Not enough Israelis killed by “home-made contraptions” for BBC’s Mishal Husain

Here is BBC World News presenter Mishal Hussein interviewing Gil Hoffman of the Jerusalem Post on November 20th 2012. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gs7igC5siY]

At 1:20 Husain says:

“OK, you say that Israelis have been running for their lives ..erm…from rockets from Gaza, so tell me then; until this current confrontation, how many Israelis have been killed by these rockets from Gaza this year?”

Believe it or not, from there, it goes downhill. 

This is yet another example of the “not enough dead Israelis to count” syndrome so prevalent across the board at the BBC and which we have seen touted repeatedly over the past week. 

Can we really imagine citizens of any other country in the world being aggressively badgered by BBC presenters because their compatriots have not been murdered in large enough numbers by terrorist organisations?

Sixty seven British nationals were murdered in the 9/11 terror attacks. In relative terms, that is around six people in Israel. The United Kingdom saw that as justification for the invasion of Afghanistan – several thousand miles away – less than one month later.

 But apparently according to Husain, Israel is not justified, after almost twelve years of terror attacks by missile fire, in acting against terrorists located literally meters away from its civilian population because not enough Israelis have died this year – or at all. 

Some might call that a double standard

We might also call to mind the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines:

“Presenters, reporters and correspondents are the public face and voice of the BBC – they can have a significant impact on perceptions of whether due impartiality has been achieved.  Our audiences should not be able to tell from BBC output the personal prejudices of our journalists or news and current affairs presenters on matters of public policy, political or industrial controversy, or on ‘controversial subjects’ in any other area.”

For more commentary on the subject, see here.

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