Tag Archives: ‘From our own Correspondent’

Jun 18 2013

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

The June 13th 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. 

FOOC cherries Golan & Gaza

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

cherries Golan Bell

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: SONY DSC

“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.

 

 

Apr 14 2013

BBC report: Israelis are not polite

Over the past few days the BBC News website has been promoting an April 12th article by Raffi Berg entitled “Getting behind Israeli ‘frankness’ “. The written report is featured on the Middle East page and in the Magazine section. An audio version was broadcast on the BBC World Service in the ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ programme – with the BBC iPlayer  synopsis of the programme describing Israelis as “rough and ready“.  A reader has informed us that the programme was also broadcast on NPR in the United States. 

Manner of speaking

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FooC Berg

The subjects of ‘politeness’ and ‘manners’ are, of course, entirely culture dependent – as this perplexed Israeli discovered when a fellow passenger stood on her foot at Manchester’s Victoria railway station and then proceeded to publicly berate her for not responding to his apology with one of her own. SONY DSC

So what do BBC Watch readers think about this item? Does it represent a light-hearted attempt to explain part of the Israeli culture or is it superficial – merely reinforcing and spreading existing stereotypes? Has Berg actually gone any way towards explaining to readers and listeners around the world why Israelis (like most other cultures) may have different perceptions of politeness and manners than the British, or is it in fact an example of cultural colonialism?

Tell us what you think in the comments below. 

Mar 19 2013

BBC’s Kevin Connolly tries wit, promotes jaded memes

The BBC programme ‘From our own Correspondent’ – broadcast on Radio 4 and the BBC World Service – promises its audiences:

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

On March 16th 2013, the broadcast included an item by the BBC Jerusalem Bureau’s Kevin Connolly (available here from 21:58), the synopsis of which reads: 

“People in Jerusalem are awaiting the imminent arrival of Barack Obama. Kevin Connolly speculates on what may emerge from the trip and wonders if, afterwards, streets will be named in honour of the American president! ”

Connolly’s attempts at wit unfortunately come across as more embarrassingly parochial than amusing.

“Foreigners tend to be commemorated here, naturally enough, according to the degree of enthusiasm they showed for the Zionist cause. So you’ll find streets named after Balfour and Lloyd George alongside roads named after men who are now otherwise figures of total historical obscurity. The back bench British MP Josiah Wedgwood, for example, or the colonial official Wyndham Deedes. The street map of Jerusalem can seem more like a ‘who’s he?’ rather than a Who’s Who.”

<i><i>Josiah Wedgwood</i></i>

The ‘Josiah Wedgwood’ sailed from Italy in April 1946 with some 1,250 Holocaust survivors aboard. Arrested by the British off the coast of Haifa in June 1946, its passengers were interred in Atlit.

Of course it actually might be of some benefit to Mr Connolly’s listeners’ familiarity with Israel’s history (and Britain’s too) were the reporter to refrain from dismissing a figure such as Colonel Josiah Wedgwood as obscure before familiarizing himself with the latter’s tireless campaigning against British limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine and against restrictions on entry to Britain for persecuted European Jews in the pre-war years. 

The most notable feature of this report though is the slick manner in which several beloved BBC memes are inserted into it. The introduction to the item begins with presenter Kate Adie saying:

“Barack Obama arrives in Israel next week. It’s the first foreign trip of his new presidency and it promises to be a tricky one; not least because he and the Israeli prime minister Netanyahu don’t apparently get on.” [emphasis added]

Later on we have Connolly repeating that meme:

“Mr Obama is widely thought not to have warmed to Mr Netanyahu personally, but Congress loves him.” [emphasis added]

Thought by whom? The listener is not made privy to the source of the BBC’s ‘Chinese whispers’.

Another rather suspect meme promoted by Connolly comes in this passage:

“Obama did come here as a presidential candidate: a prudent step to woo the Jewish vote at home and to please the powerful pro-Israel lobby.” [emphasis added]

Connolly also informs listeners that:

“There will be much talk of Iran whilst President Obama is in Israel. Its nuclear ambitions worry most Israelis and they sometimes seem to obsess Prime Minister Netanyahu.” [emphasis added]

Can we then assume that if a neighbouring enemy country which had vowed to wipe Britain off the map was developing nuclear weapons, Kevin Connolly would not expect his prime minister to be preoccupied with that issue?  

And we also have an insertion of the much touted – but entirely unfounded – meme that all would be sweetness and light in the Middle East if only the Israelis and the Palestinians would make peace.

“One reason perhaps why there was no visit in that first Obama term was the sudden fluidity of the Middle East – a kind of breaking of the political pack-ice after decades of stagnation. America suddenly needed changing policies for changing times in Tunisia and Libya and – above all – Egypt. [….] In those long years of stagnation there was an unspoken belief that the key to unlocking everything was to find peace between Israel and the Palestinian people of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” [emphasis added]

As ridiculous as that “belief” may be, it was – and is – certainly not “unspoken” as Connolly claims. But one really would expect that analysts and commentators (and Western politicians) would have learned from the past two and a quarter years of Middle East turmoil that the fact that their own assessments and predictions proved redundant time and time again shows just how little of the region’s dynamics they actually understand. That applies just as much to the concept of the ‘peace process’ as the key to regional stability as it did to the ‘expert’ schools of thought which assured us that revolution would not happen in Libya and Syria, that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was ‘moderate’ and democracy-loving and that Bashar al  Assad was a ‘reformer’. 

The BBC’s seemingly limitless obsession with ‘the peace process’ as the only show in town – even as Al Qaeda affiliated militias stalk the Syrian side of Israel’s northern border and a Hamas minister tries to establish terror cells in PA controlled territories – is dismal testimony of the standard of Middle East-related “analysis” and “insight” it offers to its audiences. 

