As world leaders and royalty from 49 countries gather in Israel to remember the Holocaust and take a stand against rising antisemitism, leave it to the BBC to find a way to drag Israel’s name through the mud.
At the end of an otherwise nice profile of Holocaust survivor Rena Quint, reporter Orla Guerin goes on to editorialize about Israel’s “occupation” of the Palestinians. It has nothing to do with the story at hand, except in the minds of Guerin and her BBC editors. (Watch here. Guerin’s key quote is at 4:12.)
The state of Israel is now a regional power. For decades, it has occupied Palestinian territories. But some here will always see their nation through the prism of persecution and survival. Orla Guerin, BBC News, Yad Vashem.
Translation: Israel is no better than the Nazis. If only the Jewish state would get over its siege mentality.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism includes “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” How twisted that Guerin makes such a claim from the very halls of Yad Vashem.
However, there is a teachable moment in all this. The IHRA’s definition of antisemitism has been adopted by a number of Western governments, including Italy this week. Guerin’s editorializing makes clear why news services also need to adopt IHRA’s definition.
It brings to mind another moment when a BBC journalist clumsily tried to tie in Israel’s alleged misdeeds to a story of antisemitism and hatred that had nothing to do with the Jewish state. That was in 2015, when Parisians rallied in solidarity with the Jewish community following a massacre at the Hypercacher kosher supermarket. Interviewing a Jewish woman at the rally, reporter Tim Willcox told her,
Many critics of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.
Willcox later apologized on Twitter for what he termed a “poorly phrased question.” Deeming the tweet sufficiently contrite, BBC brass never acknowledged the offensive nature of Willcox’s statement or took any disciplinary measure against him.
(In what became a drawn-out example of the absurdity and futility of its complaints procedures, the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit rejected the many complaints it received, producing a whitewash of the incident not once but twice. Then, having dragged out the process for several months, a further appeal by HonestReporting was rejected by the Senior Editorial Adviser to the BBC Trust.)
Unidentified aircraft, widely believed to be Israeli, carried out overnight airstrikes on targets belonging to Iran-backed militias near Syria’s border with Iraq.
It was not clear who carried out the overnight strikes in and around the town of Albu Kamal.
But Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks on Iranian-linked targets in Syria during the country’s civil war.
It has sought to thwart what it calls Iran’s “military entrenchment” in Syria and shipments of Iranian weapons to militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
See below for update.
Having made it clear that Israel is the prime suspect (which is entirely possible, even probable), this text is followed by a video. Here is a screenshot of the video image:
An emotive and disturbing image of a Kurdish child disfigured by an airstrike.
But when included just after text suggesting that Israel has just carried out an airstrike, it is clear what the average reader will take away.
The BBC report itself refers to the airstrike’s targets as “bases, arms depots and vehicles” belonging to a militia. This was certainly an airstrike aimed at a specifically military target and not civilians.
Yet a child’s face is what we see and not those of the “wounded fighters” who were the actual targets of the airstrike.
Whether Israel is responsible for this incident, it’s air force never deliberately targets civilians. The BBC’s placement of its graphic video image is inflammatory, misleading and inappropriate.
It belongs in a story concerning airstrikes that Syrian government and Russian forces have carried out against unarmed civilians during the Syrian civil war, not one about an alleged Israeli attack on military targets.
Even if the placement of this video is due to an algorithm rather than human editing, the video should be removed and we’ve asked the BBC to do just that.
UPDATE – THE BBC RESPONDS
Shortly after the publication of this post, the BBC responded to our complaint with the following:
We don’t agree that the inclusion of this video would make readers assume that Israel willingly targets civilians, or that it injured the boy.
The caption refers to A young face destroyed by war: The impact of an airstrike one year on and it’s clear on watching the video that Israel was not involved in the attack which disfigured the boy.
Furthermore, as our story says, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement and so your wider point is based on a supposition that Israel was involved.
The BBC fails to address the point that the inclusion of its video and image works on an assumption that all airstrikes are similarly negative in their impact, drawing a moral equivalence between airstrikes aimed at civilians and those aimed at military targets.
In addition, it assumes that most readers will actually click on the video, which is likely not the case and acknowledges that they will only find out the relevant background information by being forced to watch it.
Palestinian children are consistently used and abused in the service of the Palestinian cause both for terror activities and more widely for propaganda purposes.
The BBC has released an 11 minute video titled “Diaries of childhood in Israeli military detention.” You’d think that Palestinian children are spending their entire childhoods under lock and key. But since when did the BBC shy away from producing anti-Israel propaganda on behalf of the Palestinians?
We are introduced to three young Palestinians, one of whom is a familiar face – Ahed Tamimi.
Ahed Tamimi: the Palestinian poster child
While the BBC shows footage of Tamimi attacking an IDF soldier, for which she spent eight months in an Israeli prison, it fails to give any real background on the Palestinian poster girl for terror. For the real tragedy is not Tamimi’s experience with the Israeli military court system (what the BBC terms a “childhood”).
Ahed Tamimi’s entire childhood has been spent in an environment permeated with Palestinian terrorism: terror in which her family has long played an active and prominent role. For example, Ahed’s aunt helped plan the horrific Sbarros Pizza restaurant bombing, and her mother posted anatomically precise tutorials on how to most effectively stab Israelis.
Ironically, this very terrorism is the reason Israel has security measures in the first place.
Since childhood Ahed has learned from her family that all of Israel is occupied Palestinian land, including Tel Aviv, and that she must fight to gain all of it. Hardly a path to peace. And Ahed’s family have placed her personally in danger over and over, for the benefit of cameras.
