06-Jan-16: Perceptions and realities at the BBC

Inside the BBC newsroom in Broadcasting House, London
[Image Source: BBC]

The BBC ("the largest broadcaster in the world"; "the World's Radio Station"; home to a close-to-incredible 22,000 employees) has much for which to answer in relation to how it systematically fails to call terror "terror". 

It's a painful subject not only because of the damage the BBC's resort to aggressive euphemisms does to people's understanding of terror, but also because of the blatant hypocrisy inherent in the way it adheres to the policy sometimes and ignores it other times. To deeply concerned observers like us, it's plain that the BBC's rule book [BBC Editorial Guideline: Language when Reporting Terrorism] provides a fig-leaf for journalistic values that do no credit to BBC management.

The estimable BBC Watch today posted the kind of well-written and penetrating article that makes its work so valuable. We're referring to "More evidence of BBC News double standards on use of the word terror". There, the writers remind us of what the BBC itself and the laws under which it operates say it's supposed to do, and then expands on

the BBC's inconsistent application of those editorial guidelines and the resulting two-tier system of reporting is evidence of precisely the type of “value judgement” it supposedly seeks to avoid and indicates that the choice of language when reporting acts of terror is subject to political considerations which undermine the BBC’s claim of impartiality. If further evidence of those double standards were needed, it could be found in an article published on the BBC News website on January 3rd under the title “Israelis charged over fatal West Bankfamily arson attack”.

Those are obviously serious allegations. The chronic, systemic issues to which they relate are among the most weighty and consequential that an organization with the mission

to ensure that the BBC gives information about, and increases understanding of, the world through accurate and impartial news, other information, and analysis of current events and ideas.

ever faces.

In its reporting of arrests made this past week following the deaths of three members of a single family in a house fire in Duma, a Palestinian Arab village, the BBC's news reporters and editors used

the words “Jewish terrorists” not in quotation marks and not as quoted text. This was the BBC speaking in its own voice.

Calling the Jewish Israelis who were taken into custody over the Duma deaths “suspected terrorists” is unexceptionable. Israel's government has referred to the lethal fire at the Duma home as terror from the outset. See, as an illustration, "PM condemns ‘horrific, heinous terror attack’ on Palestinians" in Times of Israel on July 31, 2015.

BBC newsroom [Image Source: BBC]

BBC Watch reminds us that other terror attacks, some of them among the most horrifying this country has ever known, stunningly failed to reach the BBC's call-it-terror threshold:

• The almost-unimaginably horrific throat-slitting murders of five members of the Fogel family from Itamar. Three little children, the youngest only 3 months old, along with their parents, killed in their beds as they slept at home in March 2011 (BBC report);
• The murder by shooting of Na'ama and Eitam Henkin of Neria in front of their four little children (the youngest 4 months old) in October 2015 (BBC report)
• The early-morning slaughter - by men using knives, axes and meat-cleavers - in a quiet Har Nof, Jerusalem, synagogue of four worshipers and a police officer in November 2014 (BBC report)
• The shooting death of Malachi Rosenfeld in June 2015 - three other Israelis were wounded in the terrorist gunfire. That attack in fact was never reported at all by the BBC.

BBC Watch says, and we certainly agree, that in deciding not to call these acts of murder "terror", while using "terrorist" to describe the unconvicted Israeli Jews arrested in the Duma case, the BBC ought to be required to tell its funding public why. 

Its management should also be called on to justify their engaging (as we say they are) in highly-politicized decision-making whose contours are influenced more by unspoken policy considerations than by the obligations imposed on the BBC by the laws under which it operates.

Here's some further reading from past posts of ours dealing with the BBC and its terror strategy:

• 08-Aug-15: Another BBC moment
• 01-Apr-15: A question for Jeremy Bowen and his morally-challenged BBC handlers
• 20-Dec-14: BBC, unable to call him "terrorist", says French police killed an "Allahu Akbar attacker"
• 01-Sep-14: Gaza, Israel, the BBC: What children - and their parents - ought to know
• 15-Aug-13: To promote something truly hideous, can't do better than adopt the BBC's approach
• 24-Mar-13: Seed of evil: Whitewashing terror at the BBC
• 10-Jan-13: When terror is ignored by news reporting agencies, the BBC for instance, what can we learn?
• 17-Feb-12: It's final: the BBC is relieved from having to reveal the results of in-house inquiry into whether it is biased against Israel
• 16-Aug-11: When the powers at the BBC put this much effort into something, they must really care
• 15-Jun-07: Journalistic Objectivity from BBC and Other Oxymorons
• 18-Jul-06: What Is It About the BBC?
• 14-Jul-06: A word about the BBC

Finally, on a more generous note, let's a take a moment to offer congratulations to BBC management for having just won a well-deserved major award from Honest Reporting. The prize and the attainments that earned it for them are detailed here.