Mar 17 2013

Update on the BBC’s Omar Masharawi story

A member of the public has informed BBC Watch that he heard a correction made on BBC radio on March 14th 2013 regarding the BBC’s claim that an Israeli missile was responsible for the death of Omar Masharawi. He noted that:

“…the correction was very straightforwardly made, first indicating that the former blame placed on Israel was wrong, thereafter telling what had actually happened..”

Unfortunately, our correspondent could not specify the station or the programme in which he heard the announcement and so BBC Watch has been unable to trace it. 

Such an announcement would of course be a very welcome and appropriate development, but it can be of little value as long as Jon Donnison’s original report blaming Israel for the infant’s death remains ensconced on the BBC website – even taking into account the decidedly mealy-mouthed announcement now added as a footnote. 

Update Donnison Masharawi article

Magazine HP 17 3

Mar 12 2013

BBC appoints Jon Donnison as ‘Shin Gimmel’ of Masharawi story

In Hebrew, the expression ‘the Shin Gimmel syndrome’ is used to describe a situation in which the public blame for an operational failure is placed upon the lowest ranking soldier – the one guarding the front gate – so that high-ranking officers can avoid having to take the responsibility and its consequences. Needless to say, the use of the ‘Shin Gimmel’ as a scapegoat is a symptom of a serious failure of leadership. 

That is precisely what the BBC has done in its belated attempt to stave off criticism of its handling of the Omar Masharawi story: it has sent Jon Donnison – the lowest ranking journalist involved in this story – to do damage control.

It has not allocated that task to Donnison’s boss at the Jerusalem Bureau, Paul Danahar, who Tweeted unverified claims that an Israeli attack had killed Omar Masharawi. Nor has the job been given to Danahar’s boss, Jeremy Bowen, whose position as Middle East Editor was created especially in order to avoid precisely such situations in the wake of previous criticisms of the BBC’s record of accuracy and impartiality when reporting on Israel. Neither was the Head of News or anyone else further up the chain of command required to provide explanations for the BBC failure. Instead, lowly Donnison was sent to take the rap.

Is it any wonder then that Donnison gives the impression of being distinctly out of his depth as he flails about trying to make passable-sounding excuses for the BBC’s failures? 

Donnison 11 3 Masharawi

Donnison’s article – entitled “UN disputes Gaza strike on BBC man’s house” – opens with the same picture of Jihad Masharawi carrying his son’s body which the BBC touted so extensively at the time. This time, however, the caption is particularly loaded. [emphasis added]

“Jehad Mashhrawi’s 11-month-old son Omar was killed in the attack on his house in Gaza”

In other words, the BBC wants to place in readers’ minds from the very beginning the idea that there was a deliberate attack on Masharawi’s house, rather than an accident. 

Donnison begins:

“The son of a BBC journalist and two relatives killed in last November’s war in Gaza may have been hit by a misfired Palestinian rocket, a UN agency says.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said its conclusions were based on a visit to the site a month after the attack.”

All the information in the first five paragraphs of Donnison’s article is for some reason repeated further on into the article and so we later find the following statements, which clearly intend to cast doubts upon the UN findings, not least because of the passage of time:

“UN officials visited the house four weeks after the strike.

They said they did not carry out a forensic investigation, but said their team did not think the damage was consistent with an Israeli air strike.

However, the UN said it could not “unequivocally conclude” it was a misfired Palestinian rocket.

A UN official said it was also possible the house was hit by a secondary explosion after an Israeli air strike on Palestinian weapons stores.”

The UN’s report states:

“On 14 November, a woman, her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.”

A footnote adds that the UN investigated the incident itself and the UN has confirmed that the above passage in its report indeed relates to the incident at the Masharawi home. 

Donnison’s “UN official” quote above also appears in an AP report which includes further information which Donnison elected not to include in his piece:

“Matthias Behnke, head of OHCHR office for the Palestinian territories, cautioned he couldn’t “unequivocally conclude” that the death was caused by an errantly fired Palestinian rocket. He said information gathered from eyewitnesses led them to report that “it appeared to be attributable to a Palestinian rocket.”

He said Palestinian militants were firing rockets at Israel not far from the al-Masharawi home. Behnke said the area was targeted by Israeli airstrikes, but the salvo that hit the al-Masharawi home was “markedly different.”

He said there was no significant damage to the house, unusual for an Israeli strike. He said witnesses reported that a fireball struck the roof of the house, suggesting it was a part of a homemade rocket. Behnke said the type of injuries sustained by al-Masharawi family members were consistent with rocket shrapnel.”

Donnison’s efforts to pick holes in the UN findings are a deliberate attempt to distract readers from the essential point. As BBC Watch noted last November:

“Whether or not Jihad Masharawi’s house was hit by a short-falling terrorist rocket, by shrapnel from secondary explosions of Fajr 5 missiles deliberately hidden by Hamas in built-up residential areas or whether an errant IDF shell targeting those rocket launching sites and weapons storage facilities caused that accident, we may never know.”

That essential point – which Donnison does his level best to bury – is that there was no solid evidence at the time that the Masharawi house has been hit in an Israeli air-strike and indeed, several other possibilities (as now confirmed by the UN) existed. The BBC, however, not only dismissed those other possibilities – to which it had been alerted by bloggers – but exclusively and unquestioningly promoted the notion of Israel’s responsibility for the infant’s death with no factual evidence to back up that assertion. 

Donnison continues:

“At the time, human rights groups blamed the deaths on an Israeli air strike.”

He later adds:

“The family, and human rights groups, said that the house was hit in an Israeli attack.”

Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas addresses the PCHR 2006 conference

Donnison does not name the “human rights groups” he cites, but it can safely be assumed that he is referring to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) which claimed on November 15th – the day after the incident – without providing any concrete evidence whatsoever, that:

“..an Israeli warplane fired a missile at a house belonging to Ali Nemer al-Masharawi in al-Zaytoun neighborhood in the east of Gaza City.  Two members of the family (a woman and a toddler) were killed: Hiba Aadel Fadel al-Masharawi, 19, and Omar Jihad al-Masharawi, 11 months.”

Far from being an objective “human rights group”, the PCHR uses the mantle of human rights in its political campaign against Israel and has a long history of unreliability. This is certainly not the first time that Jon Donnison has unquestioningly promoted information from the PCHR – apparently being unable to distinguish between a genuine human rights organization and a Hamas accessory. 

Donnison continues his attempt to bring the reader back round to believing the original BBC claims of Israeli culpability by writing:

“The Israeli military says it never denied carrying out the strike because it was not clear what had happened.”

He later adds:

“The Israeli military made no comment at the time of the incident but never denied carrying out the strike.

Privately, military officials briefed journalists that they had been targeting a militant who was in the building.”

If that were true, and if Donnison was aware of the presence of a terrorist in the building, then the next question must be why no reference was ever made to that in any of the BBC’s reports on the subject – including his own. 

Donnison continues:

“The UN says 33 other Palestinian children died in Israeli attacks during the conflict.”

Towards the end of the article, and contradicting his own use of the words “33 other”, he adds:

“The UN report concluded that at least 169 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks during the offensive.

It said more than 100 were civilians, including 33 children and 13 women. The report said six Israelis were killed by Palestinians attacks, including four civilians.”

As Elder of Ziyon has pointed out, the UN report – which apparently suddenly gains renewed credibility in Donnison’s eyes when it can be used against Israel – actually says:

“During the crisis, 174 Palestinians were killed in Gaza. At least 168 of them were killed by Israeli military action, of whom 101 are believed to be civilians, including 33 children and 13 women.” [emphasis added] 

As we have previously pointed out here, other reports on the casualty figures in the Gaza Strip during Operation Pillar of Cloud indicate that as many as 60% belonged to terrorist organisations. 

Further on in his article Donnison states:

“Now, though, the United Nations says the house may have been hit by a Palestinian rocket that fell short.

This is despite the fact that the Israeli military had reported no rockets being fired out of Gaza so soon after the start of the conflict.”

However, the above claim of “no rockets” is contradicted by Donnison himself in his ‘From our own Correspondent‘ report of November 24th:

“But at that time, so soon after the launch of Israel’s operation, Israel’s military says mortars had been launched from Gaza, but very few rockets.” [emphasis added]

As BBC Watch remarked at the time, and as the UN official quoted by AP above confirms:

“Regarding Donnison’s claim of mortars, “but very few rockets” having been fired at the time (BBC Watch has seen no such statement by the IDF, but would be delighted if Donnison could produce it), as is pointed out here, “very few rockets” does not mean no rockets.”

Under the curious subheading “Rubbish”, Donnison goes on to inform readers that:

Jihad Masharawi at his brother’s funeral

“Jehad Mashhrawi dismissed the UN findings as “rubbish”.

He said nobody from the United Nations had spoken to him, and said Palestinian militant groups would usually apologise to the family if they had been responsible.”

Apparently Donnison seems to think that this anecdote adds some kind of back-up to his story, perhaps forgetting that his own organization had (probably unwittingly) broadcast footage of Jihad Masharawi’s brother being buried in a Hamas flag. 

Donnison also states that:

“A photo of BBC video editor Jehad Mashhrawi cradling the corpse of his baby son Omar became one of the iconic images of November’s short war.”

It certainly did, but only because the BBC deliberately and energetically promoted the story far and wide, despite having no concrete evidence whatsoever to back up its claims that Israel was responsible for Omar’s death. 

The disturbing fact is that the BBC’s only response to the findings of the UN report has been to belatedly send Jon Donnison out to offer up a badly written collection of excuses and insinuations published five days later on the Middle East page of its website, whilst Donnison’s original article remains intact on that same website’s ‘Magazine’ page with no correction and no link to his article on the UN report. 

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Donnison’s cringe-worthy attempt at damage control does nothing to address the real problem underlying this story. That problem is not one of determining which type of ordnance fired by whom hit the Masharawi house, but that the BBC knowingly published and extensively promoted a story based on local anecdote for which it had absolutely no proven evidence, purely because it fit in with the political narrative accepted and promoted by the BBC. 

Fronted by Donnison, but undoubtedly with the full knowledge of his superiors, this self-destructive attempt to shift the focus of the story away from the real issue of the BBC’s complete failure to meet its own editorial guidelines on accuracy and impartiality – and to protect those further up the chain of management from the obvious conclusions of that failure – calls into question, once again,  both the sincerity of the BBC’s commitment to the values behind which it hides and the quality of the organisation’s leadership. 

Mar 7 2013

BBC’s Omar Masharawi story has rug pulled by UNHRC

The drop down menu of the ‘From our own correspondent’ section on the ‘magazine’ page of the BBC News website looked like this on March 7th 2013:

FOOC Masharawi magazine 7 3

Yes – over three months after Operation Pillar of Cloud, the BBC is still promoting Jon Donnison’s story about the son of the BBC employee in Gaza who the BBC very energetically insisted had been killed in an Israeli air-strike. 

As readers may remember, BBC Watch pointed out at the time that there were terrorist rocket launching sites in the Zaitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City in which the Masharawi home was situated and that the BBC’s automatic assumption that Omar Masharawi’s death was the result of an Israeli attack was not founded upon any solid evidence.

In his report Donnison stated:

“Despite the evidence pointing towards an Israeli air strike, some bloggers have suggested it might have been a misfired Hamas rocket.

But at that time, so soon after the launch of Israel’s operation, the Israeli military says mortars had been launched from Gaza but very few rockets.

Mortar fire would not cause the fireball that appears to have engulfed Jehad’s house.

Other bloggers have said that the damage to Jehad’s home was not consistent with powerful Israeli attacks but the BBC visited other bombsites this week with very similar fire damage, where Israel acknowledged carrying out what it called “surgical strikes”.

As at Jehad’s home, there was very little structural damage but the victims were brought out with massive and fatal burns. Most likely is that Omar died in the one of the more than 20 bombings across Gaza that the Israeli military says made up its initial wave of attacks.”

Despite the lack of evidence, the BBC continued (and still continues, as can be seen above) to promote this story very heavily indeed and of course it was picked up and propagated by other members of the mainstream media – as well as numerous anti-Israel websites – as cast-iron evidence of Israeli wrongdoing,  bearing the hallmark of BBC accuracy and impartiality. 

On March 6th 2013 the UN HRC issued an advance version of its report on the November 2012 hostilities and blogger Elder of Ziyon bothered to read the whole thing. The report states on page 14 that a UN investigation found that:

“On 14 November, a woman, her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.” [emphasis added]

A footnote adds that the UN investigated the incident itself.

Omar Masharawi was the only 11 month-old infant killed on November 14th in the Zaitoun neighbourhood (although the woman killed at the same time was not in fact his mother as the UN report states, but his father’s brother’s wife; Hiba). 

The BBC used the story of Omar Masharawi to advance the narrative of Israel as a ruthless killer of innocent children. It did so in unusually gory detail which etched the story in audiences’ minds, but without checking the facts, and with no regard whatsoever for its obligations to accuracy and impartiality. BBC reporters and editors  – including Jon Donnison, Paul Danahar and the many others who distributed the story via Twitter – rushed to spread as far and wide as possible a story they could not validate, but which fit in with their own narrative.

It is impossible to undo the extensive damage done by the BBC with this story. No apology or correction can now erase it from the internet or from the memories of the countless people who read it or heard it. Nevertheless, the people responsible for the fact that the unverified story was allowed to run – and that it was deliberately given such exceptionally extensive coverage – must be held accountable for their failure to even try to uphold the standards to which the BBC professes to adhere. 

Any other outcome will make a mockery of the supposed BBC commitment to accuracy and impartiality and will further erode the BBC’s already bruised reputation.

 

Jan 29 2013

BBC’s Paul Moss promotes politically motivated stereotypes of Israelis

Can you imagine the BBC publishing or broadcasting a facile report which tries too hard to be funny by tapping into jaded Benny Hill-style stereotypes about certain national characteristics such as Frenchmen who smell of garlic, women-chasing Italians or lazy, siesta-loving Spaniards?

No? Well then prepare to be surprised…or perhaps not.

On January 24th 2013 the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ (also broadcast on the BBC World Service) featured an item by Paul Moss. The podcast can be downloaded here (listen from 22:34) or heard here. A very similar written version of the same report was featured on the BBC News website’s Middle East page on January 27th. 

Paul Moss

Moss’ piece is entitled “The Middle East conflict at 35,000 feet” and supposedly tells of his recent flight from Luton to Tel Aviv. But Moss decided to turn an account that flight into a contrived analogy for the Middle East conflict as a whole – or at least what he perceives as the Israeli contribution to it. 

And so, despite admitting that he speaks neither Hebrew nor Russian, Paul Moss portrays Israeli passengers on the flight as argumentative and aggressive.

“The Israelis were arguing with the non-Israelis, and indeed with each other – over who was entitled to what territory.

Some were polite, but others more hostile. It was an ugly scene. At one point, I thought people might well come to blows.

And still they could not sort it out. Who was supposed to be in what seat? The plane had not even taken off yet, but already Flight 2085, from Luton to Tel Aviv, had become a microcosm of the Middle East.

Some argued from a point of legal entitlement. They held up their boarding passes, the seat number clearly visible.

“I have a right to be here,” they protested. But others simply pointed out that they had got there first. I felt I had heard this before somewhere.”

Predictably, Moss’ Israeli co-passengers are also pushy, rude and potentially dangerous into the bargain.

“Meanwhile, bolder passengers were simply shoving their luggage – and themselves – into the places they wanted. You might call it “establishing facts on the ground”.”

“Tensions rose and so did voices in English, in Hebrew and in Russian. I only speak one of those languages but I am quite sure I was being treated to a crash course in their finest insults and for the first time I found myself awfully glad that metal implements are no longer permitted in carry-on luggage.”

The laboured analogy and stereotypes continue, with Moss ditching all efforts to display any of that much-touted appreciation of diversity in which his countrymen take so much pride and exhibiting particular disdain for the religious passengers on the flight.

There is, of course, absolutely no point to this article whatsoever. It does not inform the reader about any particular news event and it certainly does nothing to increase audiences’ understanding of the world. All Moss achieves in his shallow, superficial piece is the promotion of stereotypes in order to advance a very clear political agenda. 

However, simplistic agenda-driven reporting on Israel seems to be something of a pattern as far as Moss is concerned. In January 2009, at the time of Operation Cast Lead, he was also in Israel. In one article from the time he reported on Israeli Arabs in Haifa opposed to the operation, implying that they were representative of the whole Arab Israeli population and quoting Leah Tsemel and Ameer Makhoul without disclosing to his readers who they are or what they represent. 

In another article (which does much to explain his attitudes towards Israelis) Moss showcased the opinions of the founder of ‘Zochrot‘, which he described as an “educational charity” and in a third piece Moss uses a visit to Masada to suggest that Israelis are unnecessarily militaristic. The World Tonight 25 1

If readers are wondering what happened once Moss’ flight landed in Tel Aviv, the answer to that is to be found in another radio broadcast from January 25th. The BBC Radio 4 programme “The World Tonight” featured Paul Moss (from 35:43 or as a podcast here from around 29:31) on the subject of “Israel’s view of its international image” in which he argued that Israelis – in contrast to citizens of other countries – should care more about how they are perceived abroad.  

“MPs in most countries will insist it’s their people that [sic] should determine who forms their government and what is in their country’s interests. But Israel, of course, is not like most countries. For a start it gets huge amounts of financial aid from the United States.”