Her appearance for the BBC is just the latest in a global propaganda tour, milking her iconic status.
This, however, is the real Ahed Tamimi that you won’t see on the BBC:
Only towards the end of the film does it state:
The Israeli Military told the BBC that Ahed Tamimi accepted a plea deal for a number of charges.
It doesn’t say what those charges ultimately were: the assault on the officer caught on film, incitement and two prior instances of disrupting IDF soldiers. For the BBC, however, it was merely the “slap that made global headlines” that cost Tamimi eight months in prison.
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A victim of a military court
But Tamimi isn’t the only Palestinian female ‘icon’ appearing on the BBC. Malak Al-Ghalith is lauded in the Palestinian community as the youngest Palestinian female to spend time in an Israeli jail at the age of 14. While the BBC acknowledges that she was arrested for an alleged attempted knife attack on Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint, that’s where the background context ends.
Al-Ghalith is treated as a victim of the Israeli military court system with no further questions posed as to the event that led to her arrest or even the incitement in Palestinian society that encourages children as young as 14 to carry out terror attacks.
What does it say about the BBC that it appears to whitewash terrorism?
The BBC deliberately muddies the legal waters
Instead, Israel stands accused as
the only country in the world where children are prosecuted through a dedicated military court system. Israeli military law is applied to Palestinian children in the West Bank because it is under military occupation.
While the BBC is happy to stress that there is a “military occupation,” what it doesn’t make clear to viewers is that under international law, Israel is obligated to operate a military court system. The alternative is the implementation of Israeli civil law to the disputed territories – effectively annexation. It’s safe to say that the BBC would not be so supportive of this hence a certain level of hypocrisy when it criticizes Israel for fulfilling its obligations under what the BBC would call an ‘occupying power.’
Secondly, Israel operates a dedicated juvenile military court and is the only one is the world to do so precisely because it distinguishes between adults and children, which is actually a positive.
At the end of the film, it states:
Israel currently denies Palestinian children detained in the West Bank legal protections granted to Israeli children. Yet agreed international law clearly states the same legal rights should apply to every person going through the judicial process. Especially those under the age of 18,
Yet again the BBC attempts to muddy the legal waters. In fact, despite the fact that Israeli children and Palestinian children are subject to different judicial processes for the reasons set out above, Israel’s juvenile military court still applies most of the special rules regarding minors as set out in Israeli civil law.
Although the provisions of Amendment No. 14 to the [Israeli] Youth Law do not apply in the Area, it is impossible to ignore their spirit or the principles underlying the protection of a minor’s rights, even if he is suspected of committing offenses, and dominant weight must be given to the supreme principal of the best interest of the minor, as stated in the proposed law. Ultimately, a minor is a minor is a minor, whether he lives in a place where Israeli law applies in its entirety, or in another place, where, although Israeli law does not apply in its entirety, it is subject to the significant influence of the Israeli legal system“.
Interview with a terror-affiliated organization
The Director of Addameer is interviewed by the BBC, which is described as an “organisation that advocates for Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank.”
As documented by NGO Monitor but unmentioned by the BBC, Addameer is a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) “affiliate.” The PFLP is a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. NGO Monitor catalogs Addameer’s numerous ties to the PFLP as well as its role in the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.
Addameer has made numerous charges against the Israeli military court system in other venues that have been dissected and rebutted here.
This is the organization that the BBC feels it appropriate to turn to for an interview?
The most controversial form of incarceration is known as Administrative Detention. It allows the Israeli military to hold people without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence that is not shown to the detainee or their lawyer.
While this may sound extreme, Israel isn’t the only country to exercise administrative detention for immigration or security reasons. This includes the US, UK, Australia, Ireland and Japan.
An administrative detention order can be appealed at the Israeli district military court, or, if denied there, at the Supreme Court. An order is valid for at most six months, but can be renewed by the appropriate authority.
The BBC introduces us to Husam Abu Khalifa who has apparently been held in administrative detention for 14 months. At the end of his segment the BBC states that the IDF told it:
Husam was held on information “which showed his intention to carry out a terror attack and his support” for the Islamic State group.
He may have been 16 but, as far as the Israeli authorities were concerned, Abu Khalifa clearly represented a security threat.
“Solitary confinement” and “interrogation”?
Husam Abu Khalifa claims to have been put in solitary confinement in a breach of international law concerning minors.
The allegation of placing Palestinian minors in solitary confinement appears to stem from Israel’s abiding by international standards and Israeli law in not placing minor and adult offenders in the same cells. When Israel separates minors from adult detainees, it becomes an excuse to claim an increase in solitary confinement as noted by former IDF prosecutor Maurice Hirsch in the Washington Examiner (who also appears in the BBC video).
Likewise, in the case of Ahed Tamimi, the BBC reporter asks “You were interrogated for 16 days?” Given the context behind the BBC film, it would be unsurprising if viewers pictured an ‘interrogation’ as something more akin to a torture session. Just this subtle change of the lexicon adds to the anti-Israel slant. Given that the Tamimi case made international headlines, and an investigation was carried out, it is most likely that Tamimi was questioned multiple times over the course of 16 days even if this may have been unpleasant from her perspective.
Widening the circle of Palestinian victimhood
The BBC even attempts to widen the circle of Palestinian victimhood to include the families of minors in Israeli prisons. It may very well take a considerable amount of time and effort for these families to visit their loved ones in prison involving crossing Israeli checkpoints. But the BBC never considers why these checkpoints are there in the first place. The same way it cannot imagine Palestinian minors representing a security threat, it cannot imagine that checkpoints are there for any other purpose than to inconvenience innocent Palestinians going about their daily business.
