BBC Arabic’s tendentious Hebron feature – part one

A one-sided BBC project featuring Hebron.

On February 18th a feature titled “Hebron: One street, two sides” (erroneously dated February 14th) appeared on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page.

The link leads to an English language BBC Arabic project, a version of which was also promoted on the BBC Arabic website with additional Arabic and Hebrew versions.

The feature commences by showing three separate screens of ‘background information’, including promotion of the BBC’s usual partisan mantra on ‘settlements’ and ‘international law’ and portrayal of the subject matter as being all about ‘narratives’.

BBC audiences next reach a screen which offers several short videos reached by clicking on arrows termed “hotspots”. In order to see all eight videos it is necessary to click and drag to rotate the screen.

The eight videos include:

1) A video about a tour in Hebron conducted by Dean Issacharoff of the foreign funded political NGO ‘Breaking the Silence’ which is inadequately described thus:

2) A video showing Israeli soldiers being briefed ahead of a Purim procession followed by footage of drunk Israeli residents.

3) A video showing Hebron spokesman Ishai Fleisher in which viewers see the sole superficial mention of the 1997 Hebron Protocol signed by Israel and the PLO.

4) A video about an emergency responder, Ofer Ohana, who notes some of the Palestinian terror attacks that have taken place in Hebron.

5) A video about a 14 year-old girl identified only as Waad who films for an organisation presented as ‘Palestinian Human Rights Defenders’ (PHRD) with no further details of its background and funding.

6) A video about one of the founders of PHRD – Emad (or Imad) Abu Shamsiya – whose footage is used in some of the videos.

7) A video showing some Palestinian youths trying to fly a kite and an unexplained conversation between a Palestinian man and a youth.

8) A video using B’tselem footage showing a confrontation between a Palestinian and an Israeli.

All those videos are taken from two much longer films which can be accessed by clicking on the “film version of this project” on the first screen.

Those films will be discussed in part two of this post.

 

 

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