Jun 19 2013

BBC College of Journalism “associations”

The BBC Academy’s College of Journalism was opened in 2005 in the wake of the Hutton Judicial Inquiry with the aim of providing “training for the entire BBC editorial staff”. Its website claims that it “focuses on best practice in core editorial skills, and offers an overview of specialist areas as well as legal and ethical issues”.

On that website one can find plenty of evidence of collaboration between the BBC College of Journalism and the Frontline Club in London, where events are frequently advertised as being “in association with the BBC College of Journalism” and BBC employees frequently appear. Whether or not that “association” has financial aspects is unclear.

But not only mainstream media journalists appear at the Frontline Club. As the CST recently reminded us, some speakers with decidedly dubious connections are given a platform there too.

“Tonight [June 12^th 2013], Ibrahim Hewitt (pro-Palestinian Islamist), David Hearst (senior Guardian writer) and Tim Llewellyn (ex-BBC Middle East correspondent), will be “critiquing the media’s approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict”. The venue is London journalist haunt, the Frontline Club. It will be chaired by Mark McDonald, a founder of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East.

Hewitt is central to this meeting. He is senior editor of Islamist news outfit, Middle East Monitor (MEMO) and runs Interpal, a pro-Palestinian charity. In 2010, CST stated that MEMO’s beliefs about “Zionist” control of media and politicians, made it “unsuitable for Labour MPs and senior Guardian personnel to work with”.”

As noted above, as well as being involved with MEMO, Ibrahim Hewitt is also a trustee of the Hamas-supporting ‘charity’ Interpal which is proscribed by the United States, Australia and Israel. He is seen in the picture below on the left, together with Essam Mustafa of Interpal, visiting Hamas PM Haniyeh in Gaza.

“In July 2006, an investigation by BBC Panorama claimed that Interpal was providing funds to a number of charities in the Palestinian territories that were affiliated with Hamas. Some of these charities were even run by senior Hamas members. The investigation uncovered video clips of young girls from the al Khalil al Rahman Girls’ Society, which had received money from Interpal. The children sang: “We all sacrifice ourselves for our country. We answer your call and make of our skulls a ladder to your glory, a ladder” … “Fasten your bomb belt, o would-be martyr and fill the square with blood so that we get back our homeland.” “

So here’s a question for BBC licence fee payers: do they consider it appropriate for the BBC College of Journalism to maintain “associations” with an establishment which provides a platform (and even a MEMO organised book launch) for someone who belongs to what it knows itself to be a fundraiser for a terrorist organization?

Jun 19 2013

More evidence of BBC double standards on terrorism

In a ninety word article dated June 14^th 2013, the BBC rightly used the word ‘terrorist’, or versions of it, no fewer than five times.

But no – this is not ‘man seen on white donkey in Jerusalem’ week, or even a sign that the BBC has at long last come to its senses and begun describing Hamas or Hizballah activity for what it is.

This article is about a subject much closer to BBC home – terrorism in Northern Ireland – and it shows once again that the BBC’s supposed aversion to “value judgements” as outlined in the editorial guidelines on terrorism is entirely relative – and politically motivated.

Where can terrorism be named as such by the BBC?

When did the BBC lose the plot on terrorism?

Stop press! BBC uses word ‘terrorist’!

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 18 2013

Groundwork and maintenance on BBC’s ‘From Our Own Correspondent’

The June 13^th 2013 edition of ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ – broadcast both on BBC Radio 4 and on the World Service – included an item by Bethany Bell (usually to be found in Vienna) reporting from the Golan Heights and a second item from Yolande Knell in the Gaza Strip.

The programme can be heard here, or as a podcast here. Bell’s report begins at 06:16 and Knell’s at 17:04.

Concurrently, an article based on Bell’s report appeared in the Magazine section of the BBC News website on June 14^th, as well as on its Middle East page.

