The BBC's Hezbollah lovefest

Jeremy Bowen, the infamous BBC editor who blames all of the Middle East problems squarely on Israel, has written another piece that glorifies terrorists, this time Hezbollah:

The mighty Israeli army, one of the most technologically advanced forces in the world, had been unable to stop Lebanese guerrilla fighters from Hezbollah firing low-tech missiles into the north of their country.

In more than a month in 2006 Israel's enormous firepower did what the UN estimated was $3.6bn of damage to Lebanon, including the destruction of 80 bridges, 600km of roads and 900 factories, markets, farms and other commercial buildings.

It killed 1,187 Lebanese, mainly civilians, and wounded 4,092.

But it could not stop Hezbollah firing its rockets, and it could not rescue the two Israeli soldiers whose capture by Hezbollah sparked off the fighting in the first place.

He gets this close to calling the scrappy Hezbollah terrorists "heroic" in the face of the unfeeling Zionist army machine mowing down only civilian infrastructure.

Also, the "mainly civilians" part, stated as fact, is not clear at all. Israel released the names and addresses of 440 Hezbollah terrorists killed during the war, and it estimates about 600 were killed altogether. Lebanon, on the other hand, counts all Hezbollah members as "civilians" in its counts of the casualties. At best, Bowen is being misleading, at worst he is a liar, and at any rate without his citing his sources we will never know where he gets his numbers from.
(h/t: Backspin)

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British reporters condemn Israel as BBC reporter reported executed

Ya gotta hand it to British leftist journalists - they have a great sense of timing.

The day after the National Union of Journalists called for a far from even-handed boycott of Israeli goods, and in another vote called Israeli actions "savage," a previously unknown terror group in Gaza claimed that they executed BBC reporter Alan Johnston and said a video will be released soon.

The NUJ had nothing to say about their fellow British journalist in their orgy of condemnations. After all, why pretend to be fair when your pre-defined agenda is so much more important? After all, isn't that the underlying premise of British journalism to begin with?

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BBC Editor: Everything's Israel's fault

A great find by Stephen Pollard (hat tip: Backspin) on an internal BBC memo that is a briefing on what lies ahead in 2007 for the Israel/PalArab conflict.

Here's part of the memo with my comments:

From: Jeremy Bowen
To: Editorial Board; Newsg World-Bureaux-Eds; Newsg World Asseds; News Leadership Group; Mark Byford & PA; Simon Wilson-NEWS; Jerusalem Bureau;
Newsg World-Affairs-Unit
Sent: Fri Jan 05 15:16:16 2007
Subject: FW: Mini briefing on the Israeli and Palestinians

2007 has started as unpromisingly as 2006 ended. The outlook is bleak because of fundamental instabilities and weaknesses on both sides.

Israel's major military incursion into Ramallah on Thursday, killing four Palestinians after a botched arrest operation, was a reminder of the non stop pressures of the Israeli occupation. [On the same day, some 9 Palestinian Arabs were killed by each other, but that is not a "reminder" for anything for Bowen. -EoZ]

What is new in the last year, and will be one of the big stories in the coming twelve months, is the way that Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting. [Notice how he is glamorizing the terrorists as being the unifying hope for Palestinian Arab society. -EoZ]

The reason is the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel's military activities, land expropriation and settlement building – and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas led government which are destroying Palestinian institutions that were anyway flawed and fragile.

The result is that internecine violence between Hamas and Fatah is getting worse. On Thursday six people were killed in clashes between them in Gaza. The death of a major figure on either side would spark something much more serious. [Bowen is saying that Palestinian Arabs are unthinking animals who cannot be held responsible for their murderous actions. When they slaughter each other, it is because of Israeli policies - they have no choice, according to Bowen. - EoZ]

...
Olmert wants to replace Peretz at the defence ministry with Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister. Barak is a retired general, former head of the Israeli army and its most decorated soldier. (Among his many exploits was disguising himself as a woman during a raid in Beirut to kill various Palestinians). The feeling in Israel is that 2007 will be a year of wars, so aside from coalition politics Olmert wants to have a warrior next to him when they make the tough decisions. The intray could include whether or not to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. [What an interesting example of Barak's experience - that he killed "various Palestinians" in 1973 who happened to be members of the PLO during its heyday of airline hijackings and terrorizing the West. - EoZ]

...
The political crises in Israel - and violent political disintegration among the Palestinians - are not just internal matters. They make it impossible for the Israelis and the Palestinians to engage in a meaningful political dialogue, assuming that their protestations that they want one are true. (The one meeting that Olmert has had with Mahmoud Abbas can hardly be called a process.) [One would imagine that the fact that the elected leader of the Palestinian Authority has said hundreds of times that he wants to see Israel destroyed is possibly a contributing factor to the lack of "meaningful political dialogue," but Bowen would say that it is only because of Israel's political crises and the PalArab political problems which we've already established were Israel's fault. - EoZ]

Only strong Israeli and Palestinian leaders would be able to make the tough choices necessary to relieve the serious pressures that are building up in the holy land. To persuade their people to make the necessary concessions, they would need a strong political base, which neither Olmert nor Abbas possess.

Because they are weak - many would say lame ducks - don't expect any progress. And since an uneasy status quo cannot hold, no political progress will equal more violence. [Again, worshiping at the altar of useless negotiations when one side has made it abundantly clear that they will never accept living permanently side-by-side with the other. - EoZ]

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BBC: Dhimmified since 1935

Just found this:

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The BBC discovers the rocket threat - to a point

The BBC has an unusually sympathetic article about the threat to Israel from rockets. One of the illustrations shows the range of Palestinian Arab rockets from Gaza (older Kassams, newer Kassams and Katyushas):


Even with this article, the BBC falls short of telling the whole story:

What would happen if Israel would go back to the Green Line in the West Bank?

Let's look at a map I made based on this BBC map:

That's right - essentially all of the populated areas of Israel are in range of Katyushas from the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon.

So while the BBC at least began to inform its readers of the threat that their "Goliath" is under, it just couldn't quite take the next step and describe how life would be if Israel did what the BBC and most of the world has been pushing it to do.

It is easy to sit in the UK or in the US where you are thousands of miles from any real threat to your citizens and say that Israel should give back its only slight strategic advantage in its war with the combined Arab nations, but Israel doesn't have two oceans or an entire continent as a buffer. Defending against an enemy that is within walking distance from you is a little different from one that is far away.

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BBC lauds Hamas humanitarian work

The BBC has an amazing article online now about the release of a British Hamas supporter.

Israel has ordered a British aid worker to leave the country, accusing him of backing a militant group.

Ayaz Ali, 36, originally from Bradford, had been held in a top security Israeli prison for three weeks without charge.

Mr Ali, who worked in Gaza for Islamic Relief, was freed on Monday and given seven days to leave Israel.

Israel had accused Mr Ali of helping groups linked to Hamas. Islamic Relief, which is Birmingham-based, said his release was a relief to aid workers.

Hamas, which is the ruling Palestinian party, runs an extensive network of social services including kindergartens and clinics.

• 'Great relief'

But it is considered by the Israeli government to be a terrorist organisation.

Islamic Relief's president Dr Hany El Banna OBE said: "I am glad that this whole situation has come to an end.

"It is a great relief to Ayaz's family, humanitarian workers all over the world and Islamic Relief.

"We are grateful to all those individuals, international NGOs and the UK government who helped secure Ayaz's release."

So the BBC, clearly sympathetic to Mr. Ayaz, highlights Hamas' "social services" and "kindergartens and clinics"; starts a new section of the story, and then mentions as an afterthought that Israel considers Hamas a terrorist organization.

They give specifics on Hamas' social work, but any specific examples of terror are left unwritten - in fact, the implication is that only Israel considers Hamas a terrorist organization, while the rest of the enlightened world knows that Hamas is a humanitarian network of charities and hospitals.

The BBC also fails to mention that Islamic Relief has been accused of terror ties itself. Russia accused it of supporting Chechnyan terror groups; they seem to have accepted money from Al-Qaeda front groups, and their "orphans" are often the children of terrorists, allowing Islamic Relief to reward terror.

In other words, any facts or background information that may indicate that Ayaz is in fact a terror supporter are completely ignored, and anything that makes him look like an innocent aid worker and victim of unwarranted Israeli aggression is highlighted.

Hat tip to Judeopundit

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The problem with the BBC

The BBC just completed a third-party study on how impartial its coverage is of the Israeli/Palestinian Arab conflict.

There seems some disagreement as to what the conclusions are (the Times claimed the study concluded that BBC coverage favored Israel, which does not seem to be quite true.) There was one welcome recommendation that the BBC use the word "terrorism" when appropriate.

From reading the report itself, it is obvious that the authors tried very hard to ensure that the BBC's coverage was "balanced." In fact, that was one of the purposes of the report:

...[T]he BBC [is] committed, as our terms of reference make clear, to fairness, impartiality and balance. (While fairness and impartiality are legal requirements, balance is a concept adopted by the BBC in seeking to give effect to them.)

And much of the report details suggestions on how exactly to get balanced reporting out of an asymmetrical conflict.

The problem is that the premise is wrong.

Israel's legitimacy is not a valid topic for a balanced debate any more than that of Great Britain. Terrorism's legitimacy is similarly not a valid topic for debate. Any sensible person makes reasonable assumptions that the fundamental moral basis of the reporter is somewhat similar to the reader. These moral absolutes make "impartiality" in itself immoral.

To give a specific example, the report mentions that BBC coverage favors multiple Israeli deaths in terror attacks compared to multiple Palestinian Arabs killed in Israeli attacks (in terms of time given and percentage of incidents reported). The point is that this imbalance needs to be addressed.

That is absurd. There is a huge difference in motive for the killings, and that difference is the difference between morality and immorality. If motive is not important, one would expect the BBC to cover every auto accident in England with as much airtime as an assassination of a Prime Minister. Nobody but the far Left and Arab terror apologists claim that Israel targets civilians, while the Arabs themselves celebrate the murder of Israeli and Western civilians. The very idea that the coverage of both events deserve the same sympathy is in itself immoral.

Nobody is saying that the BBC should not provide in-depth analysis of the conflict, nor that it shouldn't cover anything from the Palestinian Arab viewpoint. But "balance" is immoral.

A more basic premise that is wrong in this report is that the conflict is between Israel and Palestinian Arabs. If the conflict is framed in such terms, it is easy to make Israel look like the big bully with the huge advantage in strength. This idea is so ingrained in the world psyche that even the BBC, striving for impartiality (and it truly appears to be trying) cannot see the forest for the trees.

It is not a conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Israel. It is a conflict between the entire Arab world and Israel. (One can plausibly argue that it is a single battle in the conflict between Islam and the West as well.)

The Palestinian Arab people are not in great shape, but the idea that they have been pawns in the geopolitical and military power play between the entire Arab world and Israel is not addressed by most news outlets. The basic question of whether the Arabs want independence for their Palestinian brethren, or the destruction of Israel, is not addressed. When framed this way, the "conflict" can be seen in an entirely new, and more accurate, light.

But the world has been brainwashed into accepting the idea of a Palestine-centric conflict, and this fundamentally affects how the news is reported. If the BBC and other news outlets truly want to be fair, accurate and balanced, they need to look beyond the incorrect framing that is implicit in the BBC report itself.

If you cannot define the issues correctly to begin with, you cannot dream to cover them accurately.

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