Of course Israel has not received economic aid from the US since 2008 and the vast majority of the military aid it does receive (around 1% of the Israeli economy) is spent in the United States, thus sustaining American jobs. As the Assistant Secretary of Political-Military Affairs at the State Department put it in 2011: “We don’t just support Israel because of a long-standing bond, we support Israel because it is in our national interests to do so”. 

But does the fact that Israel receives US aid at all make it – as Moss claims – “not like most countries”? Hardly: not only is Israel not the biggest recipient of military aid from the US, but if we look at the subject of financial aid in general, we see that in fact, Israel is exactly like most countries.

Foreign Assistance by country

But Paul Moss is obviously not one to allow mere facts to get in the way of the agenda he is trying to promote. 

Moss is, of course, entitled to his own political opinions and prejudices. What he is not entitled to do as a BBC presenter is to allow those prejudices to spill over into his reports, thus compromising the BBC’s reputation for impartiality – even under the pretext of supposedly trying to be funny. 

Jan 28 2013

Kevin Connolly tweaks the Israeli political map

Apparently still unable to let go of the subject of the Israeli elections, the BBC featured another report on the subject by the Jerusalem Bureau’s Kevin Connolly in its January 26th edition of ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ – broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. 

A podcast of the programme can be downloaded or heard here.  Connolly’s report begins at 01:26, but it is also worth listening to the introduction by the programme’s presenter Kate Adie from 00:39, in which she once more repeats the unquestioned mantra of “the deadlocked peace process” as one of the “pressing regional matters”. Alternatively, a fairly accurate transcript of Connolly’s radio report can be read in the magazine section of the BBC News website.

Moving on past the rather laboured introduction, we reach Connolly’s assessment of democracy in the Middle East; one which seems riskily hasty if one considers the track record of elected Islamist regimes in the region so far.  

“Israeli officials have long made the point that theirs is the only democracy in the Middle East – a claim that calls for a little tweaking or qualification in the light of Egypt’s elections last year.”

But the real intention of this report by Connolly seems to be to persuade audiences that the BBC’s pre-election analysis was not as far off the mark as they may think. 

You see, if you happened to think that the BBC’s energetic promotion of the notion that Israelis were about to elect a right-wing government was mistaken then, according to Connolly, it is you who are wrong. And in order to explain just how wrong you were, Connolly says:

“What is interesting about this election is that the dynamic new force in parliament comes not from the far-right of Israeli politics as many expected, but from the centre.

A new party called “There is a Future” is the second-largest force in the new Knesset.

It is led by a popular television personality called Yair Lapid. If you are British or American, you will have to imagine David Dimbleby or David Letterman stepping down from the screen to sort the country out.”

So far, so good. But Connolly then continues:

“Using the term “centrist” in the context of Israeli politics is not always helpful.

I suspect that to many Europeans, it conjures an image of a leader who would be much less tough in negotiations with the Palestinians than Mr Netanyahu would.

But Mr Lapid does not believe that Israel should have to divide Jerusalem with the Palestinians in a future peace deal – one of the core elements of the two-state solution that the wider world continues to believe in.

That Mr Lapid is labelled a centrist perhaps shows you where the centre of gravity of Israeli opinion on such matters lies these days.”

So you see, the BBC was not wrong: Israelis did elect a far-right government after all, because Kevin Connolly has just ‘shown’ that in Israeli politics – which apparently should be defined in European terms and solely in relation to the ‘peace process’, ignoring aspects such as economic policy – even the Centre is Right. 

And how does he pull that off? By blinkering his audience into focusing on one single issue – the subject of the possible re-division of Israel’s capital city – which Connolly should know is just one of many issues defined in internationally recognized agreements as subjects for final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The fact that Yair Lapid – or any other Israeli – may consider the division of Jerusalem undesirable is not a rejection of negotiations with a Palestinian Authority genuinely interested in reaching a settlement. 

Of course Connolly’s convenient tweak of the Israeli political spectrum does nothing to explain why, in all its pre-election coverage of the Israeli Right (and only the right), did the Yesh Atid party barely get a mention. Rather embarrassingly, Connolly also seems to have forgotten that only three days previously he himself wrote the following words:

“But the sudden and decisive lurch to the right that many predicted hasn’t happened.

The results show that there’s plenty of life on the left and the centre of Israeli politics too.”

Unfortunately, this latest report by Connolly appears to indicate that not only is the BBC nowhere near engaging in the much-needed self-criticism shown to be so necessary by its coverage of the Israeli elections, but that it appears to be determined to avoid that introspection like the plague, even if it makes itself and its correspondents look very silly in the process. 

 

Dec 18 2012

The fast-tracking of a complaint to the BBC

On November 21st 2012, the programme ‘Newsround’ which is produced by the children’s section of the BBC – CBBC – put out an item entitled “Guide: Why are Israel and the Palestinians fighting over Gaza?“.  Whilst there is much to critique in the article itself – not least its ridiculously mistaken title – at the bottom of it, readers will notice this announcement:

Newsround correction

So what brought about such a speedy change in the wording of this article?

The answer to that question can be found of the website of CAABU – the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding – which, on November 22nd, announced that it had made a formal complaint regarding the ‘Newsround’ item of the previous day. 

CAABU complaint

On December 6th, the CAABU website announced that changes had been made to the item and provided a link to the BBC’s response of December 3rd to CAABU’s complaint.

Many BBC Watch readers will no doubt be amazed by the unusual alacrity of the BBC’s response to this complaint, but additional factors may go some way towards explaining it.

CAABU was established in 1967, just after the Six Day War, with the declared aim of being “prepared to stand up for Arab and Palestinian rights”, which it achieves, among other means, through extensive lobbying in the British parliament, by campaigning in British schools and through lobbying the media.  According to CAABU’s Director, Chris Doyle in an interview given to the Gulf News earlier this year:

“Caabu has a distinguished history of working to change the pro-Israeli atmosphere in British politics in the 1960s and 1970s. Much has changed since then, and the plight of the Palestinians is now widely recognised.

