The BBC’s Haneen Zoabi show

In mid-October the BBC World News channel aired a documentary by Jane Corbin titled “Israel’s Arab Warriors” and on November 8th, 9th and 10th the same programme was shown on BBC Arabic TV. A written article by Corbin on the same topic (which includes the video) was promoted on the BBC News website’s Middle East page on November 8th under the title “Israel’s Arab soldiers who fight for the Jewish state“. The same article was translated into Arabic and promoted on the same day on the BBC Arabic website.israels-arab-warriors-orig

It is of course good to see the BBC finally getting round to reporting on a topic which has long been off its radar and Jane Corbin is to be commended for enabling BBC audiences to see beyond the standard BBC narrative in her unusually nuanced presentation of Israeli society.

A distinctly less laudable aspect of Corbin’s filmed and written reports is their generous amplification of unqualified and unchallenged propaganda from the inadequately presented Haneen Zoabi.

Less than a minute into the film’s pre-title introduction viewers see Zoabi – unidentified – saying:

“This small, marginalized group that serves in the Israeli army against its people knows they are crossing a patriotic red line.”

At 08:33 Jane Corbin tells viewers that:

“Haneen Zoabi is an MP in the Knesset – the Israeli parliament – but she identifies herself as Palestinian and often clashes with the government.

A similar portrait of Zoabi is presented in the written article:

“Hanin Zoabi is an Israeli Arab MP who identifies herself as Palestinian and is a fierce critic of the state.”zoabi-israels-arab-soldiers-2-with-desc

When Zoabi is presented on screen, the description given is “Hanin Zoabi MK Joint Arab List”. While that description is of course accurate, it tells BBC audiences nothing about the ideology of the Balad party to which Zoabi belongs and the very relevant fact that she and her fellow party members reject the existence of the Jewish State, promote the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees and aspire to a bi-national state. The absence of that information – along with relevant details such as Zoabi’s participation in the 2010 Hamas-supporting violent flotilla and her glorification of terrorism – of course prevents BBC audiences from being able to put her “particular viewpoint” into its appropriate context.

Following that inadequate introduction from Corbin, viewers hear Zoabi say:

“Should we serve in an army that besieges our people in Gaza, occupies our people in the West Bank? A State which expelled my people and built its State on the ruins. 678 cities and villages were demolished by the State of Israel. There’s a conflict with a state that defines itself as a Jewish State; a state that grants privileges to its Jewish over its Palestinian citizens. We just can’t accept the situation.”

The BBC’s commitment to accurate and impartial broadcasting should of course have meant that if it was deemed necessary to include those allegations from Zoabi in the film, then Corbin should have clarified – inter alia – that Gaza is not ‘besieged’, that the vast majority of Palestinians in Judea & Samaria live under the rule of the Palestinian Authority and that most of Palestinians who left what is today Israel in 1948 were not “expelled”. Corbin, however, failed to add any clarifying comments.corbin-art-in-arabic

At 15:28 Corbin tells viewers that:

“The Israeli government says Israeli Arabs have equal rights but they often complain that they are second class citizens. Haneen Zoabi – an MP here – accuses Israel of using bribery to get Arabs to join up.”

Zoabi: “Israel is after people who are poor with no work to serve in the army. 52 – 54% of our Palestinian people in Israel are under the poverty line. Only 10% of the Palestinian youth in Israel continue their university study. You are talking about a whole new generation. The government’s policy of creating poverty obliges people to look for the only solution they can.”

Not only does Corbin fail to challenge the falsehood that the Israeli government has a “policy of creating poverty” but she refrains from supplying any context to Zoabi’s propaganda (for example the fact that just 22% of Arab women of working age are employed or the fact that poverty among the ultra-Orthodox population stands at a similar 54.3%) or informing viewers of government investment in efforts to raise the proportion of Arab citizens in higher education.

Three minutes further on, Zoabi is again given an unchallenged platform.

