The BBC reporting Israel & the Palestinians - compare and contrast

The BBC have an article entitled 'Gaza-Israel clashes: The view from each side' and it is as one-sided as you might imagine. To start with the article as written as two parts but it is always the Gaza story that opens up, to read the Israeli story you have to select the relevant tab. The Gazan tab is entitled 'Gazans 'inured' to conflict', the Israeli tab 'Israel's Iron Dome hopes'. The Gazan piece is by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, begins at the scene of an Israeli attack and is a real heart-string puller:

'After years of blockade and repeated rounds of air strikes Gazans appear almost inured to the endless conflict.

...

A four-storey house had been completely destroyed. Its roof had collapsed inwards; tables and chairs, bedclothes and children's toys spilled out of its squashed floors like shopping from a torn plastic bag.

...

A short distance away a group of young boys sat on a pile of rubble, chatting and smiling at the foreigner.

"Hello, how are you?" they shouted and then squealed with embarrassed delight.

Their parents knew what it was like to take the bus to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem for the day.

But now these children are growing up behind a high wall. They have never been to Israel and never met a Jew.

The only thing they know about Israel is its drones and its missiles.

Seeing those children makes me feel very pessimistic that this conflict could ever find an end. '

So that's the Gazan story, Israeli destroying houses and building a high wall to keep cute Gazan children prisoners behind.


The Israeli story also starts at a bombed building but the narrative is more factual and illustrates how Israel isn't so badly affected and why the rockets fired at Israel are almost insignificant and becoming more so:

'At the scene of the original blast the work of clearing up continued - road-sweepers clearing away the dust and rubble and broken glass while engineers from the electricity company overhead made the power lines safe.

...

alongside that familiar sense of dread, there is a growing sense that the military balance, which has long been tilted in Israel's favour, has tilted a little further in the same direction.

On the edge of a wheat field outside Ashdod we found a pair of missile launchers belonging to Israel's new Iron Dome defence system.

It turned out that the crews at this site - or another one just like it - had intercepted the missile which triggered the air raid sirens, exploding it harmlessly in mid-air.

There is a clear sense of confidence that the new missile system and the sophisticated high-speed radar to which it is hooked up are doing much to render the rockets fired from Gaza less threatening.'

The comparison between the two stories is stark but what also comes through the Gazan piece on a second reading is that the true facts are in the piece but left unanalysed:

'...directing my eyes to the Israeli drones circling high over head.

At one point I counted four circling together over a point further south, their powerful cameras hunting the ground below for any sign of militants trying to launch rockets in to Israel.

Then suddenly as we were filming a rocket streaked in to the sky a kilometre or so to the west - a long white trail tracing its path in to the clouds.

Within a minute the rumble of thunder could be heard again, Israel's response had been swift. '

So the Israelis are reacting to a rocket attack, as they sometimes do. How many rocket attacks have there been from Gaza on Israel? How many have Israel reacted to? How many attacks on Israel should there be before it would be (to borrow a favourite BBC word) proportionate for Israel to respond? How long would the UK, France or Germany wait before responding to terrorists firing rockets at its populace?

The BBC article continues:

'Back at the bomb site, I met the man who owned the pile of rubble that was - until last night - his home.

Amazingly no-one was killed in the explosion, despite the complete devastation.

On first inspection it looked like one of Israel's missiles must have gone astray, a case of collateral damage.

But on closer questioning the pictures changes.

"I have already lost one son to the struggle for liberation," the man told me. "I have two more, and I am willing to sacrifice them too."

One of his sons is in the al-Qasam brigades, he says, the other in Islamic Jihad.

"After the attack last night (Sunday) the Israeli Shin Bet (Internal Security) called me on the phone to tell me it was because of my son's activities," he says.'

So again it is Israel responding to a terrorist attack.

'I asked another local how it was that so many people could have escaped relatively unscathed from a building that was so completely destroyed.

"Sometimes the Israelis call up the person beforehand and warn them that they have 10 minutes to leave the house, then they strike."'

So Israel warns people before the attacks, how unlike the Palestinian terrorists. "But only 10 minutes to leave the house, that's not a lot of time is it?" I hear some cry out. True, very true; I would hate to have that short a period of notice to evacuate my house. What possessions would I be able to grab in 10 minutes? BUT what warning do the people of Israel have when a rocket fired from Gaza is heading their way? None from the terrorists who fired it, none from the government of Gaza and just 15 seconds from the Israeli missile tracking system. 15 seconds to get up and run, no time for anything else...

The article continues:

'But familiarity has not softened the anger here at the great historical injustice they believe has been inflicted on them by Israel.

"What do you mean when you say you are struggling against the occupation?" I asked one Gazan. "After all Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005?"

"We mean the occupation of Jerusalem, and Jaffa and Haifa and all the other places that belong to us," he said without hesitation.'

There is no explanation from Rupert Wingfield-Hayes as to what this means. I will explain: it means that these children don't want to live in peace alongside Israel, they don't want a two state solution, they don't want to be Israel's 'Partners in Peace', they subscribe to the Hamas and Palestinian Authority/Fatah goal of no Israel, just a Palestinian state. One shouldn't blame these children, after all they have been brainwashed at school, brainwashed by Palestinian children's TV and by their political and religious leaders that Israel should not exist and that all the land 'from the river to the sea' is Palestinian land. The trouble is that the BBC seem to subscribe to the same view and s do nothing to explain this problem to the British people.