The BBC Continues To Lie About History And Censor Calls For Ethnic Cleansing

Apologies for the lengthy title, but there are two issues here which need to be covered, and I’m combining them into one post. First, the BBC’s continued attempts to lie and rewrite history.

Q&A: Palestinian statehood bid at the UN

Most people here will know exactly what’s coming, and I know this has been covered here many times before, but it’s even more important to call the BBC out on it now because of the looming UN fight over creating a State of Palestine. For the benefit of those who don’t know the BBC’s bias about the “West Bank”, here’s the map they use to explain history to the public:


Notice on the left, the BBC is claiming that there was such a thing as the West Bank (i.e. Palestinian) Territory before the 1967 war. They’ve just erased a chunk of Jordan from history. As we all know, that was part of Jordan at the time, a country at war with Israel. Why else would Israel have invaded? This map indoctrinates the public with PLO propaganda, that Israel invaded sovereign Palestinian territory. Your license fee is being used to promote false history and anti-Israel propaganda.

Reality, on the other hand, is not Israeli propaganda. This map of Jordan – from a non-partisan source – and environs showing the borders during part of the 1967 war in question is fact, not fiction:


Notice the clear border lines of Jordan encompass the area about which the BBC is lying. Yes, I am accusing BBC News Online of telling a lie. I don’t care what some Beeboids personally believe about nasty old Israel’s land grab or the plight of the poor Palestinians or anything else. This is historical fact, and the BBC is lying about it. How can there be an honest Q&A about the topic when one of the answers is a lie? Until they remove that first map and replace it with an honest one, my accusation will stand.

Needless to say, this propaganda demonizes Israel in the minds of the public. Most people are seriously uninformed about the facts of Israel and 1967 and the “Palestinian Territories”. When one tries to explain the facts to get past the emotions, one is then accused of spouting Israeli propaganda. This is how the BBC’s editorial policy and style guide is blatantly biased, causing them to demonize Israel at every opportunity, although the BBC disputes this.

It’s impossible to have a civil discussion, national or otherwise, about the situation when the national broadcaster promotes propaganda for one side and demonizes the other. This then promotes anti-Jewish sentiment, but that’s a topic for another time.

Now for the BBC Censorship angle. Last week, Maen Rashid Areikat, the Palestinian ambassador to the US, said that there should be no Jews in a State of Palestine:

“Well, I personally still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated, and we can contemplate these issues in the future,” he said when asked by The Daily Caller if he could imagine a Jew being elected mayor of the Palestinian city of Ramallah in a future independent Palestinian state. “But after the experience of 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it will be in the best interests of the two peoples to be separated first.”

Actually, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about their desire for a Judenfrei Palestine. He said the same thing a year ago. Not only that, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said the same thing last year, and went further:

Almost no notice was taken of another pre talks decision that the PA chairman revealed, as he announced clearly that if a Palestinian Authority state is created in Judea and Samaria, no Israeli citizen will be allowed to set foot inside.The PA chairman also stated that he would block any Jewish soldiers from serving with an international force stationed on PA-controlled land.

“I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land,” Abbas declared.

Judenfrei, Judenrein. And the BBC has steadfastly censored all of this. Justin Webb didn’t bring it up to the feckless Lord Levy on Today, it doesn’t feature in any BBC News Online report about Israel or the Palestinians, and it hasn’t been mentioned anywhere else on the BBC. If someone can show me one single example of it, I’ll post it here, shocked but grateful.

Without the truth and all the facts, it’s impossible to have a rational debate and reasonable understanding of the situation. Yet the BBC actively prevents that, promoting propaganda for one side, rewrites history, and censors the Palestinians’ desire for ethnic cleansing.

ADDENDUM: Here’s Katty Kay interviewing US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, in which Katty states uncategorically that only Bibi Netanyahu is the problem, and Amb. Rice corrects here. No surprise that this is Katty’s belief as she recently tweeted to her followers that this New York Magazine article – which blames Netanyahu and uncritical, “steadfast” support for Israel in the US Congress as the only obstacles to peace – is All you need to know about the frosty relationship between Barack and Bibi.”

