As Israel assaults Gaza, BBC reporting assaults the truth

Amena Saleem The Electronic Intifada London 16 November 2012

BBC has shown deference to Israeli goverment line in its reporting on Gaza in recent days.

Ashraf Amra APA images

In 2006, an independent panel of senior public figures published a report assessing the impartiality of the BBC’s coverage of the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The panel, chaired by Sir Quentin Thomas, a senior figure in the British Home Office, found “identifiable shortcomings, particularly in respect of gaps in coverage, analysis, context and perspective and in the consistent maintenance of the BBC’s own editorial standards.”

The Thomas Report, as it became known, was quickly shoved under the carpet by the BBC, even though it had originally been commissioned by the corporation’s own governors, and business continued as usual (“Report of the Independent Panel for the BBC Governors on Impartiality of BBC Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” April 2006, available on the Internet Archive).

In the last few days, the shortcomings highlighted in the report have never seemed so glaring.

Gaza reported without context

Across the BBC’s output, from the 24 hour rolling news channel, BBC News, to its flagship news and current affairs program Today on Radio 4, the Israeli assault on Gaza has been reported without context, without perspective and with a bias that has wholly favored the heavily-armed, nuclear state of Israel against the mostly refugee population of the besieged Gaza Strip.

This pattern of partiality was noted by Thomas and his panel. They made several mentions in their report to the “asymmetry of power between the two sides” and noted that “given this asymmetry, the BBC’s concern with balance gave an impression of equality between the two sides which was fundamentally, if unintentionally, misleading.”

To counter this flaw, the Thomas Report recommended that the BBC “should make purposive, and not merely reactive, efforts to explain the complexities of the conflict in the round, including the marked disparity between the position of the two sides.”

Yet, rather than providing information to its global audience which would make clear that Israel is deploying a vast arsenal of high tech armory against Gaza’s civilian population, to which the response is crude rockets, the BBC’s coverage of the past days has portrayed the stateless Palestinians as vicious aggressors against an exhausted Israel.

On the morning of 15 November, the day after Israel carried out the extrajudicial killing of Hamas military leader Ahmed al-Jabari and unleashed a wave of terror against Gaza’s civilian population, the BBC put an article onto its website headlined: “Gaza rocket arsenal problem for Israel.”

The article goes into minute detail about what the BBC’s diplomatic and defense correspondent Jonathan Marcus describes as “the Palestinian rocket arsenal.”

There are descriptions of the types of rockets in the “arsenal,” their range, their design, their country of origin, the threat they pose to Israel, the towns in Israel they might be capable of reaching. Marcus also spends time discussing the capability of Israel’s “Iron Dome” defense and Israeli allegations of shipments of arms coming via Sudan to Gaza.

Israeli arsenals unreported by the BBC

Nowhere in the article, or elsewhere on the BBC, does Marcus investigate Israel’s weapons stockpile, which is funded to the tune of $3 billion a year by the United States.

There are no reams of paragraphs devoted to describing the different types of bombs, mortar shells, drones, fighter jets, gunboats, tanks, guns, nuclear warheads or white phosphorus shells that are in Israel’s arsenal. Yet, with the exception of nuclear missiles, all of these have been used at some point against the people of Gaza with devastating consequences.

A second article published on the BBC website the same morning is headlined: “Escalating violence takes its toll on Israelis.” Here we have journalist Yolande Knell putting a human face on the Israelis who have faced rocket attacks in the towns of Ashkelon and Kiryat Malachi over the last two days.

There are interviews with Israeli men and women describing their fear, their pain at the previous day’s fatalities in Kiryat Malachi, their scramble to find shelter when the air raid sirens sound and the damage to their buildings. Knell describes “eerily quiet” streets in Ashkelon, closed restaurants and schools and how “normal life here remains on hold.”

Minimizing Palestinian voices

Yet when it comes to how Palestinians in Gaza endure frequent Israeli bombardment, Palestinian voices and their pain are minimized.

A BBC article in March claimed the people of Gaza are “almost inured to the endless conflict” and life in the Gaza Strip carries on as normal — a report based on the perspective of BBC correspondent, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, rather than interviews with the Palestinians themselves.

When the Palestine Solidarity Campaign complained about the bias inherent in Wingfield-Hayes extraordinary claims, which were juxtaposed alongside an article by Kevin Connolly describing the “dread” felt by Israelis during rocket strikes, a reply was received from Fraser Steel, Head of Editorial Complaints at the BBC.

He wrote: “I have to say it seems to me that the aspects of the reports which you single out for criticism can be interpreted as evidence of bias only if one approaches them with a prior assumption of bias on the part of the authors.”

The bias that PSC was highlighting is not on the part of the authors, but on the part of their employers, the BBC, and with good reason.

Israeli spokespeople unchallenged

Since al-Jabari’s assassination on 14 November, the BBC has rolled out all the Israeli heavyweights across its programming: Ron Prosor, Israeli ambassador to the UN; Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister; Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesperson; and Daniel Taub, Israel’s ambassador to the UK.

All have been allowed to disseminate, with virtually no interruption or correction, the propaganda line Israel is using for the duration of this assault on Gaza: that Israel withdrew its settlers in 2005 in order to allow Gaza to live in peace but Hamas insisted on a war which Israel has so far resisted, but is now being reluctantly drawn into in order to protect its citizens.

On the Today program on 15 November, Taub was interviewed by BBC heavyweight John Humphrys. For four minutes he was allowed to expound Israel’s hasbara line that Hamas rockets rain down on southern Israel with no response from Israel and that no other country but Israel would be so understanding.

Humphrys gave no challenge when Taub said: “We have to recognize, seven years ago, we pulled out of every inch of Gaza. We removed 9,000 Israeli civilians along with their homes, their schools, their kindergartens, in order to try and have a peaceful situation with Gaza … Tragically, that opportunity was not taken up. Hamas took over and since then has been waging an intensive war.”

The BBC’s major evening current affairs program Newsnight was used as a vehicle for similar hasbara the previous evening by Danny Ayalon, who enjoyed an uninterrupted three minute interview with presenter Gavin Esler.

At the very end of the interview Ayalon said: “Not only do they [Hamas] target the civilian population in Israel, but they implant themselves in the midst of the civilian population in Gaza, so in fact they use a population as a human shield for their hideous attacks.”

To which Esler replied: “Ok, we’ll leave it there. Danny Ayalon, thank you very much.”

There was no attempt, or even it seems a willingness, by this senior BBC journalist to confront and challenge Israeli propaganda and falsehoods.

Meanwhile Zionist activist Jonathan Sacerdoti appeared four times as a guest on different BBC television news programs during the first two days of the Israeli assault. The BBC allowed him to pose as an independent expert, neglecting to mention his past work for the Zionist Federation and current role at the Board of Deputies of British Jews (“Who is Jonathan Sacerdoti, the BBC’s Go-To Man on Gaza?” New Left Project, 16 November).

BBC failure

The findings of the Thomas Report from 2006 are holding true during this latest onslaught on Gaza. This unwillingness by both Humphrys and Esler, together with the presenters on television and radio news, to point out the facts to their Israeli government interviewees is just a symptom of the BBC’s failure to provide context and perspective, as highlighted by the report.

And so BBC audiences listen to Regev and the rest without being made aware that Israel is considered by the UN to be an occupying power in Gaza with obligations under the Geneva Conventions to protect the inhabitants.

Taub is allowed to freely say that Israel has withdrawn from Gaza, without being made to explain how he can make such a travesty of the truth when Israel holds Gaza under tight military siege, restricting access to food, medicines, water, fuel and other essentials, and restricts the free movement of Gaza’s people in and out of the territory.

Prosser can stand in Kiryat Malachi condemning Palestinian rocket attacks, as he did on the BBC News channel on 14 November, and not be asked to comment on Israel’s massacre of 1,400 Palestinians in three weeks in 2008-09 or its continuous bombing and shelling of Gaza since then.

And that is how Ayalon can barefacedly mislead BBC viewers with the human shield fallacy, because nowhere on the BBC, including Newsnight will its audience be told that 1.6 million people are crammed into a strip of land about 20 miles long and four miles wide, and consequently there is nowhere that is not inhabited.

In its final points, the Thomas Report summed up: “some of the deficiencies are serious and … [the BBC’s coverage] could be a great deal better: more distinctive, challenging and informative.”

If only it were. Imagine how many people around the world and those paying the licence fee in the UK would become aware of Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians, its daily violations of international law, its lies and deceits.

One presumes this is why the Thomas Report has rarely seen light of day since its publication.

Amena Saleem is active with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK and keeps a close eye on the media’s coverage of Palestine as part of her brief. She has twice driven on convoys to Gaza for PSC. More information on PSC is available at www.palestinecampaign.org.

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Eugene replied on

What would you do if you were a Jewish politician in Israel, maybe a president like Netanyahu? Would you say, ok wow they are firing rockets, let's move 500,000 people from West Bank and finally give them what they have been asking for, statehood. No of course the first priority is self-defense. If Hamas did not want to be attacked they would not attack with rockets which have injured 120 israelis according to magen david. Unfortunately due to pop. density casualties occur. The BBC has an excellent piece about whether it is legal under international law to do airstrikes on Gaza. In fact, it is because some buildings house terrorists. I invite you to tell me what to do with a building that houses a rocket launcher and civilians. Do you knock on the door nicely and say please leave? Do not be ignorant or pretend Israel is irrational. For several years Gaza was not hit like this. Do you know why it started? Because of the rocket attack on the jeep which killed 4 Israelis. Israel only asks one thing from Hamas to negotiate - recognize its UN backed state boundaries. Hamas does not recognize any land under Israel's authority. So be it, its people will pay unfortunately, until it has some responsible politicians. I wish the blood to stop being spilled and for there to be peace, but the people in this forum are completely biased against Israel, and it is funny to see a justificiation for war crimes from posters like Artemis who say the 1920 riots were justified while today condemn Israel. Artemis I would invite you to tell me how many Jews died at the hand of Moslems but you could not tell me because no records could have existed. We have circumstantial evidence from history starting with Muhamads execution of the Qureysh Jews in KSA for not abiding. Look at the leveling of synagogues and the non recognition of Judaism - building Al Aqsa on formerly Jewish religious ground. If that doesn't hint at the treatment, I'm not sure what does.

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Tony replied on

Netanyahu is Prime Minister not President. Eugene, are you capable of writing a true statement or do you, and other Israel-supporters, have a clinical allergy to truth?

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Artemis replied on

Eugene, you are really outrageous. Don't you dare write that I justified the riots against Jews. That is willful manipulation of the truth.
You are obviously capable of distorting everything and understanding nothing. You are totally fixated on one belief system and nothing moves you from that position.
It really is pathetic that anyone goes on about Al Aqsa being "built on formerly Jewish religious ground." We know that archeologists are working round the clock to prove that Israel is a divine state., but really, is it sane for human beings to base their world view on such assumptions?

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Eugene replied on

Are you seriously disputing that Al Aqsa mosque is built on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in the Jewish religion? Because if you are, then I see no point in arguing with such an ignoramus.

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Artemis replied on

FYI, sent a complaint to the BBC. Not an easy process. What happened was, they sent me a stock Israeli supporter email instead of a reply to my complaint about biased reporting! they assured me (some of the examples given):

"Since the news of Israeli air strikes in Gaza our coverage has pointed out on numerous occasions that the attacks are in response to recent rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Our initial online report on the 14th of November pointed to how the attack on Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari and another Hamas official:
“...follows a wave of rocket attacks against Israel from the territory.”

And how:
“The United States said it supported Israel's right to self-defence, and condemned militant rocket attacks on southern Israel.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl... ....."

Well, if that doesn't display their bias!!!

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Eugene replied on

The fact remains that Arabs claim they are the inheritors of the land based on the Koran. Though the UN recognized Israel, Hamas still does not.

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Tony replied on

The Palestinian claim to Palestine is based on the fact that its their country, its where they come from, whether they are Muslim, Christian, atheist or anything else. It's Israel's dodgy claims that are based on religious texts.

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Eugene replied on

"The Palestinian claim to Palestine is based on the fact that its their country,"

By the way, that's a great example of a tautology. Simpleton.

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Homburg replied on

No one appears to be picking up the real story here. Investigative journalism should be asking why would such an unequal conflict be started by the weaker side? Who is instigating this and, particularly, why now? Surely not some unmentioned other, apparently unconnected, state which is abusing the Palestinian cause for it's own selfish ends? To the unenlightened west it is inconceivable that anyone would create a conflict which can only harm Palestinian civilians just to divert attention from their own dark deeds, but it's certainly possible: all it takes is money, and they have plenty of it. As for the BBC: perhaps every country gets the journalism it deserves and their intelligence matches that of their viewers?

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Denise replied on

We need to think in terms of "what if my land was occupied, what would I do?" I doubt most people would stand by passively while another occupied us.

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gullfraz replied on

"The Israeli-Palestinian issue is very thorny."
No, it's a straightforward affair which involves the decades-long oppression and occupation of one people (the Palestinians) by Israel. The matter would have been resolved long ago were it not for US military and political support.

"The Palestinians continue to fire rockets into Israel. If not the Iron dome, Israel would also have high rate of deaths."
The key word here is 'rockets', not missiles, which are crudely made, and which remain a drop of water next to the sea of Israeli armaments and stockpiles of weapons–including nuclear. Palestinians do not have an army, navy, or intelligence force. Thus, with the above statement, you whitewash Israeli crimes and make a weak argument for what 'might have been'. If were were to take your line of argument, we could say that Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during WW2 might have killed as many as 6 million Germans were it not for sophisticated German defenses of the time. Of course this is absurd, but so is your statement.

"The Hamas leader that was killed had Israeli blood on his hands."
In this above statement you are add extra-judicial murder to your list of Israeli apologies. You imply that it is ok to kill someone as long as you believe they have blood on their hands. By the same token, one could justify the killings of Olmert, Barak, and Netanyahu, all of whom have blood on their hands.

"If The Palestinians had left without firing rockets into Israel, over a hundred lives would have been saved."
If the Palestinians had left what exactly? Their own land? This is a rather revealing statement from you.
Your pinning the blame on the victims is classic. Again, it is like saying 7,000 Jews could have been saved from being shot in the Warsaw Ghetto if only they hadn't fired at the Germans. Ridiculous, like every statement you make.

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