war.
Judge for yourselves how much attention BBC journalists have paid to Hamas’ media guidance to its own supporters…whom, if you were of a cynical bent, might say included the BBC, or elements thereof:
Via Harry’s Place/Memri:
MEMRI provides some excerpts:
“Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.
“Begin [your reports of] news of resistance actions with the phrase ‘In response to the cruel Israeli attack,’ and conclude with the phrase ‘This many people have been martyred since Israel launched its aggression against Gaza.’ Be sure to always perpetuate the principle of ‘the role of the occupation is attack, and we in Palestine are fulfilling [the role of] the reaction.’
“Beware of spreading rumors from Israeli spokesmen, particularly those that harm the home front. Be wary regarding accepting the occupation’s version [of events]. You must always cast doubts on this [version], disprove it, and treat it as false.
“Avoid publishing pictures of rockets fired into Israel from [Gaza] city centers. This [would] provide a pretext for attacking residential areas in the Gaza Strip. Do not publish or share photos or video clips showing rocket launching sites or the movement of resistance [forces] in Gaza.
“To the administrators of news pages on Facebook: Do not publish close-ups of masked men with heavy weapons, so that your page will not be shut down [by Facebook] on the claim that you are inciting violence. In your coverage, be sure that you say: ‘The locally manufactured shells fired by the resistance are a natural response to the Israeli occupation that deliberately fires rockets against civilians in the West Bank and Gaza’…”
Additionally, the interior ministry prepared a series of suggestions specifically for Palestinian activists who speak to Westerners via social media. The ministry emphasizes that conversations with them should be conducted differently from conversations with other Arabs. It stated:
• “When speaking to the West, you must use political, rational, and persuasive discourse, and avoid emotional discourse aimed at begging for sympathy. There are elements with a conscience in the world; you must maintain contact with them and activate them for the benefit of Palestine. Their role is to shame the occupation and expose its violations.
• “Avoid entering into a political argument with a Westerner aimed at convincing him that the Holocaust is a lie and deceit; instead, equate it with Israel’s crimes against Palestinian civilians.
• “The narrative of life vs. the narrative of blood: [When speaking] to an Arab friend, start with the number of martyrs. [But when speaking] to a Western friend, start with the number of wounded and dead. Be sure to humanize the Palestinian suffering. Try to paint a picture of the suffering of the civilians in Gaza and the West Bank during the occupation’s operations and its bombings of cities and villages.
• “Do not publish photos of military commanders. Do not mention their names in public, and do not praise their achievements in conversations with foreign friends!”
It is surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, easy to tie in BBC reporting with the Hamas version of events:
‘Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine’
Rarely does the BBC provide the figures for actual civilian deaths preferring to say ‘X’ number of Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli attacks began.
‘This many people have been martyred since Israel launched its aggression against Gaza.’
The BBC always limits the casualties to those caused ‘since’ the Israeli counterattack on Gaza began….never mind this is is a 65 year old war.
‘You must always cast doubts on this [Israeli version], disprove it, and treat it as false.’
Well….how often have we heard the BBC interviewer challenge an Israeli spokesman’s explanations?
‘Try to paint a picture of the suffering of the civilians in Gaza and the West Bank during the occupation’s operations and its bombings of cities and villages.’
That’s just constant from the BBC.
‘In your coverage, be sure that you say: ‘The locally manufactured shells fired by the resistance are a natural response to the Israeli occupation that deliberately fires rockets against civilians in the West Bank and Gaza’…”
Oh yes..those famous ‘homemade contraptions’…inaccurate and harmless.
‘There are elements with a conscience in the world; you must maintain contact with them and activate them for the benefit of Palestine. Their role is to shame the occupation and expose its violations.’
The BBC…the world’s ‘conscience’…imposing its own moral values and judgements upon others….taking it upon themselves to ‘shame the occupation and expose its violations.’
Yep….reckon Hamas must be pretty pleased with the BBC’s reporting despite it being so pro-Israeli according to Greg Philo who would seem to be a firm favourite of some at the BBC (h/T Is the BBC biased?) such as Roger Bolton who lavishes praise upon him:
On Today on Tuesday he was also in challenging mode, alleging that the Beeb’s coverage of the conflict in Gaza was pro-Israel. Many Feedback listeners agree with him, and almost as many disagree.
