Perhaps it is unfair of us to single out Jeremy Bowen amidst the wealth of media coverage of the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War. It’s just that Bowen has cropped up as the BBC’s Mideast “expert” on Newsnight, Radio 4, BBC Online and just about anywhere else that the BBC can use him.
Bowen is also illustrative of some of the deficiencies in reporting of the Six Day War anniversary. Renowned historian Michael Oren notes: “The biggest myth going is that somehow there was not a real and immediate Arab threat, that somehow Israel could have negotiated itself outside the crisis of 1967, and that it wasn’t facing an existential threat, or facing any threat at all.”
What’s behind the myth, Oren argues, is “a more pervasive, ongoing effort to show that Israel bears the bulk, if not the sole responsibility, for decades of conflict in the Arab world, and that the Arabs are the aggrieved party.”
This is precisely what Bowen implies on 4 June in his own skewed analysis on BBC Online :
The myth of the 1967 Middle East war was that the Israeli David slew the Arab Goliath. It is more accurate to say that there were two Goliaths in the Middle East in 1967. The Arabs, taken together, had big armed forces, but they were not ready for combat. The Jewish Goliath had never been in better shape, and knew it, or rather its leaders did.
Ignoring the rhetoric from Arab leaders themselves promising to destroy Israel and the very real sense of fear and desperation of the Israeli public and its political leadership, Bowen attributes the threats as empty posturing from an Egyptian radio station. This, despite Michael Oren’s research of documents in Arab countries that revealed clearly that the Arabs had planned to destroy Israel.
Comments to the BBC – http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints – about this and any other BBC programmes that you may take issue with over the coming days.
Jeremy Bowen is but one source of biased reporting of the Six Day War anniversary and the issue above is not the only flaw in his analysis. There have already been other articles in the media and undoubtedly there will be more to come, each bringing up a variety of issues. For more resources to address this media coverage, see HonestReporting’s Special Report: The Six Day War: Forty Years On as well as the following:
MEDIA REACTIONS TO UCU BOYCOTT
One of the main instigators of the academic boycott campaign, Stephen Rose, was given op-ed space in The Independent to promote his support for the Universities and Colleges Union’s misguided and prejudicial boycott of Israel academics. While some media have reiterated criticism of Israel, credit must be due to the almost blanket condemnation of the UCU boycott, which includes editorials in The Sunday Times, The Observer, the Financial Times as well as op-eds by Joan Smith in The Independent, Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail and Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express.
For more on the campaign against anti-Israel boycotts, including the National Union of Journalists, the UCU and the proposed boycott by members of UNISON, see the Engage website.
WHAT IF ISRAELIS HAD ABDUCTED BBC MAN?
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore identifies the double standards in the treatment of Israel, asking what if Israel had abducted Alan Johnston:
But just suppose that some fanatical Jews had grabbed Mr Johnston and forced him to spout their message, abusing his own country as he did so. What would the world have said?
There would have been none of the caution which has characterised the response of the BBC and of the Government since Mr Johnston was abducted on March 12. The Israeli government would immediately have been condemned for its readiness to harbour terrorists or its failure to track them down.
Loud would have been the denunciations of the extremist doctrines of Zionism which had given rise to this vile act. The world isolation of Israel, if it failed to get Mr Johnston freed, would have been complete.
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to media bias.
