“The BBC must not knowingly and materially mislead its audiences. We should not distort known facts, present invented material as fact or otherwise undermine our audiences’ trust in our content.”
Consider this filmed report from March 24th by Lucas de Jong which appeared on BBC television news programmes as well as on the BBC News website.
“Obama is credited with connecting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his Turkish counterpart. Mr Netanyahu apologized to Turkey for this 2010 commando raid that killed nine activists on a Turkish vessel in a Gaza-bound flotilla.”
However, as previously noted here, PM Netanyahu’s apology did not relate to the fact that a “commando raid” took place – as de Jong claims – but to “any mistakes that might have led to the loss of life or injury” and it was made not “to Turkey”, but specifically to the Turkish people.
De Jong’s complete failure to inject any context whatsoever into this section of his report, together with his selective omission of crucial facts, means that viewers unfamiliar with the actual sequence of events are left unaware of the severe violence perpetrated against the Israeli soldiers by the well-prepared mob of religiously inspired Turkish nationals and of the fact that the soldiers acted in self-defence.
Neither are viewers made aware of the fact that the purpose of the “Gaza-bound flotilla” was to breach a legal maritime blockade initiated in order to curb the flow of weapons to the terrorist group Hamas, with which organisers of the flotilla – including the owners of the ship upon which the incident took place, the IHH – are affiliated.
This additional example of inaccurate and context-free reporting on the subject of the Mavi Marmara incident indicates yet again that the BBC is more interested in manipulating audiences’ recollections of that event through distortion of the facts than in accurate and impartial reporting in accordance with its obligations.
The timing of the editorial decision taken by the BBC to heavily promote Jon Donnison’s latest report relating to the subject of Palestinian prisoners is very interesting. The event around which the story is based actually took place last August, but was not reported by the BBC at the time. Now, when a Palestinian publicity campaign to raise the profile of the subject of prisoners is in full swing, the BBC suddenly sends Donnison off to resurrect the story, with the result being a distinct whiff of activist journalism – or ‘journavism’ as it is known.
Ben Yehuda street bombing 1997, in which Ammar a-Ziben was also involved.
Donnison’s tale of a baby boy born – supposedly as the result of IVF treatment using smuggled sperm – to the wife of a Hamas terrorist jailed in Israel after having been sentenced to multiple life sentences, was featured on the BBC News website, on BBC television news programmes, on BBC World Service radio and some BBC Watch readers also heard the item on the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘PM’.
The various versions of Donnison’s report all severely play down the father’s crimes, instead focusing on what one can only presume the BBC thinks is the ‘human interest’ side of the story. Donnison even goes so far as to inject some scepticism into his reports regarding the imprisonment of Ammar a-Ziben and other terrorists: apparently he is not convinced by Israel’s definition of the blowing up of human beings as a security offence.
“Unlike some Israeli prisoners, Palestinians who are jailed for what Israel calls security offences are not allowed conjugal visits where they can be intimate with their partners.”
Donnison’s only mention of a-Ziben’s crimes is concentrated in one very vague sentence:
“Ammar Ziben is serving 32 life sentences in an Israeli prison for his involvement in bomb attacks in Jerusalem in 1997.”
So let’s have a look at what a-Ziben’s organization, Hamas, says about him.
“Ammar played an important role in resisting the occupation forces, at a time when most people were disenchanted with the occupation’s false promises of peace. Before his arrest, Ammar worked with Mohannad El-Taher, Ayman Halawa, and Mahmoud Abu Hannood. This was the group of Al-Qassam leaders who carried the burden of maintaining the resistance before Al-Aqsa Intifada, and escalated the resistance during the first 2 years of the Intifada.
In 1997, five martyrdom operations resulted 27 Israelis killed and 300 injured as a reaction against the Zionist daily arrest and crimes against the Palestinian people. The operations were also a price paid by the occupation for the imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians in occupation jails. Ammar was in the operation room that oversaw the operations.” [emphasis added]
Ben Yehuda street bombing 1997
In other words, what Donnison euphemistically calls “involvement” in “bomb attacks” is actually the organization and overseeing of suicide bombings in which Israeli civilians were brutally murdered during the turbulent seven-year period between the signing of the Oslo Accords and the commencement of the Second Intifada, when rejectionist terror organisations including Hamas tried to derail the peace process.