What is a “last resort” for the BBC?
The BBC film states:
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is a legally binding international agreement that states that children should only be arrested as a last resort. Israel is a signatory.
What constitutes a last resort for the BBC? Is an attempted stabbing attack not grounds for arrest? Is the planning of an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack not enough to warrant anyone, even a minor, being taken into custody?
* * *
The rights of children are undoubtedly extremely important. If the BBC were so concerned for the rights of Palestinian children, it would be focusing on the incitement that drives Palestinian minors to confront Israeli soldiers, carry out terror attacks or promote violent extremism.
Instead the BBC in typical fashion attempts to portray Israel as a militaristic child abuser backed up by the claims of an iconic professional propagandist, a terrorist-affiliated NGO and its own efforts to muddy the legal waters of international law.
UPDATE
Former IDF military prosecutor Maurice Hirsch, who featured in the BBC film has responded directly on Twitter to the BBC’s Megha Mohan, the journalist responsible. The thread of multiple tweets is a devastating take down from an expert whose insights were clearly edited out of the film in order to favor the Palestinian narrative.
Sadly, you piece is just another example of biased BBC coverage. While we spoke extensively about teenage Palestinian murderers like the murderers of Daphna Meir, the Fogel Family, Ari Fuld and others, you shamefully omitted any reference to them. 1/12
While the Eurovision Song Contest isn’t appealing to everyone, Israel undoubtedly put on an impressive show for an estimated global audience of 200 million.
In the year since Israel was confirmed as the 2019 host on the back of winning the competition, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign has run a coordinated effort in multiple countries to intimidate national broadcasters, competing artists and spectators alike to boycott the competition.
They failed.
However, with the eyes of the world on Tel Aviv, some media, particularly in the UK, took this an invitation to give platforms to some of the most vicious and hateful anti-Israel invective.
The narrative created by BDS was picked up by the media which attempted to normalize the view that holding the Eurovision in Tel Aviv was “controversial.” The real controversy was created by the media themselves, particularly the British media.
The Guardian
In the weeks leading up to Eurovision, The Guardian was the place to go for those musicians promoting BDS. Prime among these was Roger Waters, now an icon for Israel haters.
No surprises from Waters who had this to say on April 17 while attacking Madonna’s decision to perform at the Eurovision:
In the context of the current conversation about the location of the Eurovision finals and the participation of Madonna and the other performers, the brothers and sisters in question are the people of Palestine who live under a deeply repressive apartheid regime of occupation and do not enjoy the right to life, liberty and self-determination.
. . .
Some of my fellow musicians who have recently performed in Israel say they are doing it to build bridges and further the cause of peace. Bullshit. To perform in Israel is a lucrative gig but to do so serves to normalise the occupation, the apartheid, the ethnic cleansing, the incarceration of children, the slaughter of unarmed protesters … all that bad stuff.
Fellow musician Brian Eno had already got in on the act on February 18:
What happens when a powerful state uses art as propaganda, to distract from its immoral and illegal behaviour? Everybody involved in the Eurovision song contest this year should understand that this is what is happening.
European broadcasters, including the BBC, are pushing ahead with plans to hold the contest in Tel Aviv this May, as if broadcasting a hugely expensive entertainment spectacle from an actively repressive apartheid-like state is no problem at all.
Later The Guardian treated us to a whiny May 8 opinion piece by Arwa Mahdawi who claims:
One of the most frustrating things about being Palestinian (I’m half-Palestinian myself) is that there seems to be no acceptable way to defend your humanity or protest against your oppression. Calls to boycott Eurovision, for example, have been decried as divisive.
And the icing on the cake for the week of Eurovision itself from Elias Jahshan on May 16:
Incredibly, from the comfort of London where he is based, Jahshan has the gall to claim that Israel discriminates against gay Palestinians:
This year’s Eurovision, often nicknamed the “gay Olympics”, is being held just weeks before Tel Aviv Pride – an annual event where Israel presents itself as a haven for LGBTI expression even though queer Palestinian citizens of Israel do not enjoy the same rights as their Jewish counterparts. In a deep irony for an event supposedly about inclusion, Palestinians from the blockaded West Bank and Gaza, including queer Palestinians, are effectively banned from attending Eurovision.
Palestinian gays are not being prevented from doing anything by Israel on account of their sexual identity and Jahshan is invited to find out just how welcoming and inclusive the Hamas government is towards the Palestinian gay community.
The Independent
The Independent is consistently hostile towards Israel and a look at the comments sections of its Israel coverage and opinion pieces gives an indication as to the rancid readership it tries to appeal to.
Hilary Aked was given the platform again on April 10:
Having exhausted the LGBT+ angle, Ohal Grietzer in a particularly hateful piece on May 18 turns to accusing Israel of mistreating Palestinian women:
Israel’s systematic mistreatment of Palestinian women affects them harshly in almost every sphere. When Palestinian women give birth they are regarded as a “demographic threat”. Palestinian women are deprived of their right to family reunification, and are constantly subjected to humiliation and harassment at military checkpoints, where some have been forced to give birth without any medical attention.
The Independent’s Jerusalem correspondent Bel Trew took time out of her busy schedule to spend quality time with the highly politicized Breaking the Silence organization and BDS activists:
The BBC
The Eurovision award for the biggest hypocrites goes to the BBC. The UK’s national broadcaster is also a stalwart of the Eurovision Song Contest with responsibility for the UK’s participation.
