Sunday, November 25, 2012

The BBC's pro-Palestinian propaganda machine has swung into action



The Telegraph by Peter Mullen World November 19th, 2012

The Rev Dr Peter Mullen is a priest of the Church of England and former Rector of St Michael, Cornhill and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London. He has written for many publications including the Wall Street Journal

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/petermullen/100190323/finally-the-bbcs-pro-palestinian-propaganda-machine-has-swung-into-action/  

The BBC has been slipping up recently. No – I don’t mean to refer to unpleasant recollections of Savilegate and McAlpinegate. Let us just leave them conveniently on the Corporation’s CV. Instead I am wondering why it took the BBC so long to get into its full propaganda mode in its reporting of the war between Israel and Hamas. I don’t say there was ever anything distantly approaching even-handedness. You never get that with an ideological pressure group as committed to its own unassailable self-righteousness as the BBC. But at least for the first few days of the war there was the pretence of objectivity.

But true colours will inevitably show themselves and, sure enough, over the weekend the Corporation began to screen its horrific and heart-breaking accounts (with pictures, of course) of the Gazan children slaughtered by the nasty Israelis. What is never explained – because propaganda aims not to explain but to seduce – is the fact that Hamas stores its rockets and high explosives in schools and hospitals, and those leaders who are not so far up the pay scale that they are allotted their personal bunkers are obliged to live in their own houses with their families. And even the most meticulously targeted airstrike cannot distinguish between a terrorist and his three-year-old son when they are sitting in the same front room.

The BBC loves to announce the casualty figures which invariably show that Palestinians have suffered many more deaths and injuries than the Israelis. This is entirely a matter of chance – but a distinction needs to be made. The Israeli forces do not target non-combatants or children. In fact they go to great pains to avoid killing innocent bystanders. By contrast, Hamas deliberately targets innocent women and children in Israel. That is the sole purpose of their rocket attacks. Let me spell it out: what terrorists do is propagate terror. It is simply a matter of good fortune, aided by the Iron Dome defence system, that more Israeli civilians have not been killed. More than 750 rockets have been fired into Israel over the last six days, including long-distance projectiles made in Iran.

Now the conflict is entering a new and much more dangerous phase. The attacks from Gaza may be subdued, but other threats are rapidly emerging. To the east, Jordan is unstable, the crowds demonstrating for the sacking of the government and their own version of the Arab Spring. To the west, post-Mubarak Egypt is not the steadying influence on the region that it was for so long. But the most terrifying scenario is the prospect from the north, from the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon who are even now waiting eagerly for the ragbag rebel Syrian army to take possession of Assad’s copious stores of chemical weapons. There is an extreme likelihood that these would be used against the civilian population in Israel.

I learned of this real and present danger from Sky, by the way, not from the BBC.



5 comments:

  1. Never expect truth from the BBC. It considers that it is always right and it is we who are wrong. We have to be told by them what is correct and what we should believe. The Soviet Union lives on at the BBC. And this organisation suppressed information about the dreadful Savile, spread lies about a Tory former politician. Even worse, it refuses to release the Balen report which surely found that the BBC was biased in its reporting about Israel. If it was found not to be biased against Israel, they wouldl have released the report for us all to see. And they paid a fortune to suppress it, using OUR licence fee money. They are beneath contempt.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Small correction to an important and accurate article: You say "It is simply a matter of good fortune, aided by the Iron Dome defence system, that more Israeli civilians have not been killed." Well, certainly it is fortunate that Israel had fewer casualties. But that is not "simply a matter of good fortune." Israel has spent hundreds of millions of dollars since her founding on the protection of civilians. Every single home - house or apartment - must have a steel-protected room, and every school or place of worship must have a shelter.
    If the BBC were to obey the conditions mandated by its own charter, (not to mention follow the norms of honest, contextual, and libel-free reporting, that broadcaster would mention that the people of Gaza, includig women and children should ask their leaders for some protection from the inevitable and direct consequences of launching unprovoked wars on Israel. The BBC, in an unlikely spazm of honesty, might also mention that those same people in Gaza voted overwhelmingly for Hamas on its written and published promise to destroy Israel and murder its Jewish population, having previously had five full years to study the Hamas charter enshrining those genocidal goals.

    ReplyDelete
  3. BLATANT BBC FRAUD The BBC commentator Joh Donnison, again tonight ommited context and thereby distorted the tragedy of this war when he said in his report: "...the fact the Israeli Ambulance Service was also reporting those suffering from anxiety and bruises is an indication of the asymmetric nature of the conflict...." Of course the missing context was the other "asymetrical aspect of the conflict" that Jon Donnison deceptively omitted: that Gaza has no sheltres for the population, and that weapons are deployed among them for the purpose of sacrificing civilians to the insatiable BBC appetite for Arab victimhood. Donnison and the BBC never stop to ask why the elected representatives of Gaza's mothers and fathers fires rockets into Israel's population centers, knowing there will be return fire. The BBC does not ask why Gaza spends vast amounts of money that could be spent on its children, on rockets to fire at Israel's children. Real journalists might find that a worthwhile direction inquiry. No, what the BBC is doing is a cynical betrayal of both their duty to those who provide endless funding, and of course to the children of Gaza by shielding those truly responsible for their horiffic plight: their elected government.

    ReplyDelete
  4. one of the reasons why the BBC is pro-Palestinian;
    in a recent Times leader on the Jimmy Saville scandal, the writer said he was surprisied that the Director-General had not even read the BBC's house hournal, The Guardian.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Just saw ITV news 10 Syrian children kiled by cluster bomb that the rebels say were dropped by Syrian Air Force. I expect all the anti Israel supporters will have a big out cry NOT

    ReplyDelete