Bell’s report focuses on the residents of the four Druze villages in the northern Golan Heights, currently busy with the cherry picking season. Like most journalistic forays into the area it presents a monochrome picture of the Golan’s Druze community, putting the accent upon their self-identification with Syria and – in the majority of cases – their support for the Assad regime, but obviously without understanding the background to those factors. Bell says:

“Traditionally the Druze have had close religious and political ties to the family of the Syrian leader Bashar al Assad. The secretive Druze religion, like Mr Assad’s Alawite sect, draws on branches of Shia Islam and strong Syrian nationalism has tended to mean loyalty to the Assads.”

Bell makes little attempt to dig deeper, apart from her brief paraphrasing of one interviewee.

“But lots of people in the Golan are still in the middle and they’re too frightened to take part in [anti-Assad] protests they’ve seen here because they’re worried that could hurt their relatives in Syria.”

Listeners to Bell’s report are left in ignorance of the fact that a proportion of the Druze living in the northern Golan already hold Israeli citizenship and that those numbers have risen since the beginning of the civil war in Syria. They are not told of economic aspects such as the free tuition in Syrian universities which the Golan Druze have enjoyed for years or that Druze apple farmers, who were convinced this last season that they were going to be left with a business-destroying glut of fruit, were surprised and relieved when the Assad regime once again purchased their produce despite the ongoing civil war. Neither does Bell appear to be in the least bit curious about the wider connections of the minority of activists who openly oppose the Assad regime.

Having laid the groundwork for homogeneous BBC audience impressions of ‘occupied Syrians’ on Israel’s north-eastern border, the programme later moves on to the job of maintaining existing impressions about its south-western one with Yolande Knell’s report from the Gaza Strip.

In that report audiences hear an introduction by presenter Kate Adie in which she says:

“Thousands of Palestinians marched from Gaza City to close to the Israeli border the other day to demand the liberation of east Jerusalem which was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.”

The event to which Adie refers was actually one of the events organised by the ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ campaign: a conglomeration of Islamists from Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime, among others, but Adie’s reference to the event fails to inform listeners of that fact.

Adie also states in her introduction that:

“Israel continues to impose sanctions on Gaza. The blockade limits the movement of goods in and out of the Strip.”

Yolande Knell, however, opens her report with a tale of KFC fast food smuggled into the Gaza Strip from El Arish in Egypt and Hamas limitations on that enterprise – neither of which of course have anything whatsoever to do with Israel. But Knell is soon back on target, with references to “daily hardship” and “food rations” and explaining to listeners that:

“Their struggle’s largely caused by border restrictions that were tightened by Israel and Egypt in 2007 when Hamas – which refuses to recognise Israel – took control here.”

Knell’s meticulous airbrushing of the very significant subject of terrorism out of the picture continues throughout her report, compromising its impartiality and accuracy. Later Knell says:

“While border restrictions have been reduced, there are still regular power cuts and a ban on most exports. This constricts industry and unemployment is high at around 30%.”

The power cuts in fact have their roots in Hamas policies dating back to 2011:

“Meanwhile, Hamas has stopped buying fuel for the Gaza power plant from the Palestinian Authority. The fuel, which was itself purchased by the PA from Israel, is believed to have been replaced by a steady supply of fuel smuggled in from Egypt through the Rafah tunnels.

This is a significant coup for Hamas, from an economic point of view.

Hamas previously received 150,000 liters of fuel per day from Israel, via the Palestinian Authority.”

That Hamas plan went sour when Egypt began clamping down on smuggling through the tunnels, but Western journalists such as Knell still insinuate that power cuts in the Gaza Strip are Israel’s fault. Likewise, Knell’s banal claim that “most exports” are “banned” is simply a fabrication and fails to provide listeners with the context of the effects of terror activity upon the crossings.

Knell employs the same policy of omission of context in her story of Gazans “playing football on a field partly obliterated by an Israeli air strike” – without clarifying whether that same football field was one of those used to launch missiles at Israeli civilians. Her tales of “classic cars repaired for everyday use” and “Gazans resorting to donkeys when their cars ran out of fuel” naturally omit any mention of the latest craze for brand new Chinese cars in the Gaza Strip.

