BBC journalists get a ‘briefing’ from a past interviewee

BBC journalists hold a meeting with a PA representative who has repeatedly spread falsehoods in the past.

Ahead of the US initiated economic workshop in Bahrain next week (which the Palestinian Authority claims to have ‘foiled’), PA and PLO representatives in London have been rather busy.

In addition to organising meetings with the Minister of State for the Middle East, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, the Labour party leader, RUSI, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Palestine, CAABU and others, the PA representative in Britain, Husam Zomlot, also met with “senior BBC correspondents and journalists”.

Husam Zomlot – who just last month marched next to a Hamas affiliated activist at an anti-Israel demonstration in London – is a fairly regular participant in BBC content. While we do not know what he told BBC journalists at that meeting, we do know that BBC audiences have been repeatedly misled by his blatant falsehoods and inaccurate claims in the past.

photo credit: ITIC

“Israel’s colonialism”

“…their siege, their colonisation, their daily theft of our resources and land and their daily murder of our families and babies and women.”

“…they pulled out of Gaza to lay siege on the people of Gaza for all these years and turn Gaza into the dark ages…”

“There are no basic goods and commodities…[in the Gaza Strip]”

“…the original people, the natives, the Palestinians…”

“…another ethnic cleansing like they did in 1948.” 

BBC WS radio’s ‘Newshour’: insights into presenter intervention on inaccurate claims

“…we reject violence and we promote non-violence.” 

“We are religious about non-violence. We roamed the world for years upon years to try and provide our people with non-violent way of achieving their rights…” 

“…a Palestinian bus driver with two young sons was hanged in his own bus by again another most likely Israeli-organised terror groups…”

“We Palestinians are the occupied, are the ones who are subjected to the de-Arabisation of Jerusalem.”

“…every other week we have a theft of our land…”

“…every other day we have a provocation to enter mosques and burn mosques…”

BBC coverage of Har Nof terror attack: World Service’s ‘Newshour’ – part two

“…the Netanyahu government have been murdering the two-state solution via this phenomenal expansion of settlements everywhere in the occupied Palestinian territory…state.” 

BBC WS ‘Newshour’ special edition from Jerusalem – part one

“…it took us so many years to get to that national equilibrium here in Palestine; to establish a national consensus on the two-state solution and on accepting, recognising Israel on 78% of our land.”

Challenged and unchallenged claims in a BBC ‘Hardtalk’ interview – part one

“According to the Oslo Accords Israel should have withdrawn from all the territories it occupied in 1967 and in fact what happened after was the deepening of the occupation and the spread of colonial settlements and the besiegement [sic] of the people in Gaza.” 

“Let me give you some numbers very, very quickly about the economic disparity because of us having to work in Israel – not, by the way, by choice but by coercion. You know our population is around 12.7 million.” 

“It’s our own water that they consume, most of it.”

“Some groups that are privileged and others that are disprivileged [sic] and discriminated whether by means of occupation or by means of colonisation or by means of apartheid.”

“…if this means we will continue to be treated as slaves in our own land and we continue to put up against some people who argue that God is estate agent and God chose some people at the expense of others.”

Challenged and unchallenged claims in a BBC ‘Hardtalk’ interview – part two

It is hence highly unlikely that Zomlot’s ‘briefing’ to BBC journalists “on the current situation in Palestine” will contribute anything of value to the accuracy and impartiality of BBC reporting.

 

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