So it was also the target of the BDS campaign that called on it not to take part in this year’s event due to its location in Israel. While the BBC didn’t cave in, perhaps some employees felt the need to “balance” the situation. After all, why would one of the BBC’s flagship news programs, Newsnight, feel the urgency to broadcast the rantings of an unknown member of a not very well-known rock band as Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie accuses Madonna of being a “total prostitute” for performing in Tel Aviv:
“Madonna would do anything for money"
– Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie on Madonna performing in Tel Aviv at Eurovision.
Madonna has said she will “never stop playing music to suit someone’s political agenda" https://t.co/dIXMXIzVwU
I think the whole thing is set up to normalize the State of Israel and its disgraceful treatment of the Palestinian people. By going to perform in Israel I think what you do is you normalize that. Madonna would do anything for money.
Normalizing hate
What UK media outlets such as The Independent and The Guardian have done is to normalize hate. While this is arguably nothing new, it is clear that the the BDS campaign against the Eurovision found an easy platform to spread vicious anti-Israel propaganda while at the same time accusing Israel of using the Eurovision to propagandize on its own behalf.
BBC News also couldn’t resist the opportunity to malign Israel even when its own organization was broadcasting Eurovision to millions of British viewers.
Perhaps it’s karma that ultimately, the biggest loser from Eurovision Song Content was the British entry that came in the final position.
A BBC documentary, One Day In Gaza, examining the events of May 14, 2018, when tens of thousands of people in Gaza protested along the border with Israel, confirmed Israel’s version of events and explanations for what went on that day at the Gaza border.
Directed by award-winning documentary maker Olly Lambert, the program details how events on that dramatic day unfolded.
Despite a number of flaws, One Day In Gaza proves that Israel was not facing mere unarmed protesters, but was dealing with a dynamic in which violent rioters and armed terrorists concealed themselves in large groups of civilians, including women and children, some of whom were willing human shields for their violence.
The Israel-Gaza conflict is an incredibly difficult, and thorny, topic to cover. It has many facets, including Israel’s right to self-defense, the suffering of the Palestinian people under Hamas’ decade-long reign of terror, their legitimate right to self-expression, and the willingness of Gazan civilians to allow themselves to be used as human shields.
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One Day in Gaza addresses all of these in context, giving people a platform to speak in their own words. It allowed Israeli Adele Raemer to show Israelis are “on edge” and anxious about Israel being invaded. The film demonstrates that some of the Palestinians involved in the protests were potentially violent and extremist, with one young protester sharing his thoughts from the night before the march: “We’re going in, we’ll cross the fence. We’re going in and we’ll give them hell,” and another who speaks openly about his fantasy to “rip a Jew’s head off.”
Israel has long held that the protesters acted as human shields for more violent elements, sometimes willingly. During the program, numerous women spoke and children openly admit their role in enabling terrorists and rioters to get closer to the border: “We line up like a human shield so the men could advance further,” says one Gazan woman. Another tells viewers that previously, “some of us distracted the Israelis with stones and Molotov Cocktails” before cutting the fence.
Similarly, the program showed a Hamas official admitting that, at one location at least, Israeli shooting only commenced as a direct response to armed Palestinians firing on IDF soldiers, finally laying to rest the myth that all of these Palestinian protesters were unarmed innocents and Israel had attacked without cause. Gazan interviewees also reveal that the demonstrations, which originally were grassroots were infiltrated and co-opted by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists groups.
For all this, the program should be praised. However, it was not without its flaws.
Censoring Palestinian antisemitism
The film demonstrated that some of the Palestinians involved in the protests were potentially violent and extremist. A Gazan boy says “the revolutionary songs excite you, they encourage you… to rip a Jew’s head off.” However, instead of translating the Arabic word for Jew, ‘Yahud,’ accurately, the translation is inaccurately rendered, and replaced with a more sterile one – Israeli, thus minimizing antisemitism.
Arabic media throughout the Middle East does not use the term “Yahud” to refer to Israel, but rather “Israel” written in Arabic letters. On any day numerous articles at newspaper like Al-Ghad in Jordan illustrate this. Even Hamas writes “Israel” in its official press release for media, not “Yahud.”
Yahud is routinely translated directly as “Jew” by the media in almost every other circumstance. In his article, Frantzman contrasts the BBC’s translation with news coverage after a doctor was fired in January following the surfacing of antisemitic tweets. In its coverage of the firing, NBC noted that: “She tweeted that she would ‘purposely give all the yahood [sic] the wrong meds,’ using the Arabic word, Yahud, which means Jews.”
UPDATE: A BBC spokesperson has responded to the uproar provoked by the mistranslation of the word ‘Yahud’: “We sought expert advice on the translation before broadcast and we believe the translation of ‘Yehudi’ as ‘Israeli’ in this documentary is both accurate and true to the speakers’ intentions.”
The documentary sets out to frame the protest against the backdrop of the US embassy relocating from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In reality, the protests had been occurring on a weekly basis for over a month by this point. The protests of May 14 were originally scheduled to occur a day later, but Hamas deliberately brought the protest forward a day so as to compel the media to cover the embassy transfer in the context of mass riots and casualties. In not mentioning this, the BBC helped Hamas achieved its objective.
Similarly, even if the documentary focused on one just one day, the BBC had a responsibility to explain events preceding that day. It certainly showed the Gazan narrative, in which the day came about as a ‘response’ to the US transferring its embassy to Jerusalem. However, it didn’t show much from Israel’s perspective. In the lead-up to the protest covered in the documentary, Israel was attacked on numerous occasions by terrorists in Gaza.
