BBC: sympathy for the terrorists

On Wednesday, the BBC's Gaza correspondent, Alan Johnston, ran a highly sympathetic account of the jailed terrorists who have been elected to the Palestinian parliament.

The Hamas-led Palestinian government was inaugurated on Wednesday, but not all those elected to the new parliament are able to take up their seats.

For some, the best they can do is have a life-sized photograph of themselves propped up in their place.

About 10 members are represented in this way. They are absent because they are in Israeli jails.

As the parliament's debates rage, the silent presence of the photographs is meant to serve as a constant reminder of those Palestinians behind bars.

He managed to suggest that many of them had been jailed by Israel for apparently trivial offences:

But down the decades, the detentions have gone much further than simply rounding up would-be bombers.

They have been used to suppress resistance in the occupied territories.

Before the Oslo peace accords, flying the Palestinian flag was enough to get you jailed.

You could end up behind bars for displaying a poster of Yasser Arafat or participating in a demonstration or throwing stones at soldiers.

Possession of a weapon in the occupied territories can now earn you several months in prison.

And so can membership of the governing party, Hamas, which calls for the destruction of Israel.

True, he does acknowledge that amongst those jailed might be those who plotted suicide attacks, and that the imprisonments might have saved many Israeli lives.

But the overall message comes across as suggesting that imprisonment is the routine lot of Palestinian men, and these elected politicians have done no worse than agitate or perhaps plan a little resistance.

So let's consider just what some of the jailed Palestinian legislators have been banged up for.

The most famous is Marwan Barghouti, the leader of the Tanzim and the Al-Aqsah Martyrs Brigade terrorists of the Fatah movement, convicted by an Israeli court of five counts of murder, including one of a Greek Orthodox priest, and one of attempted murder, involving a failed suicide car bomb.

Then there's Sheikh Jamal Abu Al-Haijah, convicted of organizing a 2002 terrorist attack on Safad which murdered nine Israelis.

And I've already posted about the terrorism track record of Ahmed Sa'adat who organized the assassination of Israeli Minister Rehavam Ze'evi and boasts about his promises to "destroy" the project of Israeli existence.

Yes, that does sound very different from the innocent-sounding offences Alan Johnson cited. I wonder if the BBC would write about the terrorists jailed in Iraq for their murderous attacks on British and US troops and ordinary Iraqis in these terms.

Then Johnson proclaims that these men are heroes to the Palestinian people. He quotes an "analyst", Toufic Haddad as offering some highly sophisticated "analysis":

Analyst Toufic Hadad says electing prisoners to parliament "is a fitting symbol for what the Palestinian people truly are - an imprisoned nation, fighting for their freedom".

That reads as if Alan Johnson had actually interviewed Toufic Haddad.

Possibly he did. But by a remarkable coincidence, the quoted words seem to be identical with those written by Toufic Haddad in an article that was published in Counterpunch, notorious for its readiness to publish grotesque anti-semitic conspiracy stories:

the existence of 15 prisoners as the face of the Palestinian political leadership is a fitting symbol for what the Palestinian people truly are - an imprisoned nation, fighting from their freedom.

So our licence fees are paying for sloppy journalism as well as apologetics for terrorism.

And if you want to know more about just what sort of "analyst" is Toufic Haddad, now living in San Francisco,  here's some extracts from something he produced earlier, for an interview with a journalist of Socialist Worker in 2003. That it should have been Socialist Worker is no accident, given the turgid and gloriously erroneous crude marxist cliches he spouts:

It’s not clear that this has been entirely thought out yet, but my guess is that there will be an internalization of the lessons that the anti-imperialist Arab camp is accumulating.

First and foremost among these lessons is the conclusion that the undemocratic, pro-Western, crony-capitalist model has to be done away with. Second, there’s a realization that the alternative embodied in the "bin Laden approach" is not a desirable alternative.

I therefore expect to see the growth of a movement that breaks both with the corrupt Arab regimes as well as the dead-end strategy of al-Qaeda, though this will take years to develop and formulate. Unfortunately, here the weakness of genuine left forces in the Arab world is laid bare, greatly impeding the formation of a current that understands the current structure of oppression and exploitation and how to advance an alternative to it.

How is it that the BBC selects someone like Haddad as an "analyst" and does so without giving its audience any insight into just what sort of analysis he plugs?

