01-Apr-15: A question for Jeremy Bowen and his morally-challenged BBC handlers

BBC's Bowen [Image Source]

Jeremy Bowen and his BBC minders today provide the sleek arch-terrorist Khaled Meshaal with an invaluable platform (not for the first time) for marketing the jihadist program of his outlawed Hamas terror organization to an international audience, safe from the threat of incisive or even semi-informed questions. Despotic, thuggish 'militant' terrorists world-wide must be green with envy.

Just three jaw-dropping - and unchallenged - quotes from the text version of "Hamas leader Meshaal warns of Israeli 'extremism' after elections" [BBC World, today] (we assume a longer video version will eventually emerge):

• In an interview with BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen in Qatar, Mr Meshaal said attacks on Israel would continue "as long as there is occupation, aggression, war and killing". But he stressed that Hamas was "careful to respect international humanitarian law and to target only military targets".
• "...Israel killed the peace process," he added, blaming Mr Netanyahu's outgoing government, along with "extremist forces" in Israel, for the collapse of the US-brokered direct negotiations last year.
• Hamas... was "an active resistance with a just cause, battling the occupier." "Others practice violence under the name of jihad, which we condemn. And this is not Islam. Islam encourages its followers to fight those who occupy their land and their sacred places. But Islam does not allow killing innocent people, civilians, or killing based on identity, belief and different views, political or religious."

Nod-nod, yes-yes. The reporter, evidently overawed by the presence of greatness, puts it out there for Joe Average to take in. Moral value judgement? Common sense? Horror in the face of unapologetic, religion-inspired blood-lusting murder? Those are probably not Bowen's thing. Or his editors'.

Our murdered daughter, Malki

We have just one question that, if Jeremy Bowen had thought to ask, might have left him and his loathsome interview guest looking a touch less composed:

Assuming Meshaal's claims that the terror-addicted thugs of Hamas "condemn" jihad and are "careful to respect international humanitarian law" are not just pathetic April Fool jokes, and in light of Meshaal's conviction that "Islam does not allow killing innocent people", why does Hamas prefer to give a woman called Tamimi (scandalously and literally the "success model" of the Arab world's most important school of journalism, Jordan Media Institute) a platform the likes of which no other confessed, convicted, unrepentant mass murderer has ever had -- her own self-promoting and highly self-justifying weekly television program aired throughout the global Arabic-speaking world every Friday night to an audience of millions -- instead of, say, flinging her from a high-rise rooftop or dragging her through the streets behind a speeding motor bike as Hamas acolytes have done when confronted with viewpoints with which they differ?

Mr Bowen, we're sure you will find a way to express that in fewer words than it took us (the parents of one of the children murdered by Tamimi) to say. We're waiting. 

Not.

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UPDATE Wednesday April 1, 2015 at 5:30 pm: Over at BBC Watch (we linked to them in our article above), they did a fine job during today of closely analyzing both the written and video versions of the Bowen/Meshaal tête-à-tête. See "BBC’s Bowen facilitates Hamas PR binge", where they highlight what they term Bowen's "self-conscripted role as a vessel for the propagation of Hamas’ public relations campaign", distinguishing it from what serious journalists do and ought to do.