One of several terror attacks which Ammar a-Ziben oversaw took place on July 30th 1997 in Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem. Sixteen people were killed and 178 injured by two suicide bombers. Here is archive footage from a news report following the attack.
Donnison’s ‘human interest’ story shows absolutely no interest in the human beings murdered and maimed in that attack. BBC audiences are unsubtly steered by Donnison in the direction of empathy for the a-Ziben family, with the IVF treatment described as being carried out for “humanitarian reasons” and the child’s mother quoted as saying:
“Muhannad is a gift from God,” Dallal told the BBC at the time. “But my happiness is not complete without my husband here beside me.”
Donnison and his editors devote no attention to the fact that for the past sixteen years, life has most probably not been complete either for the relatives of Lev Desyatnik, Regina Giber, Valentina Kovalenko, Shmuel Malka, David Nasco, Muhi A-din Othman, Simha Fremd, Grisha Paskhovitz, Leah Stern, Rachel Tejgatrio, Liliya Zelezniak, Shalom (Golan) Zevulun, Mark Rabinowitz, Eli Adourian, Ilia Gazrach and Baruch Ostrovsky – all of whom Ammar a-Ziben was complicit in murdering, along with many others in additional attacks.
Memorial to victims of the 1997 Mahane Yehuda bombing
Donnison also refrains from revealing to his audiences the reason for the choice of name that Ammar a-Ziben elected to give his son. According to a Channel 2 report from last August, the baby was named Muhannad after Ammar a-Ziben’s good friend Muhannad Taher – known as ‘the fourth engineer’ – head of Hamas’ military wing in Samaria and an explosives expert. Taher was responsible for the deaths of 121 Israelis, having supplied the explosive devices which were used in the Park Hotel terror attack in 2002, the Dolphinarium attackin 2001, the Patt Junction bus bombing in 2002 and been involved in the organization of many other attacks, including those for which a-Ziben was convicted. Wanted since 1999, Taher was killed in a firefight in July 2002 whilst the IDF attempted to arrest him.
Having already put out in recent weeks numerous reports whitewashing the terror connections of Palestinian hunger-strikers in Israeli prisons and portraying the organized rioting campaign aimed at stirring up international condemnation of Israel as ‘spontaneous’ protests, the BBC has now reached a new low with this ‘human face of terror’ puff piece from Donnison, in what is increasingly looking like a BBC publicity campaign on behalf of imprisoned terrorists.
“Two decades ago the world’s killing fields were in the Balkans and Rwanda but right now, they’re in Syria. Can we be any more confident today, than we were back then, that the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity will be brought to justice? HARDtalk speaks to Theodor Meron, currently serving a second term as President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. When it comes to delivering justice, is the international legal framework now in place fit for purpose? ”
The programme can be heard here or watched here in the UK.
Members of the audience tuning in because they are actually interested in the subject of potential legal action against either or both sides in the Syrian conflict would have been left feeling rather sold short after watching or listening to this programme, as the subject was given barely a minute of attention towards its end.
What they did hear, however, was host Stephen Sackur blithely lumping the subject of Israeli settlements together with crimes against humanity in, among other places, the former Yugoslavia, Darfur and Rwanda.
At 19:44 in the above audio recording, Sackur says to his interviewee Theodor Meron:
“Let’s talk about one particular case, which is again very relevant to your past, and that is Israel. Israel stands accused by many observers around the world of violating the Geneva Conventions – fundamental international law – when it comes to settlements. You wrote a legal advice for the Israeli prime minister back in 1967, right after the Six Day War, in which you said settling Jewish civilians on occupied land, in your view, would fundamentally contravene the Geneva Convention.”
Meron: “This is still my view.”
Sackur: “Still your view?”
Meron: “This is still my view.”
Sakur: “So in that case, do you think..”
Meron: “I am sorry my opinion was not listened to; I think those settlements certainly make no contribution to peace.”
