How the BBC devalues Palestinian lives and acts as mouthpiece for Israeli propaganda
Why is the BBC seemingly determined to shield Israel from bad
publicity by withholding important news stories from its audiences,
while pushing anti-Palestinian stories provided by the Israeli army?
Funeral of 14-year-old Palestinian boy Yousef Al-Shawamreh, shot by Israeli soldiers, 19 March 2014
Over the last five weeks, the trend in BBC reporting to ignore events
that show Israel in a negative light, while affording coverage to
tenuous claims from the Israeli army that it has uncovered Palestinian
“terror” plots, has become quite glaring.
On 19 March, a 14-year-old Palestinian child,
Yussef Shawamreh,
was shot in the back and hip by Israeli soldiers as he foraged for
edible wild thistles on his family’s land in the occupied West Bank.
The child bled to death. His two friends, aged 12 and 17, were seized
by soldiers dressed in black fatigues and wearing black face masks, and
taken to a nearby illegal settlement, in handcuffs and blindfolds.
There they were beaten for failing to answer questions in Hebrew, a
language neither understands.
By any standards, the cold-blooded killing of a 14-year-old by
soldiers, and the subsequent abuse of his young friends, is appalling.
The media outcry if the boy had been Israeli and his killers Palestinian
can only be guessed at.
As it is, with the dead child being Palestinian, the BBC ignored the
story. The previous week, the BBC also failed to report on the
killing on 10 March of university student Saji Darwish, also in the West Bank. Saji, a university student, was shot in the head by Israeli forces as he tended his goats.
Prevailing news agenda
When challenged by
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
on its failure to report on the killings of young Palestinians by the
Israeli army – two in nine days – BBC Online’s Middle East desk wrote
back saying: “There is no mandate to report every killing.” And so
killings of Palestinians went by with the BBC’s journalists feeling
under no obligation, or mandate, to report any of them.
Pressed further, the Middle East desk wrote back again to say: “The
fact that we did not report the death of Yusef Abu Aker Shawamreh [sic]
should not be construed as evidence of bias. There can be occasions
where an incident does not get mentioned, possibly as a result of the
prevailing news agenda.”
So what was the prevailing news agenda around the time of these
youths’ deaths? According to BBC Online, it would appear to be an
overwhelming concern with Israel’s security, and the threat the state
claims it faces from Palestinians.
On 5 March, BBC Online ran with the story “
Israel ‘halts weapons shipment from Iran.’”
The article begins: “Israel says it has seized a ship carrying advanced
Iranian weapons made in Syria that was heading towards Gaza.” The
alleged weapons were surface-to-surface missiles.
The story continues: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said
the shipment was a ‘clandestine operation’ by Iran, and added that the
weapons would have been used against Israel.”
Credulous BBC news team
The BBC’s source for the story is, in its own words, “the Israel
Defense Forces.” There is a link from the BBC’s page to the story on the
Israeli army’s website.
The story is based entirely on the claims of the Israeli prime
minister and Israeli army officials, and doesn’t even begin to question
how surface-to-surface missiles could possibly be smuggled into besieged
Gaza.
Nor is the timing of the Israelis’ find questioned by the credulous
BBC news team. The announcement came just days before EU foreign policy
chief
Catherine Ashton’s relationship-building visit to Iran (which denied any involvement in the shipment).
Instead, the Middle East desk chose to run a corresponding feature headlined “
Israel’s clandestine battle with weapons smugglers.”
An incredibly lengthy report, written by the BBC’s diplomatic
correspondent Jonathan Marcus, it claims to reveal how the “major
shipment of weaponry heading to the Gaza Strip from Iran throws a
spotlight on alleged ongoing attempts to arm militants there, and
Israel’s aim to thwart them.”
The feature continues in predictable BBC form, with subheadings such
as: “So how does this compare to previous Gaza arms interceptions?”
All Israeli allegations of where the arms were headed and what they
were to be used for are taken as fact. There is no critical analysis at
all of Israel’s sudden announcement.
“Israel has lied”
However, while the BBC remained oblivious to the absurdities of
claims that a missile-loaded ship might be headed to Gaza, under land,
sea and air blockade, and to the possibility that it was acting as a
pliable conduit for Israeli propaganda, more sceptical news
organizations challenged Israel’s allegations.
The Israeli newspaper
Haaretz ran a story headlined: “
Netanyahu’s display of seized ship: meaningless Hollywood-style propaganda.”
Columnist Amir Oren writes: “From David Ben-Gurion’s time to the present, Israel has lied when it believed it had to.”