At previous protests, people had breached the border fence with weapons, and shot at Israeli soldiers. For example, on March 30, in the very first in the series of protests, two men armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades opened fire on Israeli soldiers and then attempted to breach the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip.
Moments ago, IDF troops thwarted an infiltration attempt by three terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip. The terrorists approached the security fence and attempted to infiltrate Israeli territory. In response, IDF troops targeted the terrorists with tank fire pic.twitter.com/unGS1x79Hg
The documentary could have found time to mention another border breach that took place a few weeks before, in which four Palestinians entered Israeli territory and tried to set fire to a military vehicle before fleeing back to Gaza. Video footage of that incident was shown on Al Jazeera and other outlets, and could easily have been integrated into the program.
The BBC could also have highlighted that only a few weeks before, three Gazans with grenades and knives successfully infiltrated Israel and were discovered near an army base 20 kilometers from Gaza.
Other clips, such as the one below, were freely available on social media.
This is what a border infiltration from #Gaza into #Israel looks like. See the man (0:30) clutching a meat cleaver? Imagine hundreds like him coming into Israeli territory, hoping to murder as many Israelis as possible.
— (((Emanuel Miller))) (@emanumiller) May 14, 2018
Where was the footage? Why was there no mention of repeated attempts to lay booby-trapped flags, box-cutters and other tools at the border fence in order to kill or injure Israelis, on one occasion injuring four IDF soldiers after approaching the fence to remove a bomb disguised as a flag? Why was there no mention of the countless flying Molotov cocktails in the form of balloons or kites with petrol bombs attached, causing massive fires?
Showing these videos, or even just describing these events, would have left viewers in no doubt that Israel faced an array of threats, and was genuinely fearful of a mass invasion, with hordes of people intent on causing harm to Israeli citizens and Israeli property.
Israel’s measures to avoid mass casualties
Notably, entirely absent from the program were the measures taken by Israel to avoid mass casualties. Due to the most violent rioters and terrorists concealing themselves within larger groups of protesters, regular Israeli soldiers were taken off border duty, and only snipers were allowed to shoot. The guiding principle was that only a sniper rifle would be accurate enough to take aim at the most violent people without injuring the innocent people around them. Whether or not this was enough is a matter of opinion, but the fact that this was Israeli policy is undisputed and should have been mentioned.
‘Gassing’ Palestinians?
While that may have been missed by most people, watching Palestinians seemingly convulsing in agony towards the end of the program was an assault on the senses. Footage of Gazans suffering from the effects of an unknown gas is shown. Viewers are told that a “drone came and started dropping gas” and the narrator described Israelis deploying “gas” against the Gazan people in much the same way the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons during that country’s civil war. People are seen writhing, convulsing and crying out, with others appearing flat on their backs, receiving saline solution to their eyes and hands. Some have breathing tubes.
There is no problem in documenting this, the very real result of Israel’s response to the mass rioting and attempted breach of its border. However, no description of the gas is given. All viewers are told is that Israel used “gas.” That the BBC notably failed to say “teargas” as it had done earlier in the program undoubtedly left viewers wondering if Israel was using chlorine or something far worse than a legitimate means of crowd dispersal used by other Western states.
As a result of the failure to define exactly what tools Israel used, a clip taken from the program spread swiftlyonsocial media within hours of the program being aired, purporting to be evidence of Israeli ‘chemical weapons.’
Flawed, but the most balanced coverage so far?
Despite the numerous flaws listed above, One Day in Gaza deserves a degree of credit. It shows that human shields were used regularly, that Hamas deliberately bused civilians into military zones, sometimes against their will, and displays the horrendous embrace of violence by Gazan teens and youths. The program also allowed people on both sides to talk about their frustrations and hopes, allowing the humanity of one Israeli citizen and of numerous Israeli soldiers to come through.
An Israeli soldier, tasked with watching events through security cameras, speaks of Israel’s recognition that “tens of thousands of people aren’t all enemies,” and makes clear that the situation was complex and dynamic. “We’re talking about civilians, and that’s what makes this difficult.” Repeatedly, Israelis state clearly that they genuinely had no desire to hurt anyone innocent, but were forced to react to a military event.
In many ways, the documentary backs up the Israeli account of events that day, showing how hell-bent the protesters were on breaking through the fence and murdering Israelis. It’s just a pity that a lack of context, background and one lamentable translation ruined an otherwise fair program.
A bizarre historical error on the BBC News website:
Except, of course, Gaza is currently under the control of Hamas and has been ever since the violent overthrow in 2007 of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.
We contacted the BBC, which swiftly corrected the error:
Many media outlets have recently published obituaries for the heroic Air France pilot Michel Bacos who, along with his flight crew, stayed with the hostages in the 1976 Entebbe plane hijacking.
To recall, on June 27, 1976, Air France Flight 139, carrying over 200 passengers, took off for Paris from Ben-Gurion International Airport with a stopover at Athens. Shortly after takeoff from Athens the plane was hijacked by four terrorists including two Palestinians of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The plane was flown to Entebbe, Uganda where 148 non-Israeli and non-Jewish hostages were released over the course of the following two days. An audacious Israeli commando operation freed the remaining 94 Israeli and Jewish passengers and the 12 Air France crew members who had stayed with the hostages.
Who were those hostages?