19:19 Corbin: “Haneen Zoabi’s at a protest outside an Israeli hospital where a Palestinian from the West Bank is on hunger strike. He’s being held under Israeli administrative detention without being indicted or tried.”

Zoabi: “There are hundreds of Palestinians in administrative detention. It’s political persecution; part of the Israeli policy to criminalise the lawful Palestinian resistance. We are fighting for equality and our rights against Israeli racism and colonialisation against the people who have rights to this land.”

Once again, there is no comment from Corbin – not even an effort to distance the BBC from the claim that violent terrorism against civilians is ‘lawful resistance’ or an explanation of the fact that the particular hunger striker in administrative detention is associated with the terrorist organisation Hamas – as the BBC is aware.

At 20:26 viewers see Zoabi repeat the statement made in the programme’s introduction:

“This small, marginalized group that serves in the Israeli army against its people knows they are crossing a patriotic red line.”

At 20:37 Zoabi tells viewers that:

“[Father] Naddaf is a person rejected by Palestinian society – even by some Christians. Not only does he not represent anyone, he is being used by Israel. He is a tool in the hands of the Israeli authorities.”corbin-art-eng

The ability of audiences to put those statements into their correct context would of course have been enhanced had Corbin bothered to tell them of Zoabi’s attempts (together with other Balad MKs) to intimidate Father Naddaf. 

At 24:11 Zoabi returns:

“90% of the Arabs who serve in the Israeli army don’t have equality with Israelis. Israel does not need us to protect its security. Israel doesn’t want to treat us according to our national identity but divide us into Bedouins, country people, city people, Muslims, Christians, Druze. Any way to divide us.

At 40:07 Corbin yet again provides a platform for more unchallenged propaganda from Zoabi – this time at a Land Day rally in Sakhnin.

“Knesset member Haneen Zoabi is here to address the rally.”

Zoabi: “Our message is this army is the army of a country which is against us and kills our people in Jerusalem and in Gaza and in the West Bank. We are not going to play a part in killing our people.”

Following an interview with Mohammed Zoabi, audiences once again hear from Haneen Zoabi:

42:33 “Of course I do not represent those who serve in the Israeli army. I do not speak in the name of the person you just mentioned [Mohammed Zoabi]. Just because he’s part of my family doesn’t make me responsible for his actions. Of course I do not represent those who have identity disfiguration. I do not represent those who have no self-esteem, those with a slave mentality. I represent people with dignity who feel they are in their homeland and never left it.”

Haneen Zoabi appears no fewer than nine times in this 47 minute-long film and on none of those occasions does Corbin challenge her falsehoods and propaganda or correct the inaccurate impressions received by viewers. Although at one point in the film (40:39) Corbin does tell viewers that “a recent poll says a majority of the Arab-Israeli community identifies as Israeli in some way”, none of the sixteen other Muslim, Christian or Druze members of the Knesset are interviewed, meaning that BBC audiences are restricted to hearing Zoabi’s extremist views without understanding her place on the political map.

The vast majority of this programme’s viewers around the world will of course not be aware of the ideology of Zoabi and her political party and will not be familiar with the phenomenon of publicly funded MPs who advocate the destruction of the state they ostensibly serve. The failure to adequately explain the political motivations behind Zoabi’s propaganda means that not only does this film become a platform for its unchallenged amplification, but that viewers are misled with false and distorted information which overshadows and detracts from a long-overdue presentation of the seriously under-reported topic of co-existence between different ethnic communities in Israel.  

Related Articles:

The Christians who do not fit into the BBC’s Middle East narrative

Protest by Middle East Christians not on the BBC radar

What Do Israeli Christians, Druze and Bedouin Think About the Jewish State?   (CAMERA)

BBC WS ‘Newshour’ promotion of Haneen Zoabi omits crucial information

 

More from Hadar Sela
Examining a BBC correspondent’s recommended reading on Egyptian Jews
This is a guest post by the Point of No Return blog. ...
Read More
Leave a comment

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