2-Apr-12: When you march for the rights of prisoners, what does it mean for the rights of their past and future victims?

Source: PMW

A friend has alerted us to the fact that political rallies are being organized in Europe (including Paris) and elsewhere this week in support of yet another UN-sponsored conference about the“plight” of the Palestinian Arabs being held in Israeli prisons.

We want those who march for them and against administrative detention and imprisonment to ask themselves and the organizers some tough and perhaps unpleasant questions - about these prisoners, about what brought them there - before they turn to good, liberal-minded people for support.

When they march, are they marching for the young cousins Amjad and Hakim Awad?

These boys are mere teenagers. And in the world in which most Europeans and Americans live, we know that boys in their teenage years are prone to getting into mischief. As an enlightened society, we treat them a little more gently so that we can encourage them to grow to mature manhood and become constructive members of our societies.

But this is not Europe or America. Yes, the Awad cousins are young. Amjad Mahmad Awad is 19, and was a student at Al-Quds Open University. Hakim Mazen Awad is 18. The Awad clan makes up about half of the population of Awarta, the village to which they fled after they carried out the crime for which they were convicted in an Israeli court. Last year, when they were arrested, Hakim Mazen Awad was a high school student whose father, Mazen, is active in the PFLP terrorist organization and had served a five-year prison sentence, imposed by the Palestinian National Authority, for murdering his female cousin and cremating her body.

It’s a family with some history. The boys had an uncle Jibril, also a PFLP terrorist. This Awad uncle participated in an earlier attack on the neighbouring community of Itamar back in 2002. A mother called Rachel Shabo and three of her children, Neria (16), Zvi (13), and Avishai (5) were shot to death inside their home, and the head of the neighborhood preparedness team, Yosef Twito (31), was also shot to death. Uncle Jibril’s career in terrorism came to a premature and fatal end in a 2003 clash with Israeli forces.

It is perhaps not surprising that the Awad clan had elaborate and quite complete arguments why their beautiful young sons had nothing to do with the horrible crime of which they were convicted last year. (Note also that several early media reports said the perpetrator might have been a Thai agricultural worker, though their services are generally not used in that part of Israel.) The crime was cold-blooded and horrifying even to observers who are hardened by the difficult acts of terror that happen in Israel with sickening frequency. Wikipedia’s report [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_attack] says:

After crossing the fence, Amjad and Hakim walked 400 meters into the settlement. The perpetrators first broke into a house of the Chai family who were on vacation, searching all the rooms. They stole an M-16 assault rifle, ammunition, a helmet, and a kevlar vest. They waited an hour and entered the Fogels' house at around 10:30 pm. According to the indictment, the two entered the children's room, told eleven year old Yoav, who had been awakened by their entry, not to be afraid, then took him to a nearby room, slashed his throat, and stabbed him in the chest. Hakim Awad then strangled four-year-old Elad with Amjad Awad stabbing him twice in the chest. The two next entered the parents' room, and turned on the light, waking them up. The parents then struggled with the attackers. Ehud Fogel was repeatedly stabbed in the neck, and Ruth Fogel was stabbed in the neck and back and then shot when the suspects saw that she was not dead. The suspects then left the house… The two then argued over whether to withdraw or carry out attacks in other homes, with Hakim insisting that they return immediately to Awarta, and Amjad arguing that they should return to the home and steal another weapon. Amjad then re-entered the Fogel home. When 3-month old Hadas began crying, Amjad stabbed her… According to several accounts, the infant was decapitated, though one source says that although her throat was deeply slit, she was only "nearly decapitated". The attackers did not notice two other children asleep in the house at the time. In their confessions they said that they would not have hesitated to kill them if they had noticed them.

Hakim Awad's mother, Nawef, claimed that her son was at home the night of the murder and never left the house, claiming that "five months ago Hakim underwent a surgery in his stomach and I'm sure he was tortured and forced into confessing."  Amjad's family also claimed that he was in the village at the time of the event. One relative said that Hakim and Amjad did not know each other, as "one went to university, the other is in high school". He also claimed that if they had been guilty, they would have been captured within days, as "the whole world knows about Israel's advanced investigation abilities and its use of sophisticated means". 

What the whole world knows is actually something else. The Awads, who confessed and recreated the killings for the police, are now being claimed as heroes in the perverted world of the Palestinian Arab media and its friends and supporters. They are praised on government-owned television which played a song containing this revealing line: “That is what the homeland asked of me”.

Click to view the English-sub-titled PMW video clip

Here is where the story becomes decidedly un-American and non-European. We Israelis are confronted with an enemy that believes its very highest values are served by encouraging its young men to become heroes in the very specific sense of slicing the throats of sleeping Jewish children because “that is what the homeland asked” of them.

One of the most notorious of the killers created by the terrorism-adoring Islamist Arab society is Ahlam Tamimi. She planned the 2001 massacre in which fifteen Israelis, most of them children, were blown apart in a pizza restaurant. She planted the bomb – who happens to have been a human being – and then fled for her own safety. Later that day, she personally, herself, read the evening news report on PA Television about the successful killings in central Jerusalem without so much as a cynical smile to acknowledge that this horrifying crime was in fact hers. (Is there a historical precedent for this? Could Hollywood invent a credible scenario that includes such a scene?)

Tamimi, explicitly unrepentant, was released in October 2011 as part of the Shalit Transaction and has become a genuine media star with her own weekly program on the Al-Quds satellite television channel that is broadcast throughout the Arabic speaking world. Her presence as a fiery religious speaker, finger pointing  heavenwards, encouraging copycat acts of terror against Jews, has become ubiquitous in Islamist rallies in Jordan, Tunisia and parts in between.

Tamimi, speaking to an Islamist rally in Amman a month ago [Arabic source here], revealed that hunger strikes by Palestinian Arabs in Israeli prisons are what she called a “tactical move” that will continue for at least the next two months. And on April 17th, which is termed "Palestinian Prisoners' Day," something is going to happen. As the most well-known spokesperson for the claims of the imprisoned Islamists, she – perhaps more than anyone else on earth – exemplifies the cynical manipulation by the Islamists of liberal sympathy for the victims of alleged human rights offences. And more than anyone else’s actions, hers exemplify where that manipulation leads.

To those planning to take to the streets tomorrow in Paris and elsewhere, we ask: Are you for Tamimi or against the lethal hatred and the pathological racism which she embodies. Are you for the teenage perpetrators of last year’s Itamar massacre, or do you insist that something even worse is done when we hold them behind bars.

It may seem to you that getting this right or wrong does not matter so much because the killers are far away and not threatening your children. But what if you are wrong about that?

It might be interesting to ask the people of Toulouse for their opinion.

19-Apr-11: What happened that awful Sabbath night in Itamar?

Itamar, population 1,000

On Monday, two Palestinian Arabs from the Samarian village of Awarta, Hakim Maazan Niad Awad and Amjad Mahmud Fauzi Awad, were arrested by the Israeli police and charged with the massacre of five members of the Fogel family in the small Jewish community of Itamar.

The Jerusalem Post's account says the Awads confessed and reconstructed the steps before and after the killings. Their fellow villagers and clansmen, in the time-honored way, say the confessions are false, the murders were done by disgruntled foreign laborers, the Awads are "children", as pure as the driven snow and innocent of any wrong-doing. And what proof is there that a murder happened anyway?

Here is what is now known:

• The 11th March 2011 stabbing murders took days of advance planning.
• The Awads tried to obtain firearms from their local resident representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They did not succeed, so equipped themselves instead with wire-cutters and knives.
• They left Awarta on foot. Seeing that Itamar's periphery fence had an electric sensor, they abandoned the wire-cutter and climbed the fence instead. The alarm was not triggered.
• They walked across a forested hilltop, and arrived at a row of quiet Itamar homes. It was late Friday night - the Jewish Sabbath.
• No one was at home in the first house they entered. They found, and stole, an M-16 rifle, ammunition and body armor. Then they moved on to the house next door: the Fogel residence.
• Peering in through the window, they saw two children sleeping. These were four-year-old Elad, and 11-year-old Yoav.
• They entered and stabbed them both to death.
• They entered the parents’ bedroom, attacking with their knives. The parents fought back. Using the stolen rifle, they shot the young mother, Ruth Fogel, dead, and stabbed her husband Ehud dead.
• The murderers left the house. Then they heard a baby crying. This was three-month-old Hadas, in her crib in the parents’ bedroom.
• They did the logical, nationalistic, jihadist, religiously-inspired thing: returned to the bedroom and slashed the three-month-old baby to death.
• They now know they had overlooked two additional Fogel children. Amjad Awad says, lest there be any doubt about the matter, that they would have killed the remaining children had they realized they were in the house.
• The two murderers hiked back to their village in clothing soaked in the blood of their victims. 
• Their clansman, Salah Awad, affiliated with the PFLP, helped them dispose of the incriminating evidence. The stolen weapons were spirited away to a co-conspirator in Ramallah for hiding. He is now under arrest too.

After the fact, we know these additional things about the barbarism of that night.

• Amjad Mahmud Fauzi Awad is 19 and worked in Israel as a laborer. Hakim Maazan Niad Awad is 18 and a high school student.
• The Awads received considerable after-the-fact support from clan members in the village and other friends in the area. Six accomplices are under arrest.
• Ynet quotes sources close to the investigation saying the Awad clansmen provided the investigators with a dispassionate account of the attack, "a chilling reenactment", a "shocking, cold, remorseless and detailed description". 
• Amjad is quoted saying he went to Itamar to "die a martyr's death".
• There is massive support among Palestinian Arabs not only for the general idea of killing Israelis but specifically for the massacre of the Fogel family members. This arises from an authoritative survey conducted by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, and the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and by Prof. Khalil Shikaki, Director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR).
• American Educational Trust, self-described as "a non-profit, non-partisan organization incorporated in 1982 in Washington, DC, by retired U.S. Foreign Service Officers", publishes a website called Remember these Children. This purports to objectively report on the terrible price paid in terms of children's lives in the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. Our impression it takes a highly partisan Palestine-centric view of the conflict and of the victims. It is striking that the cold-blooded, deliberate murders of the three Fogel children are not recorded at all on the site, though the deaths of Palestinian Arab children in the same month, allegedly at the hands of the IDF, are.

One final point. 

In an blog entry last month ("21-Mar-11: Why Palestinian Arab condemnations of babies being murdered in their beds are a fraud"), we referred to the mealy-mouthed condemnations by Palestinian Arab political figures of the Itamar massacre, and in particular Mahmoud Abbas who is quoted saying it was

"a despicable, immoral, and inhuman act. A human being is not capable of something like that. Scenes like these - the murder of infants and children and a woman slaughtered - cause any person endowed with humanity to hurt and to cry." 

Did he mean it? Let's see.

The day before the Fogel family were slaughtered, the official Palestinian Authority television - the mouthpiece of the Mahmoud Abbas regime - broadcast a program in honour of one of its former employees, a woman called Ahlam Tamimi. She is serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison for one of the most heinous crimes known in these troubled parts. Yet the program praises her, praises the actions that put her in prison, and unequivocally identifies with the longing of Tamimi’s family members for her and for her release. The camera focuses on a certificate awarded by Fatah, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, calling Tamimi "the heroic prisoner." Watching this, which countless Palestinian Arab families did, no one would be left in doubt as to what official Palestinian Arab society thinks of Tamimi and of the chain of events that brought this evidently heroic figure to an Israeli cell. This Tamimi is the murderer of our daughter and of fifteen other innocent Israelis. She is articulate, capable and very proud of what she did, and everyone watching the program is encouraged to share that pride. The head of the Palestinian Arab political pyramid, Abbas, is closely identified with that pride. Killing Israeli children is something to be proud of, the program teaches and Abbas confirms. Palestinian Arab society holds this Tamimi up as an example to be emulated.

Understanding how Palestinian Arab society says one thing to the outside world and an entirely other, hateful thing to its own members is key to understanding why this ongoing war is so resistant to resolution. Discerning the things that we can learn from horrifying events like the Fogel family murders is critical to getting this right, a challenge that most people - under the influence of double-talking politicians and a compliant media - fail.

