Yesterday the BBC Radio 4 Today programme broadcast an interview with Dr Aryeh Kontorovich who lives in Beersheva in southern Israel and Dr Mona El-Farra, vice president of the Red Crescent in Gaza. This followed the usual biased BBC introduction. I won't comment on the interview as you can read all about in the article and comments at Biased BBC but I will remark that this morning's news summary at 07:30 included very little about the situation other than that has now been a ceasefire which has resulted in Israel stopping attacking Gaza and that 200 rockets had been fired from Gaza at Israel since Friday. This is deliberately misleading as it makes it seem as though the rockets only started on Friday and are as a result of retaliations after Israel's attack of Friday on Gaza terrorists (or in BBC language - 'militants'). This is not a minor matter as it neatly turns the blame for starting this latest violence onto Israel, when the blame should be laid squarely on the terrorist groups operating within Gaza who have been firing potentially lethal rockets at Israeli civilians for many months.
It is not as though this information is hard to come by. The BBC could subscribe to the Twitter feed from QassamCount for updates every time a rocket is fired at Israel. The BBC could look at the feed from Challah Huakbar or even just '
Challah's Gaza Rocket Counter' on the same site. Alternatively the BBC could look at this Wikipedia page that lists Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel in 2012. For even more detailed information the BBC could even look at this list of 'Palestinian ceasefire violations since the end of Operation Cast Lead'.
The real figures and facts are easily obtainable so why do the BBC allow interviewees such as Mona El-Farra to state that there have been no rocket attacks from Gaza.
This is not a minor matter, by deliberately misleading their listeners Radio 4 push the Palestinian narrative of an evil, aggressive Israel opressing innocent Palestinians. It's not true and to pretend it is, is dangerous.
It is not as though this information is hard to come by. The BBC could subscribe to the Twitter feed from QassamCount for updates every time a rocket is fired at Israel. The BBC could look at the feed from Challah Huakbar or even just '
Challah's Gaza Rocket Counter' on the same site. Alternatively the BBC could look at this Wikipedia page that lists Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel in 2012. For even more detailed information the BBC could even look at this list of 'Palestinian ceasefire violations since the end of Operation Cast Lead'.
The real figures and facts are easily obtainable so why do the BBC allow interviewees such as Mona El-Farra to state that there have been no rocket attacks from Gaza.
"let me tell you that for the last four months there were no rockets against Israel and Palestinians respected the cease-fire."Where was the correction from John Humphrys at the time or subsequently?
This is not a minor matter, by deliberately misleading their listeners Radio 4 push the Palestinian narrative of an evil, aggressive Israel opressing innocent Palestinians. It's not true and to pretend it is, is dangerous.
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