Following communication from CAMERA Arabic, BBC Arabic once again corrected a reference to Jewish communities inside Israel’s internationally recognised territory as “settlements” (before/after):
“Militants launched several missile shells towards what is known as the Gaza envelope settlements area”
This is the sixth time in just under six months that CAMERA Arabic has had to prompt BBC Arabic to correct this recurring error.
The ‘Gaza envelope’ communities are unquestionably located within Israel’s internationally recognised territory. They are therefore “known as settlements” only by those who regard any Jewish sovereignty between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea as a form of illegitimate “settler colonialism”.
Furthermore, that terminology is contrary to the BBC’s own style guide, which clearly defines “settlements” as “residential areas built by the Israeli government in the territories occupied by Israel following the June 1967 war.”
The first three corrections of the same error were made in September of last year.
Two older webpages were corrected in November 2022 as part of the wave of BBC Arabic corrections prompted jointly by CAMERA Arabic, CAMERA UK and The Jewish Chronicle:
April 2022 webpage (before/after): “Militants carrying out a launch of a missile shell from the Strip towards what is known as the settlements of the Gaza envelope area in the Israeli side”.
July 2022 webpage (before/after): “the Kibbutz (the name given a cooperative agricultural settlements built by Jewish emigrants before and after the State of Israel was established) of Nahshon”
In the case of those two previous corrections, action was only taken 132 and 79 working days respectively after the submission of our original complaint – i.e. more than 13 and 7 times the timeframe for addressing a complaint as set by the BBC itself.
The BBC have forever played this game. Not enough complaints are made by individuals who have Israel at heart. It’s not as if their reports are incorrect but it’s more of how the reports and the headlines are phrased. It’s the headlines that remain with the listener and viewer.