THE SOUND OF MEDIA SILENCE

Tom Gross Mideastdispatches

29^th Sept 2014

See full article at: http://tinyurl.com/lx9zovj

The same western media that criticized Israel in sensational terms this summer (“Israelis are a nation of child killers” said one British paper) have barely a word to say about all the many civilians their governments are now accidentally killing in airstrikes on Iraq and Syria. Photos of dead and distressed civilians have appeared in Arab media in recent days but I could hardly find any in the Western media I scrutinized. (In some of the cases reported in Arab media, Western warplanes hit the wrong targets and only civilians died.)

By contrast, The New York Times on Friday yet again published a weeks-old photo of the destruction last summer in Gaza on its main international news page (top of Page A4) (and a sports photo from a baseball game at the top of page A1), but nowhere could I find the New York Times showing photos, or even providing details, of any of the civilians dying in U.S. led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. (Of course, if it was a Republican president ordering the strikes, rather than President Obama, it might at least mention the civilian deaths…)

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Past analysis has shown that the U.S., which has worse intelligence on the ground than Israel, has inadvertently killed a higher proportion of civilians than Israel:

Israel’s record on civilian casualties compares well to America’s

BBC NEWS ANCHOR SUDDENLY SOUNDS LIKE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT SPOKESPERSON

BBC Radio’s flagship Today program interviewed the Baghdad-based Reverend Canon Andrew White (who is a long standing subscriber to this email list). He spoke of the civilians being killed in Western and Arab airstrikes in Iraq.

The BBC presenter replied in some exasperation, saying they are sophisticated, targeted strikes, and are “essential” for fighting terror.

As a friend of mine points out, did it not occur to the BBC news anchor that he sounded exactly like the Israeli government spokesperson who he so furiously attacked only a month ago.

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UNLIKE MOST WESTERN MEDIA, REUTERS HAS REPORTED ON CIVILIAN DEATHS

Unlike most Western media, Reuters has reported on civilian deaths. For example, its report today (September 29) gives one such example. It begins:

U.S.-led raids hit Syria grain silos, killing civilians

REUTERS - U.S.-led air strikes hit grain silos and other targets in Islamic State-controlled territory in northern and eastern Syria overnight, killing civilians… “The aircraft may have mistaken the mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian town of Manbij for an Islamic State base, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. There was no immediate comment from Washington.

The strikes in Manbij appeared to have killed only civilians, not fighters, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory which gathers information from sources in Syria. “These were the workers at the silos. They provide food for the people,” he said…

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Tom Gross adds: Not only the Western media, but Western human rights groups and the UNHRC, which seem never to tire of attacking Israel when Israel is defending itself from thousands of rockets fired at its cities, is also now strangely silent.

And unlike the IDF, which made considerable efforts to minimize civilian casualties ahead of every attack – making phone calls to homes in each targeted area, sending text messages to cell phones in Arabic, and dropping leaflets from aircraft into the targeted neighborhoods days in advance, warning residents to leave for their own safety, and calling off airstrikes it if spotted civilians in the locality – those countries currently bombing Iraq and Syria (including the U.S., UK and France) don’t appear to be doing as much.

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Tom Gross adds: Fresh on the ground analysis by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights – which has proved itself to be a reliable organization these past three years (and if anything has been too conservative in its estimates) say that coalition airstrikes killed at least 28 civilians on Saturday, and 26 civilians on Friday.

These are in addition to the airstrikes on Sunday that hit grain silos instead of ISIS bases. The number of casualties in that attack has not yet been determined, only that strike killed many civilians – the exact same people who had already survived bombing raids by the murderous President Assad.

The aircraft may have mistaken the mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian town of Minbej for an ISIS base.

The double standards of government spokespeople and the media are remarkable.

“It’s slaughter” as Juan Williams called Israel’s actions in Gaza on Fox News several weeks ago. “It’s indiscriminate, asinine,” said Joe Scarborough on MSNBC.

Is the BBC really pro-Israel?

By Tom Gross, July 19, 2014

The National Post

http://tinyurl.com/ojrb2h6

Some 5,000 rowdy demonstrators chanting anti-Israeli (and, in some cases, blatantly anti-Semitic) slogans brought traffic to a virtual standstill outside the BBC’s central London headquarters in Portland Place last week. They were protesting what they claim to be the BBC’s “pro-Israel” bias.

