Jeremy Bowen retweeted this comment on the 26th of December:
#Hezbollah is pressing hard to be granted similar powers in security & foreign policy matters that Syria exercised in Lebanon for 15 yrs.
— Mohamad B Chatah (@mohamad_chatah) December 27, 2013
Mohammad Chatah was then assassinated the next day.
Bowen’s only comment was this:
Mohamad Chatah was always informative and frank when I spoke to him. Stood up for his beliefs but was the kind of man divided Lebanon needs
— Jeremy Bowen (@BowenBBC) December 27, 2013
Bowen doesn’t even mention his death…..nor then speculate about a link between Chatah essentially denouncing Hezbollah and his being assassinated? Chatah is a Sunni, Hezbollah Shia…Iranian mercenaries in essence.
Not as if others in the BBC don’t report the possibility:
Saad Hariri indirectly accused Syria and Hezbollah of being behind the killing.
“Those who assassinated Mohamad Chatah are the ones who assassinated Rafik Hariri; they are the ones who want to assassinate Lebanon,” he said.
Guess the BBC’s Middle East Editor is too busy being cynical about Christmas:
Christmas is over. Time for the next commercial festival. Happy New Year. pic.twitter.com/ncIRNUy07f
— Jeremy Bowen (@BowenBBC) January 2, 2014
And gets told off by Fox News:
@BowenBBC Christmas still has three days to run. Its only commercial if you chose to ignore central purpose.
— Mark Fox (@MarkFoxNews) January 2, 2014
Ha ha…or is that Ho Ho Ho?….must have gone down well with the rather priggish Bowen!
And for those varieties of Orthodoxy that still follow the Julian calendar for these things (of which a number are represented in Jerusalem), it’s not even Christmas Eve yet. You’d expect a long-term Jerusalem-based Middle East correspondent for a serious news outlet to know that sort of thing.
Hadda, you’d expect more wouldn’t you? For instance in Lebanon Christmas is officially Jan 6 http://tyros.leb.net/feasts.html
Next Bowen will be remarking on the religious tolerance shown to Jews in Arab states, of how Israeli Arabs are desperate to emigrate, and of the persecution of Christians in Israel. And of course how they celebrate Christmas so wonderfully in multi-cultural, cosmopolitan Saudi Arabia.
what you have to understand about jeremey bowen is his bias and stockholm syndrome towards radical sunni islamists and there causes started a long long time ago,what he is doing now with his biased reporting from syria is excatly what he done in 1991 at the height of the bosnian war where bosnian serbs fought the bosnian muslims to save that christian country and state from total takeover by radical muslim terrorists who wanted independence from christian yugolslavia,jeremy bowen then was slammed by the yugoslavia goverement and many in the uk for his total bias in reporting that war.this guy has a long track record in taking sides in civil wars,he just cant help it.
Stuart
Your points are well made, but please make them easier to read. A bit of punctuation, using the space bar and breaking things down into sentences would be helpful!!
Retired teachers, don’t you just love them !
Oh you all must be aware that Bowen and others at the BBC are sharpening their pencils (and knives) ready for the passing of Arial Sharon.. I don’t think that Ms Barbara Plett will be crying at Sharon’s death as she was at Arafat’s passing….When it does happen contrast and compare to the Mandelathon which we all had to endure!!
Sharon………the right man for the time. Just ask the Egyptian 3rd army.
I suspect that if Mr Bowen wasn’t a bbc employee, he’d be unemployable.
I don’t know ,there always seem to be room in labour run local authorities for another apparatchik
Press TV? RT? Al Jazeera? Consultant on the Middle East to certain political parties who want him to confirm their existing biases?
i am no good at spelling and my grammar is useless,those who attack me all the time on these points when i leave a comment will just have to put up with,i cant be any more honest than that can i.
While I sympathise, may I suggest a spelling/grammar check before posting? Microsoft Word has a quite adequate one. Apparently there are several online checkers that may be useful to you.
If you want your points to be understood, of course.
I have no problem understand the points he makes
(even if he does spell his name wrongly)
You just tell ’em to fuck off. Despite your literacy problem your posts are fluent and well written, and carry the reader along. You usually make good points as well.