In its report “
Doubts surface on Gaza destination of rockets seized by Israel,”
the respected news agency Reuters quotes an unnamed US official as
saying: “You look at those things and it’s obvious they couldn’t have
been slipped into Gaza.”
Even the right-wing
Times of Israel chose to cover the story
from all angles, and not just from Israel’s perspective, as the BBC had
done. Its report is headlined: “
Iran arms ship may have been bound for Sinai, not Gaza.”
Correspondent Marissa Newman refers to investigations by US and
Middle East intelligence analysts which concludes that: “Israel may have
obfuscated [the ship’s] real destination in order to spare Egypt the
humiliation of conceding the security unrest in the peninsula.”
Fact or speculation?
Compare these reports, responsibly analyzing the possibility that
this story was no more than Israeli propaganda, with the BBC’s decision
to use Israel’s claims as an opportunity to manufacture a feature on how
an embattled Israel is fighting a “clandestine battle” with weapons
smugglers.
Even when US doubts about the story began to emerge, the BBC refused
to report on them, sticking with the Israeli side of the story which
paints Palestinians in Gaza as violent militants.
Questioned on why the BBC is so willing to believe and report on all
Israel has to say, the online Middle East desk replied: “The veracity of
all stories can be called into question if there is not independent
verification, but this depends on the reliability of the source and the
credibility of the available information.”
And who is the source for this story? Back to the Middle East desk:
“The article makes it clear that the announcement has come from Israel,
i.e. that is the source.”
In other words, the BBC’s news teams are willing to throw
journalistic values to the wind and accept Israel – a country which
remains implicitly dishonest about its nuclear arsenal – as a credible
and reliable source, in a way it probably wouldn’t do with any other
country.
The Middle East desk certainly places what Israel has to say above
what US and Middle East analysts have to say. Asked to follow up its
original story by reporting on their doubts about the arms shipment, the
Middle East desk replied that “to comment further would be purely
speculative.”
So, according to the BBC, what US officials have to say is
speculation, but what comes out of the mouths of Israeli officials is
fact.
Promoting Israel’s viewpoint
On 21 March, BBC Online ran another story that could be viewed as propaganda for Israel under the headline: “
Israel ’
uncovers longest Gaza tunnel.’”
The BBC’s source once again is the Israeli army, and a link is provided
to the story on the army’s website as verification for its
authenticity.
The BBC reports: “A spokesman said it was the longest tunnel found to
date and was meant for use in attacks on Israeli civilians.” The story
came five months after a similar BBC story headlined “
Gaza ‘terror tunnel’ uncovered inside Israel.”
In the intervening five months, BBC Online carried no stories on how
tunnels between Gaza and Egypt have served as a lifeline to the
Palestinians, held under an illegal blockade for seven years. When the
BBC reports on tunnels under Gaza, they are solely “terror tunnels.”
And so, in March, the BBC ignored the killings of Palestinian youths
in the West Bank, choosing instead to run dubious stories on arms
shipments to Gaza and “terror tunnels,” both of which propagate Israel’s
hasbara viewpoint of Palestinians as terrorists hellbent on
its destruction. The truthful image of Palestinians that Israel does not
want promoted – that of victims of unprovoked Israeli aggression – is
kept from BBC audiences.
This week,
BBC Online airbrushed another historical moment
from its news pages. This time it was the comments of US Secretary of
State John Kerry, blaming Israel for the breakdown of talks with the
Palestinian Authority, which the BBC decided to withhold from its
licence fee-paying audience.
Incredibly, the
BBC begins its article
in a way that placed the blame on the Palestinians for the collapse of
the talks, a claim made by Israel. Once again, the BBC reported from the
viewpoint of Israel. The US perspective that Israel precipitated the
breakdown was not reported.
So why is BBC Online’s Middle East desk seemingly so determined to
shield Israel from bad publicity by withholding important news stories
from its audiences, while, on the other hand, pushing anti-Palestinian
stories provided by the Israeli army?
Could it be anything to do with the desk’s editor, Raffi Berg, who took up his post in August 2013, and was
exposed by The Electronic Intifada for having sent emails to BBC journalists asking them to promote the Israeli perspective in their reporting?
It is, of course, impossible to say. But what can be said, by just
looking at its reporting of Israel and the Palestinians over the last
five weeks, is that it is becoming almost impossible to hide the
pro-Israeli bias of BBC Online’s Middle East desk. For that, the BBC
should surely take collective responsibility.
Source: Electronic Intifada
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