Sackur: “Do you think Israel should face international legal action on the back of – for example – Chapter Eight of the ICC, concerning war crimes?”
Meron: “It would be a very difficult question for the ICC to tackle, but because of my Israeli past I feel not comfortable in discussing the jurisdictional or political aspect of..”
Sackur: “Well, precisely.”
Meron: “Because of my past.”
Sackur: “Well hang on a minute; that is your past. You’re no longer a citizen of Israel. You took US citizenship, but you advised the Israeli government for years and therefore you, more than anybody, could send a message ringing around the world about your belief of how Israel stands before international law.”
There are – as is well known – many legal opinions which differ with that of Theodor Meron, although Sackur elected to avoid any mention of that point and indeed a detailed and factual discussion of the subject would have actually distracted from what was clearly his purpose. The BBC is of course perfectly entitled to discuss the legal aspects of Israeli settlements, but its editorial guidelines would require that such a discussion be factual and balanced, with fair representation of differing views on the subject.
Sackur, however, was obviously not interested in such a discussion because – despite Meron’s clearly expressed reluctance to get into the issue – all that was important to him was getting across to audiences the ‘sound bite’ framing of the building of towns, villages and residential neighbourhoods as being a war crime on a par with the mass slaughter of civilians. That, together with Sackur’s call for a “message” to be sent “ringing around the world” can be seen as nothing other than a deliberately demagogic and politically motivated action which severely compromises the BBC’s claim of impartiality.
On March 1st 2013 the BBC’s flagship interview programme ‘Hardtalk’ featured Tim Franks – formerly a BBC correspondent in Jerusalem between 2007 and 2010 – talking to the Israeli novelist AB Yehoshua.
The programme can be heard as a podcast here or watched on BBC iPlayer in the UK here.
Audiences actually never get to hear about AB Yehoshua’s latest novel and its subject matter (according to the author) of the relationship between West and East in Israel, because the interviewer repeatedly drags the conversation back to one issue – the peace process. Already in the introduction viewers get a hint of the interview’s tone as a whole when Franks refers to the failure of that process and “the journey Israeli Jews need now to take” – apparently without any such journey being necessary on the other side of the divide and ignoring the non-Jewish 20% of the Israeli population.
Regardless of one’s degree of agreement or disagreement with AB Yehoshua’s politics and opinions, this interview is particularly interesting because it provides a glimpse of what happens when cherished BBC accepted wisdoms regarding the Middle East meet the Israeli Left and the extent of the BBC’s lack of ability to understand that the Left in Israel does not necessarily fit into preconceived compartments which apply to other countries.
At 07:03 in the video above, Franks declares:
“But the truth is it is the Right that is in power and it is gaining in power – not just politically – when you think about the institutions in Israel; the army, the judiciary. Why is the Left failing in Israel?”
Franks provides no evidence for his assertion, and seems rather nonplussed when Yehoshua replies by pointing out to him that even most of the Right in Israel recognizes the need for a two state solution. To that, Franks responds:
“Yes, but what progress is there being made towards the two state solution?”
At 09:54 Franks promotes an old canard which still crops up fairly regularly in BBC articles:
“One of the ..erm..views that you have though, that seems to be directly in the mainstream [of Israeli thought] and also – to be honest – a bit of a myth, is that when Israel withdrew its settlers back in 2005, it left Gaza a sort of pristine proto-Singapore: a sort of place that could become a territory of boundless possibilities..err…for the Palestinians who were left behind, when actually it was still a miserable and occupied place.”
ABY: “It was not an occupied place.”
TF: (interrupts) “It was!”
ABY: “It wasn’t occupied.”
TF: “The Israelis..the Israelis retained control.”
ABY: “No, we don’t retain control. They have an open border to Egypt. They have an open border to Egypt.”
TF: (interrupts) “That..that..that border was sealed by Egypt and it was ..and on all other sides Israel retained control, so there was no freedom of movement.”
ABY: “Because these are enemies. They are throwing Kassams.”
Gaza Strip withdrawal 2005
TF: “Well no, you can argue the reason for it but I’m just saying it’s just a bit of a myth to say that it was no longer occupied.”