The New York Times: “Three days later, the hijackers freed the 148 passengers who wereneither Jewish nor Israeli.”
Associated Press: “The seven pro-Palestinian hijackers held some 110 Jewish and Israeli hostages“
NPR: “The hijackers then began to separate the Israeli and Jewish passengers from all others.”
Public Radio International: “The terrorists freed 148 non-Jewish passengers and offered to release Bacos and the crew. Bacos refused to leave the Jewish passengers. “
Jerusalem Post: “the terrorists split up the hostages between those who were Israeli or Jewish and those who were not.
Washington Post: “According to published accounts of the event, their terror escalated when their captors separated the Jews and Israelis from the rest of the group”
The historical record is pretty clear and, if the international media coverage is anything to go by, the consensus is that the terrorist hijackers separated some Jews as well as the Israelis from the rest of the passengers.
It quotes Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi, who said: “Michel was a hero. By bravely refusing to give in to antisemitism and barbarity he brought honor to France.”
It later goes on to say:
The passengers were eventually split up. The non-Israelis were flown to Paris while the 94 Israeli passengers were held hostage.
Having quoted Estrosi mentioning antisemitism, the BBC then erased the Jewish hostages who weren’t counted as Israelis.
A simple error easily corrected. Or so we thought.
UPDATE: The BBC issued a clarification and made a significant revision to its story following HonestReporting’s complaints. See the end of this post for more.
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The BBC doubles down
Following an official complaint and a request to acknowledge that hostages were targeted for being Jewish as well as Israeli, this was the BBC’s emailed response:
“The terrorists separated the Israelis from the non-Israelis,” says Hartuv, one of the unofficial leaders of the hostages, and the official translator from English to Hebrew in talks with Amin, who visited the hostages a number of times. “The separation was done based on passports and ID cards. There was no selection of Jews versus non-Jews.”
On the third day of the hijacking, the hijackers demanded that all the Israelis, including those with dual citizenship (Israeli and foreign ), assemble in the transit hall of Entebbe airport. They were joined by the plane’s crew members, led by the French captain, Michel Bacos. The rest of the passengers, carrying non-Israeli passports, were transferred to another hall. Later they were freed and flown to Paris.
‘We’re not against Jews’
“Many of the freed hostages were Jewish,” Hartuv explains. “In the talks my friends and I conducted with some of the terrorists, they told us explicitly: We’re not against the Jews, only against Israel. It is true that the female German terrorist acted like a Nazi. She yelled and threatened to kill us all the time. But some of her friends acted differently toward us. One of them was the one we called the Peruvian [because he was a representative of Haddad’s organization in South America].”
Hartuv recalls that the Israelis were joined by two couples from Belgium and the United States, and two teens from Brazil, who had completed a year of studies in a Jerusalem yeshiva: “They were transferred to the Israeli group because when we landed in Entebbe, before dawn, they had put on tefillin and recited morning prayers.
We approached the Peruvian and asked that they be transferred to the foreign group because they were not Israelis. The Peruvian agreed and transferred the two Brazilians. Later they were freed with the rest of the non-Israeli hostages. He apologized for not being able to free the other two couples because the German woman wouldn’t allow it.”
He notes that the Israelis were joined by two couples from Belgium and the United States because they had put on tefillin and recited morning prayers, but points out that the initial separation of passengers was done based on passports and ID cards.
So we don’t have a problem with the wording of our sentence, which was providing brief background in an article that wasn’t about the hijacking itself, but the death of Michel Bacos.
What the Haaretz article and the eyewitness account do is to question the motivations of the terrorists, chiefly whether their motivation was antisemitic or anti-Israel – shades of a modern-day argument over antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
What it does not do is change the facts – that there were both Jews and Israelis taken hostage based on their national and religious identities. Even adding the word “mainly” to the 94 Israeli passengers referenced in the BBC story might have alleviated the original error.
But the BBC refuses to admit such an error and compounds it by searching for a way out.
An authoritative version of events?
Couldn’t it be argued, as the BBC would do, that the Haaretz account is more authoritative than others because it is an eyewitness account?
Not necessarily.
For example, The Guardian‘s Jonathan Freedland, in a feature-length article to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Entebbe operation in 2016, interviewed Israeli passenger and hostage Sara Davidson:
The hijackers, in a plan agreed with Amin, divided Israelis from non-Israelis, gathering the former in the transit hall, the latter elsewhere. The non-Israeli group were soon released and flown to Paris. But included in the group kept behind were some Jews who were not Israeli. “There were two couples, religious Jews, and they had no Israeli passports,” Davidson recalls. “They were crying and shouting that they are not Israelis – it didn’t help them. The [hijackers] just pushed them to the other room, which we called the Israeli room.” Some remembered this process differently, but to Sara and others, it seemed as if the hijackers were dividing people not by citizenship, but by ethnicity. The fact that these orders were issued in German accents stirred a painful memory.
While the process that led to the hostage selection may be remembered or interpreted differently by some, it doesn’t change the fact that there were both Jews and Israelis among the hostages.
Since when is it the job of the BBC to cherry pick the facts to suit its apparent desire to exonerate terrorists of antisemitism in order to portray their cause as ‘only’ against Israelis?
The BBC’s obstinate refusal to amend a few words in one sentence of its story point to something that should have no place in the BBC’s mandate that specifically tries to prevent political editorializing in the way that we have seen here.
HonestReporting will be following up on the original complaint. In the meantime the BBC should be ashamed. Help us publicly expose the BBC by SHARING this post by clicking on the Facebook and Twitter icons at the top or bottom of this page.
