What the BBC Means By Impartiality is NOT Broadcasting South Africa’s Case for Genocide But instead Broadcasting Israel’s Defence!
Pilger on BBC
Dear Mr Davie,
On 11 January the International Court of Justice heard South Africa’s application that
‘acts and omissions by Israel . . . are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . . to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”
and that this was in clear contravention of the United Nation’s Convention on Genocide.
Paragraphs 101-107 of the Application gave numerous examples of the Genocidal Intent of Israeli military leaders, senior politicians and also their effect amongst Israel’s soldiers.
For example Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant’s declaration of 9 October that
International Court of Justice at The Hague
I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,”
Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu implored his listeners:
you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.” with reference to I Samuel 15:1-34
“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass”
Viewers saw Irish KC Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh’s powerful closing speech in South Africa case. All independent observers are agreed that South Africa’s case was overwhelming.
3 Israeli hostages die because Israeli used banned chemical weapons, poison gas, to try and kill Hamas militants
As Nimer Sultany wrote in The Guardian:
The powerful case brought by South Africa against Israel at the international court of justice under the genocide convention is a wake-up call for many western governments and media outlets that uncritically supported Israel’s savage war.
I say viewers, but of course not those who watch BBC because you took a decision, in the interests of ‘balance’, not to broadcast the case that South Africa was presenting. Instead you decided, in line with previous practice, only to broadcast Israel’s defence the next day.
ICJ: Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh’s powerful closing statement in South Africa case against Israel
BBC’s viewers were therefore unable to judge for themselves the case that Israel was responding to, which is exactly what you intended, because in your view the people of Gaza have no case.
The murder of 15,000+ children, 120 journalists, innumerable doctors and health workers, the attacks on all of Gaza’s hospitals – all on the pretext that Hamas was using them as their military bases counted for nothing because the BBC is nothing if not a spokesperson for British and US foreign policy. Their view and yours is that however many civilians are murdered, South Africa’s case is ‘meritless’.
If this was China or Russia then it would be a different story. If Russia had said that the Ukrainian resistance was hiding behind civilians or using hospitals as bases then the BBC would be the first to call this out for what it was. But as a failed Conservative candidate you know where your loyalties lie.
Those who wanted to listen to South Africa’s charges had to turn to Al Jazeera. The BBC decided that the injustice that Post Office managers have experienced was more important.
Israel’s ‘defence’ consisted primarily of accusations that South Africa was perpetrating a ‘blood libel’, i.e. ‘anti-Semitism’.
If the BBC was going to broadcast Israel’s defence then you were under a duty to broadcast the South Africa’s allegations of genocide. This is so elementary that it hardly needs stating.
The BBC’s Lucy Williamson shows viewers the destruction in Kibbutz Be’eri but she never thinks to ask how Hamas caused it given they had no heavy weaponry
October 7 Breakout from Prison Gaza
The BBC has acted as the Voice of Israel. News coverage repeatedly goes back to the events of October 7 whilst carefully omitting the fact that Israeli tanks fired on houses in Kibbutz Be’eri killing both Israeli hostages and their Hamas captors.
The same is true of the Nova festival and the firing on cars escaping from the festival by Apache helicopters. All of this is ignored by the BBC which prefers to accept the Israeli version of what happened that day.
There is plenty of information on how Israel’s military took the decision to implement the Hannibal Directive and kill its own hostages, rather than allow them to be taken captive and exchanged for the Palestinian hostages that Israel holds.
The BBC, it seems, made sure viewers got a live-stream today of Israel’s defence against genocide in Gaza but deprived viewers yesterday of South Africa’s detailed case for accusing Israel of genocide.
See for example The Cradles’ How Israeli forces trapped and killed ravers at the Nova Festival, Ha’aretz’s Families of Israelis Killed in Be’eri Home Hit by IDF Tank on October 7 Demand Probe, Electronic Intifada’s Israeli child “burned completely” by Israeli tank fire at kibbutz.
