Inaccuracies and distortions go unchallenged on BBC WS ‘Newsday’ – part two

The BBC WS programme 'Newsday' gave interviewees an unfettered platform for promotion of inaccuracies and lies.

In part one of this post we discussed an edition of ‘Newsday’ broadcast on BBC World Service radio on the morning of December 6th in which Mustafa Barghouti was given free rein to promote lies and distortions concerning Israel that went completely unchallenged by the programme’s presenter.

A later edition of the same programme – again presented by Lawrence Pollard and Andrew Peach – also included items relating to the then anticipated announcement by the US president concerning Jerusalem and the US embassy in Israel. At the start of the show listeners heard from American human rights lawyer Brooke Goldstein and later on (from 26:57 here) a BDS supporting one-stater UCLA professor of English literature was brought in to give ‘the Palestinian view’. [emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]

Peach: “This morning the US president is expected later to make an announcement recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Hugely controversial this as Israelis and Palestinians consider the city their capital. East Jerusalem has been occupied by Israel since 1967. The status is one of the most sensitive disputes in the conflict, further complicated by the presence in the city of holy sites for Jews, Muslims and Christians.”

Pollard: “Well in the last couple of weeks [sic] a number of world leaders – Europeans, Arabs, allies of America – have been warning President Trump against taking this step, with some expressing concerns that it might threaten future peace talks and even trigger violence. We’ve been getting opinions from Israel, from America: now for a Palestinian view of the implications. We’ve been speaking to Professor Saree Makdisi. He’s based in California. He’s the author of ‘Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation’. So, Professor Makdisi, how significant is this move?”

Makdisi: “I think it’s going to destabilise the entire region and I think it’s gonna throw a lot of fuel on many different fires that are already burning. I also think it makes some things clearer, so it’s not all bad news in that sense. I think the most important thing – the first thing that needs to be said – is that it’s a major blow of course to Palestinian aspirations and Palestinian rights. It’s very problematic in that it represents the kind of acknowledgement of sort of giving American blessing to the acquisition of territory by force. But we have to remember after all that the reason why nobody recognises Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is that Israel’s claim to Jerusalem is extremely questionable. The 1947 UN partition of Palestine  didn’t give Jerusalem to the putative Jewish state and the eastern part of the city was taken in the war of 1967 so that’s why the international community doesn’t recognise Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as its capital and what the…what Trump basically will be doing is saying we’re giving our blessing to the acquisition of territory by force which is contravention of international law and giving our blessing to the colonisation of Arab land by the Israeli state.”

Pollard refrained from clarifying to listeners around the world that the 1947 Partition Plan never got off the ground because the Arabs refused to accept it and that it also did not give any part of Jerusalem to a Palestinian state. He also had nothing to add to Makdisi’s remarks concerning the “acquisition of territory by force” in terms of the very relevant context of the belligerent Jordanian invasion of parts of Jerusalem in 1948. Even Makdisi’s spurious reference to the “colonisation of Arab land” went completely unquestioned.

Pollard: “You said benefit might come out of it as well – a kind of clarification – what do you mean?”

Makdisi: “Yeah a clarification because you know for the twenty plus years of the so-called peace process, which has really done nothing in particular to accomplish anything like a just peace, there’s been this…I mean part of what’s stained the whole process has been this image of the United States as what’s called an honest broker. It has been anything but honest and really hasn’t even been much of a broker but certainly it’s been incredibly dishonest for all these years because of course the US is a partisan…an ally of the Israeli state. I mean it gives Israel billions of dollars in aid every year. It gives it pretty much unlimited support in the United Nations Security Council. It lets it get away with gross and grotesque violations of international humanitarian law.”

Pollard: “Is the move important enough in your opinion and weighty enough and symbolic enough to actually stop people talking about the peace process? To put a nail in the two-state solution? I mean does this, for example, preclude a Palestinian Authority capital of some kind in East Jerusalem? Because plenty in America say it doesn’t.”

Makdisi: “Let’s put it this way: there are no current negotiations as far as anybody knows. I mean there’s talk about it and there’s been talk on and off for more than 20 years about, you know, a two-state solution. During the process of talking on and on in all those years, what’s happened is Israel has consolidated its hold over East Jerusalem. It’s consolidated its hold over the West Bank by building more and more settlements and transferring more and more of its own population into these occupied territories.”

Pollard made no effort to clarify to listeners that – as the BBC knows – Israel has not built ‘settlements’ in the past twenty years and has not ‘transferred’ (and of course Makdisi used that particular word deliberately) any of its population to Judea & Samaria.

Had listeners been informed in the introduction – as required under BBC editorial guidelines – that Makdisi is a proponent of a bi-national state – and the resulting elimination of the Jewish state – and a supporter of the BDS campaign, they would have been able to put his next set of claims in context.

Makdisi: “And so what this does is it just makes it clear that that whole set of discourse is fictional basically and so what it does is it puts the onus on everybody to come up with a different set of solutions and that’s why there is something of a silver lining here because it’s giving the lie to a tired and worn-out set of really abstract actions and fictions. And we’re seeing the increasing isolation of Israel in terms of boycotts and sanctions which are really beginning to bite in all kinds of ways – culturally and in terms of sports and other things. And I think that will intensify, especially with the official demise of the two-state solution. It’s incredible.”

Lawrence Pollard did not even find it necessary to challenge Makdisi’s subsequent justification of terrorism or his allegations regarding a person unable to exercise the right of reply.

Makdisi: “And the other thing, you know, which one could have said – it seems kind of obvious – is that, you know, next time something awful happens and people say why do they hate us – well – now, I wonder why they hate us. It’s almost the self-fulfilling prophecy which is…and it doesn’t seem to have any benefit for anybody except…except that faction of the Israeli Right that really wants to have unlimited carte blanche and it’s getting what it wants, you know, and that’s…that’s Kushner’s role, no doubt.”

As we see, Lawrence Pollard yet again made no effort whatsoever to challenge the multiple inaccuracies and falsehoods promoted by the inadequately introduced Makdisi, meaning that BBC audiences once again went away with misinformation and misleading impressions that distorted their view of the story.

In the subsequent December 6th edition of ‘Newshour’ listeners once again heard (from 00:25 here) an edited version of Mustafa Barghouti’s earlier comments that included unchallenged repetition of his dubious interpretations of international law, two repetitions of the ‘apartheid’ smear, lies about Palestinian ‘non-violence’ and a distorted account of events in Jerusalem last July that began with a terror attack near Temple Mount that Barghouti erased from his account.  

It is glaringly obvious that both Mustafa Barghouti and Saree Makdisi were given unfettered platforms from which to promote inaccurate claims and blatant falsehoods without any hindrance whatsoever from ‘Newday’ presenters. Moreover, Barghouti’s slurs and inaccuracies were subsequently recycled both in the programme itself and in a clip promoted on social media.

While those softball interviews clearly contributed to the advancement of a specific political narrative, they certainly did not enhance audience understanding of the specific story under discussion or the wider topic.

Related Articles:

Inaccuracies and distortions go unchallenged on BBC WS ‘Newsday’ – part one

An overview of BBC News website coverage of the US embassy story

 

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