After following the BBC for a few days on my new RRS feed reader and paying special attention to how they cover Israel, I've become increasingly shocked at the crassness of their anti-Israel position.
Here are ALL the stories on the BBC about Israel from the past week (let me know if I've missed any):
Story headline: Israel sees Brazil help with Iran
Excerpt: "In what could be seen as a message for Israel he also spoke of the desire to see a Middle East free of nuclear weapons."
Translation: Israel having nukes is awful, because Israel would just attack other countries without provocation or reason.
Story headline: Paralysed girl's story reflects Gaza's plight
Excerpt: "The family alleged that Israeli soldiers had opened fire at close range - as they lined up outside the house and while Samar's grandmother waved a white flag."
Translation: Israel likes to shoot at children.
Story headline: Israel settlers burn olive trees
Excerpt: "At least 280,000 Jews live in settlements (with a further 180,000 living in East Jerusalem), established in the occupied West Bank with Israeli government backing, in contravention of international law."
(Which is kind of odd, given that they said this previously in the same article: "The caravan was part of an "outpost", a settlement illegal under Israeli law, which Israel has agreed to remove." So, is the Israeli government in favour of these or not?)
Translation: Israelis are violent and their government breaks international law.
Story headline: Palestinian killed on Gaza border
Excerpt: "The Israeli military said he had aroused suspicion by approaching the fence in a heavy coat, despite high summer temperatures.
But it said he was later found to be unarmed."
Also: "Israel's military said troops returned fire after a border patrol was targeted with a rocket-propelled grenade.
But a pro-Hamas website said militants had been retaliating against Israeli fire."
What 'but'? Hamas is credible now? And why do you think Israel is firing at them in the first place?
Translation: Israel likes to shoot at innocent, unarmed civilians.
Story headline: Israel condemns Iran-PA meeting
Excerpt: "The PA has been negotiating with Israel for years on a two-state solution, but is currently refusing talks unless Israel freezes all settlement activity - a condition of a 2003 agreement."
Translation: Israel is refusing the Palestinian Authority's offer of a two-state solution. (Back in real life, it's Israel who has always been pushing for a two-state solution. That's why they left Gaza after offering it to them and being rejected.)
Story headline: Israeli PM defiant on Jerusalem
Excerpt: "Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967. It has annexed the city and declared its east and west Israel's eternal capital. This is not recognised by the international community, with the east of the city considered occupied territory."
I kind of want to quote half of this article. But I'll just do one more: "Palestinians hope to establish their capital in East Jerusalem, as part of a two-state peace deal with the Israelis.
They say Israel uses settlement and demolition orders to try to force them from the area."
Translation: Israel steals land by demolition and force. Palestinians just want to live in peace via the two-state solution.
Story headline: Israel soldiers speak out on Gaza
Excerpt: "Israel denies breaking the laws of war and dismissed the report as hearsay."
Translation: Israel breaks the laws of war.
Oh, but it gets better:
Excerpt: "[An Israeli soldier says:] 'People were not instructed to shoot at everyone they see, but they were told that from a certain distance when they approach a house, no matter who it is - even an old woman - take them down.' "
Translation: The IDF's policy is to kill old women and civilians.
(The article continues on to say that the IDF uses human shields, demolishes homes and fires at Gazan water tanks. It's attempt at the end to be balanced started with "An internal investigations by the Israeli military said troops fought lawfully," citing the Israeli military -- whom the article already built up as unreliable and evil -- that the Israeli military is OK, and still continuing with "although errors did take place, such as the deaths of 21 people in a house that had been wrongly targeted.")
Story headline: Breaking silence on Gaza abuses
Excerpt: "The soldiers tell in their testimonies how this unwritten message [...] translated into zero patience for the life of enemy civilians."
Translation: Israel is bloodthirsty.
Story headline: Israeli textbooks to drop 'Nakba'
Excerpt: This one isn't actually so bad. But even still, near the end: "The term Nakba is usually applied to the loss suffered by millions of Palestinian refugees displaced by the 1948 war and subsequent conflicts; their fate remains a key factor in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute."
Translation: Israel stole land and made millions of Palestinians suffer.
Story headline: Israeli charged over bus deaths
Excerpt: "An Israeli bus driver has been charged with manslaughter following the deaths of 24 Russian tourists last December."
Final thoughts: While this might look like a little unimportant story about an individual, its gives an impression much like the other stories: that Israel is evil and kills civilians for no reason. Taken by itself, it might be fine. Just a crazy guy who killed some people. But when coupled with the terribly anti-Israel articles on the BBC, the relatively warm fuzzy mentions about Palestine (the West Bank lifted the ban on al-Jazeera, don't you know), and no news about anything remotely positive in Israel, this story doesn't exactly help their image.
I think that's enough for now. The ones I didn't include were Palestinians mock 'bad taste' ad, In pictures: Gaza six months on, Ultra-orthodox Jews visit Hamas, and Israel warships pass through Suez -- only the last one of which was neutral, and all the rest contained similar passages to the other articles I quoted.
(As a side note, this is not just the BBC. It's in our culture.)
UPDATE: You know when I said one of the articles wasn't so bad? "The term Nakba is usually applied to the loss suffered by millions of Palestinian refugees displaced by the 1948 war and subsequent conflicts."? Well, turns out that contains a plain lie: the number displaced was significantly less than a million. Explained in a recent Mere Rhetoric post:
The only way it reaches "millions" is if you also count the refugees' third, fourth, and fifth generation descendants. That would make the 1948 Arabs the only population in the history of the planet who claimed their great, great, great grandchildren as "refugees." And no, "well the UN does it" is no excuse."
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