Demolition Job: Balance and Relevant Facts Go Missing

Stories where Palestinian children are portrayed as the victims of Israeli malice are extremely damaging to Israel’s image – which is why such stories are so valued by those journalists who wish to promote their own one-sided narrative.

So it was probably a gift for The Independent’s Bethan McKernan to report on the Israeli demolition of Palestinian educational structures before the commencement of the Palestinian school year, not once but twice on consecutive days.

Both stories are virtually identical save for the added bonus of Belgian anger in the follow up.

There are legitimate questions that can be asked concerning Israeli policies. However, while The Independent states that demolitions occurred because the structures had been built without permission, that’s as much as McKernan was prepared to divulge.

Regarding the European Union, The Independent, while happy to quote enraged European diplomats and the politicized Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, is less interested in including another perspective such as the one uncovered by investigative reporter Jake Wallis Simons in 2015 when he investigated EU-funded building in Area C:

Alan Baker, an international lawyer who took part in drafting the Oslo Accords in the Nineties, said that the EU’s actions were illegal.

 

‘The EU is a signatory to the Oslo Accords, so they cannot pick and choose when they recognise it,’ he said.

 

‘According to international law, all building in Area C must have permission from Israel, whether it is temporary or permanent.

 

‘The same principle applies anywhere in the world. If you want to build, you need planning permission.

 

‘The EU is ignoring international law and taking concrete steps to influence the facts on the ground.’

 

Professor Eugene Kontorovich, an international lawyer from the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, said: ‘There’s no question, the EU is openly in violation of international law.’

These demolitions took place in Area C of the West Bank, which falls under full Israeli military and civil control, as defined under the Oslo Agreements. Here, Israel is fully responsible for planning and construction policy for the approximately 300,000 Palestinians who live there. (The majority of the Palestinian population lives in Areas A and B where the Palestinian Authority is responsible for civil affairs.)

Any self-respecting Middle East correspondent should mention this important piece of background information. Ultimately, whether one agrees with Israeli policy or not, it is legally recognized by agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians and endorsed by the international community, including the European Union.

So The Independent has failed to include vital factual information concerning the status of Area C as well as taking the EU and B’tselem’s line as gospel to produce two examples of imbalanced reporting.

HAMAS RESPONSIBILITY FOR GAZA OMITTED

Bethan McKernan wasn’t only concerned with events taking place on the West Bank. On the same day as her second story above, The Independent also published an article focusing on the deteriorating conditions in Gaza.

According to The Independent:

When the fighting ended on 26 August 2014 – after the deaths of 2,200 Palestinians and 71 Israelis, among them four civilians – Israel vowed to change course on Gaza, ruled by militant Hamas since the organisation took over the area in 2007.

 

Yet nothing has come of the promises to increase travel permits to let Palestinians out of the “open-air prison”; fewer people are granted permission to leave the Strip than in 2014, even for medical reasons. The crossing into Egypt also remains closed.

Is Israel solely responsible for a decrease in travel permits, even for medical reasons?

What isn’t mentioned is the Palestinian Authority’s measures against Hamas that included severely restricting the number of medical transfers to Israel from the Gaza Strip. In order to receive an Israeli travel permit and medical treatment in Israel, Gazans have to first get confirmation from the PA that it will pay the bill.

While the PA has apparently recently eased these restrictions, would it not have warranted a mention in The Independent’s story?

As for the statement that the “crossing into Egypt also remains closed,” this is the responsibility of the Egyptians not the Israelis. Perhaps it is obvious to an informed reader but McKernan includes this statement in a section of the story that places the emphasis on Israel for Gaza’s welfare.

McKernan continues:

Only a third of the some 11,000 homes destroyed in the 2014 war have been rebuilt, the Norwegian Refugee Council estimated recently. The economic knock-on effects of two wars and ten years of Israeli sea and land blockades have led the Gazan economy to effectively collapse, unemployment is sky-high at 41 per cent, rising to 60 per cent for the young, and the threat of Israel Defence Forces (IDF) air strikes is constant.

Nowhere does McKernan explain that the rate of rebuilding would increase if Hamas were to stop diverting resources towards the construction and reconstruction of its terror tunnel network, which requires significant amounts of concrete and building materials.

And why are there border restrictions in the first place? Because Hamas is still more concerned with attempting to transfer weapons, money and other contraband to support its terror activities at the expense of the general population. As such, the “constant” threat of IDF air strikes is nothing of the sort. Israel has only launched retaliatory strikes after rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel. As the ruling authority, Hamas is held responsible for such attacks.

McKernan not only confuses cause and effect but fails to even include the cause.

Instead, Hamas is given a free pass and even portrayed as softening its extremism:

Hamas is slowly rebranding in an effort to force the PA into reconciliation talks: earlier this year it unveiled an updated charter which accepted the borders of a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 boundaries for the first time.

 

But the announced changes are unlikely to be enough: Israeli officials have dismissed the perceived softening of Hamas’s stance.

So, yet again, it is Israel that is responsible for a lack of progress, this time for, quite rightly, treating Hamas “rebranding” with skepticism.

IMBALANCED REPORTING

What two days of stories from The Independent demonstrate is a serious lack of balanced reporting. Middle East correspondent Bethan McKernan is so narrowly focused on portraying Israel as the bad guy that other narratives or relevant facts are conveniently omitted.

Thus, in The Independent’s stories, Israel is destroying Palestinian and EU for no reason other than sheer malice, while Hamas is no longer held accountable for a deterioration in living conditions in Gaza.

Whether the anti-Israel Independent is catering for its blinkered readership rather than cheating them of the full story is, sadly, another matter altogether.

Please send your considered comments to The Independent – [email protected]