Given that the BBC reflects and inevitably creates public attitudes, and is obliged to be seen to be impartial, could someone at the BBC kindly explain your portrayal of M.E. news.
For example this web article concerning the removal of the word nakba from textbooks for state-educated Arab Israeli nine-year-olds.
Although worded to give a veneer of impartiality, the article conveys an unpleasant underlying message with an innocent smile, the lip-service of balance barely concealing prejudices that turn the truth inside out.
“The passage in question, which occurs in one textbook aimed at Arab children aged eight or nine, describes the 1948 war, which resulted in Israel’s creation,”
What? The war resulted in Israel’s creation? The other way round methinks.
Israel’s creation resulted in the war. The war waged by the Arabs against Israel’s creation. Because of it. See? Upside down.
Your message shines through thus:
Far-right Jews have callously stolen the truth from little children, forcing them to deny their catastrophe and pretend instead that it was a triumph for the Zionist oppressors. Hebrew text books deviously focus on the heroism of Israeli forces in 1948 and gloss over the mass exile of Palestinians.
Israelis are arrogant boasting manipulators who cover up the proof about Israel’s lies over their brutal ethnic cleansing of millions of Arabs in 1948.
More impending oppressive legislation is in the pipeline from the far-right.
Is that what you really think but were constrained from saying outright? You had to make an attempt, through gritted teeth, to sound even-handed?
A little transparency please. Make people who write articles and broadcast over the airwaves learn some history. Please.
Look at the list of KEY STORIES. It’s almost as though you think there is nothing positive to say about Israel. Almost as if you fall into the category of what they call ‘ready made thinking about Jews.’
“Oh no,” you reply. “It’s not Jews we hate, it’s Israel.”
Well in that case why do you publicise Breaking the Silence and not this?
The amnesty International report about war crimes and not this?
And why don’t you mention the equal number of Jews, (not millions as you state in your article but an estimated 750,000) that were displaced from Arab countries in 1948, or reflect on the good fortune of Arab Israelis who enjoy a state education in Israel with text books that don’t perpetuate hostility and deliberately inflame grievances and hatred.