BBC News misleads audiences on Fatah incitement map

As was noted here recently, the BBC’s failure to produce any serious reporting on the topic of the incitement and glorification of terrorism from official Palestinian sources, which continues to fuel the ongoing wave of violence against Israelis, is now in its sixth month.

On March 9th audiences were given another reminder of the by now all too obvious fact that this is not some sort of continued oversight on the part of busy journalists but a matter of editorial policy.Biden art

An article titled “Biden criticises failure to denounce Palestinian attacks” opened as follows:

“The US vice-president has criticised those who fail to condemn gun and knife attacks on Israelis, in an implicit attack on the Palestinian leadership.”

Later on readers were told that:

“At a news conference following talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Mr Biden said there could be no justification for what he called the “horrible violence” and criticised those who did not condemn it.

“Let me say in no uncertain terms: the United States of America condemns these acts and condemns the failure to condemn these acts,” Mr Biden said.

“The kind of violence we saw yesterday, the failure to condemn it, the rhetoric that incites that violence, the retribution that it generates, has to stop.””

Those readers who have throughout the last six months been getting their news about the wave of terror attacks against Israelis from the BBC would of course have no idea what the US vice-president meant by “the rhetoric that incites that violence” because – apart from one decidedly dismal effort five months ago – the BBC has made no serious attempt to inform them on that issue. So this was clearly the ideal opportunity for the BBC to go some way towards rectifying that.

However, readers of this article were then told that:

“Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly blamed the Palestinian leadership for incitement.”

In other words the BBC is not prepared to tell its audiences in its own words about the incitement and glorification of terrorism coming from the PA leadership and other official Palestinian sources: rather, it frames that subject as something that ‘Israel says’.

Moreover, the report’s next paragraph presents a very recent example of glorification of terrorism from Fatah within the same framing – even whilst misleading readers about a map which actually eliminates Israel.Fatah map

“A spokesman for Mr Netanyahu noted on Wednesday morning that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement had posted on Twitter a cartoon showing a hand holding a knife over a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories calling the Jaffa assailant a “hero” and a “martyr”.” [emphasis added] 

The article then goes on to promote ‘whataboutery’ and unchallenged falsehood from a veteran Fatah propagandist.

“An aide to Mr Abbas, Nabil Shaath, told AP that Mr Biden “should start from where the real crime is, which is the Israeli occupation and Israeli colonial settlement, because the beginning is here for those who want peace in the Middle East.””

So there we have it: further evidence that the BBC is too ideologically conscripted to tell its audiences about the very relevant subject of Palestinian Authority incitement in its own words.

 

 

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