Why, it’s almost as if there’s a groupthink on this issue extending across the spectrum of the BBC.

The Prophet Carter

Octogenarian Jimmy Carter was given a lovely long spot on Today, with James Naughtie questioning him deferentially about his particular version of the Israeli Palestinian situation and his support for the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN security Council.

They both forgot to mention the Palestinians’ continual refusal to recognise Israel or to renounce violence, and Jimmy Carter made, at length, a number of factually incorrect statements about settlements and various other things.

His prediction that a bid would succeed at the General Assembly, if not at the UN Security Council, was announced as if it was a great insight on his behalf. Perhaps he didn’t hear Jeremy Bowen stating something which we all know, namely that there’s “a built-in pro Palestinian majority, and no veto, at the General Assembly.”

Some of his remarks indicate that he thinks Palestine is already an independent state, so why does the BBC bother to broadcast his bonkers views on the forthcoming Palestinian bid for statehood?

Update. Melanie Phillips is wondering if the British government is about to vote for a Palestinian state.

Keeping Watch

I’m forever guarding the BBC’s output, day and night. I watch all channels simultaneously, whilst listening to radios one two three four five six and seven, and the BBC World Service.

Only Joking. I’m bemused if anyone has that impression, and quite flattered.

From the bits I do watch, I recognise many of the biases mentioned on this blog, but I find the anti Israel bias the most painful, and somehow the most insidious, because it leads to things like the incident at the Prom.

Palestinian Solidarity Campaigners committed a profoundly self-defeating affront when they disrupted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

Music lovers regard Zubin Mehta and Gil Shaham as the crème de la crème. The audience at the Albert Hall eventually got to enjoy the treat they were waiting for. First they had to sit by and watch while a bunch of nobodies who presumed they had the right to caterwaul and chant and drown out the finest musicians in the world, gave an embarrassing display of their insensitivity and ignorance.

The radio 3 audience missed out altogether. The BBC made an unfortunate decision to abandon the live transmission. However, when the fools were finally ejected, the performance went ahead triumphantly, to prolonged, tumultuous, joyous, applause.

The incident has generated thousands of comments on the internet.

There are four hundred and forty four on the BBC News website, and forty nine on the BBC Proms website, several hundred below other articles, such as Brendan O’Neill’s piece in the Telegraph.(689 and counting)

The ignorance displayed by some of the contributors is mind-boggling.

The Palestinian Sympathy Orchestra, let’s call them, is equipped with clichéd, half-understood gossip, myths and distortions. Helpfully, they nearly always set them out in full before launching off into the tirade proper. “Stolen land, illegal settlements, ethnic cleansing, diverted water supplies, bulldozed houses, white phosphorous, apartheid, UN resolutions, illegal this that and the other” they excrete, indignantly. Particularly common is: “Israelis are killing innocent Palestinians everyday.”

They *know* these things, and they use them to justify their largely predetermined hatred of Israel. Where do they get these ideas?

Comments also appear on Norman Lebrecht’s ‘Slipped Disc” webpages. Today there’s a contribution by famous tousle-haired cellist Steven Isserlis. It was submitted to the Guardian, and for some reason they chose not to publish. He begins: “The protesters who disrupted the Prom by the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta are not only guilty of cultural hooliganism, but are deeply misguided.” and ends: “To wreck their very rare and special concert over here gives a terrible impression of us all – haven’t the rioters done that already?

You may as well read the middle as well.

