BBC radio marks Peres’ death with Palestinian propaganda – part two

Following his afternoon appearance on the BBC World Service programme ‘Newshour’, Mustafa Barghouti was back again on BBC radio on the evening of September 28th.

BBC Radio 4’s ‘The World Tonight’ – presented by Razia Iqbal – included an item (from 35:36 here) concerning the death earlier in the day of Israel’s ninth president Shimon Peres. Listeners heard one minute of recordings of statements by the Israeli prime minister and the leader of the opposition and Iqbal read short statements from the US President and Secretary of State as well as the Pope before introducing her next contributor.peres-the-world-tonight-r4-28-9

Iqbal: “Let’s get the perspective from a Palestinian now. Dr Mustafa Barghouti is a Palestinian legislator.”

Barghouti: “Well I believe of course it’s a sad moment for his family, for his colleagues but one has to say the political opinion about this person; I think to me he represents a very controversial figure. From one side when you compare him today with the leaders of Israel like Netanyahu, Lieberman and Bennett – who are extreme racists rejecting any possibility for peace – of course he looks moderate in comparison to them. But on the other hand one cannot forget that he was the father of settlement policies in the West Bank: the same settlement activities that are killing today the potential and possibility for peace. And he was personally, in my opinion, responsible for the flaws of Oslo Agreement which he orchestrated – the biggest of which was that the agreement was concluded without freezing or stopping settlement activities as we were demanding in Madrid. Instead of one hundred eleven thousand settlers then, we already have now 700 thousand settlers. So one wonders was it just a mistake or an intentional policy? Specially that I didn’t see Shimon Peres unfortunately advocate or call for the recognition of the Palestinian state although he kept talking about two state solution.”

Iqbal: “He did – in the run up to the Oslo Agreement – persuade Israel that the Palestine Liberation Organisation – the PLO, under Yasser Arafat – was the organisation that Israel should and could do business with.”

Barghouti: “That’s true but at the same time he made the PLO pay a very high price for that. He was very smart. He was even devious in this manner because he recognised the need of the PLO to get recognised as a partner. But in exchange he pushed the PLO to recognise Israel without demanding the recognition of Israel of a Palestinian state. I remember talking to Yasser Arafat at the very last weeks of his life and he told me something. We were sitting alone and he was in a very bad mood because he was being besieged and frustrated completely with the whole Oslo process and he said to me ‘we fell into a trap; they created a trap for us’. And I think that’s what it was. When we criticised Oslo in ’93/’94 few people listened to us but today, after 23 years, what do we have? More occupation and an occupation that will become 50 years next year – the longest in human history – and an occupation that has transformed into a system of apartheid much worse that what prevailed in South Africa.”

Iqbal: “When you talk about Shimon Peres being devious, here was a man who for the rest of the world was somebody who deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Yasser Arafat.”

Barghouti: “Yes I know. They won peace prize – they won Nobel Peace prize with Itzhak Rabin for concluding the Oslo Agreement. I don’t want to sound ridiculous but at that time I said they deserved not the Nobel Prize but they deserved the Oscar because it was more of a show – a performance – rather than a change of reality. And the results today – 23 years after – are very clear. We still have the occupation, worse than any time before. We still have the settlement activities going at a speed that is unprecedented. We have fragmented Palestinian territories and everybody sees a process of assassination of the possibility of two state solution. This of course worries me at all a lot but at the same time it will not make us lose hope but it makes us more determined as Palestinians to demand our rights in a clear manner. We want real freedom. We want freedom from occupation and not an adjusted situation of occupation.”

Iqbal: “Legislator Dr Mustafa Barghouti with a Palestinian view of Shimon Peres.”

That propaganda rant – rich with inaccuracy and blatant falsehoods completely unchallenged by Razia Iqbal – went on for almost four and a half minutes. In other words, the producers of this programme found it editorially justifiable to allocate 77% of a five minute and 41 second item supposedly about a recently deceased Israeli statesman to “a Palestinian view” which contributed nothing whatsoever to audience understanding of the Oslo Accords, their sabotage by Palestinian terrorism or the reality of the situation today.  

Related articles:

BBC radio marks Peres’ death with Palestinian propaganda – part one

 

More from Hadar Sela
Limited BBC coverage of latest Hizballah designation
The BBC's Hizballah profile has not been updated in almost three and...
Read More
Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *