Why the BBC’s failure to cover faux outrage in Jerusalem matters in the UK

BBC audiences were correctly informed that Temple Mount reopened two days after the terror attack that prompted its closure but subsequent events have not been reported.

BBC News website coverage of the terror attack in the Old City of Jerusalem on July 14th included reporting on the temporary closure of Temple Mount while police investigations were being completed.

“In the wake of the incident, police sealed off the site to search it for weapons. It is the first time in decades that the compound, which contains the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, has been closed for Muslim Friday prayers, which normally draws thousands of worshippers.

The site is administered by an Islamic authority (Waqf), though Israel is in charge of security there. Police are investigating how the attackers managed to smuggle in a handgun, sub-machine gun and knife.” BBC News website, 14/7/17

BBC radio reports on the same story amplified Palestinian objections to that closure but without adequately explaining why it had been implemented or clarifying the political background to those ‘protests’.

“There have been closures in the past for short periods of time when there have been incidents but for the police to say they’re closing it and that prayers not take place is significant. And in response, as you’ve heard, there has been much criticism from Palestinians. There have been prayers taking place outside the compound itself this afternoon. Obviously there a scene of heightened tension.” BBC World Service radio, 14/7/17

“After the shooting police began a search of the site and sealed it off. Friday prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque are usually attended by thousands of Muslims but the closure prevented that: a highly unusual decision by the Israeli authorities. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the preacher at the mosque, was defiant saying no force on earth could prevent prayers there. Instead though, they took place outside the compound amid signs of growing tension and angry scuffles at another of the Old City’s gates. Adnan Husseini – the Palestinian governor of Jerusalem – criticised the closure.” BBC Radio 4, 14/7/17

The only follow-up to those reports came in an article on a different topic in which visitors to the BBC News website were correctly informed on July 16th that:

“The holy site was closed after shooting but it reopened on Sunday.”

Hence, as far as BBC audiences are aware the story ended there. That, however, is not the case but the BBC has not produced any reporting on events that followed the reopening of Temple Mount two days after the temporary closure.

Audiences have not been told of the false and inflammatory claims made by Waqf officials or statements put out by the OIC and the Arab League.

“The Arab League condemned Israel for the closure, with Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit saying in a statement on Friday that Israel’s “banning Palestinians from praying” will only “inflame extremism and escalate tension” in the region. He stressed “the high sensitivity of issues related to religious places,” and chastised Israel for handling the situation with “carelessness.”

The statement made no mention of the terror attack that caused the temporary closure.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, an umbrella group of 57 nations, also lambasted the closure, calling it “a serious crime and a dangerous precedent.””

Neither have they been informed of inflammatory actions in the Jordanian parliament.

“On Saturday, there was an anti-Israel/defend Al-Aqsa march in Amman. On Sunday, the speaker of the Jordanian parliament read out a eulogy for the “martyrs of Palestine and the Jabarin family,” from which the killers hailed. He termed their attack a heroic act. All this, even as King Abdullah and Netanyahu had spoken by phone and agreed to reopen the Mount.”

BBC audiences have not been informed that although Temple Mount was reopened to visitors two days after the terror attack, some Muslims are refusing to pray there, citing the new security measures installed after the terror attack.

“At noon on Sunday, Israel reopened one of the entrances to the Mount to all Muslim residents of Jerusalem, regardless of age or gender. However, metal detectors were installed at the gate, which Israel had set up in the past but later removed, in order to improve security.

Waqf officials, who oversee the religious management of the Temple Mount, refused to enter the site and instigated a protest outside the entrance, with dozens of worshipers conducting their afternoon prayers next to the gate. “We will not accept security checks at Al-Aqsa… Don’t go through the gates,” one official shouted to the crowd outside the gate, who responded with cries of “Allahu Akbar.”

Police said the Waqf officials were not required to pass through the sensors. Channel 2 reported that Waqf officials initially entered the compound by a side entrance, without being required to go through the metal detectors, but later came back out and instigated protests against the new arrangements.”

Inflammatory statements from several parties concerning the new security arrangements (which are similar to those already in existence at the entrance to Temple Mount used by non-Muslims) have also been ignored by the BBC.

“Mahmoud al-Aloul, deputy head of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, told Palestinian media on Sunday that posting metal detectors at the Temple Mount was “illegitimate,” and security would only be ensured at the site by preventing the entry of “settlers” and removing “Israeli soldiers” — a reference to Border Police officers stationed at the site — from the compound.”

Even the propaganda of BBC ‘frequent flyer’ Mustafa Barghouti did not receive any BBC coverage.

“”We have been under occupation for 50 years, and we will not ‘get used’ to the new injustice,” Barghouti told The Jerusalem Post. “People will try entering in every possible way without going through the electronic devices,” he added.

Barghouti pointed his finger at the Israeli government as the source to these tensions, saying it just waited to get an excuse to install the metal detectors at the gate.

“These measures were preplanned,” he said. “Nobody is convinced that due to the incident these measures were taken.”

“The measures are completely unacceptable,” Barghouti added.

“There is no place in the world that collective punishment is used against the whole population… We feel that their aim and nature is to change the situation at al-Aksa mosque.””

BBC audiences have also not been informed of the violent incidents that have taken place in recent days or of the incitement from the PA president’s party Fatah.

“Protesters rioted in East Jerusalem neighborhoods overnight Tuesday against new security measures at the Temple Mount, throwing stones and petrol bombs at police and shooting fireworks at Israeli forces. At least 50 Palestinians and one officer were reported hurt.

The disturbances come after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party on Monday called for a “Day of Rage” in protest against new measures, including metal detectors installed following a deadly terror attack at the end of last week. […]

Fatah on Monday called for marches in the West Bank toward Israeli checkpoints in protest of the new measures and announced that Friday prayers, when many worshipers go to the Temple Mount, would be conducted in public squares instead. The decision was made following a meeting between Fatah Revolutionary Council secretary Adnan Ghaith, Fatah central committee member Jamal Muheisin, and Fatah representatives from the northern West Bank.

The group said the measures were called in order to denounce Israeli “terrorist procedures” in the Old City, according to a report in the Palestinian news agency Ma’an.”

For years Palestinian and Muslim figures – including the PA president himself – have been inciting violence by means of made-up ‘threats’ to the Muslim holy sites on Temple Mount. While the BBC’s Middle East correspondent described that site as “one of the most acute flash points in this decades-old conflict” as recently as last Friday, the corporation in fact has a long record of consistently under-reporting incitement and glorification of terrorism from such sources and on occasion has even amplified their conspiracy theories concerning Temple Mount.

The absence of any sober, factual BBC reporting on this latest example of anti-Israel delegitimisation and dangerous incitement dressed up as faux outrage (once again) over the installation of security measures of the kind already found at public places in Israel and around the world is not merely a technical issue of record. On the BBC’s home turf – where it is obliged to “contribute to social cohesion” – there are elements that are already promoting misinformation on this story to sectors of the UK population.

Such misinformation thrives in the vacuum created by the absence of responsible, accurate and impartial reporting by the media organisation with the broadest outreach in the UK.

Related Articles:

More conspiracy theory amplification from BBC’s Yolande Knell – and why it matters

BBC ignores Jordanian cancellation of US brokered Temple Mount plan

The part of the Temple Mount story the BBC refuses to tell 

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