Myths and Facts Part 3

A favourite talking head, panellist and guest of the BBC is Green MP for Brighton, Caroline Lucas. She’s the only Green MP, so you’d think she’d be busying herself doing the job she was elected to do. (Saving the planet.) Instead, as Richard Millett shows, she and some other intellectually challenged activists for peace or whatever they call themselves are creating unnecessary carbon footprints with a mock flotilla on the Thames. Why? Activists for peace are not ‘pacifists’ – a term which implies apathy, inactivity and capitulation. These people shriek “Free, free Palestine” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” discordantly and shrilly through loudhailers, with little or no knowledge or understanding of what their chant means. The word ‘activist’ resonates with righteousness. Pent-up hatred animates such people into flatulent, gaseous, hyperactivity, till they enact vacuous gestures of pointlessness. Oh! the smug looks on their faces. Do they know what ‘From the River to the Sea” means? The Greens have links with undesirable organisations, antisemitic tendencies, and are popular with the BBC.

CONFLICTS FORUM ON THE BBC…

This brought to my attention;


“The BBC excelled here onthe Today programme this morning bringing in a commentator that they must knowis a Hamas and Hizbollah apologist and champion of the Islamist cause.

Alastair Crooke, the one time MI6 spymaster who converted to Islamism and isnow director of the pro-Hizbollah outfit called Conflicts Forum and who proudlyboasts that it is “Listening to political Islam, recognisingresistance….Conflicts Forum wants to challenge the prevailing westernorthodoxy that perceives Islamism as an ideology that is hostile to the agendafor global democracy and good governance.”

Crooke believes Islamist terrorists are not in fact terrorists but resistersand freedom fighters.

Why would the BBC think that he was the right man to ask to comment on theevents in Syria when 2 weeks ago he quite clearly stated that he supported theSyrian government’s position……and funnily enough this is what he didtoday…stating that the protestors were just a small group of Salafists andalienated exiles and it was their propaganda that was exaggerating the deathtoll of civilians. In fact he said, it was the police who were being killed inlarge numbers and only a few demonstrators…..the Syrian people do not want UNintervention and do not want peace with Israel.

Syria supports Hamas and Hizbollah…Hamas and Hizbollah seek to destroyIsrael….why would the BBC give a platform to a man who clearly and openlysupports such groups? 


But then why would the BBC have on Mark Thomas to tell usthat the real purpose of the Israeli security barrier was to steal Palestinianland and water…a land grab….and of the ‘incredibly brutalising effect’ofhaving to go through check points….’The Israeli occupation is creating amortal sin.’ and that the Israelis were running a campaign to ‘cleanse’ an areaof Palestinians….and then John McCarthy who told us…’Palestinian lives arefractured by check points and deliberately so……every one traumatised bythese horrible walls and barriers that are put up.’

So traumatised in fact that the Palestinians have to resort to running literaryfestivals in the West Bank to cope…which was the reason for McCarthy to gothere. Life is hard….and the check points are mostly run by, er, thePalestinian Authority not the IDF!”

Backtrack Goes Without Saying

I don’t know. You go away for a week, and all sorts of things happen behind your back. Sensational things such as Judge Goldstone’s OpEd in the Washington Post. “Sorry, I was a bit wrong!” he said. “Silly me. Wonderful thing, hindsight. We can’t all be perfect, can we?

“That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.”

No, it doesn’t go without saying. It shouldn’t. It needs to be said.

“I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence
explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were
targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about
intentionality and war crimes.”

“Oops! Sorry! Oh well, it’s partly Israel’s fault for not co-operating with us.”

“we were not able to corroborate how many Gazans killed were civilians and how many were combatants.”

“(So we just believed uncorroborated figures from Hamas.)”

”The Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas”

“Oop! Sorry again. Oh well, you live and learn.”

“The purpose of the Goldstone Report was never to prove a
foregone conclusion against Israel. I insisted on changing the original
mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel.”

Skewed against Israel, eh? ‘It takes one to know one’ as the saying goes.

“Something that has not been recognized often enough is the fact that our report marked the first time illegal acts of terrorism from Hamas were being investigated and condemned by the United Nations. I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.”

This judge fellow has remarkably high hopes it seems. He must be a jolly little chap, always looking on the bright side.

“…our main recommendation was for each party to investigate, transparently and in good faith, the incidents referred to in our report. McGowan Davis has found that Israel has done this to a significant degree; Hamas has done nothing.

Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations.”

“Get me! So naïve! Silly old absurd little me.”

The BBC of course, so keen to absorb the Goldstone report and flourish it at the merest whiff of pro Israel odour, was unmoved. “Old Goldie must be having a senior moment,” they assume.

“Operation Cast Lead was launched in response to repeated rocket attacks on Israeli territory by militants in Gaza. Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including hundreds of civilians, as well as 13 Israelis.”

“We’re sticking with that, thanks all the same. That’s the one we know and love, and nothing’s gonna change our world.”

Shocking and Callous

Several B-BBC people have commented on the BBC’s bizarre take on the recent horrific murder of an Israeli couple and three of their children. Honest Reporting singles out the BBC’s version of the story as being particularly shocking and callous.
Why would the BBC illustrate Saturday’s article with an IDF soldier?
“Palestinian ‘kills five Israelis’ in West Bank.”
What are the scare quotes for?
“Kills five Israelis?” what, they didn’t “kill” them? There weren’t five? or they weren’t Israelis?
What a pointless and inappropriate use of inverted commas, which are, don’t forget, “to convey irony.”

The headline promises the report is to be about the “killing,” but the article sets off, not with the “killing” but with something Israeli troops have done. They’ve launched a manhunt! So the report is about the manhunt, and the “killing” is relegated to second place, perhaps to provide context for this story about a manhunt.
Of course the victims weren’t just an Israeli family. No, they were a settler family, deemed illegal and subhuman under international law.

The intruders showed generosity because two other children had been spared. Mr Netanyahu on the other hand is less compassionate. He is full of threats of punishments and vigorous actions.

So “Palestinians have refused all direct contact with Israel until construction is frozen.” What about the months when all construction was frozen when the Palestinians still refused all contact with Israel? Where have all the scare quotes gone when you need them? They must have run out. ‘Until construction is frozen’ could do with a pair.

And while they are repeating the tag about settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation, why doesn’t the BBC remind the readers about why Israel needed to occupy any areas in the first place? It was because of a war. A war which the Arabs started, and the Arabs lost.

Next, the article last updated 13th March.
“Israel Approves new Jewish settler homes in West Bank”
An act of pure defiance and obstructionism? Handy for the BBC, though. Just the thing to justify the murder of an Israeli family including a little baby.

So the concept of ‘hundreds of homes for Jews’ excuses this compassionate intruder and his pal for an act they had no choice but to carry out?

“An Israeli government official said the construction is to be in settlements that Israel expects to retain control of in a possible peace agreement with the Palestinians.”

When it suits them, the BBC uses the all-purpose Palileaks revelations to show that, much to their disapproval, certain agreements over the allocation of territory were under consideration by both parties. That’s the Palestinians as well as the Israelis. However the BBC habitually regards whatever an Israeli government official says with deep suspicion. No, for the purpose of this particular case we are to perceive Jews expanding into ‘stolen Palestinian land’.

“An Israeli government spokesman said the construction move had been planned for some time but the BBC’s Jon Donnison in Ramallah says it’s hard not to see the timing of the announcement as linked to the killings.”
It may be hard for Jon Donnison; but surely not as hard as seeing Jewish settlements as justification for slitting the throat of a three month old baby.

Most people think that celebrating violence and terrorism by handing out sweets is newsworthy. Most people, but apparently not Jon Donnison.

The Other

Several other bloggers are alarmed at the recent tidal wave of films and documentaries we’re being bombarded with, which subtly or overtly misrepresent Israel. Many have been brought to us by the BBC, but the most seductively beguiling of them all is on Channel Four. On last night’s Newsnight, in a wider discussion on the role of the media, I heard Mark Thompson say that BBC is obliged to “confront people with the other.

In the light of that, I feel justified in explaining why I find The Promise so disturbing, and why I feel that under the principle of confronting people with “the other”, it’s high time the BBC made and aired a programme that shows Israel in a truer, fairer light.