It was refreshing to hear his views, and I look forward to the publication of his detailed analysis, and that of those who allege the opposite. I also hope voices like his will be heard more regularly. Broadcasters need to be challenged. That’s what Feedback is all about.
‘Now here’s a story for BBC Trending.’
Neither BBC Trending nor any other department has shown any interest whatsoever in the topic of the use of conventional and social media by Hamas for propaganda purposes – despite the fact that there are numerous recent examples.
That lack of interest appears to have caused the BBC to fail to notice that it has itself been co-opted to Hamas propaganda.
A picture circulated by Hamas purporting to show a teenager in Gaza killed by an Israeli airstrike is in fact a still image from the Hollywood horror film ‘Final Destination 4′, as can be seen in this video below.
Note the caption in Russian inserted by Hamas: it reads “BBC Israel kills Palestinian teens in Gaza”.
Evan Davis, the BBC’s economics goto guy, is in the Newsnight hotseat:
“Evan is an outstanding journalist,” said BBC director general Tony Hall. “I think he is an extraordinary, clever and intelligent interviewer. He has a wonderful presence on TV and I’ve got no doubt he’ll be a really great presenter of Newsnight,”
Wonder if he will get away with the giggling and smirking interviews on Newsnight as he did on the Today programme in which his sole aim seemed to be to make a fool of the politician, usually Tory, point scoring rather than a sensible interview.
Apparently no one will replace him on the Today prog, surplus to requirements:
His appointment solves a conundrum for the Today programme, which has been widely perceived to have had one too many presenters since Husain’s appointment last year, bringing the total number to six, along with John Humphrys, Justin Webb, James Naughtie and Sarah Montague.
The BBC said Today would continue with a rota of the remaining five presenters.
The BBC is losing some of its audience as well:
The news was revealed on the day the BBC’s annual report was published. It also stated that audiences spent 18.5 hours with the BBC each week.
That is an hour less than 2012/2013. The figure includes radio, TV and online use.
But 96% of UK adults still use the BBC each week.
When Premier League supremo Richard Scudamore found himself at the centre of a Media storm when the contents of some private emails were leaked by a disgruntled ex-employee the BBC was there joining in with the witch hunt, Victoria Derbyshire expressing her shock at the language used and especially the use of the word ‘gash’ to describe a woman.
The Guardian was at the front of the pack as well and here they explain why there was such a furore.…not just the words used but the hypocrisy of football organisations:
Were other factors at play in the affair becoming so toxic for Scudamore?
It is unavoidably true that many in football and the media saw a sharp contrast between the aggressive way the Premier League has criticised people in other organisations for similar situations and the tolerance shown to Scudamore.
Which brings us onto James Donaghy, a TV reviewer for the Guardian whom the Guardian obviously thinks is perfectly kosher…despite having read his ‘alternate’ material..which they must have done as they link to it…….
James has written for Arena, Vanity Fair Italia, House, Front and Project. His thoughts on television, boxing and betting can be found at http://aerialtelly.co.uk/
Now Donaghy has a perfectly respectable website for his work:
James has been writing freelance since 2006 for a variety of publications. He specialises in TV, music, movies, boxing, betting and all aspects of popular culture.
He also writes e-books for Amazon Kindle and runs things at the Aerial Telly blog.
But Donaghy also has an ‘underground’ site, ‘Aerial Telly’, where he expresses his views more forthrightly…it is the site the Guardian links to.
Donaghy, otherwise known as ‘Jamdog’, uses an interesting and very unGuardian-like turn of phrase on this site:
Ginger gash, Heebs, Durkas, ‘Tards, Arabian Shi’ites and Chocolate Benjamin are some of the the exotic characters highlighted by his reviews:
what Gemma from Sons of Anarchy would call “that ginger gash” Milner (Rose Leslie) the security skank
The pressure is on for Philip though because this Milner gash is a real fucking taskmaster.