ABY: “This is an enemy and when there are..after the withdrawal…we have withdraw (sic) from Gaza without any conditions.”
TF: (interrupts) “Well I’m sorry but that’s simply not true. Take the UN report from just a few months ago: ‘the blockade imposed by Israel intensified’ – this was following the Hamas takeover – ‘intensified the closure applied since the early 1990s. It is a denial of basic human rights in contravention of international law and amounts to collective punishment’. That’s the UN saying you have not withdrawn.”
ABY: “Yes, now I have to say. In Gaza there was first of all settlement. There were eight thousand Jews living there in the heart of Gaza. This was a very, very – I would say – bad thing that we have done. One of the most vicious things that we have done to put there.. to take part of Gaza and put there settlements for eight thousand vis-a-vis one million and a half refugees. The people in Gaza fought against us and Israel was defeated. This is the main thing. After the withdrawal from Gaza, the people in Gaza…we were saying to Gaza; now you are by your own [selves]. You are governing yourself. You make yourself a Singapore. Take money from all the Arab countries and invest and build etcetera. Instead they continue to throw Kassam and missiles on Israel and putting one million people on [in] shelters. This is the situation and of course, what we have to do? We have to say to them now take more sophisticated missiles from Iran in order to hit Tel Aviv? They already hit Tel Aviv. They are shelling our cities and people are..million people are…and they don’t have any reason to do it. They are free. No [not] one Israeli soldier is in Gaza. So – [Franks tries to interrupt] now give me the possibility – when they are in state of war against us – a total state of war – we don’t have any responsibility. They are enemy. And now for the first time we see very clearly that they can control the fire and for three month they are not shooting any more because they can control and when they have shooted (sic) it was done by their own will and not because someone was obliging them.”
Franks clearly cannot understand AB Yehoshua’s reply. Like many others in the West today, he is incapable of reconciling a Left wing political view with the concept of the right to – and necessity for – self-defence and equally incapable of releasing himself from the trap of viewing Palestinians solely in terms of victimhood and oppression. So Franks changes the subject:
“Given the continuation of the conflict..erm…given what is happening inside Israel itself, how long do you think Israel has got?”
ABY: “For what?”
TF: “To continue its existence – as a Jewish state.”
Following the first part of AB Yehoshua’s answer to that question, Franks asks again:
“If though – sorry to interrupt – if that doesn’t happen; if there isn’t a two state solution, how long do you think Israel has?”
In general, there are two categories of people who talk about a world without the Jewish state. We are sadly now used to anti-Israel extremists of the red-green alliance openly championing the notion of the forced dismantling of Israel and – at least in the case of this writer – deeply perplexed by the casual approach of so-called enlightened societies in the West to the open expression of the concept of the planned destruction of a sovereign country.
The other sort of person who talks about a world without the Jewish state is the one who belongs to the school of thought which purports to want to ‘save Israel from itself’. Often insisting that they are ‘friends of Israel’, they promote the notion that without a two state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel’s days are numbered. Significantly, they place the onus of arriving at that solution upon the shoulders of the Israeli side of that conflict alone, whilst totally ignoring Palestinian rejectionism, Palestinian terror and Palestinian incitement, and in doing so they display a clear case of double standards, mixed with no small amount of self-awarded moral superiority and patronising paternalism.
Significantly too, they would never have dreamed 15 years ago of asking a British author how long his country had got if it did not reach a peace agreement with the IRA. Neither would they ask a Lebanese interviewee how long they think their country will survive if it does not grant equal rights to the Palestinian refugees and their descendants living there. They would also never ask a person living in Gaza or Ramallah how long his nation will continue to exist if it does not make peace with Israel.
One can, of course, be of the opinion that a two state solution is the desirable way in which to end the conflict, as indeed the vast majority of Israelis are. But to suggest that if that cannot be achieved in the near future – as it has not been over the last two decades – then Israel soon will cease to exist as a Jewish state, is obviously mere speculation and involves no small degree of scaremongering and emotional blackmail as well as a disturbing paucity of informed critical thinking about the Middle East.