After Louis Theroux, Michael Morpurgo, and some upcoming radio plays which have clear anti Israel agendas, I suspect that as far as Israel is concerned, the BBC may not even be aware that there is an “other”.
A state of emergency should be declared.

Peter Kosminsky has spent several years, some say eight, some ten, devising and incubating this drama. He uses his considerable cinematographic skills to produce a slick advertising-savvy film with an agenda that subliminally and openly reconfirms what many think they already know about the Israel Palestine conflict. Namely: ‘Rich European Jews are transplanted into Muslim Lands by the British in a blundering attempt to atone for the holocaust, with the unintended consequence of penalising the innocent indigenous Arab population.’

The filmmaker has so far used two cheap tricks to mimic balance. One. Gratuitously and voyeuristically-inserted ‘real’ footage of emaciated concentration camp corpses. Two. A cafe suicide bombing in which two of the characters we’re following are injured. These two devices represent Israel’s case for the defence, while everything else represents the case for the prosecution.

Rich, heartless Jews versus poor, noble Palestinians; the giant key symbolising the right of return; left wing, European-born Israelis; checkpoints, the wall, stolen land, brutal Israeli soldiers, heroic, wronged Palestinian schoolgirls, Jewish terroism, stony-faced settlers.

Peter Kosminsky has even turned reality completely on its head! The stone-throwing children were not Palestinian, but Israeli! The Israeli hostess calls Palestinians ‘animals’ when Kosminsky really ought to have known that it’s Jews that are the desendants of pigs and apes. Ruthless Zionists tarred and feathered the female spy as a bluff to make our hero trust her. And though terrorism is the current method of resistance of the Muslims, it was brought to you first by Jews; and guess who were ‘put into prison camps’ by the Jews.

All this, and still one episode to go. But these things have all been done before, though perhaps less slickly and perhaps less seductively.

The website indicates that Kosminsky hopes to introduce a wider audience to the Palestinian cause. They are to learn the “truth” Kosminsly-style, through drama.
Comments, tweets, and even a liveblog, which Kosminsky himself has graced with his interactive presence, are all provided on the website. The gullible media addicts have tweeted and texted their appreciation in droves. They were captivated, amazed, thrilled, and ever so grateful that the hitherto mystifying Israel / Palestine conflict has been set out in technicolour for easypeasy digestion, painlessly and enchantingly.
What is alarming is that this advertising propaganda masquerades as enlightenment.
Kosminsky, far from trying to warn people that his partisan film isn’t a substitute for a fully comprehensive education, graciously accepts the plaudits. Lindsey (No I am not an anti-Semite) Hilsum provides a handy Potted Political History. Comments pointing to the omissions and obfuscations therein are dismissed by a Channel Four spokesman – because Lindsey Hilsum is an expert, so there.
I know it’s not part of my remit to comment on Channel Four business, so, if only because of the BBC’s obligation to confront people with “the other”, I rest my case.

Happy Birthday!

Over at CiFWatch they’ve been comparing two reports about Hamas’s 23rd Birthday celebrations and wondering why there was nothing in the Guardian to mark the happy event.

Al-Jazeera, not particularly known for its pro-Israel bias, generously shares the information that “the tight Israeli siege has made Hamas increasingly unpopular.” Yes, unpopular.

The BBC, on the other hand, hasn’t noticed this at all.

CiFWatch has:

“But the BBC? Hamas is unpopular? Perish the thought. Dear old Auntie instead stresses the “tens of thousands”, the “throngs” of supporters who – of their own free will of course – “filled the streets of Gaza” to watch the festive green balloons and listen to the tinny martial music and hear how, “Hamas leader Ismail Haniya says the Islamist movement is committed to Palestinian national reconciliation in order to fight the Israeli occupation”. How noble! But, any thoughts instead of making peace with Israel for the good of all? Thought not.”

Back at the BBC website, Jon Donnison describes the scene.

