Jun 18 2013

BBC gets it right – on matkot and Waze

Proving once again that it can produce accurate and impartial reporting about Israel when it wants to, the BBC recently published an article by technology reporter Katia Moskvitch on the subject of Google’s acquisition of the Israeli company ‘Waze’ for a reported $1.3 billion. Also worth reading is Moskvitch’s 2011 report entitled “How Israel turned itself into a high-tech hub“.

And then we have Yolande Knell’s engaging cameo of the world of ‘matkot’, which rightly received a lot of positive feedback on Twitter.

As we have noted before:

“Now of course none of these reports relates to ‘the conflict’, and so in these cases the BBC apparently does not feel the need to go beyond reporting news, but also to shape audience perception of it. But nevertheless these reports indicate that the BBC can report on Israel in a professional manner when it chooses to do so.”

Let’s hope to see more of this kind of accurate, impartial and – no less importantly – interesting reporting in the future.

Jun 16 2013

BBC’s Knell uses F1 to amplify PA propaganda on Jerusalem

Israeli readers of the headline to a June 14^th report by the BBC Jerusalem Bureau’s Yolande Knell, which appeared on the Middle East page of the BBC News website, might logically have assumed that it referred to disgruntled Jerusalemites upset about two days of traffic restrictions in their city last week due to the Formula One event held there.

But they would have been wrong. Upon further reading we learn that Knell’s “controversy” predictably involves the usual one-trick phoney outrage from “Palestinian officials” and is in fact no more than a journalistic hook upon which to hang yet another BBC advancement of the PA’s political narrative.

“Tens of thousands of spectators have turned out to watch Formula 1 racing teams roar around the edge of Jerusalem’s Old City.

A showcase event over the past two days featured the Ferrari and Marussia teams.

The mayor said the idea was to promote peace and bring together people of different faiths.

However Palestinian officials saw it as an Israeli attempt to show sovereignty over the disputed city.

Both Israel and the Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital.”

Knell of course neglects to clarify for her readers that Israel does have sovereignty over the city, which – despite recurrent BBC claims to the contrary – is Israel’s capital.

Knell writes:

“However Palestinian officials did not share that enthusiasm.

“The Israelis are trying all different ways to project their own agenda, including through sport,” said the Palestinian Authority Governor of Jerusalem district, Adnan Husseini.

“They are trying to show the issue of Jerusalem is resolved and that there is peace and stability. Actually it isn’t true. It’s not the fact.” “

So, “Palestinian officials” are in fact one person bearing a fairly meaningless title – Adnan Husseini – who was described by Knell in the original version of the article as being the “Governor of Jerusalem”. That bizarre error was quietly amended several hours later.

In the interests of context, transparency, impartiality and accuracy, it would have been appropriate for Knell to inform her audiences that Adnan Husseini (yes, he is a descendent of the notorious former Mufti) has quite a history of denying Jewish and Israeli connections to Jerusalem.

“It’s not a simple matter. The excavations are being carried out [by Israel] in accordance with an entire political program of Judaization, falsification of history, exploitation of this falsification for Zionist propaganda in the West and throughout the world, to prove that they have some connection to Jerusalem.” (June 12, 2012, Palestinian TV)

“The Jerusalem district [administration] published an announcement yesterday under the heading ‘Jerusalem’s Archaeological Landmarks, Ancient History, and Israel’s Ongoing Assault’, to inform people about some of the many archaeological, religious and historical landmarks in Jerusalem. Jerusalem District Governor, Engineer Adnan Husseini, said that the announcement comes as the city is subject to an Israeli campaign of forgery, aimed at erasing its Islamic and Christian landmarks, and highlighting its Jewish character. Husseini declared that some of the active national institutions, including the Jerusalem District, the National Committee, and the like, bear the burden of focusing attention on feverish attempts at Judaization to which these landmarks are subject.” (September 18^th, 2012, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)

“It cannot be that Jerusalem will someday be part of the State of Israel. Every inch of Jerusalem is always speaking the Arabic-Palestinian-Islamic-Christian language. The resolve of the residents of Jerusalem and their struggle against all the oppressive, settling and colonizing acts, prove this… The invasions of Al-Aqsa, for example, what do they prove? In other words, why do they want to drag us into a religious war?” (October 19^th, 2012, Palestinian TV) [emphasis added]

Oh dear! It seems that Mr Husseini is not even content to limit himself to demanding “East” Jerusalem alone as the capital of a Palestinian state. Perhaps that explains why he is so outraged by a sporting event which in actual fact took place in areas of the city he and his PA colleagues are not supposed to find remotely controversial – at least according to the narrative as it is understood by their Western donors.