Electronic Intifada and others published the interview with Yasmine Porat, a survivor of Kibbutz Be’eri but the BBC have never even referred to it or similar interviews.
Electronic Intifada’s article on how Israeli HQ ordered troops to shoot Israeli captives on 7 October, the Times of Israel’s IDF officer recounts ordering tank fire on Be’eri home during hostage standoff on Oct. 7 likewise made no impression on BBC coverage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza’s Palestinians.
Interview with Yasmine Porat on Kan’s Haboker Hazeh radio program on 15 October 2023
Whilst information on how many if not most civilian deaths on October 7 is easily available, not least from the Israeli press, including interviews with the hostages, the BBC has done nothing to question the Zionist narrative that Israeli deaths on October 7 were solely the work of Hamas.
An Open Letter from Israelis to fellow Israelis demanding the truth about October 7th at the end of October demanding an inquiry into the events of October 7 was ignored. They wrote:
Israel’s domestic and international rhetoric now contains something much more akin to Nazi extermination propaganda.
We know what the purpose of this propaganda is. More than 8,500 indigenous Palestinian children, women, and men have been exterminated – and the number rises as we write. Many are trapped under the rubble of their homes, dying slowly. Others are facing thirst, starvation, and infectious diseases. At the same time, senior Israeli figures, even our president, keep howling that there are ‘no innocent civilians’ in Gaza.
Make no mistake, what Israel is doing in Gaza now will haunt Israelis for decades. Now is the time to make sure all Israelis understand this. And this understanding should start with full disclosure about the events of October 7, 2023.
Not one word has left the lips of BBC interviewers about the Hannibal Directive despite widespread discussion in the Israeli press such as for example Ha’aretz’s ‘Unlawful, Unethical, Horrifying’: IDF Ethics Code Author on Alleged Use of ‘Hannibal Directive’ During Hamas Attack’. In this article Asa Kasher, the philosopher who wrote the Israeli Military’s Code of Conduct, told how ‘allegations that the infamous operational order may have been used on October 7 must be investigated immediately’. The BBC is simply not interested in such facts.
I did a google search on the Hannibal Directive and BBC. I came up with nothing. I went to the BBC’s own site and searched on ‘Hannibal Directive’. The nearest I came up with was a story Hannibal Mejbri: Manchester United midfielder joins Sevilla on loan!
These omissions are not accidental but deliberate policy decisions by BBC News, under your direction. You are deliberately distorting and slanting the news in such a direction as to support Israel’s narrative that October 7 was an unprovoked attack as Hamas sought to indulge in murder and rape. Your claim of ‘balance’ is nothing but a lie.
As Jonathan Cook, a former Guardian journalist wrote in What the BBC fails to tell you about October 7:
‘It is journalistic malpractice for the media to still be repeating so credulously the Israeli military’s account….
Simply repeating that narrative without any caveats has by now reached the level of journalistic malpractice. And yet that is precisely what the BBC does night after night.
Just a cursory look at the wreckage in the various kibbutz communities that were attacked that day should raise questions in the mind of any good reporter. Were Palestinian militants in a position to actually inflict physical damage to that degree and extent with the kind of light weapons they carried?
And if not, who else was in a position to wreak such havoc other than Israel?
The BBC has repeated every lie that Israel’s propagandists have conjured up in order to excuse Israel’s genocidal orgy in Gaza. Instead you preferred to faithfully follow the Israeli narrative on October 7. See for example Israel Gaza: Hamas raped and mutilated women on 7 October, BBC hears and Hamas planned sexual violence as weapon of war – Israeli campaigner.
A counter-narrative such as that from Mondoweiss’s article Despite lack of evidence, allegations of Hamas ‘mass rape’ are fueling Israeli genocide in Gaza has made no impression on the BBC’s coverage.