Comments

[Neal]

Judy,

Chog semeach!!!

How is it that the British people allow the BBC to rant on without a peep? In the US, there would be round the clock protests and witholding of money, not merely a few bloggers noting some rather non-neutral reporting.

Why not the same in Britain? Why is it that no one demands the end of overt bias as the cost for public financing?

[Eamonn]

On "The World Tonight" last night, there was an absolutely awful report from Gaza, concentrating on Palestinian victims (children) of Israeli shell fire. The idea that the shell fire was undertaken by Israel to stop rockets being fired into Israel was given scant attention,whilst of course Israeli victims of the rockets were not mentioned.

[piers]

"The idea that the shell fire was undertaken by Israel to stop rockets being fired into Israel was given scant attention"

Eamonn, Much as i may sympathise with the victims of the rockets, a horrible and indiscriminate attck on civilians, retaliation with shellfire in a civilian area is nothing but a revenge attack which has no hope of targeting the rocket firers, long gone, and will only be likely to kill children and innocents. According to the geneva convention it is the responsibilty of armed forces to avoid indiscriminate weapons in civilian areas, much as US/UK forces are effectively committing warcrimes everytime they cluster bomb another civilian suburb 'to stop insurgency activity'

[Neal]

piers,

Note the words "civilian areas." Were the really Israelis firing willy nilly or, to be more exact, into such areas, there would be a far greater number of deaths than have occurred. So, you are factually mistaken. The fact is that the Israelis have behaved responsibly, given the provocation.

I also note that the Geneva Convention applies to the Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza. They fire rockets at the Israelis and toward - and when they are "lucky," into - "civilian areas." This is an important fact that you fail to mention.

Here is my suggestion, since you make a truly phoney comparison between Israeli and the coalition in Iraq: Let us make the real comparison.

Who is doing a better job of following the Geneva Convention, Israel or the coalition countries in Iraq? Is it even a close case? Even after Falluja and the many hundreds of civilians killed, evidently in response to 4 gruesome deaths? I do not think so. I do not think it is even a close call. Israel, by far, has better followed the law.

I should add: I think the Israelis are complying far, far, far better with the Convention than are the Palestinian Arabs. After all, the entire strategy of the Palestinian Arabs is to massacre civilians - the very opposite of a legal war strategy -. That strategy is, by any standards, illegal and out and out illegitimate.

That bears mentioning since, to Israeli ears, those who see only Israel's violations are hypocritical. Such critics of Israel say hardly a word about the Palestinian Arab war strategy, which is an entirely illegal, illegitimate and immoral strategy.

Think about it.

[piers]

Oh dear Neal.

I made a quick and simple point, that it is the onus of forces not to target civilians. I began by deploring the indiscriminate rocket attacks and also find suicide bombing equally pugnacious, having narrowly missed out on my own demise here in the london bombings and my sister in law lost her best friend in them.

It is your statement that is full of caveats and half-truths and putting words into my mouth 'willy-nilly?!'. 'Behaved responsibly given the provocation' ie its ok to bomb civilians 'cos they did first.

The 'phoney' comparison is also laughable. Falluja was a war crime by any measure, but then so was Jenin. Does 50 civilian deaths compared to 1000s make it any less so. IDF soldiers regularly shoot at stone throwing children, not to mention reporters, aid workers and an merican protestor standing in front of a bulldozer.

"They are bad too" can never justify crimes. As I said i will always deplore the use of murder, but I find it tragic whoever commits it, and cries of we're not quite as bad as they are is a pretty weak argument, especially in the light of palestinian civilian deaths during the second intifada doubling that of israeli.

Perhaps a knee-jerk attack to any criticism is not the way forward. P{erhaps an open agenda of admitting strategic, tactical and moral errors may be more productive in the long term.

[Neal]

pier,

You write: "Does 50 civilian deaths compared to 1000s make it any less so."

First, 50 civilians were not killed. Most of those killed were fighters. The number of civilians kiled is rather much smaller. Second, the Israeli lost numerous soldiers - I believe 23 -. Third, what the Israelis did is now taught in military acadamies, such as West Point, as a paradign of how to fight an urban battle in an ethical manner - which is exactly the opposite of what you suggest.

I reiterate: the comparison between Jenin and Fallujah is phoney, exactly like I said.