Tim Franks clearly does not belong to the first category of people who openly talk about a world without Israel. Whether there is a moral difference between the two, given the implications of a panicked implementation of a two state solution in the current climate, whilst ignoring the ever-looming possibility of the fall of the Palestinian Authority and a Hamas take-over of the territory currently under PA control, is a matter of opinion.
It is nevertheless disturbing to hear the very concept of a world without Israel being brought into the mainstream by a representative of a media organization which is part of the British establishment because – although that may not be the intention – it nevertheless contributes to the delegitimisation of Israel.
One can, perhaps, gain some insight into the expression of that concept by Franks by listening to the rest of the interview and in particular by tuning in to the subtext of the conversation, in which a BBC journalist (who also happens to be a diaspora Jew) meets an Israeli. It is very clear that Franks – like the organization he represents – has difficulty understanding the issue of Israeli identity and in coming to terms with the fact that Israelis are not just Jews who happen to live in a more pleasant climate, but that their collective experiences, together with the eclectic make-up of Israeli society, have forged a new national identity.
Unwittingly, Tim Franks may have provided us with an understanding that part of the BBC’s problem with Israel is that deep down – perhaps unconsciously - it sees Israelis as Jews who could just as easily live anywhere else in the world rather than as a nation in its own right.
One other observation we can take from this interview is that no matter how many correspondents the BBC sends to Jerusalem at considerable expense and no matter how many reams of articles it produces on Israel, BBC journalists do not seem to be particularly interested in understanding the people who make up the nation about which they report.
Ahead of its February 7th broadcast of an edition of ’Hardtalk‘ with Khaled Masha’al, the BBC was promoting the programme on the Home and Middle East pages of its BBC News website with a written article and a filmed report.
The synopsis of the ‘Hardtalk’ programme states:
“HARDtalk travels to Doha to meet Khaled Meshaal, the leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas. His base used to be Damascus but he broke ranks with the Assad regime after the repression of the Syrian uprising. Now he spends much of his time in the diplomatically ambitious Gulf state of Qatar – another sign that the realities of the Middle East are changing. But not, it seems, in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. On that front does Hamas have anything new to offer?”
As we are only too aware, during Masha’al’s visit to Gaza last year the BBC largely ignored the content of his speeches there, extensively promoting a sanitized version of the Hamas ‘birthday’ extravaganza.
(A longer video of Masha’al’s speech can be seen here.)
In both of the February 7th reports promoting the ‘Hardtalk’ programme, and as has often been the case in the past, the BBC seems very keen to put the accent upon the subject of Hamas-Fatah unity, but without providing any insight for its audiences as to what the wider consequences of such unity – or Masha’al’s reported bid to head the PLO – might be.
In the written article, Hamas is referred to as “the militant group”, with the final two paragraphs stating:
“Hamas is designated a terrorist group by Israel, the US and EU due to its long record of attacks and its refusal to renounce violence.
But its supporters say it is a legitimate resistance movement and a democratically elected government.”
This rather laconic statement is taken from the BBC’s own profile of Hamas, but with one important omission. The original states – with the link included – that:
“Hamas is designated a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and EU, due to its long record of attacks and its refusal to renounce violence. Under the group’s charter, Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel.
But to its supporters it is seen as a legitimate resistance movement and a democratically elected government.”
As well as those mentioned, there are in fact other countries which define Hamas as a terror organization as well as additionalcountries which designate Hamas’ Izz ad Din al Qassam arm. Obviously too, the criteria for designation of terror organisations are considerably less simplistic than the BBC suggests.
But what is really odd about the above statement is the promotion of the views of supporters of a terrorist organization which murders civilians on the basis of their ethnicity – apparently in order to lend an air of ‘balance’ and ‘impartiality’ to a BBC article. That must be one of the more absurd examples of moral relativism around.
As of 2011, BBC World News had a weekly audience of 74 million people and it is fair to assume that the number has risen since then. One of its daily programmes is named “Impact” – aired every weekday.
One report seen by those millions of people around the world this week on “Impact” was produced by the BBC Jerusalem Bureau’s Wyre Davies and it is another version of his previous report on Naftali Bennett of the ‘Jewish Home’ party which appeared on the BBC News website.