Baby Arby looks and acts like a fucking tard
Finally we get another husbland and wife duo Filip Devogeleer and his wife/business partner Jessica Wang. Roomii Toys is their cuntpany
But who’s this handsome gentleman? It’s Ghanaian entrepreneur Benjamin Mougarbel, owner and face of Benjamin’s Hot Chocolate Ltd…..Chocolate Benjamin shuffles out potless. Sigh.
Nessa and Atika are captive in a Durka shitbox listening to the screams of tortured prisoners.
Later they both go to some function or other where a crazed Heeb throws a raspberry pudding on their table screaming “Samaria belongs to Israel!”
All of which brings us back to that earlier statement by the Guardian:
Were other factors at play in the affair becoming so toxic for Scudamore?
It is unavoidably true that many in football and the media saw a sharp contrast between the aggressive way the Premier League has criticised people in other organisations for similar situations and the tolerance shown to Scudamore.
Is there a sharp contrast between the way the Guardian and the BBC pillory people like Scudamore but seem to look the other way for their own like ‘Jamdog’? Or should that be ‘Jammydodger’ as he seems lucky to get away with it?
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:
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:
April – August 1948: More than 700,000 Palestine refugees are displaced as a result of the Arab-Israeli War.
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.
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:
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?
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.
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:
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:
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.
‘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:
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.
Which senior BBC journalist said this?:
‘We cannot get across the view that Palestinians are a displaced people who are fighting to overthrow, as they see it, a brutal military rule.’
Who are ‘the many’ senior BBC journalists who say that ‘They simply cannot get the Palestinian viewpoint acoss, the perspective they cannot say is that Israel is a brutal apartheid state.’
They cannot say that..because it isn’t true…however interesting to know that they want to say that….even more interesting to know which BBC journalists said such things…not hard to guess though. Wonder what the Balen Report says. Cannot be good can it? BBC News Kills Jews?
There have been protests about BBC coverage being pro-Israeli...the BBC news did not report those protests…however the Today programme, in the shape of Mishal Husain, did. (0839)
Who do they invite in to discuss this? An ardently pro-Palestinian Greg Philo and the fence sitting Jonathan Freedland who we are told works for the Guardian and the Jewish Chronicle. We weren’t told he also works for the BBC on a regular basis…which might have coloured and informed your view of his comments as he defends the BBC telling us their coverage is quite fair….which we know to be quite untrue….he is also someone quite critical of Israel’s stance against Hamas….Hardly the ideal balance to the fanatical Philo…but perfect for the BBC.
This was a perfect storm for the BBC…..not only can they have some rabidly anti-Israeli comments aired and allegations of pro-Palestinian bias countered, but also have someone defend the BBC telling us how good its coverage is. Win win for the BBC.
Earlier in the programme (07:39) we had Justin Webb ‘advising’ the Israelis that killing and mutilating little children was a pointless exercise and that hadn’t they better talk to Hamas?
Lyse Doucet then came on and blamed Israel for the failure of the ceasefire telling us that of course Hamas won’t stop rocketing Israel until Israel deals with Gaza’s economic and social conditions.
Any coincidence that the new BBC drama, The Honourable Woman, is based upon precisely that premise…that the Israelis should be knocking down their ‘walls’, stopping their violence and instead work hand in hand with Palestinians to develop their economy?
That kind of ignores the root of the problem and flips the blame from Hamas to Israel…but Israel is defending itself against rockets and attacks from Hamas and imposed the closure of its borders because of those attacks…therefore the cause of any economic and social problems in Gaza can be traced directly to Hamas and the Palestinian’s 65 year history of terrorism against Israel and not Israel’s sanctions on Gaza.
Curious how Israeli violence in self-defence is futile and brutal whilst Palestinian terrorism is the result of Israeli aggression, a brutal occupation and a vicious apartheid state.
Doucet has turned history on its head in an attempt to support Hamas, a terrorist organisation.
Stop the terrorism, recognise Israel’s right to exist and tear up the charter that demands the destruction of Israel and death to the Jews and the Palestinians might then see a change in their circumstances.
Perhaps the Palestinians should heed their guru, Muhammed, who said that nothing will change for Muslims unless they change what is within themselves first.