We should be grateful that the Palestinian armed resistance in Gaza is taking such a toll of the Zionist SS militias that have wreaked such havoc. Like the German SS, their Israeli equivalent are more at home killing children and doctors than confronting armed guerrillas which is why they are having to cover up their real casualties, something which the BBC has also not reported on. The BBC has totally failed to cover the actions of the Palestinian resistance so the increasing number of Israeli casualties must come as something of a surprise.
The BBC has repeated the Israeli lie that Hamas operates from the hospitals of Gaza. There was just one exception to this – Ros Atkins BBC Fact Investigation into Israel’s justification for its attack on Al Shifa Hospital.
The BBC has always been the Voice of the British Establishment since the days when it refused to allow the Archbishop of Canterbury to broadcast during the 1926 General Strike because he favoured compromise. The Catholic Archbishop of Westminster was though allowed to broadcast because he held the strike to be sinful.
What the BBC fails to tell you about October 7:
It is journalistic malpractice for the media to still be repeating so credulously the Israeli military’s account of that day. My latest: https://t.co/EJKNpYYzUM pic.twitter.com/lp6DoBrZWG
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 2, 2023
As the BBC’s own history admits:
During the strike Reith vetted almost all the bulletins, while also dealing with the political aspects. He decided to refuse the Archbishop of Canterbury’s request to appeal for an end to the strike; but allowed reporting of TUC statements. He helped Baldwin write a speech to the nation, which was delivered from Reith’s home in Westminster.
Lord Reith’s own diary recalls a cabinet meeting on 11 May which took the view that the government should be able to say
that they did not commandeer [the BBC], but they know that they can trust us not to be really impartial”.
And this remains the situation today. Through control of the license fee and appointments such as yours, the government can maintain a pretence that the BBC is independent.
When the Miners were confronting the government its Director-General was writing the Prime Minister’s speech! And nothing had changed when it came to the Miner’s strike of 1984-5. During the Orgreave clashes it reversed footage of police attacks on the miners to show the miners attacking first. In 1991 the BBC apologised for having ‘inadvertently reversed’ the footage.
This was about as inadvertent as the editing out of laughter at Boris Johnson when he responded to a question about the importance of politicians telling the truth.
We have come to expect that the BBC will faithfully follow the establishment narrative whether it is on Israel, strikes or any other issue involving a challenge to the rich and powerful.
However what the BBC is not entitled to do is to expect us to pay for what is an Establishment propaganda station.
As the late, great John Pilger, who was banned from appearing on the BBC in his later years, said
the BBC is and has been the most refined propaganda service in the world.’
In his 2010 documentary, The War You Don’t See, John confronted Fran Unsworth, head of newsgathering at BBC News and ITV News editor in chief, David Mannion, on the failure of their reporters to challenge the lies that had come from government and intelligence sources without which the Iraq war could never have been prosecuted.
It was the collusion of the corporate media in refusing to challenge the misinformation from the Foreign Office and US State Department that led to the death of over a million Iraqis.
The same is true today. Israel could not get away with genocide in Gaza if the BBC and the corporate media did not give credence to their lies and excuses. It is as if you would have both sided Hitler’s claim that the invasion of Poland was a reaction to Poland’s attack on Germany.
BBC News, by giving credence to Israel’s absurd lies and cavorting with its propagandists, have blood on their hands. What you call ‘balance’ is neutrality between right and wrong and you always manage to come out on the wrong side.
In the Russia/Ukraine war you have had no difficulty taking sides, erasing the history of NATO’s provocations and its expansion into Eastern Europe in the process. This despite the promises made to Gorbachev that there would be no expansion.
But when it comes to Palestine you adopt a fake neutrality which in practice means you treat Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank as if it was a normal state of affairs. You never refer, unlike Al Jazeera, to the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied. You treat Israel’s racist colonial police force as if it was Dixon of Dock Green.
As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the great hero of the South Africa struggle against Apartheid, which the BBC did nothing to help when it continued to broadcast South Africa’s all-white cricket team, said:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
Tony Greenstein