What is interesting about this report is that it provides a very good example of how an agenda can be subtly promoted, without viewers necessarily being aware of the manner in which they are being manipulated.
At 1:09, whilst standing – a la Bowen – on a pile of rubble somewhere in what is presumably Area C, Davies says:
“In recent months Mr Netanyahu has tried to re-establish his Right-wing credentials by supporting more building in Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land: settlements seen as illegal under international law. But even that isn’t enough to appease some of his critics and former supporters on the Right. One recent report said that there had been a record surge in settlement expansion. Not enough for those on the religious right – who say Netanyahu is still not tough enough with the Palestinians.”
What does Davies do here? First, he promotes the notion of construction on “occupied Palestinian land”. Of course any construction which is going on is exclusively in Area C – the fate of which is – under the terms of the internationally supported Oslo Agreements – supposed to be determined through negotiations. The fact that Wyre Davies may have personally decided that in his opinion this is “Palestinian land” does not make it so until a negotiated agreement defines it as such.
Secondly, Davies trots out that well-worn old BBC cliché – “illegal under international law”. Which specific “international law”, Davies does not inform his viewers – because he cannot. But importantly, he also neglects his obligation to impartiality by failing to mention the fact that there are many varying opinions on that subject.
Davies says that “one recent report said that there had been a record surge in settlement expansion” under the Netanyahu government. Davies neglects to name the authors of the report he cites, but one can be pretty certain that he is referring to a recent report by the politically motivated NGO ‘Peace Now’; previously promoted on Twitter by his colleague.
Obviously, Davies has not bothered to check his facts regarding the so-called “record surge” he is so keen to promote: in terms of actual construction of housing units, the 2009 – 2013 Netanyahu administration pales in comparison to the 1999 – 2001 Labour government under Ehud Barak.
Later on in his report, Davies says:
“Benjamin Netanyahu and Barak Obama have never been close. Reports from Washington say that the US president is already resigned to a difficult relationship with an even more Right-wing Netanyahu-led government in Israel.”
The notion that leaders of different countries should be “close” is in itself a bizarre one, but the important thing to note in this passage is Davies’ promotion – again – of a “report” which he fails to name, but uses as ‘evidence’ to support his own claims. That “report” is most likely the acrimonious column by Jeffrey Goldberg published on January 15th – also promoted by a BBC Jerusalem Bureau Tweeter.
That Goldberg column, it not surprisingly turned out, may have had political motives of its own:
What we see here are two methods used by Davies to promote a specific agenda by framing a story in a particular manner. The first method is by use of carefully chosen language: terms such as “illegal under international law” and “occupied Palestinian Land” do not stand up to scrutiny, but when used frequently enough without presentation of the opposing point of view, they become accepted – though erroneous – terminology which steers audiences towards a preferred narrative.
The second method is the opaque use of anonymous “reports” to back up the claims used to support a particular narrative. By failing to identify the sources of those reports, Davies denies his audiences the right to judge for themselves whether they are of any value or to seek out other opinions. He assumes a patriarchal attitude which places him in the position of gatekeeper of information, doling it out in accordance with his own agenda.
In no way can this be considered the accurate and impartial reporting of news. Rather, it is the exploitation of a news event as a platform from which to promote a politically motivated, non-transparent agenda by people who want to be opinion-shapers rather than just plain old reporters of the news.
On January 16th 2013 a filmed report by Wyre Davies for the BBC World News’ GMT programme was also featured in the Middle East section of the BBC News website. The two and a half-minute report – entitled “Israel elections: Security fears top political agenda” – is described in its synopsis as follows:
“Israelis will go to the polls to elect a new government next week.
Benjamin Netanyahu is the overwhelming favourite to be returned as Prime Minister at the head of a right-wing coalition government.
Despite widespread concerns about jobs and the high cost of living, the issue of security dominates the political agenda.
Wyre Davies gauges the mood of the electorate.”