UPDATE
Following HonestReporting’s public exposure, a follow up complaint to the BBC as well as the complaints filed by those of you who took action, the BBC has made a significant revision to its article, which now reads:
The passengers were eventually split up. The non-Israelis were flown to Paris while the 94 remaining passengers were forced to stay. The hijackers held all the Israeli passengers hostage as well two religious Jewish couples from the US and Belgium, according to eyewitness Ilan Hartuv.
The following has also been added to the bottom of the article:
Every so often, readers ask us, “Can’t we sue the media for bias?”
People posing this question tend to make any or all of the following points:
Apologies and corrections are a waste of time.
Free speech also carries responsibility.
The threat of costly damages should scare the news industry into better accountable.
No simple matter
First of all, Western free speech laws are very strong, meaning that a plaintiff would have to be able to demonstrate that the news coverage in almost any case was an outright lie. Period. Misleading coverage that has enough truth to it would not be actionable in a court of law. (Legal beagles are invited to hash out the finer points in the comments section.)
Second of all is the question of who has “standing” to sue? Standing refers to who has the right to sue because they were directly harmed. The vast majority of the problematic media coverage we see is biased against the state of Israel, not against specific people.
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In any event, states don’t sue foreign journalists for three reasons:
1. Enforcement: Countries with free speech laws enforce defamation against individuals more strongly than defamation against organizations. That distinction makes it prohibitive for any country to theoretically sue a media service. In many jurisdictions, states are prohibited from suing over defamation at all.
2. Jurisdiction: Even if a country like Israel were to sue a foreign news outlet, would the lawsuit be filed in Israel, the home state of the news service, or perhaps the area where the corporate headquarters are? Much would depend on where the media outlet’s money is located and whose free speech rules would be most advantageous.
3. Other means: States have other ways at their disposal to fight problematic news. States can withhold or withdraw press credentials (like when Israel suspended, then restored credentials for Al Jazeera’s bureau chief). There are also potential diplomatic channels for political leaders to contact the highest level news executives.
Boycotting a news service is a powerful card to play; in the news industry, access is everything. But such boycotts aren’t in either side’s best interests and therefore don’t last long. The relationship between the press corps and any government is a two-way street. Just as journalists need access, news-makers need exposure.
Let’s say some activists are looking for an individual with standing to sue a news service. They would need a clear-cut plaintiff who has A) suffered as a result of sloppy media coverage, and B) has the finances and fortitude to wage a lengthy legal battle whose outcome is by no means certain. Such lawsuits aren’t common in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but two come to mind.
Ariel Sharon in 2005. Photo by GPO/Moshe Milner
One was filed by the late Ariel Sharon against Time. In 1983, the magazine falsely reported that Sharon, then minister of defense, had encouraged Lebanese Phalangists to massacre Palestinians living Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps after the assassination of Lebanese president Bashir Gemayel.
Sharon and Time reached an out of court settlement in 1986 in which Time paid an undisclosed but reportedly “substantial” sum. Under the terms of the settlement, Time also admitted that the description of Sharon’s alleged conversations with Phalangists in Beirut was “erroneous.”
More recently was a lawsuit against Associated Press and the French paper, Libération over a September, 2000 photograph incorrectly describing US student Tuvia Grossman — who had been rescued from a Palestinian lynch mob — as a Palestinian.
A Paris judge in 2002 ordered the two news services to pay Grossman 4,500 Euros in damages for misrepresenting him. (Read more about Grossman’s story and how it played into HonestReporting’s founding by seeing The Photo That Started It All.)
In one other instance, the mere threat of legal action was enough to make a difference.
In May, 2012, The Guardian wrote that Tel Aviv was Israel’s capital. When complaints to both The Guardian and the then UK’s Press Complaints Commission were rejected, HonestReporting threatened legal action. In the end, The Guardian backed down, making a retraction and revising its style guide.
An apology, according to Merriam Webster, is simply “an admission of error or discourtesy accompanied by an expression of regret.” For legal purposes, an apology is “a public plea for forgiveness to undo some damage” and may be accompanied by the publishing of correct information and perhaps a financial payment of one form or another.
Just as information, quotes, headlines, photos, videos, podcasts, etc. are “on the record,” so are the corrections. And in the internet age, anyone can get online and see, for example, what NPR had to say about a map error or how the International Business Times handled a grossly inaccurate Temple Mount report (the story was removed from the web site).
Granted, corrections aren’t usually seen by only a fraction of the people who saw the original erroneous reporting. But a lack of transparency is a form of media bias by not being open and accountable.
Sometimes, legal action is both an appropriate and practical option. In the past, relevant parties, including HonestReporting, have gotten involved in such battles. However, the Western world generally accepts that freedom of speech is such a high priority that legal action for biased news is rendered impractical or impossible.
That’s why HonestReporting has developed advocacy skills for readers and relationships with journalists. Sometimes the best remedy for biased speech is more and better speech in return.
Before you comment on this article, please note our Comments Policy. Any comments deemed to be in breach of the policy will be removed at the editor’s discretion.
A mother and her three children narrowly escaped with their lives in the early hours of Wednesday morning when a rocket fired from Gaza landed on their house in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.
So often, media like to play the numbers game, using casualty figures as a moral barometer – if fewer Israelis are dying than Palestinians then this is somehow unfair and Israelis are clearly the aggressors goes the argument.
This, of course, fails to tell the real story and Israelis are not going to apologize for protecting themselves from murderous Palestinian intent. Indeed, the only reason the family in Beersheba survived is thanks to the reinforced safe room that all modern Israeli buildings have by law.
