BBC News airbrushes extremist group from vandalism story

Early on June 27th Israel time, an uncredited report tagged ‘Israel & the Palestinians’ was published on the ‘Wales’ and ‘Middle East’ pages of the BBC News website.

Similar signposting is found in the report’s headline: “Israel and Palestinians: Factory attack political protesters jailed”.

In fact, that story has nothing to do with “Israel and Palestinians”. Rather it concerns a group of British citizens who, last December, severely vandalised a factory (including a memorial) in Wales because they mistakenly believed it manufactured components used by an Israeli company.

The BBC’s report opens as follows: [emphasis added]

Pro-Palestinian protesters who caused hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage to an electronics plant they believed was making circuit boards for Israeli drones have been jailed.”

There is of course nothing “pro-Palestinian” about that gang of British vandals. Remarkably, at no point in this entire article are readers informed that they belong to the anti-Israel group ‘Palestine Action’, despite that fact having been known ever since the story first broke over six months ago. The BBC is presumably aware of that fact too because this report includes no fewer than four photos credited to a photographer named Vladimir Morozov who has photographed such agitprop by ‘Palestine Action’ on numerous occasions in the past

Moreover, all but one of the previous BBC reports presented as “more on this story” at the bottom of this latest article likewise fail to report the connection of the criminals to ‘Palestine Action’.

For over two years CAMERA UK has been documenting the BBC News website’s reporting on political stunts organised by the group of UK anti-Israel extremists calling themselves ‘Palestine Action’.

BBC NEWS MUDDIES RADICAL GROUP’S ANTI-ISRAEL AGENDA

BBC EAST MIDLANDS FAILS TO DELIVER IN FOUR REPORTS ON ANTI-ISRAEL EXTREMIST GROUP

SUMMARY OF BBC NEWS WEBSITE PORTRAYAL OF ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS – AUGUST 2021

BBC NEWS AGAIN FAILS TO TELL THE FULL STORY ABOUT EXTREMIST ‘PROTESTERS’

BBC EAST MIDLANDS FAILS YET AGAIN IN ‘PALESTINE ACTION’ REPORT

As we have noted previously, none of the BBC’s reports has provided audiences with a proper explanation of the group, its tactics and its political agenda, which includes the following:

“We view the Israeli occupation of Palestine as starting in 1948, and coming out of a history of colonial oppression. The Israeli state is a colonial and apartheid state, and so we view the struggle for Palestinian liberation as an anti-colonial struggle.”

In other words, the BBC continues to choose to airbrush extremism and hinder audience understanding by failing to provide the full range of information about the real agenda of members of a group whose political stunts it regularly reports.

More from Hadar Sela
Join the Conversation

2 Comments

  1. says: Grimey

    The BBC deliberately distorts any/all news items to fit their anti-Israel narrative.
    After The Grauniad and the Indy, it is the most antisemitic medium in the UK.

Leave a comment
Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *