THE BBC SLAMS “RACIST” ISRAEL AND IGNORES PALARAB VIOLENCE

Posted By on January 22nd, 2010

http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/
BBC slams “racist” Jewish settlers on West Bank while continuing to censor Arab and Palestinian anti-Semitism
Coming hard on the heels of this week’s appalling Panorama documentary on Jerusalem (see last post but one), the BBC is now giving major prominence to a story about the alleged desecration of a Palestinian cemetery in the West Bank by a group of racist Jewish pilgrims.

The story stands in sharp and striking contrast with the policy of de facto censorship operated by the BBC on almost all instances of the deep-seated anti-Semitism that is a central feature of the political culture in the Palestinian territories, in Arab countries and in the wider Muslim world.

The incident in question is said to have taken place in the northern West Bank village of Awarta after a group of Jewish pilgrims were taken to nearby Jewish tombs by a settler group. Opening the piece on its website, the BBC, which is the world’s most powerful English language media outlet, said:

“Damaged graves and racist graffiti have been found in the Palestinian village of Awarta in the northern West Bank after a Jewish group visited the area.”

Now, from a journalistic point of view this is certainly a reasonable story to cover since it follows the arrest of 10 Israeli settlers earlier this week in connection with the arson attack on a mosque in the village of Yasuf in December, and the threats by some maverick settlers to respond to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s settlement freeze with attacks on Palestinians.

But in the context referred to above of a complete whitewash of Palestinian anti-Semitism the piece provides stark illustration of the insidious bias, by both commission and omission, that leaves the BBC’s audience with only one conclusion to draw about where our sympathies should lie in the wider conflict.

The agenda here is very clear: all illustrations of extremism among settlers are painted on as broad a canvas as possible; all instances of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim extremism and bigotry are brushed over or ignored.

I have remarked many times that the BBC continues to run a profile of Hamas which excludes all reference to the group’s Holocaust denial and its Protocols of Zion style anti-Semitism. Despite vast amounts of evidence of the daily assault on the Jewish people from “moderate” Palestinian leaders such as Mahmoud Abbas, who wrote a doctorate denying the extent of the Holocaust, that too is censored out of the reporting. In my recent book, A State Beyond the Pale (link below), I also provide polling evidence showing that negative sentiment about Jews even in “friendly” Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan runs at 97 and 98 percent respectively. Again, such realities are simply not referred to.

Without being aware of such a fundamental issue it is simply impossible to understand the Israeli point of view, which is presumably why the BBC is so adamant that it will not report on it.

To read the article in full, click here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8472193.stm

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