How very revealing it is that Yolande Knell chose to politicise what could have been a factual and impartial report on a sporting event by showcasing Husseini’s baseless histrionics and that in doing so, she opted as a volunteer mouthpiece for the amplification of the opinions of a man who promotes the offensive racist trope of the ‘Juadization’ of Jerusalem.

Jun 14 2013

Exceptional Middle East story ignored by the BBC

As we mentioned here a few weeks ago, Israeli doctors at the Wolfson Medical Centre in Holon recently operated on a four year-old Syrian refugee with a life-threatening congenital heart condition. The little girl and her mother left Israel this week and the Times of Israel has a compelling article on their story.

“Nadrah underwent heart surgery on May 8, Raha told me. The operation went smoothly, but she had to stay in the hospital for 10 days.

One day while Nadrah was recuperating, Raha took her daughter for a stroll down the hall. They didn’t walk long, as Nadrah was still weak from her operation. They reached their room and walked through the door.

A man she had never seen before was waiting by Nadrah’s bed. Raha noticed the pistol on his hip.

He began speaking in flawless Syrian Arabic. “I am Abu Salim,” he said, “and I heard you were here. You don’t know me.”

Raha was in shock.

How did Assad’s intelligence services track us to the hospital?”

Somehow, despite having an office less than an hour’s drive from the hospital, the BBC has managed to totally ignore this exceptional story of human and political interest. But it seems that Nadrah’s case will not be the last, so there may yet be a chance for the BBC to tell its audiences a story which defies the usual Middle East narrative – if it chooses to do so.

“Other Syrian families, nervous about entering Israel, were waiting to see that Nadrah returned safely, with her identity protected, before agreeing to send their own children. Raha and Nadrah made it home on Wednesday, and on Thursday, the visa request for a second Syrian child was submitted to the Israeli government, with an invitation to the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer.”

Jun 11 2013

Frequent BBC favourite Falk in the news

The UN’s ‘Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights’ Richard Falk is in the news again, this time due to the call on him to resign from the post which recently came from America’s Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe.

“Mr. Falk’s most recent statement, which he dramatically and recklessly included in an official UN document, … once again starkly demonstrated that he is unfit to serve in his role as a UN special rapporteur,” she said, adding: “We once again call for his resignation.”

The statement to which Ambassador Chamberlain Donahoe refers is Falk’s call for an investigation into the NGO UN Watch after that organization called for the termination of Falk’s mandate in the wake of his remarks concerning the Boston marathon terror attack which included the following:

”The war drums are beating at this moment in relation to both North Korea and Iran, and as long as Tel Aviv has the compliant ear of the American political establishment, those who wish for peace and justice in the world should not rest easy.” […]

”The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world.”

Of course one would have to have one’s head pretty firmly buried in the sand not to be aware of the fact that Falk’s history of inaccurate and offensive statements goes back a very long way indeed. From his 1979 New York Times puff-piece in defence of Ayatollah Khomeini, through to his claims that the 9/11 terror attacks were orchestrated by the US government, his repeated justifications of Palestinian terror and his public support for the ‘one-state solution’ (i.e. the eradication of Israel as the Jewish state), Falk has never been far from controversy.

That fact was well known by the BBC when Falk took up his UN position in 2008, as an article by Tim Franks from April of that year shows.

In May 2008 the BBC’s Stephen Sackur interviewed Falk on ‘Hardtalk’, where he defended his use of anti-Semitic Nazi analogies.

And yet, the BBC – despite being bound to standards of accuracy and impartiality – has continued throughout the years to quote Falk on the subject of Israel extensively, unquestioningly and without properly informing its audiences of his long-standing history of bias and open animosity towards Israel.

Here, for example, is a 2010 article by Barbara Plett which promotes statements made by Falk on the subject of “settlements”.

Here is a 2012 report by the BBC Jerusalem Bureau’s Yolande Knell on the subject of Palestinian hunger strikers which – whilst neglecting to mention their membership of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad – also extensively promotes statements made by Falk.

And here is Knell yet again – this time in February 2013 – quoting Falk’s regurgitation of Palestinian Authority propaganda regarding Arafat Jaradat.

Most recently, on June 10th 2013, the BBC published yet another article based on statements by Falk. Towards the end of that piece it is noted that “[i]n 2008, Mr Falk drew widespread criticism for comparing Israeli actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis”, but the article fails to make clear to readers the antisemitic nature of Falk’s comments and also makes no effort to explain to readers why “the US – which has also expressed concerns about Mr Falk’s alleged bias – called for his removal from the post”.