“But on the whole, the atmosphere was festive – a day out or a big picnic, participants said. Many were bussed in by Hamas organisers from across the Gaza Strip. Occasionally, I saw an Israeli flag being burned.

He probably supplied the matches.

Don’t Mention the War

“Six months ago nine Turkish activists were killed attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The wave of international condemnation which followed led Israel to announce an easing of the blockade, but this week 22 Aid agencies issued a report saying it had made little difference on the ground. “

That’s from the programme information from the Sunday Programme’s website. It immediately reveals where the writer’s sympathy lies. Why? Because despite all the evidence that has emerged since the Mavi Marmara incident, they still present the nine who died as righteous and wronged, and gratuitously mention ‘international condemnation of Israel’ to endorse their own condemnation, and to remind us of Israel’s universal unpopularity.
Hanan Elmasu from Christian Aid said matters haven’t improved for Palestinians in the five months since the blockade was eased. She said the blockade is not necessary as you can ‘lift the blockade and meet Israel’s security needs’. Somehow or other. She was concerned that Palestinian children see their parents standing in line for food vouchers, adding erroneously, by accident or design, that ‘Gaza remains under occupation’.
Mark Regev was given the opportunity to respond, on a bad line because of the fires raging in Northern Israel. He began by thanking us for sending two helicopters. Understandably he sounded tired and distracted. He explained that Hamas is Israel’s enemy, not the Palestinian people. They are the victims of that extreme regime.
It must be tiresome to have to repeat time after time, to people who aren’t listening, that Israel is under constant threat. The BBC’s starting point is the problem. It hinges on their sentimental attachment to Palestinians, whom they naively picture as gentle folk with donkeys and olive-groves; somehow they are completely unwilling to recognise the Palestinian leaders’ visceral hatred for Jews and their unshakeable determination to eliminate Israel.
That, combined with the deliberate suppression of abundant substantive evidence of Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s genocidal intentions.

The BBC is content to approach the situation in Gaza as though a state of war did not exist. They continually push the idea that the blockade is wrong. Although we encourage the use of sanctions against our own enemies before resorting to the use of force, they have decided that Israel must use neither force nor sanctions.

The Sunday programme ended with two items on its favourite religion. A celebration of the East London Mosque. ‘A cultural centre and an integral part of community life’. We are told that the Mosque educates the community and brings it together. Hosting radical Anwar al-Awlaki who supported the Fort Hood shooting was an ‘administrative oversight,’ a spokesperson assures us. There has been some criticism of the strain of conservative Islam perpetuated by this mosque, but Islam is an ideological matter. They decide whether you should have photos in your home, and whether Muslim children should be protected from ‘UnIslamic’ matters such as music, art and school trips. How sweet.

Immediately after this generous portrayal of the East London Mosque, we hear that a hard-line muslim cleric in Pakistan, during Friday prayers, has offered a reward to anyone who will kill a Christian woman who is already facing death for blasphemy.

These three items are, apparently, unconnected.

I caught Yvette Cooper telling Andrew Marr that she had been to the Middle East, as shadow foreign secretaries are wont to do.
Did you learn anything new?” asked Marr.
What is important,” she replied sweetly, “are the personal stories. The Palestinian families separated from their olive trees by The Wall. and the children deprived of their football pitch.
“I don’t know why they must build these beastly walls, “ she seemed to imply, “it’s so spiteful”
“Oh, yes, and I talked to the parents of a Jewish soldier who was kidnapped by Hamas.” she added, remembering balance. A Jewish soldier, kidnapped? Was she implying that as a combatant, he was asking for it? And was she assuming that the audience had not heard of Gilad Shalit’s four year incarceration by evil terrorists Hamas? Perhaps she herself had not.

Fires are raging in Northern Israel, and Israel’s enemies rejoice.

“Muslim.net, owned and operated by Aljazeera Publishing, published a series of posts about the fire raging through Northern Israel which can only be described as a celebration of the death, carnage, and misery caused by the blaze. “
Should the BBC report this?