However, despite its supposed subject matter, the first 27 seconds of this report – almost 20% of the whole item – features footage from the Gaza Strip filmed during Operation Pillar of Cloud, during which Davies reports that “more than 150 Gazans and six Israelis were killed” without pointing out that the majority of those killed in Gaza were terrorists.
Next, Davies’ report moves on to show pastoral scenes of fields, tractors and cow sheds in a kibbutz near the border with the Gaza Strip – images which contrast sharply with the footage of explosions in Gaza immediately preceding them.
Davies says:
“Yochi Koffler’s kibbutz is right on the Gaza border. For now, he can again look after his livestock without fear of rockets being fired from Gaza. Dozens have landed here over the years.”
Davies does not name the kibbutz in which his interviewee lives, but Israel is a small and still quite intimate country, so BBC Watch gave Mr Koffler (Kopler) a call. In actual fact, Davies’ interviewee will not “again look after his livestock” because he is not a dairy farmer at all, but the head of the Field Crops branch of Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha. It really should not have been too difficult for the BBC to get that fact right.
Almost five years ago to the day of Davies’ visit, a volunteer from Ecuador, Carlos Andrés Mosquera Chávez, was killed by a Hamas sniper from the Gaza Strip who shot him whilst he was working in Ein HaShlosha’s fields together with Mr Kopler. The kibbutz’s farmers have experienced many other similar incidents over the years, but Davies elected not to expand on that subject.
Two days before Wyre Davies’ visit to Ein HaShlosha – and less than seven kilometers away – a large tunnel was discovered near Nir Oz, originating in Gaza and apparently designed to facilitate a terror attack.
“The tunnel was “large enough to carry people and is the same kind of tunnel used in 2006 to ambush IDF soldiers and kidnap Gilad Shalit,” the army said via Twitter.”
That discovery was not reported by the BBC.
Whilst the BBC frequently failsto report security-related incidents in Israel, in this particular report Wyre Davies nevertheless choses to frame the current Israeli election campaign as being all about security. In the introduction to his report, against the background of images from Gaza, Davies says:
“War is always a prominent feature of the Israeli election cycle – dominating the political agenda.”
Later on, in a sequence filmed in the also unnamed location of Ashkelon, Davies claims that:
“With similar socio-economic problems to the rest of the world, some people had hoped that this campaign would be different – focusing on other issues – but by and large Israeli parties, politicians and voters are still defined by their approach to one single issue: security.”
But whilst Davies’ assessment conveniently allows him to adhere to the BBC’s theme of presenting a picture of a country about to elect a hard-line, right-wing government – does it actually reflect reality?
One recent survey asked Israeli voters which subject was the most relevant to them in the upcoming elections. The majority of responders (39.5%) said that the cost of living was the most important issue to them. After that, the most important issues cited were peace negotiations (16.3%), education (15.4%), the Iranian threat (10.5%), violence and crime (4.6%), foreign illegal migrants (3.3%) and 10.4% did not reply.
Wyre Davies, however, did not bother to interview any Israeli voters on subjects other than security in this report – thus reinforcing his own prior assumptions. That suggests that he was significantly less interested in gauging “the mood of the electorate” as claimed, than in steering his audiences towards a specific image of Israel and its next government.
On December 21st 2012 a report by BBC world affairs correspondent Mike Wooldridge appeared in the Middle East section of the BBC News website. The item originates from the ‘GMT’ programme which is part of BBC World News. Entitled “Struggling Syrians face tough winter“, both the synopsis and the report itself quote the organisation ‘Avaaz’ which is described as “a campaign group”.
The BBC is not being completely honest with its readers and viewers here. Whist Avaaz (read more about the organisation here) may indeed be known for its lobbying and campaigns on a dazzlingly wide range of subjects ranging from GM crops in Europe, the recent Palestinian Authority bid for UN observer status, Bedouins in the Negev and even variousissues to do with the BBC itself – in Syria the unelected, unaccountable non-transparent organisation has extended itself way beyond its trademark ‘clicktivism’.