The next day, the BBC flagship Today radio news program (a program which is near compulsory listening for the British political elite, including the prime minister), ran an item on the demonstration, examining the absurd proposition that the BBC – which for decades has been at the forefront of providing a worldwide platform for Palestinian extremists (one correspondent, Barbara Plett, even admitted on air that she cried in sorrow when Yasser Arafat died) – was in fact “pro-Israel.”

“Are the protesters right? Have we been biased at the BBC in favor of Israel?” BBC anchor Mishal Husain asked her guest Greg Philo, professor of Communications and Social Change at Glasgow University.

Philo responded: “I’ve had many senior journalists at the BBC saying they simply can’t get the Palestinian viewpoint across… the Palestinian perspective is just not there.”

Leaving aside Husain’s own bias against Israel, which was well documented by watchdog organizations at the time of the last major Hamas-Israel flare-up in November 2012, the claim by Philo, and the choice to use him as the studio guest, is bizarre.

Indeed, Gaza seems to dominate BBC foreign coverage — so much so that thousands of people killed last week in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya and various African conflicts have barely been mentioned.

“The BBC has had way more people in Gaza just this week than they had in Baghdad at the height of the Iraq war, more than they ever had in Basra and more than they have had in Afghanistan,” a friend of mine, a seasoned British war correspondent who has extensively covered the Afghan and Iraq wars, wrote to me this week. The British, American and other militaries have killed far more people in both Afghanistan and Iraq than Israel has ever killed in Gaza. And of course Afghans and Iraqis haven’t fired thousands of rockets indiscriminately into British and American cities.

Those BBC correspondents in Gaza (Jeremy Bowen, Lyse Doucet, Paul Adams, Yolande Knell, Quentin Sommerville, Rushdi Abualouf, Shahdi al Kashif, and several others reporting on Gaza from elsewhere including James Reynolds, Kevin Connolly and Jonathan Marcus) have this week, as they have for years, presented Palestinian claims against Israel in the most graphic detail.

And many of those Palestinian claims are misleading at best. On Friday, for example, a BBC reporter in Gaza, replying to the question about how ordinary Palestinians were coping “with Israeli actions,” informed us that “no one has any electricity.”

What he didn’t say, and what the BBC anchor didn’t point out, is that the reason that 70,000 Gazans (not “all Gazans”) have been left without electricity is because Hamas – not Israel – fired a rocket that hit a Gaza power line. (By contrast, NATO did “bomb Serbia into darkness” in 1999, and the U.S. did so in Iraq both in the Gulf War and in 2003.)

Indeed the BBC, along with most of the international media, have failed to tell us that quite a number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza were the result of misfired Palestinian rockets. Last week alone, at least 100 Hamas rockets accidently hit targets within Gaza.

The BBC (and other media) barely mentioned that on Friday – under pressure from Israel and the U.S. – the UN agency UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) admitted that 20 Hamas rockets have been stored at an UNRWA school in Gaza. This is, of course, not news to people who follow the region closely; Hamas has for years stored and fired its arsenals at Israel from or near hospitals, schools, ambulances and mosques, in multiple breaches of international law.

A report by BBC world affairs correspondent Paul Adams was one of several on the network in recent days to make use of a Nazi analogy. Israel, we were told, had made “a concentration camp of 1.8 million people.” Other BBC reports made the ridiculous claim that Palestinians were “starving for the past 8 years” (Click here to see photos of food of “Gazans preparing for Ramadan” last month)

To its credit, “BBC Trending” – one small part of the vast network of TV, radio and online channels that comprises the BBC – ran an item this month admitting that pictures of alleged victims of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza were inaccurate, some for example, actually showing scenes from Syria and Iraq. One photo circulated by Hamas last week purported to show a teenager in Gaza killed by an Israeli airstrike. It was, in fact, a still image from the Hollywood horror film Final Destination 4.

But what the “BBC Trending” item didn’t point out is that some of the most senior BBC correspondents in the Middle East, such as former Gaza correspondent Jon Donnison, have been responsible for sending out inaccurate photos on their BBC Twitter feeds.

Of course it is not only the BBC who are allowing their prejudices to get in the way of balanced reporting. On Friday, for example, one of CNN’s Gaza correspondents, Diana Magnay, sent out a tweet calling Israelis “scum” (CNN has since apologized and reassigned Magnay to Russia.) But can you imagine the outcry if she had called Palestinians, or Muslims, “scum”?

Jon Stewart, on the Daily Show, called Hamas “Freedom Fighters.” That’s not very funny for the five million Israelis – 80% of the population – who have had to cower in bomb shelters this past week. And it’s not funny for the Gazans who live under Hamas’s highly oppressive rule and risk their lives if they dare to criticize the regime. Also unfunny was the Washington Post’s Wednesday cartoon, which depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly punching a Palestinian baby.

