StatCounter

Saturday 12 March 2011

Justifying the deaths of innocents

The BBC have done it again, they have manage to surprise even me with their coverage of the murder of an Israeli family in Israel. The BBC article is entitled 'Palestinian 'kills five Israelis' in West Bank attack' and here's the whole article with my thoughts in bold:
'A Palestinian has killed five Israelis in an attack on a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, Israel's military says.
'Israel's military says' - when the BBC report the deaths of Palestinians then the deaths are reported as facts rather than casting doubts on the story from the beginning but maybe this is just a one off

The five were members of the same family, a couple and three children, according to Israeli media reports.
No it was not a one-off, there the BBC go again. It is almost as though the subtext is 'the Israelis claim this but they might be lying, in fact they probably are. Yet any claim made by Hamas or Fatah is taken as the revealed truth by the BBC and reported with Israel's denials usually pushed to the end of the article and diminished in some way.

The overnight attack occurred in the Itamar settlement, near Nablus in the northern West Bank. The Israeli army is now searching the area for the suspect.

The incident comes as peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians have ground to a halt.
Why have the peace efforts ground to a halt? The BBC do not, for once, blame Israel but nor do they explain the intransigence of the Palestinian side.

The family - including a baby and children aged 11 and three - were stabbed to death, Israeli media reported.
Again 'Israeli media reported', the next time a Palestinian terrorist is killed in Gaza see if the BBC use the same sort of phrasing or whether they just report the death as fact.

The Itamar settlement was the target of a previous attack, in 2002, in which five Israelis were killed and several injured in an attack by a Palestinian gunman.
So this is not a one-off attack, might it not be worth a few lines explaining why Palestinian terrorists want to kill Jews?

US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians stalled late last year over the issue of Israeli settlement building.
Was this the only stumbling block? Was Hamas's refusal to recognise the State of Israel not a stumbling block? Was Hamas's insistence on the right of return and thus the ending of the Jewish state not a stumbling block? Was Hamas's Charter that calls for the death of all Jews not a stumbling block? Were the regular calls from Hamas and Fatah religious and secular leaders for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews not a stumbling block? Why only mention this one stumbling block BBC?

Palestinians have refused all direct contact with Israel until construction is frozen.
True. Yet Israel is still willing to talk peace with Hamas and Fatah despite their genocidal hatred of Israel and Jews, is that not praiseworthy or at least worthy of comment?

Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
How did Israel come to occupy the West Bank, was it as a result of winning a war with a multitude of Muslim States who wanted to destroy Israel having failed to do so in 1948. Did the Muslim states try again in 1973. If the only argument about Israel's borders stems from the 1967 war then why did the Muslim states try to destroy the much smaller Israel in 1948?

They are held to be illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.'
What International Law, point me to the article... The settlements are not illegal although they are on disputed land. I will expand on this in a later article this weekend.


So there we have it, the BBC reporting the deaths of two Jewish adults and three Jewish children and they have to end the article with a bland statement of (a disputed) fact. The deaths of the Jewish family get scant coverage and then the excuses for the murders have to be stated. The BBC almost blame the family for being there as they repeat the Islamist line that the settlements are illegal and that it is Israel that is the only obstacle to peace. There is absolutely no interest into why the Palestinian(s) killed this family. No wonderment at how someone could kill a family in cold blood but then these people were invaders and got what they deserved, is that the line BBC? If it is then remember that it is straight out of the Islamist ideology that defines innocence rather differently from how civilised people might define it; see here for my most recent piece on this subject. In it you will note that the Hamas politician states 'These women in the coffee shops also came to my land and came to fight me. Women in Israel are soldiers as well. The owners of the cafés built their cafés on my land and the attendants of the cafés come to fight me.... The children are killed by mistake. The children are not targets, but they die in the incidents.'

So women and civilians killed by Islamic terrorists are not innocent and their children 'are killed by mistake'. Remember this the next time you hear an Islamic apologist claim that Islam prohibits the killing of innocents.


The BBC's relentless anti-Israel propaganda has consequences; the rise in antisemitism in the UK being one, are the BBC happy to accept that consequence? The delegitimisation of Israel is a deliberate policy of the Islamists and one that the BBC seem happy to support and indeed promote. This is a dangerous policy and at some point will result in the destruction of the State of Israel, maybe when this does not bring peace to the Middle East the BBC will see that they were wrong, although by then it will be too late for the Jews killed in that war. But even then, will the BBC accept that they were wrong or will the lack of peace in the Middle east still be blames, by the BBC, on the previous existence of the State of Israel and by extension the presence of Jews on Islamic land?

3 comments:

Seamus said...

Stop talking complete and utter nonesense.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8616886.stm

"the Israeli army and Palestinian medics said"

"The Israeli military says"

"Islamic Jihad, a radical Islamist group, said"

"it was reported"

"the Associated Press news agency reported."

"Gaza medics said"

"according to the UN"

"Hamas says"

"Islamic Jihad said"

"the Associated Press reported"

Not a sheep said...

One article that includes the words; says, said and reported, well done! Now how about my other points?

Craig said...

Very sensibly dissected Nota Sheep.

The story has already dropped off the BBC website's Home Page (though an older story about police dogs biting people is still there).

The aticle on the BBC's Middle East page (as of 17.45pm, 12/3/11) STILL bears the headline (with its obscene use of inverted commas):

Palestinian 'kills five Israeli's in West Bank

On the World page its headline is hardly any better:

Israel hunts 'Palestinian killer'

From China to Thailand, the US to Europe, the world press (on Google) seems almost entirely united in NOT seeing the need to put inverted commas around any of this, casting doubt of what has actually happened. The BBC is a rare, disgraceful exception.