More politically motivated erasure of Jerusalem history by BBC News

On the evening of May 26^th the BBC News website published a report by Wyre Davies and Ruth Comerford headlined “Far-right marchers attack Palestinians as Israel marks taking of Jerusalem”.

What is in fact marked on Jerusalem Day is the reunification of the city after nineteen years of Jordanian occupation of its eastern sector rather than the “taking of Jerusalem”.

As is so often the case in BBC reporting on that Israeli holiday, Davies and Comerford fail to provide their readers with necessary context.

“Crowds of far-right Israelis chanted insults and assaulted Palestinians during an annual parade for Jerusalem Day on Monday.

Chants of “death to Arabs” and nationalistic slogans were repeated during the event, which commemorates Israeli forces taking Palestinian-majority East Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.”

And – note the punctuation:

“The parade marks Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and the “unification” of a city that the Israeli government says is their eternal capital.

Palestinians also want Jerusalem as their future capital and much of the international community regards East Jerusalem as Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory.”

As is frequently the case in BBC reporting, the portrayal by Davies and Comerford completely erases the 19-year illegal Jordanian occupation of parts of Jerusalem from the story. Their account fails to note the inclusion of Jerusalem in the territory assigned by the League of Nations to the creation of a Jewish homeland and the fact that the city was never “Palestinian territory”.

The belligerent British-backed Jordanian invasion and subsequent ethnic cleansing of Jews from districts including the Old City in 1948 – a point relevant to their “Palestinian-majority” claim – together with the destruction of synagogues and cemeteries, is completely ignored, as is the fact that the 1949 Armistice Agreement between Israel and Jordan specifically stated that the ceasefire lines were not borders. Israel’s warning to Jordan not to participate in the Six Day War is also eliminated from the BBC’s account of events.

Another notable aspect of Davies and Comerford’s report is their misrepresentation of the name of an Israeli minister in a paragraph which fails to conform to the BBC’s own style guide.

“Gvir also visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam and known by Jews as the Temple Mount. Jews revere it as the location of two Biblical Temples and it is the holiest site in Judaism.”

The BBC’s style guide states:

As we have documented in the past:

“That guidance was generally followed in the past but in late 2014, audiences began to see the employment of different terminology by some BBC journalists. The term ‘al Aqsa Mosque compound’ – or even just ‘al Aqsa Mosque’ – was employed to describe what the BBC previously called Haram al Sharif with increasing frequency from November 2014 onward.

So how and why did that deviation from the BBC’s recommended terminology come about? The change in language first appeared in November 2014. At the beginning of that month – on November 5^th – the PLO put out a “media advisory” document (since removed from its website) informing foreign journalists of its “[c]oncern over the use of the inaccurate term “Temple Mount” to refer to Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound in Jerusalem”. That directive is of course part and parcel of the tactic of negation of Jewish history in Jerusalem used by the PLO and others.”

It is hence not surprising to find that the next-but-one paragraph in Davies and Comerford’s report reads as follows:

“A spokesman for the Palestinian presidency, based in the West Bank, condemned the march and Ben Gvir’s visit to Al-Aqsa.

Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, “repeated incursions into the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and provocative acts such as raising the Israeli flag in occupied Jerusalem threaten the stability of the entire region,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement.”

The BBC’s ‘nothing worth mentioning happened before 1967’ approach to reporting on Israel’s capital city has been evident for many years. The failure of Davies and Comerford to provide relevant context concerning the city’s history while at the same time adopting PLO recommended terminology is not a one-off error but a politically motivated permanent feature in BBC reporting.

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