But Knell’s aim in this report is very clear: what listeners are supposed to go away with is not accurate and impartial insight into the situation in the Gaza Strip or new knowledge about it, but the much peddled emotion-directed message that:

“Gaza specializes in tales of creativity in overcoming adversity.”

Knell’s final story is that of Mohammad Assaf – a contestant in the ‘Arab Idol’ reality show who Knell claims is “a new hero” in the Gaza Strip, describing his participation in the show “another triumph in tough times”. Naturally, Knell avoids any mention of the fact that Assaf’s song, which she reports as being extremely popular in Gaza, eradicates Israel from the map of the Middle East.

“Oh flying bird, circling round,
My eyes protect you and Allah keeps you safe
By Allah, oh traveling [bird], I burn with envy
My country Palestine is beautiful
Turn to Safed and then to Tiberias,
And send regards to the sea of Acre and Haifa
Don’t forget Nazareth – the Arab fortress,
And tell Beit Shean about its people’s return
By Allah, oh traveling [bird], I burn with envy
My country Palestine is beautiful.”

‘From Our Own Correspondent’ claims to offer:

“Insight, wit and analysis as BBC correspondents, journalists and writers take a closer look at the stories behind the headlines.”

Neither of these items by Bell and Knell meets that description. In fact, both reports actually do more to hinder audience insight than to promote it. There is something fundamentally disturbing and condescending about the attempts by Yolande Knell – and to a lesser extent, Bethany Bell – to shoehorn local populations in the Middle East into their own pre-existing tendentious narratives either by deliberate omission of context in the case of the former, or a lack of curiosity to look beyond the obvious in the case of the latter. That is made even more grave by the fact that these are journalists supposedly obliged to adhere to standards of accuracy and impartiality.

Jun 17 2013

A BBC theme to watch

Over the past few days my Twitter timeline has been dominated by Iranian ex-pats tearing out their virtual hair at the portrayal of the new Iranian president-elect by much of the Western media (including the BBC) as a “moderate” and a “reformer”. This might be a good time to remember that not too long ago various talking heads were using the same terms to describe Bashar al Assad.

The indiscriminate use of such adjectives by Western journalists puts them in risky territory, clouding the fact that Hassan Rohani only managed to get where he now is because there is absolutely no chance of his initiating any kind of reform which will threaten the grip of the theocracy ruling Iran. As Sohrab Ahmari writes in the WSJ:

“So this is what democracy looks like in a theocratic dictatorship. Iran’s presidential campaign season kicked off last month when an unelected body of 12 Islamic jurists disqualified more than 600 candidates. Women were automatically out; so were Iranian Christians, Jews and even Sunni Muslims. The rest, including a former president, were purged for possessing insufficient revolutionary zeal. Eight regime loyalists made it onto the ballots. One emerged victorious on Saturday.”

Over half the word-count of an article about the opening of the new exhibition at Auschwitz last week, which appeared on the BBC News website’s Europe and Middle East pages on June 13^th 2013, was dedicated to what the BBC termed “Iranian ‘threat’” – complete with scare quotes.

“Earlier in Warsaw, Mr Netanyahu accused Iran, one of Israel’s strongest foes, of planning a new Holocaust.” […]

“Mr Netanyahu used a visit to the Polish capital on Wednesday to warn that Iran was now a major threat to the Jews.

Iranians are going to the polls on Friday to elect a new president, with the hard-line incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, not eligible for a third term.

Mr Netanyahu said the Iranian election on Friday would “change nothing” in the Islamic republic’s alleged quest for nuclear weapons.

“This is a regime that is building nuclear weapons with the expressed purpose to annihilate Israel’s six million Jews,” he said. “We will not allow this to happen. We will never allow another Holocaust.”

Tehran denies seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

Iran is viewed as a threat in Israel because of its aggressive rhetoric, its support for militant groups in the region, its arsenal of long-range missiles and its nuclear work.

However, critics of the Israeli prime minister have accused him of citing the Holocaust too frequently in the context of Iran.

