"Don't worry about casualties."

The BBC have a very interesting piece hidden away in their Middle East news section and getting no publicity off of the main page and certainly not on their Radio or TV news. The page describes a weekend meeting in Istanbul where 200 religious scholars and clerics met senior Hamas officials to plot a new jihad centred on Gaza. The BBC proudly report that "The BBC's Bill Law was the only Western journalist at the meeting"; now I wonder why a BBC journalist was chosen, maybe the Balen report could give us a clue...

The report is scary, but predictable in its reporting of hatred for Israel, here are some extracts:

"In a hall crowded with conservative Sunni Muslim sheikhs and scholars, in a hotel close to Istanbul's Ataturk Airport speaker after speaker called for jihad against Israel in support of Hamas.

The choice of Turkey was significant. Arab hardliners were keen to put aside historic differences with the Turks.

As one organiser put it: "During the past 100 years relations have been strained but Palestine has brought us together."

Many delegates spoke appreciatively of the protest by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who stormed out of a Davos debate on Gaza two weeks ago.

...

"Gaza is a gift," the Saudi religious scholar Mohsen al-Awajy told me. He and other delegates repeatedly referred to the Gaza war as "a victory".

"Gaza," he continued, "gives us power, it solves our differences. We are all now in a unified front against Zionism."

In closed meetings after sessions delegates focussed on the creation of a "third Jihadist front" - the first two being Afghanistan and Iraq. The intensity of the Israeli attack had "awakened all Muslims," Mr Awajy claimed.

"Palestine is a legitimate theatre of operations for jihad (holy war)," he added. "

The piece that really caught my eye was this admission/boast (my emphasis):

"Mohammed Nazzal, a senior Hamas leader based in Damascus... told his audience: "Don't worry about casualties."

The 23 days of bombardment of Gaza, in which some 1,300 people, many of them civilians and nearly 300 of them children, are believed to have died, was "just the beginning" of the struggle, Mr Nazzal said.

To laughter in the audience, another speaker noted that twice as many babies were born as children were killed during the war.

Every death, I was told, was a martyrdom on the road to liberation."

So come on BBC, you have a scoop on the attitudes of Hamas to the death of Palestinian children; you should be reporting this but then I suppose it doesn't fit your "narrative" of evil Israelis killing innocent Palestinian children.

The BBC proud to spread hatred of Israel to further the cause of their "chosen people".


Thanks to Biased BBC for the spot.


Hurry Up Harry has a fascinating report that Daud Abdullah, the deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) was present at the meeting in Istanbul read the whole piece and watch Daud Abdullah in all his ranting glory.