StatCounter

Friday 25 March 2011

The BBC and Mary Jean Gardner

It has taken the death of a British woman in Jerusalem, killed by a an Islamic terrorist bomb for the BBC to finally report a story on Israel without putting their usual keeping it in context comments at the end of the piece. The BBC report allows friends and family to give their tributes to Mary Jean Gardner and ends the piece thus:
'Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad condemned the bombing, calling it "a terrorist attack", while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to respond "vigorously and responsibly" to the attack.

US President Barack Obama also condemned it "as well as the rockets and mortars fired from Gaza in recent days".

The bombing comes amid heightened tension in the Gaza Strip.'
No mention, as is the BBC's usual practice, of Israeli attacks or (in the BBC's eyes) the questionable status of Jerusalem or the existence of settlements. Mind you the piece also does not appear on the Middle East news page as a link but on the 'NE Scotland, Orkney and Shetland' page. It is almost as though the BBC doesn't want to upset its Muslim visitors with a reminder of the murderous misdeeds of some of their fellow Muslims. I predict that this report's news front  page link will disappear today and that the BBC will forget Mary Jean Gardner rather more quickly than they forgot Rachel Corrie, an American lest you forget, for those killed by Palestinian terrorists are embarrassing to the BBC narrative that those killed by Israel are so important to.

On the BBC there is also no mention of  the sort of comments reported by the Hamas mouthpiece the Palestine Times. Here's a translation of the report which I would have thought the BBC would think relevant were they not so concerned with persuading us all that the Palestinians are just like us, really only want peace and disapprove of killing Jews:
'We missed these scenes for a long time: The joy of the West Bank after the bombing in Jerusalem


Having missed the scenes of the explosions and operations that targeted Zionist buses in Jerusalem for years...

Despite condemnation by the Fatah leadership, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas and his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and described that operation as "terrorist", there was joy in the street despite the pain experienced in the cities of the West Bank.

Upon hearing the news of a bus bombing in Jerusalem, citizens hurried to the coffee shops to follow up on television news channels and radio stations to track the latest developments.

Abu Mohammed from Nablus, sitting in a café, said: "By God, it's about time for such operations, which warms our hearts and the hearts of all who [suffer] from the oppression of the occupier recently."

He added: "The occupation only understands the language of force and blood. The netanyahu government claims they want peace in public, but carries out massacres against the Palestinian people everywhere. "

Joseph, 20, from Ramallah, said as he put headphones on his ears to listen to the radio for news on the blast: "This is surely a response to the massacre carried out by the occupation authorities in the Gaza Strip, that claimed the eight martyrs, including 3 children."

He added: "The Palestinian people have become convinced that the Netanyahu government only understands the language of force and operations such as what happened today in Jerusalem."

"The people want the return of martyrdom operations .. people want to end the occupation."

There are those who expressed their joy of such events. Samira from Ramallah: "When I saw the breaking news on one of the satellite TV news and there was an explosion on Jerusalem, the joy made my heart stop."

A young man recalled happy memories of Tulkarm for operations similar to what happened today...

Others Palestinian citizens went into social networking sites like Facebook and forums on the World Wide Web, to express their joy and the news firsthand. The majority stressed our people's right to respond to crimes of the occupation.'

The authentic, uncensored views of ordinary West Bank Palestinians as reported by one of Hamas's newspapers; worthy of comment BBC or will you just stick to what the Palestinian leaders say in public to the West?

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