18-Jul-06: What Is It About the BBC?

The caption on this picture, posted on the pivotal Q&A page of the BBC NEWS website, says: "Lebanon has seen the first Israeli land incursion since 2000". Why is no other newspaper or news site in the world reporting a 'land incursion' into Lebanon by the IDF? Could this be because there has been no land incursion?

We have some other questions about this pseudo-objective distillation of a complex situation. But we have fewer answers.

The same Q&A page asserts:

Some have argued that Hezbollah wanted to test new Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is an unknown quantity as far as military crises go.

Of all the possible explanations for Hezbollah's motives, isn't this a somewhat strange theory given that Hezbollah themselves say they have stockpiled weapons for this very war for at least 14 years?

So allow us to ask: Who are the 'some' who have 'argued'?

And since BBC Q&A choose not to tell us, then perhaps they might provide us with a taste of what others have argued. Like the NYTimes for instance, no friend of Israel, which believes - very differently from the BBC's 'some' - that

"Hezbollah needs to reassert its right to maintain its own heavily armed militia against ever louder domestic calls for its disarmament"

And that Hezbollah's strategy for war at this time will

"burnish its backers, Iran and Syria, as they face Western attempts to combat and isolate them."

Interesting theories both. In fact, the NYTimes view looks a good deal more solid than the BBC's, and are of course unmentioned by the BBC, even as rejected possibilities. How odd.
Writing about the tremendous damage being done to the infrastructure of Lebanon, the BBC Q&A says

The Israeli strikes on targets other that [sic] Hezbollah installations are at least in part punitive - power installations, roads and the international airport have been hit.

Punitive? Is no other theory available? Are there no 'some argue' positions worth quoting? Like for instance the argument that says Israel is attacking the infrastructure that makes the persistent bombardment of Israeli civilian centres by Hezbollah possible. Take away road access, the use of the airport, the bridges and you make it much more difficult for Hezbollah to make free and unfettered use of the country they have occupied for decades with the active connivance of both Syria and Iran. Or does BBC Q&A believe there is no one arguing like this? Hassan M. Fattah over at the NYTimes says something pretty close to the view we have just stated. So do dozens of commentators and analysts we have heard during the past few days on respected television networks and in the columns of name-brand newspapers.
While there's no mention at all of the damage being done to Israel via the 1,000 Katyushas that have crashed into Israeli towns, homes and motor vehicles, the BBC Q&A provides a nice, summed-up version of why all this damage is being done to Lebanon via this strange formulation:

"In both Gaza and Lebanon, the Israeli military appears to be taking advantage of the crisis to damage Hezbollah and Hamas as military organisations."

Describing this as a crisis is a nice way to set up Israel for a fall. But it's not just a crisis. It's a shooting war, started by Hezbollah. (The BBC does not mention this.) 25 Israelis have been killed; hundreds are injured. (The BBC Q&A does not mention this at all.) About a million Israelis are living in towns and cities that have absorbed hundreds of missiles each over this past week. They're being shot at, which is a crisis for them, but a good deal more than that. (The BBC Q&A does not mention this.) Hezbollah does not have a military strategy other than (if you can call this a strategy or military) to inflict as much pain as possible on Israel's civilian population, society, life. (The BBC Q&A does not mention any of this.) This is because Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, proscribed as such by the European Union and by the United Nations. (The BBC Q&A does not mention this. ) Israel's military might just as easily have been described by BBC Q&A as taking advantage of the crisis to stop Hezbollah from bombing Israel, no?

In fact, the BBC Q&A does not include the word "terror" anywhere, except in its sneering use of the phrase "war on terror" when it says:

Washington's stance in its "war on terror" may mean that its contacts with Syria, Lebanon and Hezbollah, and its ability to influence them, may be limited.

We could go on and on. But there's a very serious issue here. This Q&A page - a pivotal piece of the tax-payer-funded organization's coverage of this war - was not put together by a cadet journalist new to the trade and infected with knee-jerk campus pseudo-liberalism. The by-line on the page says it was authored by Tarik Kafala, the general editor of one of the world's largest and most authoritative news web sites (i.e. the BBC's website).

So why, Mr Kafala, did you write it so that it reads like a piece of sophomoric advocacy journalism with yawning omissions, distortions and mis-statements of the uncontroversial facts?
What is it about the BBC?