Aluf Benn, editor of liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz, wrote in an editorial last week: “Shoah [Holocaust] warnings have taken over the political and military discourse.”

Another BBC article from June 16th was headlined “Iran election: Israel issues warning after Rouhani win” and opened:

“Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that international pressure on Iran must not be loosened in the wake of the election of reformist-backed Hassan Rouhani as president.

Mr Netanyahu said Iran’s nuclear programme must be stopped “by any means” and there should be no “wishful thinking” about Mr Rouhani’s victory.

The cleric won just over 50% of the vote in Friday’s election.

He said his election was a “victory of moderation over extremism”. “

Later in the report – presumably hiding behind the excuse of impartiality – the BBC once again promotes doubts about the Iranian regime’s nuclear intentions:

”Israel and some Western powers suspect Iran’s nuclear programme may be a front for making weapons, but Tehran insists it is purely peaceful.”

The synergistic themes in these two BBC articles are of a supposed new dawn of “moderation” in an Iran which the BBC is apparently not convinced has designs to develop a military nuclear capability, coupled with a message of Israeli over-reaction. Any objective assessment of those promoted themes must of course take into account that Iran’s president-elect is not the man ultimately in charge, as an article in The Tower points out:

“Rouhani’s win … should not be seen as a dramatic sign that Iran will change its line regarding either its nuclear policy or its involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts. Despite Rouhani’s declarations in the past that may suggest he seeks flexibility in the nuclear project, the reality in Iran is that these matters will remain in the hands of Khamenei and the men of the Revolutionary Guard.”

“Victory for a candidate who is perceived as more moderate yet still has the confidence of Khamenei, serves the regime in the best way. Externally, Iran today is in a very difficult situation with regard to sanctions and its international standing. A conservative president would only have increased Tehran’s isolation in the world. A victory for someone from the ‘moderate stream,’ however, will immediately bring certain countries in the international community to call for ‘giving a chance to dialogue with the Iranian moderates.’ They will ask for more time in order to encourage this stream, and it will take pressure off the regime.”

BBC speculations regarding a theoretical Israeli strike on Iran to prevent it from reaching military nuclear capability have been a regular feature for some years now – see for example here, here, here, here and here. Notably, the mirror question of whether Iran will attack Israel is not asked. The value of the BBC’s future coverage of the subject will of course depend upon how quickly it manages to disavail itself of the notion that anything significant has changed in Tehran since Rohani’s election.

Jun 17 2013

Jeremy Bowen’s pink shirt

Early in the morning of Tuesday May 23^rd 2000 – the day before the completion of the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon – a tank crew stationed on the border fence near Kibbutz Menara received an intelligence alert concerning the likelihood of terrorists firing anti-tank missiles at IDF tanks and armoured vehicles. Later in the day, the crew spotted a Lebanese vehicle transporting men in civilian clothing and suspected that these were Hizballah terrorists carrying equipment for firing an anti-tank missile. The tank crew was given permission to fire at the suspected terrorists.

Later it emerged that the men were actually a BBC film crew headed by Jeremy Bowen and that driver Abed Takkoush had been killed. The IDF investigated the incident and issued an apology. Understandably, that tragic incident appears to be still very much at the forefront of Bowen’s mind, although he does not appear to accept that it was possible to mistake three men travelling in a war zone in a car with Lebanese plates, and carrying camera equipment, for Hizballah terrorists dressed – as was very often the case – in civilian clothing.

One of Bowen’s repeated claims is that the IDF soldiers should have been able to identify him as a civilian because of his dress at the time.

“I was in sight of the Israeli settlement [Manara]. I thought it would be fairly quiet. I even waved my arms over my head to show we were civilians. I had no helmet and was wearing a pink shirt”.

In other words, Bowen apparently believes that Hizballah terrorists never wear pink shirts and that his safety should have been guaranteed because Israeli soldiers ought to have been able to identify him and his colleagues as members of the press on the basis of the colour of his clothing.