Peter Beaumont, the correspondent for the influential British paper The Guardian has (as of July 17) run 20 articles on the current Gaza conflict, comprising 18,886 words butnot one report of his has properly explained Hamas’ use of human shields – even though this is crucial to understanding the situation and Hamas itself has repeatedly boasted of this policy as an effective way to deter Israel from attacking its rocket launchers. By contrast, the Arab media has been full of reports on the use of human shields (which is a war crime under international law).

Indeed people in the West might not realize it, but many Arab media are far more honest about the ills of Hamas than we might find in the West.

“Thank you Netanyahu and may God give us more [people] like you to destroy Hamas!” wrote Azza Sami in the leading Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. On Egyptian TV, several commentators said they were “sick and tired” of Hamas. There have been similar sentiments in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and even in the Fatah-controlled West Bank. So the next time 5,000 rowdy demonstrators take to the street to protest Western media’s supposed “pro-Israel” bias, they might want to keep in mind the history, the facts and what Arab media are saying about Hamas.

THE ABSURDITY OF THE BBC

Read. this article . It would be funny if it wasn't so typical of the BBC.

The headline of news he was complaining about was "Labour peer Lord Ahmed was suspended after "Jewish claims"

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3269/bbc_says_it_won_t_use_anti_semitism_because_the_word_is_too_long

And some of you may ask why should we protest against such dreadful misinformation.whether on BBC TV , radio or on their website . It's not that important is it? The answer lies in the facts below and the fact that if people bothered to complain the BBC would have to take notice becuse it costs the money to employ people to respond to complaints. especially if you appeal against their answers.

1. About BBC News

BBC News reaches 81% of the UK each week across all platforms.

Overall, BBC TV accounts for 73% of TV news consumption but produces just 25%.

The BBC regional 6.30pm news slot is the most watched UK bulletin.

The BBC News Channel is the most watched news channel reaching over 9m adults weekly.

The BBC News website is now used by over 20 million UK browsers each week.

BBC Network Radio news reached 54% of adults weekly in 2012 The audience to Global News in 2011/12 was 239 million, up 14m on the previous year.

1. BBC remains the news provider that the UK public trusts the most by far. An Ipsos Mori survey for the BBC, conducted in The February 2013, showed BBC News is by far the most trusted source of news in the UK – with 58% selecting it as the one source they would most likely to turn for news they trust, significantly ahead of the nearest provider (ITV on 14%).

The BBC is also considered the leading source for news that is trustworthy and impartial.

A YouGov poll for the Sunday Times between the 27-28 March contained questions from looking at trust in professions, including BBC news journalists.

It showed scores for trust in BBC journalists have risen markedly since December, back to levels seen in January 2012 1. The BBC remains the news provider that the UK public trusts the most by far. An Ipsos Mori survey for the BBC, conducted in February 2013, showed BBC News is by far the most trusted source of news in the UK – with 58% selecting it as the one source they would most likely to turn for news they trust, significantly ahead of the nearest provider (ITV on 14%).

The BBC is also considered the leading source for news that is trustworthy and impartial.

A YouGov poll for the Sunday Times between the

27-28 March contained questions from looking at trust in professions, including BBC news journalists. It showed scores for trust in BBC journalists have risen markedly since December, back to levels seen in January 2012

BBC's Hypocritical Reporting

Wyre Davies’ historically incorrect reporting upgraded by BBC to ‘analysis’


http://bbcwatch.org/2012/11/26/wyre-davies-historically-incorrect-reporting-upgraded-by-bbc-to-analysis/

It was reported in the BBC Middle East News that Wyre Davies’ grossly historically incorrect claim  of rockets fired from Gaza at Israeli civilians are a result of the partial blockade on the Gaza Strip – rather than the other way round.

Has that error since been corrected? No: in fact the report concerned was expanded and upgraded to the category of ‘analysis’.

Davies’ expanded article  is, if anything, even more egregious than  the original report and is far more occupied with promoting a narrative than with anything which could be remotely described as fact-based analysis.

“You can feel the palpable lifting of that burden among Gazan colleagues. This is such a small densely populated stretch of land that few areas have escaped the impact – direct or indirect – of Israeli bombing in recent days.

