The BBC reporting Israel

Jeremy Bowen, that paragon of fairness, was interviewed on the BBC Today programme this morning. The subject was Barack Obama's upcoming speeches on the Middle East to be given in Cairo and Saudi Arabia. You can hear the whole interview here. There was much worthy of comment in the interview but it was a remark near the end that caught my ear:

"Well his cabinet is dominated by people who absolutely believe in settlements, who absolutely believe that the land the settlements are built on is Jewish land, it should be Jewish land in perpetuity. Some of them believe that that land was given to them by God in a miracle..."

The "narrative" being spread here was that it is the Israelis who are extreme and motivated by religious zeal. How odd I thought that Jeremy Bowen never talks about the foundation of the Palestinian claims on Israel. To save me looking up the records, Pounce on the Biased-BBC blog produced an example. It's from Article 11 of the Hamas covenant and runs:

"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day?

This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement."

Would that claim be worthy of comment oh great BBC experts? Or would that bring up the fact that many Muslims see all lands that were Muslim in the past as being Muslim lands "till the Day of Judgement". In case you are wondering, that would include most of Spain and Portugal, much of France, most of the Balkan countries, Hungary, parts of Italy and even parts of Switzerland. A map to illustrate this point can be found at Euro Heritage.




By the way note that the Israeli cabinet is described at 2:56 as highly conservative, yet another try to link Conservatives with views that the BBC detest.