Why the BBC seems to feel the need to play down Falk’s long history of anti-Israel campaigning, antisemitic remarks, adherence to conspiracy theories and general offensiveness is one question. How the BBC thinks it can meet its required standards of accuracy and impartiality by unquestioningly repeating and promoting the opinions of a man it knows full well to be far removed from both of those criteria is a yet more pressing question which needs to be asked more than ever at this time.

Jun 10 2013

Letter to a new BBC ME correspondent

Hello,

We do not yet know your name or when you will be arriving in Jerusalem but that does not really matter. The minute you step off the plane at the airport in Tel Aviv, you will encounter a junction and the path you choose then will determine what you achieve during your time here.

You have no doubt taken the mandatory Middle East module at the BBC College of Journalism and so – equipped with the “correct” terminology – you could on the one hand elect to take the route which will lead you to turn out more of the same genre of reports which generations of your predecessors have produced. That is the easy option: the narrative was already set long ago and all you have to do is to shoehorn new stories into the existing mould. Whilst there is definitely no shortage of news in this part of the world, you will be able to navigate your three or so years here with relative ease if you stick to the path which has been very well-trodden by those before you.

The question is; did you become a journalist in order to turn out pro forma articles which have in fact already been dictated by somebody else and challenge neither your own preconceived perceptions nor those of your audiences? Or did you choose your career because you wanted to tell the stories which no-one else is telling? Did you aspire to challenge accepted notions and to peel back the layers of misconception by bringing your audiences a view they have likely never seen? If that is the case, you have come to the right place, but you must take the second, more uncomfortable route which demands much more effort on your part.

Indeed, that route requires that you first of all forget what you think you know and make a conscious effort to avoid imposing your own cultural interpretations on what you see. If you can, it would be beneficial to learn at least the basics of Hebrew and Arabic because language is of course a window into culture as well as a means of communication. Most important though is to listen – and not only to the English speakers in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or the conveniently provided English language press releases from the plethora of political NGOs just waiting to make your life easier – and get their own message amplified.

Get out of the main population centres and go and explore the other Israel which does not interest most foreign correspondents. Listen to the Israelis originally from Casablanca, Cochin or Sanaa in Yeruham, Ofakim and Hatzor HaGlilit. Hear the Druze dentist from Rameh, the Circassian nurse from Kfar Kama and her colleague the Bedouin GP from Shibli. Listen to the Likud-voting Muslim business owner from Daburiya and the married gay man from the Galilee Arab village who lives a double life which only his Jewish boss knows about. Hear the “air-raid shelter generation” kibbutzniks who spent their childhoods under the shadow of constant Syrian attacks from the Golan – and then built their own homes on the sites of those enemy bunkers after 1967. Talk to the Holocaust survivor who made the Negev desert bloom but whose grandchildren live under the pall of terrorist missiles from Gaza and the man born in a British detention camp in Cyprus to German Holocaust survivor parents turned back by the Mandate authorities. Meet the lady expelled from Hebron as a baby in 1929, the seventh generation Jerusalemite expelled from the Old City in 1948 and the evacuees from Yamit and Gush Katif. Listen to the parents trying to hold their lives together after their daughter was murdered by a terrorist suicide bomber for no other reason than the fact that she was an Israeli on a bus.

Be curious; there are thousands of stories here at every turn – but most of them will not fit into the familiar narrative you know and in order to tell them, you will have to be different and, to no small extent, brave. And if that sounds like too much of a challenge and you just want to pass your time here as uncontroversially and easily as possible whilst waiting for the next rung on the career ladder, then at least please bear in mind that you are not just any journalist – you are a BBC journalist. Hence, unlike your colleagues in the bar at the American Colony Hotel, you are committed to reporting accurately and impartially.

As the filter through which BBC produced content on the Middle East will pass in these coming years, you have the power to shape the perceptions and attitudes of audiences of the world’s biggest media organisation. That is a heavy responsibility and one which – if mishandled – can have very serious consequences. Libels such as the “massacre” in Jenin over a decade ago still abound on the internet (where whatever you too write and report will remain on permanent view), in no small part thanks to some of those who did your job before you.

Like them, you too will move on to a different assignment in a relatively short period of time, but the people affected by what you report and how you present it will remain here. What is perhaps only a passing story for a journalist already looking for the next one is someone else’s life.

This region is saturated with journalists writing nearly identical reports which conform to an unquestioned political narrative and news consumers have no use for yet more of the same. What they do need however is objective, factual, innovative reporting from people curious enough to look behind the clichés and the obvious. That is a big challenge. Whether you decide to take it on or not will depend upon the route you choose to take.

Good luck!

Jun 8 2013

After effects 2 : BBC accuracy failure again used to promote hatred

Back in April we noted that the image of BBC employee Jihad Masharawi holding the body of his son Omar had been used by the Iranian regime-linked ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’ at an anti-Israel protest in London.

Blogger Richard Millett has recorded another instance of the use of the same image in recent days by the same organization, also in London.

As we previously remarked:

“Is the BBC responsible for the fact that Khomeinist sympathisers intent upon Israel’s destruction and the spread of hate speech against Jews use that image to promote their cause? No.

Is the BBC responsible for the fact that the picture of a father carrying his son who was killed as a result of a terrorist missile can be misrepresented as an image depicting Israeli “murder”? Yes.

Because if BBC journalists in the Gaza Strip at the time had adhered to their own editorial guidelines on accuracy and impartiality, that story would not have been promoted as part of a preconceived narrative depicting Israelis as ‘baby killers’ and that image would not have become entrenched in the minds of the general public as a depiction of Israeli wrong-doing.”

Over six months have now passed since the BBC first promoted its irresponsible and unprofessional knee-jerk report blaming Israel for Omar Masharawi’s death without any proof whatsoever that the story it so energetically promoted had a factual basis. The subsequent corrections issued by the BBC of course received nowhere near as much exposure as the original story itself and the BBC’s response to this very grave lapse of editorial standards has been disappointing at all levels.

In May 2010, the BBC’s former Director General Mark Thompson said:

“The BBC’s motto is ‘Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation’ – the idea being that access to news, information and debate about different countries and cultures can ultimately help foster mutual understanding and tolerance.”

That concept of course has another side to it too. When the news and information accessed by BBC audiences is not accurate or impartial, it can very easily foster hate and intolerance – as the above photograph illustrates only too well. One would have expected Mark Thompson’s successors to be aware of that fact, and to take the resulting responsibility seriously rather than closing ranks as a response to public criticism.

BBC’s Jon Donnison displays a professional and ethical conflict of interests

BBC’s Omar Masharawi story has rug pulled by UNHRC

Still no BBC accountability on Masharawi story

A reminder of the chronology of the BBC’s Omar Masharawi story

Update on the BBC’s Omar Masharawi story

After effects: BBC accuracy failure used to promote hate

Jun 7 2013

Will the BBC report any of these stories?

With no BBC correspondent currently on the ground in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority controlled areas of Judea and Samaria, news from those regions has been rather sparse lately. On the other hand, readers can decide for themselves whether any of the following recent stories would have been reported by the BBC Jerusalem Bureau even if it had its full complement of staff.

The Catholic Herald reports that five Christian schools in the Gaza Strip face closure due to the ban on mixed education brought in by Hamas earlier this year.

“Fr Faysal Hijazin said: “This will be a big problem. We hope they will not go through with it, but if they do, we will be in big trouble. We don’t have the space and we don’t have the money to divide our schools.”

In addition to finding additional space, he said, the schools face having to hire more teachers. Men and women teachers would not be allowed to teach classes of the opposite sex older than 10 under Islamic law. […]

Fr Hijazin said that although the order did not specifically single out the Christian schools, the five are the only schools with mixed enrolment in Gaza.

“It is a concern that in education things are getting more conservative,” he said. “It reflects the whole society. This is of concern to both Christians and moderate Muslims. It is not easy to be there.” “

Meanwhile in Ramallah, the Islamist movement Hizb ut Tahrir staged a rally this week to mark the 92^nd anniversary of the fall of the Caliphate.

In contrast to previous Hizb ut Tahrir rallies, this one was given free rein by the Palestinian Authority and Khaled Abu Toameh gives some insight into why its approach is different this time.

“Chanting slogans in favor of the restoration of the Caliphate, the Muslim fundamentalists called on Islamic armies to “march toward Palestine to liberate the Aqsa Mosque and the rest of Palestine.”

The fundamentalists also shouted slogans in support of the jihadi terrorists engaged in the fight against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Baher Saleh, a senior Hizb-ut-Tahrir official, told the crowd that it was time for Muslim armies to “liberate the Aqsa Mosque from the hands of the filthy Jews.”

Saleh and other members of the organization also condemned the Palestinian Authority leadership for failing to endorse their ideology and mobilize the Islamic world for war against Israel.”

As for the Palestinian Authority, this week the PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department – headed by Saeb Erekat – launched a new campaign according to which the Latrun Valley, which lies on the main Highway 1 route connecting Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, is “an integral part of Palestine”.

It will be interesting to see if this latest spoke in the wheels of negotiations will merit inclusion in the BBC narrative regarding the peace process.