In the BBC Gaza office, that feeling was most tangibly felt on the first day of this conflict when Omar, the 11-month-old son of our cameraman Jihad Misharawi, was killed when a missile hit his home. It was a pointless, terrible tragedy that deeply affected Jihad’s colleagues who live and work here in these testing conditions.

What has shocked me most over the last eight days – during which I have reported exclusively from Gaza, with BBC colleagues complementing in Israel – is the appallingly high number of children killed and injured.”

In fact, according to figures released by the IDF, of a total of 165 people killed in Gaza during the operation, 93 belonged to one of seven different terrorist groups. 68 civilians died, of those 25 children and 9 youths. That civilian to combatant ratio is one of the lowest known, reflecting the considerable efforts made to avoid civilian casualties wherever possible.

[The above article, the full text of which can be read via the link above, indicates the attitude of the BBC reporters who are working in the Middle East.

We wonder how these reporters would have reacted to the British response to Arab terror at the time of the mandate]

How the British responded to Palestinian terrorists

By RAFAEL MEDOFF

11/27/2012 21:39

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/OpEdContributors/Article.aspx?id=293684

Some Israelis today are left wondering which makes more sense – England’s current advice, or the positions taken by British leaders when they themselves had to deal with the forerunners of Hamas.

In the midst of Israel’s recent action against Hamas, British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned that the Jewish State would “lose a lot of international support and sympathy” if it sent in ground troops. Hague’s assertion was widely understood as an attempt to pressure Jerusalem to refrain from going all-out against the terrorists.

Israelis have heard this before – as a matter of fact, they heard it from another senior British foreign affairs official, William Waldegrave, the minister of state in the Foreign Office, when he visited Gaza in March 1989. At a press conference, Waldegrave dramatically brandished four rubber bullets, which he accused Israel of firing “indiscriminately” at Arab rioters.

Afterwards, Waldegrave met with the mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek. Since Kollek was a longtime Labor Party figure and well known political dove, Waldegrave probably thought they were kindred spirits.

The British official was in for quite a surprise.

Kollek told Waldegrave – and told reporters afterwards – that “the British have no right to preach morals to Israel” on fighting terrorists, considering how the British themselves treated Palestinian Arab terrorists in the 1930s. The mayor pointed out that recently-released British government documents described “British army atrocities against the Arabs in Palestine” during those years.

The documents recounted the British authorities’ response to the assassination of a British district commissioner in Jenin in 1938. The killer was captured, jailed, and then shot to death “while trying to escape.” But the Mandate government decided that was not enough, and that “a large portion of the town should be blown up.”

Other anti-terror tactics employed by the British against the Palestinian Arabs in the 1930s included shooting handcuffed prisoners, blowing up civilians’ homes and forcing Arabs to drive “mine-sweeping taxis” in front of British soldiers searching areas where they suspected mines were planted.

Naomi Shepherd, in her book Ploughing Sand (about British rule in Palestine) describes how eight Palestinian Arabs in Halhul died of heat exposure when, “on a scorching day,” British soldiers “rounded up a group of men during a search for arms and kept them standing without water for hours.” After an attack on a British patrol in the village of Kawkab Abu Haija, the British army “destroyed the entire village.” When a British army vehicle ran over a mine near Kafr Yasif, soldiers burned down 70 houses and machine-gunned nine villagers.

HUGH FOOT, a district commissioner in 1930s Palestine who narrowly escaped assassination by Arab terrorists, later recalled the arbitrary nature of house demolitions: “When we thought that a village was harboring rebels, we’d go there and mark one of the large houses. Then, if an incident was traced to that village, we’d blow up the house we’d marked.” The tactic was “drastic,” High Commissioner Harold MacMichael conceded, “but the situation has demanded drastic powers.”

An Associated Press correspondent permitted to travel with a British anti-terror unit in October 1938 reported how he watched them “blow up with dynamite about a dozen houses in an Arab village from which shots twice were fired at the troops... [W]hen the troops left there was little else remaining of the once busy village except a pile of mangled masonry.”

In another Arab town, Miar, the British troops “dynamited about forty stone houses” and arrested hundreds of villagers. Sometimes Arab detainees were “put to to work building roads.”

Reports in The New York Times that month offered similar descriptions of British “clean-up” operations, as the Timescalled them. In Lydda (today known as Lod), “twenty-one Arabs’ homes were destroyed by British troops because of recent attacks on military police.” In Nablus, “severe measures by British troops resulted in about six casualties.”

