The Palestinian Authority’s envoy to the European Union – Leila Shahid – appeared on ‘Hardtalk’ (broadcast on the BBC World Service) on December 14th 2012. 
Readers in Britain can see the programme here for a limited period of time and those elsewhere can listen to a podcast of it here.
Though presenter Stephen Sackur did a fairly reasonable job on the whole, once again we saw in this programme an interviewee allowed to make factually incorrect statements without appropriate correction from the BBC’s representative.
Shahid’s statement that Israel “killed 1,400 civilians” during Operation Cast Lead went uncorrected, as did her use of the phrase “67 borders”. Most seriously, her claim that Palestinians were “ethnically cleansed” in 1948 raised a barely audible and certainly incomprehensible grumble from Sackur, but was not properly refuted.
In addition to the broadcast of the progamme itself, the BBC News website decided to highlight one portion of the interview on its Middle East page under the title “Palestinians ‘need a normal life’ “.
That 2:03 minute section of the interview can be seen here and it is largely devoted to something of a rant from Shahid in which – continuing her theme earlier in the programme when challenged regarding PA human rights abuses – she manages to blame each and every defect of the authority she represents upon “the occupation”.
“You make the questions and the answers. So if you want an answer, I’m telling you, the official institutions of the EU who are in charge of corruption with all the partners of the EU has not been able to show a case of corruption in terms of stealing money. The corruption is in the system of political clientelism. What we need is to go back to a normal life. A normal life means freedom, sovereignty, elections, democratic institutions, a parliament and a president. All this means an end of occupation. There is no way you’re going to convince me that you can build democracies without freedom. Citizens can’t express themselves – will not be able really to protect their own rights and their accomplishments unless they are free to do so. We have not had a working parliament for the last five years and this is not normal. For all these reasons I think we have a lot of work to do and in order to do it, we are sure that we need reconciliation, an end of occupation, freedom and statehood.”
The editorial decision to isolate, highlight and amplify this particular section of the interview is a very interesting one.
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Isn’t “Shahid” an Arab martyr? But she still appears to be alive.
So not really HardTalk as Easy Passage – pretty much sums up the BBC’s and the lefts’ attitude to the liars. killers and plunderers of the Red green alliance.
BBC Watchers were just thinking the Savile allegations could not bring the BBC’s reputation for accuracy and impartiality any lower, when we read this:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4663651/Jimmy-Savile-ad-axed-in-corpse-sex-fear.html
Am I missing something here?Humour? Operation Cast Lead DID produce 1400 Palestinian deaths. Where is the evidence to say they were not civilians? There was a border before the Six Day War and then a new one afterwards in 1967.Presumably 67 borders refers to the latter. In 1948,approximately 750000 Palestinians were forced from their homes,not allowed to return and replaced by people from a different ethnic group. So ‘ethnic cleansing’ is a fair description.If this were repeated today in another part of the world we might describe it as such. So what’s the problem? Everybody needs a ‘norma’l life. Living under military occupation cannot be described as ‘normal’. As for Ms Shahid’s ‘rant’. Not so much a ‘rant’ but having a moan. Quite a restrained moan in the circumstances. We can understand whereas you can’t. What is so laughable about your ‘rant’ is the irony of an Israeli apologist castigating the PA about human rights abuse. But I forgot! Anyone who defends the crimes of the IDF doesn’t do irony
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“Where is the evidence they were not civilians”?
Simple, really: the Pals’. themselves say so:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/more-of-those-civilians-killed-in-gaza.html
“Ethnic cleansing”– Of course, given that a great number fled, that makes an unfair description.
Speaking of rants — any chance we might actually hear an original thought from you, other than the usual harangues about “evil Israel”?
The majority of those 1400 killed were civilians ,including police officers .
When you terrorize people to force them to leave , thats ethnic cleansing.
Not according to Hamas itself:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-of-those-civilians-killed-in-gaza.html
More on those “civilians”:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/11/dead-child-held-by-egypts-pm-was-killed.html
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/12/gaza-101-terrorists-68-civilians-killed.html
Oh FFS Spratty. Even Hamas say ~700 of them were their operatives:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_print=1&x_context=7&x_issue=76&x_article=1952.
Then there’s these two gems:
“There was a border before the Six Day War and then a new one afterwards in 1967….”
The ‘border’ (as you call it) before the 6 Day War was actually an armistice line. A border has to have legal standing. The armistice line is simply about where the different sides had reached when the ceasefire was called in the 1948 War of Independence.
“Presumably 67 borders refers to the latter”.
By your logic, the ’67 border is the Jordan River. But then, to be fair, if we’re actually talking about real borders (as opposed to armistice lines), the 1948 border was also the Jordan River.
Then you claim: “In 1948,approximately 750000 Palestinians were forced from their homes”.
Now I’m sure you know very well that most of these were NOT actually ‘forced from their homes’ by the then Jewish population of the fledgling Israeli state, so you’re simply being disingenuous there: http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/refugees2.html
But, while we’re talking about refugees, there’s also this to consider: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/talking/jew_refugees.html.
Why ARE facts such anathema to you?
The evidence that these were dead Palestinian soldiers rather than innocent civilian victims is on Hamas’ and Islamic Jihad’s websites where they glorify the “martyr” and his journey to death. Highlights include photos of the deceased non-civilian with weapons and a story of his terrorist activities. Often you can do the math to prove he began when he was under the age of 18.
The Palestinians driven out of Kuwait or Syria or elsewhere were not allowed to return to their homes either. If it’s ethnic cleansing when Israel does it, the same applies to other countries. Similarly, apply the same to Jews forced out of Arab countries where they had lived for many centuries.