On the evening of December 12th it was announced that Israel had established full diplomatic ties with Bhutan.
“The agreement was signed on Saturday at a ceremony held at the residence of Israel’s Ambassador to India Ron Malka, with the ambassador of Bhutan to India Major General Vetsop Namgyel. […]
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday that Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi spoke with his Bhutanese counterpart, Foreign Minister Tandy Dorji, last week, where the two agreed on the signing date as well as a joint work plan to collaborate in the areas of water management, agriculture, and health. […]
Israel’s previous lack of relations with Bhutan was not linked to the conflict with the Palestinians nor to the US-brokered agreements seeking normalization with Israel from Muslim states, but rather a result of Bhutan’s isolationist policies.”
The Jerusalem Post noted that:
“The landlocked country [Bhutan] has formal diplomatic relations with only 53 other countries – a list that does not include the US, UK, France or Russia – and has embassies in only seven of them.
Neither does the country have ties with China, having closed its border to the country on its north after China’s 1959 invasion of Tibet.”
Visitors to the BBC News website will find no coverage whatsoever of that story to date, including on its Israel and Bhutan pages. Apparently a story about new diplomatic relations which cannot be framed in terms of ‘the conflict’, the US president or Palestinian reactions is not newsworthy as far as the BBC is concerned.
Had this been a story about the fact that Bhutan being the only country in the world that doesn’t have a single traffic light, then the BBC would have found that far more newsworthy.
Well, it seems the BBC news teams worldwide are going to have to be eating an awful lot of humble pie in the future, which, they will no doubt find distasteful and I hope they choke on it.