While some British officials privately expressed unease at the harsh counter-terror methods, most voices in the Colonial Office apparently supported the crackdown. “I do not feel we have the right to interfere,” Lord Dufferin asserted. “British lives are being lost and I don’t think that we, from the security of Whitehall, can protest squeamishly about measures taken by the men in the frontline.”

His colleague Sir John Shuckburgh emphasized that the British authorities in Palestine were faced “not with a chivalrous opponent playing the game according to the rules, but with gangsters and murderers.”

All of which may leave some Israelis today wondering which makes more sense – England’s current advice, or the positions taken by British leaders when they themselves had to deal with the forerunners of Hamas.

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.

BBC BIAS

JPOST EDITORIAL 26/07/2012

The BBC has managed to flabbergast even those Israelis who hadn’t expected minimal fairness from it.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=278926

The British Broadcasting Corporation could never be accused of showering Israel with sympathy, or even credited with gracing Israel with the rudiments of objectivity. Nonetheless, the BBC has managed to flabbergast even those Israelis who hadn’t expected minimal fairness from it.

The BBC has devoted a web page to the Olympic athletes.

Most of the entries are straightforward enough, but not so the ones devoted to Israel and “Palestine,” which, though not a sovereign state, did win recognition as a member of the Olympic Council of Asia since 1986 and the International Olympic Committee since 1995.

On the latter’s country profile page, the BBC listed “East Jerusalem” as the capital of Palestine. No capital whatever was noted on the page devoted to Israel, not even “West Jerusalem.” As expected, that generated considerable commotion and even a written complaint from government spokesman Mark Regev.

Discomfited, the BBC tried a quick fix, defining Jerusalem as Israel’s “seat of government,” but not without failing to add that “most foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv.”

The corresponding revamp on the Palestine page seeks to strike equivalence with the following: “Intended seat of government: East Jerusalem. Ramallah serves as administrative capital.”

Evincing no hint of regret, the BBC later waxed indignant and argued that the modifications on its website were “generated by online lobby activity.” The inference is that there was something untoward in said “online lobby activity” and that the BBC had its arm unjustly twisted.

Moreover, no opportunity appears to have been missed to render Israel’s image disagreeable. The photo chosen to represent Israel on its BBC profile shows an IDF soldier screaming at an Arab, with the caption reading: “Israelis and Palestinians have been at loggerheads for decades.”

The Syrian page, in contrast, looks idyllic. It pictures three pretty girls in white Muslim garb with older black-clad women in the background, all smiling. The caption informs us innocuously that “the overwhelming majority of Syrians are Muslim.”

Concomitantly, the campaign to commemorate the 11 Israeli athletes slain by Arab terrorists at the Munich Olympics exactly 40 years ago received zero coverage on the BBC. That’s starkly different from the choices made by other international news providers, British ones notably among them.

The BBC’s palpable anti-Israel predispositions are nothing new. Malcolm Balen, a senior editorial adviser, compiled a report in 2004 on the BBC’s radio and television broadcasters’ attitudes toward the Israeli-Arab conflict. The 20,000-word Balen Report is said to contain scathing criticism of the BBC, which fought tooth and nail against demands that it release it under the Freedom of Information Act.

But despite Balen’s admonitions, the BBC remained unrepentant and failed to clean up its act. A most telling case in point was its coverage of the March 2011 Itamar massacre, where Palestinian terrorists invaded the home of the Fogel family and butchered the father, mother, their two young sons and three-month-old baby daughter.

The BBC’s version abounded in outright inaccuracies and mind-boggling omissions. Worst of all, it was given scant resonance altogether. It was unmentioned on BBC Television and was accorded only a fleeting brief reference on radio.

In his testimony to Parliament earlier this month, the BBC’s outgoing director-general, Mark Thompson, belatedly acknowledged that his organization “got it wrong.” Yet as this latest controversy surrounding the BBC’s misrepresentations indicates, the BBC willfully keeps right on getting it wrong. It doesn’t exert much effort to get it right.

Last summer, for instance, it featured a story claiming that a Jerusalem court sentenced a dog to death by stoning. This was an utter hoax, which a preliminary check would have revealed. Yet apparently the goodwill didn’t exist to accord Israel fair treatment. The temptation to paint Israel in the most unflattering colors plainly couldn’t be resisted. The fabrication in this case was so blatant that the BBC eventually removed this item but not before it blackened Israel’s face.

Yet more than such shenanigans damage Israel, they undermine the BBC’s own integrity. For its own good, it ought to desist from so flagrantly exposing its bias.