24-Mar-11: British parliamentarian, speaking plainly, hits nail squarely on BBC's head

An item over at the Honest Reporting website praises British MP Louise Bagshawe "for taking the BBC to task for its coverage or rather, lack of coverage of the brutal murders of the Fogel family in Itamar."

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, she describes finding out about the attack via Twitter:

Horrified, I went to the BBC website to find out more. There I discovered only two stories: one a cursory description of the incident in Itamar, a West Bank settlement, and another focusing on Israel’s decision to build more settlements, which mentioned the killings in passing. As the mother of three children, one the same age as little Elad, who had lain bleeding to death, I was stunned at the BBC’s seeming lack of care. All the most heart-wrenching details were omitted. The second story, suggesting that the construction announcement was an act of antagonism following the massacre, also omitted key facts and failed to mention the subsequent celebrations in Gaza, and the statement by a Hamas spokesman that “five dead Israelis is not enough to punish anybody”. There were more details elsewhere on the net: the pain and hurt, for example, of the British Jewish community at the BBC’s apparent indifference to the fate of the Fogels. The more I read, the more the BBC’s broadcast silence amazed me. What if a settler had entered a Palestinian home and sawn off a baby’s head? Might we have heard about it then? ... I considered filing a complaint.

The full (short) piece is here. And the incisive and plain-spoken MP's website is here.

Clearly you don't need to be a parliamentarian or British or even a mother of young children to recognize when a global, fabulously well-endowed media colossus (the BBC had an annual operating expenditure of £4.26 billion in 2009/10 according to the BBC's Annual Report and Accounts 2009/20010), along with its editors, reporters, headline writers and managers, has lost its moral compass.

21-Mar-11: Why Palestinian Arab condemnations of babies being murdered in their beds are a fraud

Since experiencing the loss by murder of our fifteen year old daughter, we have come to understand that, for many people, terrorism remains truly incomprehensible. People often speak of looking for root causes, but it’s clear that few will trouble themselves to examine the context in which such acts happen.

This has consequences for how we fight the terrorists. We have a very strong sense that unless society at large faces up to this issue of context, ineffective decisions will continue to be taken. And the terrorists are going to keep winning.

When five members of a Jewish family living in the small community of Itamar were stabbed to death in their beds last Sabbath, the condemnations from officials in the local Palestinian Arab government bodies were predictably formulaic. They said they condemned the brutal murders. 

Did they mean it? We can know by looking at what those officials said and say when they speak to their own citizens.

One day before the massacre in Itamar ten days ago, Palestinian Authority television which is the mouthpiece of the Mahmoud Abbas regime broadcast a program in honour of one of its former employees. As Palestinian Media Watch documents, a PA TV film crew is shown interviewing the relatives of a woman called Ahlam Tamimi. She lives in an Israeli prison serving multiple life sentences for one of the most heinous crimes known in these troubled parts. 

The program praises her, praises the actions that put her in prison, and unequivocally identifies with the longing of Tamimi’s family members for her and for her release. The camera focuses on a certificate awarded by Fatah, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, calling Tamimi "the heroic prisoner."

Watching this, which countless Palestinian Arab families did, no one would be left in doubt as to what official Palestinian Arab society thinks of Tamimi and of the chain of events that brought this evidently heroic figure to an Israeli cell.

This Tamimi is the murderer of our daughter and of fourteen (more correctly fifteen as you can see here) innocent Israelis. She is articulate, capable and very proud of what she did, and everyone watching the program is encouraged to share that pride. The head of the Palestinian Arab political pyramid, Abbas, is closely identified with that pride. Killing Israeli children is something to be proud of, the program teaches and Abbas confirms. Palestinian Arab society holds this Tamimi up as an example to be emulated.

This is a constant theme in Palestinian Arab society. For years, Palestinian Media Watch has documented the ongoing Palestinian Authority policy of glorifying terrorists as role models.

Why? Because – as PMW points out, this is one of the most effective means of promoting terror and ensuring it goes on. 

“In honoring the worst killers, the PA is simultaneously giving approval to murder and enticing future terrorists with assurances of glory and honor if they succeed in killing. Terror and murder become the Palestinian’s ticket to fame, honor and glory.”

Keep these thoughts in mind when the crocodile tears of the politicians behind the murders next make an appearance on your television screen or news page.