Hamas, Israel and the BBC

On Day One of the invasion of Israel by Hamas terrorists Graeme Baker, a BBC reporter, posted this on the BBC News website:

“Palestinian groups [sic] have used soldiers as bargaining chips in the past

Palestinian militants [sic] attacked several military outposts — footage on social media shows militants [sic] inside an unidentified base, with burning Israeli vehicles including a Merkava tank. … Palestinian groups [sic] have in the past used hostages as bargaining chips to secure the release of militants [sic] held by Israel.”

Note the language: “Palestinian groups” and “Palestinian militants”, not Hamas terrorists. Which BBC News executive banned the use of the word “terrorists” to describe Hamas on BBC News programmes? Which BBC reporters or presenters have broken this ban or even spoken out against it on TV, radio or social media? It is barely five years since the BBC put up a statue of George Orwell outside Broadcasting House. The wall behind the statue is inscribed with Orwell’s words: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Not at today’s BBC, apparently.

The same applies to images. On Saturday evening someone from BBC Verify told viewers of the BBC News Channel they would not be showing some images of Israeli hostages and bodies because they were too “distressing”. There are two things worth noting about this act of censorship. First, all these images and, sadly, much worse, could already be seen on social media and, indeed, on the front pages of some of the Sunday newspapers. Second, this was a way of sanitising the barbaric violence of Hamas. If you’re just told a few dozen people were taken hostage, that is one thing. It doesn’t sound a very big deal. If, however you see a small child being taunted and abused by Palestinian children, having been seized from his home and taken hostage, that is rather different. Or if you see a young woman screaming, “Don’t kill me!” as she is taken away into captivity, if you see a young woman’s body on the back of a truck being screamed at by Palestinian civilians or if you see a young woman covered in blood having been violently raped, then you begin to have a sense that Hamas terrorists are a misogynistic, homophobic antisemitic death cult. That is exactly what they are and that is what BBC News executives don’t want you to witness in all its horror.

This may or may not be anti-Israel bias. It may just be liberal squeamishness. But note how often we hear graphic accounts on BBC News programmes of what has happened to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, whether on the News Channel or on Monday’s Today programme.

This is just the first problem with BBC’s coverage of the invasion of Israel by Hamas terrorists. Perhaps even more serious is the litany of omissions, distortions and inaccuracies of the BBC’s coverage over the past few days. When the Palestinian Authority’s Ambassador to the UN and the PA’s Ambassador to the UK speak of the terrible injustices done to Palestinian civilians, they never, ever refer to Hamas, Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad and, of course, they never refer to Iran, the key player behind these atrocities. Nor would one expect them to, because they’re political stooges. That’s their job. But might one expect BBC News presenters or reporters to point out this strange omission and to consistently make clear the distinction between Palestinian civilians, who suffer terribly and will continue to suffer terribly over the coming weeks, and Hamas terrorists? One useful rule of news coverage of Israel and Gaza is: if the speaker doesn’t mention Hamas, don’t believe a word they say.

Another recurring omission is to do with money. We often hear BBC reporters and spokespeople for international relief organisations speaking movingly about the poverty and deprivation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. I have spent many hours over the past few days watching the BBC News coverage, but not once have I heard anyone except the occasional Israeli interviewee ask what has happened to the billions of pounds of relief given to Gaza by the UN and EU. It seems to have mysteriously vanished. A little may have gone on relief, healthcare and schools. But much of it — how much, we are never told — has gone on arms, tunnels and, of course, into the pockets of Hamas leaders and various other Palestinian leaders and spokesmen.

The BBC News channel ran an interview with Mustafa Barghouti, Leader of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI). He has also been a leading figure in the PLO since 2007, but the BBC failed to tell us this. He also failed to mention Hamas. But sometimes a picture tells a thousand words. His living room was spacious, even luxurious. Or look at the room in Qatar where the leaders of Hamas were rejoicing at the bloodshed caused by their terrorist gunmen on a huge colour TV screen. Again, very luxurious. It’s worth remembering this scene when you listen to the BBC coverage of the Qatar Grand Prix or think back to the Qatar World Cup. Were we ever told by the BBC that Qatar hosts the leadership of Hamas in such luxury?

Then there are the guests on BBC News programmes. Broadcasting House on Sunday invited Ash Sarkar from Novara Media. She’s no stranger to the programme. As the presenter Paddy O’Connell said, “I know our listeners have heard you many times before.” Her comment on the massacres in Israel was entirely predictable. She referred to “this level of action [sic]”. And, of course, she was keen to put this “action” in what she considers the correct context: “The consistent bombardment and oppression of Gazans” and what this has led to, “an inevitable [sic] outburst of violence.” What was even more inevitable, was that neither O’Connell nor the other two panellists responded to her in any way on behalf of the many listeners who might have been throwing their breakfast at the radio.

The BBC rightly interviewed both senior Palestinian and Israeli spokesmen and women, but almost invariably reporters and presenters did not know enough about the subject to scrutinise their comments. As a result, the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK was allowed to hold forth with a long monologue on the terrible oppression of his people without any serious questions about what he was saying by the presenter, Lewis Vaughan Jones. Jones and his producer seemed remarkably ill equipped to handle the complexities of the Middle East. Many compared this weekend’s atrocities with 9/11. But there is one way in which the comparison is particularly unhelpful. At the time of 9/11 hardly anyone knew anything about Al Qaeda. How can anyone working for BBC News know so little about Hamas?

Then there are the interviews with eyewitnesses, many of them very moving. Yolande Knell interviewed a Palestinian in Gaza who said there were more than 150 people in his building, many, perhaps all of them, killed by Israeli bombs. Knell didn’t ask any Israeli spokespeople why that building had been targeted.  People from the UNRWA and Oxfam are treated respectfully as impartial eyewitnesses. But are they? What is the record of the UN and various international aid agencies in Gaza in scrutinising where huge sums of international aid are spent in Gaza?

Similarly, the Palestinian Ambassador to the UN speaks of his people’s desire for peace. This was not hugely in evidence during the previous 36 hours as not only Hamas terrorists but Palestinian civilians in Gaza waved machine guns, taunted and beat hostages. As the Representative of Israel to the UN said, “There is no reconciling with genocidal terrorists.” This is the point. Whatever sympathy we have for Palestinian civilians as bombs rain down upon them, as food and power supplies are cut, in 2006 they elected “genocidal terrorists” as their government (though it would have been interesting if any of the BBC reporters or presenters had asked what kind of fair elections these were), and the crucial distinction is between civilians on the one hand and Hamas and its Iranian patrons on the other.

Not once have I seen or heard a BBC reporter ask any Palestinians what they thought would happen when Hamas gunmen slaughtered hundreds of Israeli civilians or how they reacted to the news of the Hamas atrocities? Did anyone ask any Palestinian spokesmen or women about the history of Arab pogroms before the Second World War or the numerous invasions of Israel by Arab states after the creation of the state of Israel? All we got was the familiar tale of Palestinian oppression and injustice. Presumably, there were other Palestinian speakers who could have spoken with some sense of that history, or expressed some sympathy for the hundreds slaughtered or the dozens taken hostage, including women, children and the elderly. But researchers and producers couldn’t seem to find them.

This was a bad weekend for BBC News, censoring language and images, failing to ask crucial questions, inviting guests hostile to Israel, and constantly failing to put the weekend’s news into a proper context. Above all, the BBC failed to make the essential distinction between Hamas, a terrible death cult no better than Islamic State, and Palestinian civilians, who, like their Israeli counterparts, will suffer the effects of the war unleashed by Hamas and its patrons for weeks or months to come.

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