“Today, 70 per cent of the British public support Palestinian rights, which is a huge shift from 1967, when 20 years after the end of the Second World War there was still a lot of sympathy for Israel,” Doyle said.

Caabu’s core mission has been the crucial work of lobbying on key issues concerning British-Arab relations, such as Palestinian rights, making sure that the British government is constructive in its relations with other states based on international law and human rights, helping those countries that are en route to become democracies, and working with both media and schools.

“We talk to between 10,000 to 15,000 school children every year. We are the only organisation in Britain that gives children an opportunity to engage with the Arab World. Dr Amiee Shalan is the head of education, and she manages associate speakers who Caabu trains to speak to 16 to 17 year olds. We try to get them to look behind the headlines. We aim to get them thinking, and provoke them to have a different attitude on how they look to the region,” Doyle said.

A core function of Caabu is to lobby parliament. “At a time when so much is going on the Arab world, British politicians need an organisation which can synthesise everything into an easily understood coherent narrative, so that we can explain the main trends of what is happening in the region.

Caabu regularly takes delegations to the Arab world. It took 19 members of parliament to Palestine last year, and the members saw for themselves what it is like. They themselves felt the impact of the colonies, and the blockade of Gaza among other irritants.

“When they came back to Britain, they were angered and very concerned, and appalled at how the Palestinians are treated,” said Doyle, pointing out that this personal experience encourages them to speak out for Palestinian rights.”

In other words, CAABU is an integral and well-established part of the Arab lobby in the United Kingdom with no fewer than three MPs and two former MPs sitting on its executive committee. Some of those board members, however, can be rather coy about the organization they support and represent. 

Several months after the start of the unrest in Syria, commentators began remarking on CAABU’s sudden reinvention of itself as a supporter of the so-called ‘Syrian opposition’, after it apparently became clear even to CAABU that the Assad horse was the wrong one to back. In the framework of the ensuing damage control, CAABU board member and former MP Derek Wyatt posted three letters from fellow board members and staff on his blog. In one of those letters, CAABU co-chair Andy Love MP wrote:

 ”Caabu has zero links to the British-Syrian Society nor desires any. ”

The British Syrian Society was founded in 2003 by Fawas Akhras – the father in law of Bashar al Assad. His daughter – Asma al Assad – is reportedly a patron of the BSS, which also included among its ranks the Assad regime supporter Wafik Said. Until July 26th 2010, Rim Turkmani – wife of CAABU’s Director Chris Doyle – was a director of the British Syrian Society. 

Another director of the British Syrian Society (since March 23rd 2010 and to this day) is Shaza Shannan, who was also vice-chair of CAABU from February 2009 until April 5th 2012. According to the BSS website, Ms Shannan also works as a management consultant for the FCO-funded British Council and was also described as holding a position with that organization when, in 2010, she appeared together with Chris Doyle at an event at the London International Documentary Festival. 

“Shaza Shannan is currently the Head of Cultural Committee at British Syrian Society and the Vice Chair at CAABU – she organises events focussed on Middle Eastern issues. She is the Business Change Manager at British Council and also holds a position teaching arabic at SOAS.”

In 2007 Shannan organized a conference on the subject of the Golan Heights in London with the collaboration of the Syrian Media Centre in London (formerly headed by Ghayth Armanazi – also executive director of the British Syrian Society) and the Syrian Embassy. Among those attending was Fawaz Akhras and among the speakers was Jihad Makdissi – Syrian Embassy and Foreign Ministry spokesman from 1998 and until his reported defection at the beginning of December 2012. 

Here is CAABU in 2008 advertising via Google Groups  - on behalf of the British Syrian Society – a lecture by Brigid Keenan (more on her here). 

keenan event

In other words, CAABU co-chair Andy Love was not being frank when he claimed “zero links” to the BSS and – by extension – the Syrian regime. 

But what does all that have to do with the above mentioned complaint about the CBBC children’s programme ‘Newsround’? Well, another board member at CAABU is named Jonathan Fryer – an aspiring Lib Dem MEP, a lecturer at SOAS , a recent participant in the Arab League Conference on Palestine in Baghdad (together with his “chum” Craig Murray) and a past participant in the Doha Conference on Jerusalem.  A seasoned anti-Israel campaigner , he is also apparently the man Deborah Fink copies in to her e-mails of complaint about the sacking of Jenny Tonge. 

Fryer LDFOP 

In addition, Jonathan Fryer happens to be a journalist (apparently freelance) for the BBC’s ‘From Our Own Correspondent‘ programme. 

FOOC Fryer

Whilst Fryer’s dual role as CAABU board member and BBC journalist does not of course guarantee instant compliance with CAABU complaints, it certainly does not seem to be doing any harm. What is odd is that the fact that a board member of an organisation which frequently lobbies the BBC also does work for it – and that this does not appear to be perceived as a potentially problematic conflict of interests by the BBC itself. 

Nov 25 2012

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

On Saturday, November 24th 2012, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an edition of  ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ (also scheduled to be broadcast on the BBC World Service), which included a piece by Jon Donnison. The broadcast can be heard here or here, or downloaded here. 

Frankly, this is a subject I would have preferred not to have had to write about. Donnison’s broadcast concerns the death of the son of his BBC colleague, Jihad Masharawi, on November 14th and of course any death – but perhaps particularly that of a baby – is tragic and bound to evoke understandable emotional reactions – especially among those who know the family personally.

But as is the case with professionals in any field, journalists should be able to separate their personal storm of emotions from the task of carrying out their job. It is Jon Donnison’s inability to do that (along with many of his colleagues) which leaves no choice but to address the subject.