Mike Wooldridge’s report (which includes unidentified “amateur video” footage) came out on the same day as the Avaaz report cited in the programme synopsis, which may sound like an impressively speedy piece of journalism if one is not aware of the fact that for some considerable time, Avaaz has been acting as a stringer for the Syrian opposition by supplying information to Western journalists unable to enter Syria and facilitating the entry of others.
The BBC, however, is certainly aware of that fact: in a profile of the organisation dated February 2012, it wrote:
“After uprisings erupted in the Arab world last year, Avaaz used donations totalling $1.5m from almost 30,000 members to provide pro-democracy movements with “high-tech phones and satellite internet modems, connect them to the world’s top media outlets, and provide communications advice”, its website says.
“We’ve seen the power of this engagement – where our support to activists has created global media cycles with footage and eyewitness accounts that our team helps distribute to CNN, BBC, al-Jazeera and others.”
Avaaz also claims to have delivered more than $1.8m of medical equipment to the worst affected areas of Syria to keep underground hospitals going, set up a network of more than 400 citizen journalists across the country, and smuggled in foreign journalists.”
By no means shy about making the most of the publicity garnered from its operations in Syria, Avaaz has featured prominently in interviews given to other media outlets too, although some of its claims are disputed. This Guardian interview with Avaaz’s co-founder and director Ricken Patel states:
“To begin with, Avaaz sent a team of staff organisers to Lebanon after spotting the first signs of a nascent protest movement in Syria. Contact was then made with Syrian activists inside the country, and go-betweens recruited, notably Wissam Tarif, a highly respected Syrian pro-democracy leader who is widely consulted by journalists and senior western diplomats.”
Wissam Tarif, however, is Lebanese and executive director of an organisation named ‘Insan’ which is based in Spain – as even hisWikipedia profile (obviously written by a very serious fan) states. He has also been linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist-dominated Syrian National Council and has been one of the main conduits for information – sometimes of debatable reliability – coming out of Syria.
The interview goes on to say:
”It [Avaaz] has also smuggled 34 international journalists into the trouble zones. Marie Colvin, the Sunday Times journalist, entered using another conduit, but the French photographer Remi Ochlik who died with her as a result of Syrian government shelling was helped in by Avaaz.
Journalists who went in with Avaaz’s help have at times also needed help in escaping the violent suppression of the Syrian regime. So it was that Avaaz came to be involved in the evacuation mission of four western journalists last Sunday night.”
However, some of those journalists –including photographer Paul Conroy – say that Avaazhad nothing to do with the rescue, as can be heard here in an interview well worth listening to with the BBC’s Bridget Kendall.
Whatever one’s opinion of the situation in Syria or of the involvement of an unaccountable organization such as Avaaz in a conflict which is likely to affect the future of the Middle East long after Avaaz activists have flitted on to their next ‘sujet du jour’, one thing is clear. Avaaz’s involvement with the Syrian opposition makes it much more than just a mere “campaign group” as it is described by Mike Wooldridge.
One would expect BBC standards of accuracy and impartiality to have ensured that an organization which has taken upon itself the role of a support group for one particular side in a very acrimonious conflict would be clearly presented as such.
The Jewish Chronicle reported on November 8th that the Board of Deputies of British Jews had criticised the BBC World News anchor in Washington, Katty Kay, for using the phrase ‘Jewish lobby’ during a Question & Answer session about the US elections on Twitter.
“Board chief executive Jon Benjamin said that the reporter’s “loose use of language really has to be seen in a context where support for America’s key ally in the Middle East is cynically questioned — and the motives of Israel’s supporters are seen as suspect”.
Successive US governments, he said, “have recognised the value of this strategic relationship to the national interest, and it is unfortunate that a BBC journalist falls into the trap laid by Israel’s enemies and conspiracy theorists of reducing support for Israel to parlance of Jewish money and power”.”
The BBC’s response?
“A BBC spokesman said that the correspondent’s “primary point in responding was that the US regards Israel as a key ally in the Middle East and also recognises the importance and influence of this relationship on the voting”.”
Obviously the BBC spokesman does not understand what the fuss is all about. Perhaps the penny will drop if he takes a look at the valiant defenders of Katty Kay’s use of the term over on ‘Stormfront’ and the David Icke forum.