Israeli security forces at the scene where a building was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, on October 17, 2018. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
But how did the international media report on an incident that had (and still has) the potential to develop into a significant military escalation?
Unfortunately, some major media failed to file stories at all.
Why is this important?
Incidents like this in addition to the constant Gaza border riots, infiltrations, incendiary balloons and the like are vital context to any Israeli military actions. An uninformed reader will not treat an IDF air strike on Gaza as a defensive response if they are unaware of the Palestinian provocations that led to it.
Instead, screaming headlines about Israeli military operations can only present Israel as the aggressor and the Palestinians as victims of Israeli malevolence.
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Sadly this isn’t a problem for some media outlets who are perfectly happy to buy into this false narrative.
So no reports in The Guardian, which has been obsessively consumed with the story of Australian suggestions that it could move its embassy to Jerusalem. Nothing in The Independent, which prefers to report on the demolition of a Bedouin village that hasn’t even yet taken place.
Unlike the US media, the pattern was repeated in most of the UK press with no reports in the Telegraph nor even the BBC. Why was this story of so little interest to the British media?
One UK title that did cover it, The Times of London, stuck its small AFP-supplied piece in its News in Brief section under the headline “Israel bombards Gaza after rocket hits city.” Given that the IDF struck mainly empty infrastructure in targeted precision bombings, the word “bombards” seems inappropriate.
What’s more, The Times said that “Twenty targets were hit in Gaza and a man was killed.” Not just any man and certainly not an innocent civilian. As IDF footage of the attack showed (in our video meme below), that Palestinian was a terrorist killed during the act of preparing to fire a rocket into Israel.
As for the media that did cover the unfolding events, special praise for the Associated Press that got the headline correct:
This should be the norm rather than the exception. How sad that we should even have to congratulate the media for getting it right.
The Australian, however, took a Reuters story that did use an accurate headline and lazily butchered it to read:
While the Reuters headline mentioned the rocket landing in an Israeli city and that Palestinians had fired it, The Australian simply referred to a “rocket attack” offering no context. Why did The Australian need to alter an acceptable headline?
Somewhat surprisingly though, we weren’t confronted with a barrage of headline fails although this was partially a result of a lack of actual coverage.
“Tit-For-Tat”
We were, however, unimpressed with the Washington Post‘s reference to the events as a “tit-for-tat exchange” that bestowed a false moral equivalence between the Palestinian rocket attack and the Israeli response. “Tit-for-tat” is similar to the concept of a “cycle of violence.”
As Professor Cherryl Smith points out in an exclusive article on this very subject, scholars examining this misused term have concluded that “Israel responds predictably and systematically to Palestinian violence.”
There is no moral equivalence or “tit-for-tat” when Palestinians initiate violence and terror and Israel responds with counter-terror measures to defend its civilians.
In the immediate aftermath of the Beersheba rocket attack, we tweeted the following question:
Rocket hits Beersheba, Israel responds. Let’s see if the international media are bothered about the rocket attack. Will it be yet another case of ‘It All Started When Israel Fired Back?’ https://t.co/ZROxLnSMQe
Residents of southern Israel spent the night in bomb shelters as Palestinians fired a heavy barrage of rockets and mortars (nearly 200, according to the most recent numbers I saw). The IDF retaliated with air strikes on more than 100 Hamas terror sites.
As we expected, we came across a few headline fails. Headlines matter because many people don’t read articles, just skimming their newspaper, web site or social media feed. Headlines also matter because studies show that they frame the way people read and remember a story. So if a headline omits key information or context, it ultimately misinforms readers. (For a fuller treatment on this, see Why Headlines Matter).
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.@BBCWorld this is a formal complaint by @IsraelMFA .This title is a deliberate misrepresentation of reality ( that’s the polite equivalent of “ this is a LIE”, if you don’t get it). Israelis were targeted by Hamas and IDF acts to protect them.Change it IMMEDIATELY!!! @IsraelMFApic.twitter.com/pqjXuopXgO
This Irish Times headline says nothing about the rocket fire. [UPDATE: The Irish Times amended the headline]
The Sydney Morning Herald and its sister paper, The Age, republished a New York Times dispatch. The Times’ original headline was perfectly reasonable but headline writers for Fairfax Media, the parent company of both Australian papers, clearly missed the plot. Compare the two. [UPDATE: The SMH and The Age headlines were revised.]
This headline from The Independent could be understood to mean the escalation began Enas Khamas and her daughter were killed during an airstrike.
Editors following the dictum of “if it bleeds, it leads,” and insisting on referring to the mother and child’s death would do well to see the Daily Telegraph. I’m not a fan of long headlines that cram in too much info, but at least it’s more balanced.
Not all the headlines we saw were bungled. Hopefully, editors at the BBC, Irish Times, Independent and Sydney Morning Herald will learn from some of these headers:
Please contact the editors respectfully asking them to amend their headlines: Irish Times at newsdesk@irishtimes.com, Fairfax Media via Twitter and The Independent’s online form.
Before you comment on this article, please remind yourself of our Comments Policy. Any comments deemed to be in breach of the policy will be removed at the editor’s discretion.
Following an official complaint and a request to acknowledge that hostages were targeted for being Jewish as well as Israeli, this was the BBC’s emailed response:
More recently was a lawsuit against Associated Press and the French paper, Libération over a September, 2000 photograph incorrectly describing US student Tuvia Grossman — who had been rescued from a Palestinian lynch mob — as a Palestinian.