Below is a transcript of the programme: [all emphasis added]

Introduction by Kate Adie:

“A fragile ceasefire continues to hold in the Gaza Strip this morning. One Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces yesterday near the town of Khan Yunis. He was the first to be killed since the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel came into effect on Wednesday night, ending a week of fighting between the two sides. Israel launched its offensive in what it said was an effort to prevent Palestinian rocket fire. Jon Donnison has spent the week in Gaza and was there as one of his BBC colleagues heard that his house had been bombed.”

Adie gives no context whatsoever for the shooting of Anwar Qudaih on November 23rd and  her casting of aspersions upon the reasons for Operation ‘Pillar of Cloud’ – although by now standard BBC fare – totally ignores the context of the attack on an army jeep in Israeli territory with an anti-tank missile on November 10th and 110 missiles fired from Gaza at civilian communities between that incident and the operation’s commencement on November 14th.

Next, we hear Donnison’s broadcast:

“My friend and colleague Jihad Masharawi is usually the last to leave our Gaza bureau. Hard working but softly spoken, he often stays late, beavering away on his laptop. He has a cool head – unflappable when others like me are flapping around him. He’s a video editor and just one of our local BBC Arabic service staff who make the office tick. But on the Wednesday before last, soon after Gaza’s latest war erupted with Israel’s killing of Hamas’ military commander Ahmed al Jabari, Jihad burst out of the edit suite, screaming. He sprinted down the stairs, his face ripped with anguish. He’d just had a call from a friend to tell him the Israeli military had bombed his house and that his eleven month-old baby boy Omar was dead.”

Yet again, Donnison promotes the standard BBC line which ignores five days of rocket attacks on civilians prior to the targeted killing of Jabari, thus placing the blame for the hostilities on Israel – and excusing Hamas from any responsibility. Donnison makes an early attempt to establish the supposed bombing of Masharawi’s house by Israel as fact, despite having no proof for that assertion. He continues:

“Most fathers will tell you that their children are beautiful. Omar was a picture book baby. Standing in what’s left of his burnt-out home this week, Jihad showed me a photo on his mobile phone. It was of a cheeky, chunky, round-faced little boy in denim dungarees, chuckling in a push-chair. Dark eyed, with a fringe of fine brown hair pushed across his brow. “He only knew how to smile” Jihad told me, as we both struggled to hold back the tears.

“He could say just two words – Babba and Mamma”, his father went on. Also on Jihad’s phone is another photo; a hideous tiny corpse – Omar’s smiling face virtually burnt off, that fine hair appearing to be melted onto his scalp. Jihad’s sister-in-law, Hiba, was also killed. “We still haven’t found her head”, Jihad said. And his brother is critically ill in hospital with massive burns. His chances are not good.”

Donnison’s unnecessarily graphic descriptions are the audio version of the photographs of dead children (some real and some not – as Donnison well knows) used frequently by Hamas propagandists to incite world opinion against Israel.

 Let us be quite clear: this is war pornography. Its use is designed specifically to shock audiences into oblivion regarding the circumstances and facts and it aims to solicit purely emotional reactions of anger and disgust at the suggested perpetrator.

 Of course we have never (thankfully) heard comparable BBC descriptions of Israeli casualties broadcast in such a manner. 

For those unfamiliar with the BBC’s domestic broadcasts, it is worth pointing out that they are rife with warnings to the effect that “some viewers may find the content disturbing”. No such warning is given at the beginning of this programme. Did its unnamed producer consider the usual niceties unnecessary – or a hindrance? 

Donnison continues:

“Jihad has another son, Ali, four years old, who was lightly injured. He keeps asking where his baby brother has gone. Eleven members of the Masharawi family lived in the tiny breeze-block house in the Sabra district of Gaza City. Five people slept in one room. The beds are now only good for charcoal. On the kitchen shelves there are rows of melted plastic jars full of spices, their shapes distorted as if reflected from a fairground mirror. And in the entrance hall; a two foot-wide hole in the flimsy metal ceiling – where the missile ripped through.”

Donnison is the only person claiming that the Masharawi family home is in the Sabra district. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, as well as numerous media reports, all place the house in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City and that fact is very relevant indeed. 

Donnison goes on:

“Despite the evidence pointing towards an Israeli air-strike, some have suggested it might have been a misfired Hamas rocket. But at that time, so soon after the launch of Israel’s operation, Israel’s military says mortars had been launched from Gaza, but very few rockets. Mortar fire would not cause the fireball that appears to have engulfed Jihad’s house. Others say that the damage was not consistent with powerful Israeli attacks, but the BBC visited other bomb sites this week with very similar fire damage, where Israel acknowledged carrying out what it called “surgical strikes”. Like at Jihad’s house, there was very little structural damage, but the victims were brought out with massive and fatal burns.”

With all due respect, none of the numerous BBC correspondents in Gaza last week are ballistic or munitions experts, and until an independent study by such a professional comes to light, Donnison’s conjectures based on anecdotal evidence remain precisely that.

Regarding Donnison’s claim of mortars, “but very few rockets” having been fired at the time (BBC Watch has seen no such statement by the IDF, but would be delighted if Donnison could produce it), as is pointed out here, “very few rockets” does not mean no rockets. 

It is at this juncture useful to return to a report on the same subject put out by Donnison on November 15th – the day after the incident. In that report (specifically marked as containing disturbing images), Jihad Masharawi is interviewed by colleagues from the BBC Arabic Service. The report’s synopsis states that:

“Jihad Misharawi said his 11-month-old son Omar died after shrapnel hit the family home in Gaza.”

In the filmed interview, the following exchange takes place between Jihad Masharawi and the interviewer:

Interviewer: “Our condolences, Jihad. Tell me what happened with you.”

JM: “Shrapnel hit our house.”

Interviewer: “Shrapnel?”

JM: “Yes. My sister-in-law was killed along with my son and my brother and my other son were wounded.

Interviewer: “In which area?”

JM: “In al Zeitoun.”