Flotilla Report: BBC Plumbs the Depths

January 24, 2011 by Simon Plosker,

http://honestreporting.com/flotilla-report-bbc-plumbs-the-depths/

The Turkel Commisssion of inquiry into the events surrounding the May 31, 2010 Gaza flotilla has published its findings. Some of the main points include:
The maritime blockade of Gaza complies with international law.

Israel’s policies towards the Gaza Strip comply with international and humanitarian law.

The takeover of the Mavi Marmara was carried out in compliance with international law.

Israeli soldiers only took action in self-defense after being violently attacked by the ship’s passengers and their actions complied with international law.
The BBC’s coverage of the Turkel Report, however, graphically illustrates all that is wrong with its reporting of Israel.

Rather than address the actual findings of the report, which vindicated Israeli actions, the BBC immediately begins by attempting to discredit the report by focusing on Turkish criticisms. The screenshot above is indicative of the BBC’s anti-Israel bias:

The headline, which sets the tone for the story, is about Turkish criticism and not the findings of the report itself.

This focus continues in the opening paragraphs of the story, which also highlights a negative quote against Israel from the UN.

The choice of photo and the accompanying caption – the photo fails to demonstrate any direct link to the story contents while the caption highlights that “one activist was shot four times in the head”.

The article continues by extensively quoting Turkish PM Erdogan who states: “To my judgment there is no value, nor credibility to this report.”

As if to drive the point home, the BBC article continues with a well-placed and visible sub-heading ‘Banditry and piracy’

The BBC is notorious not only for what it includes in its reports, but also for the vital context that it omits. Referring to the makeup of the inquiry commission, the article simply states:

"The panel of inquiry was headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel, working alongside five Israeli members and two international observers."

Were the BBC interested in providing relevant context, it would have included the information that those two international observers were:

Lord David Trimble, the (joint) Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 1998 and a member of Britain’s House of Lords. He won the Nobel for his contribution to achieving peace in Northern Ireland. He served as professor of law at Queen’s University in Belfast. Upon being elected to Parliament in 1990, he left the teaching profession. Lord Trimble became leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and was First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2002. He has published numerous articles and books on law.

Brigadier-General (Ret.) Ken Watkin who served for 33 years in the Canadian army. His last position was Judge Advocate General; in that capacity he served among other things as legal advisor for the Governor General of Canada, the Defense Minister, the Department of National Defense and also supervised the military justice system of the Canadian Forces. Watkin was a legal advisor on the military/civilian board of inquiry investigating Canada’s military actions in

Somalia, as the government advisor on inquiries and investigations following the Rwanda genocide in 1994. He received the Maritime Commander’s Commendation and is a member of the Order of Military Merit. Brigadier-General Watkin has published many articles on law, including international humanitarian and civil rights law. He is expected to receive a professorship in international law at the US Army’s Naval War College.

The commission also included two international legal experts from outside Israel. Indeed, Trimble and Watkin publicly stated: “We have no doubt that the Commission is independent.” But since when did this stop the BBC from sowing the seeds of doubt? Instead, readers are treated to an accompanying box of “Analysis” from the BBC’s newest member of its Jerusalem bureau, Jon Donnison, who writes:

The problem Israel is going to face is that many of its critics will see it as a whitewash. This was an Israeli government-commissioned inquiry and people will say it simply wasn’t balanced.

Donnison might wish to consider the role of the media, particularly the BBC, in promoting this view. Donnison adds:

"The findings of this report were in stark contrast to the views of 600 pro-Palestinian activists aboard those ships."

Donnison and the article fail to mention that the “600 pro-Palestinian activists” included a number of well-organized and violent members of the Turkish Islamist IHH organization who were fully prepared to assault Israeli soldiers boarding the Mavi Marmara. Despite the fact that the Israeli commission of inquiry was headed by a supreme court judge and included legal experts and independent observers, Donnison still presents the “views of 600 pro-Palestinian activists” as somehow the equal of the Turkel Report.

Why does the BBC actively cast doubt and aspersions on the credibility of an Israeli inquiry while treating “pro-Palestinian activists” with a moral equivalence, as if they do not have a vested interest and a high level of ideological belief that is pushing their hatred and criticism of Israel. Not to mention that a number of these so-called “activists” were members of the Turkish Islamist IHH organization who came fully prepared to assault IDF soldiers – another piece of context omitted from the BBC report.

The BBC has plumbed the depths in its coverage of the Turkel Report and has clearly demonstrated its anti-Israel bias. Send your considered comments to the BBC Complaints website. For more on how to navigate the complaints process, click here for our guide on how to make a complaint to the BBC.