However, this recent picture (retweeted by Bowen) taken on a rooftop above Taksim Square in Istanbul suggests that Bowen does not have the same expectations with regard to the abilities of the Turkish riot police to recognise his pink shirt as a sign of his press credentials.

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 16 2013

Photo caption on BBC Golan Heights profile page corrected

Before:

After:

Unfortunately, the other errors noted in that article have yet to be corrected.

Jun 15 2013

BBC R4 breaches editorial guidelines in ‘Today’ interview with Jack Straw

The Friday June 14^th edition of BBC Radio 4′s ‘Today’ programme included an item in which presenter John Humphrys spoke with Labour MP Jack Straw and Dr. Dore Gold about the election in Iran.

The relevant section of the programme can be heard here from 1:35:30 for a limited period of time.

Following remarks by Straw, including claims of demonisation and humiliation of Iran by the West along with doubts expressed with regard to the intentions of Iran’s nuclear programme, Humphrys says at 1:40:06:

“Let me put that to you Dr. Gold, because if anybody has demonised them, you could argue it has been Israel.”

After Dore Gold’s reply, at 1:41:30, Jack Straw says: [emphasis added]

“Well hang on a second. Israel has the most extensive nuclear weapons capability there [Middle East]. It has no territorial ambitions apart from stealing the land of the Palestinians and it’s not going to use nuclear weapons for that, but it has [a] very extensive nuclear weapons programme…”

Humphrys follows with:

“Right, well you can’t argue…let me put that to Dr. Gold. You can’t argue with that, can you Dr Gold?”

Actually, one can – and indeed should – argue with such a gratuitous, dishonest and inaccurate cheap slur – and that is exactly what John Humphrys should have done as the representative of an organisation committed to accuracy and impartiality. The BBC’s Editorial Guidelines on live broadcasts state:

“If offensive comments are expressed during live interviews, the interviewer should normally intervene, challenge the comments where appropriate and/or distance the BBC from the comments. If this doesn’t happen we should make an on-air apology at the earliest opportunity. Potentially offensive comments include remarks that may be interpreted as, for example, racist, sexist, homophobic, prejudiced against a religious group, or reflecting an unflattering national stereotype.”

And:

“If it is established during a live programme that a factual error has been made and we can accurately correct it then we should admit our mistake clearly and frankly. Saying what was wrong as well as putting it right can be an important element in making an effective correction. Where the inaccuracy is unfair, a timely correction may dissuade the aggrieved party from complaining. Any serious factual errors or potential defamation problems should be referred immediately to Programme Legal Advice.”

And:

“Due impartiality lies at the heart of the BBC’s standards. It is a core value and no area of programming is exempt from it. It is vital that any package or interview broadcast during a live event is impartial and fair. Care should be taken to ensure that there is no suggestion of bias. This can be achieved by careful casting and ensuring the presenter/interviewer is properly briefed to conduct a robust interview.”

But instead, we find that – apparently not content with the real time broadcast of that defamatory and libellous lie from Straw – the BBC actually amplified it further, despite the fact that those same Editorial Guidelines clearly state: [emphasis added]

“Live events are often repeated in highlights programmes and are increasingly available on various ‘On Demand’ platforms (for example on the Radio Player, Interactive Television, Video On Demand or the iPlayer). Programme Editors should ensure that any derogatory remarks which caused concern on transmission are edited from any repeat or online provision. Where a defamatory remark has been made, programme editors should ensure they comply with all legal advice given. It is also the responsibility of the programme editors to ensure that, where appropriate, programmes with unexpected legal issues are not repeated or made available ‘On Demand’.”

In addition to the programme being made available to listeners for a week on the programme’s webpage, on a separate “live” webpage we find an invitation to readers to “listen to the discussion” with a link leading to another webpage on the BBC News site featuring a recording of the item.

The ‘Today’ programme’s official Twitter account also promoted another audio version of the item.

So there we have it. Once again the BBC makes a laughing stock of its supposed standards of accuracy and impartiality by not only failing to challenge a deliberate inaccuracy spouted in a live interview, but by promoting it widely afterwards.

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.”

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