Viewing the timeline of announcements from the IDF Spokesman on the relevant day (and corroborated in numerous media reports from the time) we see that immediately following the targeted killing of Ahmed Jabari, attempts were made to neutralize the arsenal of long-range Iranian supplied Fajr 5 missiles held by Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip so as to minimize the dangers of reactions to Jabari’s killing to Israeli civilians. 

Later that evening, the IDF released an aerial photograph of one such rocket launching site – owned by Hamas – in the Zeitoun neighbourhood in which Jihad Masharawi’s house is – according to him – situated. 

Whether or not Jihad Masharawi’s house was hit by a short-falling terrorist rocket, by shrapnel from secondary explosions of Fajr 5 missiles deliberately hidden by Hamas in built-up residential areas or whether an errant IDF shell targeting those rocket launching sites and weapons storage facilities caused that accident, we may never know.

But it is significant that the BBC has doggedly avoided conducting any sort of investigation whatsoever into the subject of Palestinians killed or injured by at least 152 known shortfalls of rockets fired by terrorists during the week November 14th to 21st and that it has had no inclination whatsoever to report on the use of the civilian population of Gaza as human shields by Hamas and other terrorist organizations storing and launching military-grade weapons from residential areas, despite having frequently (if inadvertently) documented those launchings itself.

In that vein, Donnison continues:

“Most likely is that Omar died in one of the more than 20 bombings across Gaza that the Israeli military says made up its initial wave of attacks. Omar was not a terrorist.”

Of course an eleven-month old baby was not a terrorist: we do not need to be told that by Donnison. But let us also take note of the fact that after a week of furious avoidance of that word, the BBC has finally found a use for it: as a means to chastise Israel. 

Donnison goes on:

“Of course every civilian death on either side – not just Omar’s – is tragic. The United Nations says its preliminary investigation shows that 103 of the 158 people killed in Gaza were civilians. Of these, thirty were children, twelve of whom were under the age of ten. More than a thousand people were injured. The Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that every non-combatant death or injury was tragic and an operational failure.”

Significantly, Donnison chooses to quote exclusively figures put forward by the highly partisan UN OCHA. Other sources suggest very different ratios of civilian to combatant deaths with the IDF reporting 120 combatants out of a total of 177 dead and B’Tselem’s initial findings (not complete) showing a ratio of 40 civilians to 62 combatants.

But it in the next part of his report – obviously inserted in the name of ‘impartiality’ – that Donnison truly exceeds himself:

“In Israel too there were casualties. Four civilians and two soldiers. There were also many injuries, but the fact that the Israeli ambulance service was also reporting those suffering from anxiety and bruises is an indication of the asymmetric nature of the conflict.”

Very classy: having spent a week advancing the narrative that not enough Israelis were being killed, the BBC now promotes accusations that Israel inflates casualty figures.

And, quick off the mark to ‘prove’ his point, Donnison continues: 

“Jihad’s son Omar was probably the first child to die in this latest round of violence. Among the last was a young boy – Abdul Rahman Naim – killed by an Israeli attack just hours before the ceasefire was announced. Abdul Rahman’s father, Dr. Majdi, is one of the leading specialist doctors at Gaza City’s Shifa hospital. The first he knew of his son’s death was when he went to treat a patient, only to find that it was his own boy.

Before I left Jihad’s house, leaving him sitting round a camp-fire with other mourners, I asked him – perhaps stupidly – if he was angry over Omar’s death. “Very, very angry”, he said, his jaw tensing as he glanced at the photos on his phone. My thoughts, after a week where I’ve had little time to think, are with Jihad and his family. Remarkably and unnecessarily, he told me his thoughts were with me and the rest of our BBC team. “I’m just sorry, Jon, that I had to go and wasn’t there to help you with your work” he said, before we hugged and said goodbye.”

It is, of course, perfectly natural that Donnison and other BBC staff should be upset about the death of a colleague’s child. It is even perhaps understandable that several of them allowed their emotions to dictate their reactions and actions at the time. 

What is not acceptable, however, is the BBC’s use of this insufficiently investigated story to promote the narrative of a child’s death being the result of Israeli actions – whilst at the same time brushing aside the conflicting unverified versions as to what actually happened and in stark contrast to its point-blank refusal to report on the subject of casualties caused as a result of the use by Hamas of its civilian population as human shields.

No less problematic is the BBC’s collaboration in the promotion of the same narrative outside its own outlet. 

Fisher did indeed use Danahar’s photographs in his article in the Washington Post. 

Jon Donnison has, over the last two days, been promoting his ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ feature with considerable zeal on Twitter. 

As angry and upset as Donnison and his colleagues may be, they have clearly crossed a line which has led to a professional and ethical conflict of interests. The tragic story of Omar Masharawi is now no longer being reported: it is being used and abused to advance a very specific narrative of Israel as a killer of children.

It is in danger of rapidly turning into a ‘journalists’ blood libel’ – if it has not already done so – and that is because of the fact that despite a number of deaths of children in the Gaza Strip during the recent hostilities, the BBC fails to make clear that none of those children (or any other civilians) were deliberately targeted by Israel and fails to present the events in their true context – part of which is the fact that not only does Hamas deliberately target Israel’s civilian population, but it also intentionally  endangers its own in order to reap exactly the kind of images and stories the BBC is now running so enthusiastically.

One may be tempted to ascribe the BBC’s actions to naivety or ‘battle fatigue’ but that may not necessarily be the case – as indicated in the Tweet below by BBC Foreign Editor Jon Williams. 

“Gaza” did not produce those images: journalists did. And in the case of the BBC it is increasingly emerging that they are knowingly and intentionally being promoted in order to advance a specific – yet unverified – narrative.

 It is that fact which has seriously compromised the BBC’s reputation as an impartial and accurate reporter of the news and tipped it over into the already over-populated category of journalists who wish to define the news and the public’s perception of it for the purpose of furthering a wider agenda.