Jun 5 2013

BBC’s Knell promotes political church campaign supported by BBC funder

Here is a Tweet dated April 26^th 2013 from the BBC Jerusalem Bureau’s Yolande Knell.

The link promoted by Knell leads to a press release on the website of the Society of St. Yves (also known as the Catholic Centre for Human Rights) and relates to the result of an appeal against the proposed route of the anti-terrorist fence in the Cremisan Valley between Beit Jala and Jerusalem – a subject which Knell wrote about just over a year ago.

If BBC licence fee payers had perhaps assumed that information regarding the appeal promoted by Yolande Knell to her Twitter followers would come – according to BBC standards – from an objective source, they would be sadly mistaken. In fact, the Society of St. Yves has provided the legal representation for some of those appealing the route of the fence.

Founded in 1991 by the former Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the Society of St. Yves partners a plethora of politically motivated NGOs active within the sphere of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including ’Stop the Wall’. The involvement of a church organization in such political activities will come as no surprise to those familiar with political campaigns in the region, especially given the fact that Michel Sabbah was one of the initiators (along with Naim Ateek of Sabeel and Atallah Hanna) of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions promoting ‘Kairos Document‘ launched in Bethlehem in 2009 and is also the international president of Pax Christi.

But there is another interesting twist to this story. Writing in the Guardian last October, Harriet Sherwood reported that the legal campaign mounted by the Society of St. Yves with regard to the anti-terrorist fence was funded in part by the British government and that the campaign was being supported (rather undiplomatically, some might consider) by the British Consulate in Jerusalem and the British Foreign Secretary.

“The British foreign secretary and the Archbishop of Westminster have joined forces in opposing the route of Israel’s vast barrier along the West Bank, which adversely affects a community of monks, nuns and Christian families near Bethlehem.[…]

In addition to Hague’s personal intervention, the British consulate in East Jerusalem is supporting the community and the Department for International Development (Dfid) is providing indirect funding for the legal challenge. […]

Dfid has given a two-year grant of £2.9m to the Norwegian Refugee Council, which in turn is funding the Society of St Yves, a Jerusalem-based Catholic human rights organisation, which is assisting the Beit Jala community with its case.”

What a coincidence then that a correspondent for the (still) Foreign and Commonwealth Office funded BBC tweets a link to an organization running a campaign supported by the FCO and funded by another UK government department.

Jun 4 2013

Soft BBC portrait of new PA prime minister

An article appearing on the BBC News website on June 3^rd 2013 relates to the appointment of a new Palestinian Authority prime minister.

The article describes Rami Hamdallah as being a “political independent” on the one hand and yet on the other states:

“He is currently president of al-Najah National University in the West Bank and seen as close to Mr Abbas’ Fatah party.”

Other media organisations, including Al Jazeera, the Huffington Post and Le Monde as well as the Palestinian site IMEMC (run by the ISM affiliated ‘Palestinian Centre for the Rapprochement between People), state that Hamdallah is actually a member of Fatah, but seeing as he was personally appointed by the PA’s president (whose own elected term of office expired well over four years ago) rather than elected by the Palestinian people, the subject of Hamdallah’s ‘political independence’ is somewhat academic.

What is certainly the case however is that Hamdallah’s proximity to Fatah is close enough to have made him Mahmoud Abbas’ preferred choice for the position – the reasons for which are outlined here and here by Khaled Abu Toameh.

The BBC article is somewhat economic with its descriptions of Mr Hamdallah’s CV. It elects to ignore, for example, his trusteeship and board membership at the ‘Yasser Arafat Foundation’ – the organization which has invested much energy in promoting the conspiracy theory whereby Arafat was supposedly poisoned by Israel.

The BBC also chooses to ignore the fact that under Hamdallah’s presidency, students at An Najar University staged an exhibition glorifying suicide bombers in September 2001 (described by the BBC at the time as an “art show” in a report placed in its website’s ”entertainment: arts” section) which included a gory representation of the Sbarro pizza restaurant where fifteen civilians – many of them women and children – had been murdered only six weeks previously.

It would of course contribute vastly to the BBC’s adherence to its defined ‘public purpose’ of promoting “global outlook” were it to desist from the practice of softening portrayals of the Palestinian leadership – and a new prime minister is a good place to begin.

Jun 3 2013

BBC Jerusalem Bureau personnel changes

Readers may have noticed that the BBC News website’s Middle East page has not carried any Israel-related items since May 30^th.

At least part of the reason for that may perhaps be explained by the news that Wyre Davies has relocated to Brazil and Jon Donnison is apparently en route to Australia.