The BBC of course fails in any of its recent ‘news’ items to report any of this. Worse still is its coverage of the actual reality on the ground which the blockade on the delivery of fuel, food and medical supplies has created. Rather than talk to Palestinians, instead it quotes Israeli sources who of course downplay the disaster caused by Israel’s illegal collective punishment of 1.5 million people (out of the eleven articles hyperlinked to the original, only one gives us a picture of life in the Gaza strip, ‘Gaza economy crushed by embargo’ (20 January, 2008). Elsewhere, in another BBC piece we read the following,

‘… many Palestinians believe that the rocket fire has simply prompted a collective punishment directed against all of Gaza's residents’, — ‘Propaganda battle over Gaza plight’, 21 January, 2008

once again echoing the central BBC propaganda line that rather than collective punishment being a war crime, it’s presented to us as just being someone’s opinion, not a fact but a ‘belief’.

‘Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.’ — Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949, Part III : Status and treatment of protected persons, Section I : Provisions common to the territories of the parties to the conflict and to occupied territories, Article 33’

Indeed, in going through all the links found with the initial article, I searched in vain for a Palestinian view of the situation aside from brief quotes from two of the officials who work at the power plant and a single person from one hospital. But there are no Palestinian views on the nature of the illegal Israeli actions in sealing off the Gaza Strip from the outside world, and this is on top of the already illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip in 1967. The BBC have simply airbrushed Israel’s war crimes out of the picture.

Contrast this with the many quotes from Israelis as well as the BBC’s incessant articulation of the Israeli point-of-view, eg ‘Israel to ease blockade of Gaza’ or ‘Propaganda battle over Gaza plight’.

Only one article actually presents the dire situation in the Gaza Strip ‘Gaza economy crushed by embargo’, but again fails to point out the illegal nature of the blockade. Indeed, the word ‘illegal’ is never used and only once did I come across the word ‘crime’ (but not war crime).

Instead, the entire situation is presented to the reader as merely an ‘humanitarian crisis’ which in any case is all Hamas’ fault for firing home-made rockets “that seldom do much damage”, whereas the IOF is using tanks, helicopter gun-ships, F16s, remote-controlled armed drones, chemical weapons, indeed the vast array of a mad scientist’s wet dream against a defenceless, imprisoned and starved population of 1.5 million people.

‘No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. — ‘Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949, Part III : Status and treatment of protected persons, Section III: Occupied Territories, Article 53

One BBC story, ‘Gaza's rocket threat to Israel’ goes into great detail describing the Quassam rocket referred to above but there’s not single reference to what kinds of weapons and their effects that the IOF is using, nor the vast disparity between casualties, with Palestinians getting murdered virtually every day, the vast majority of them defenceless civilians. By contrast, if a single Israeli is killed it makes the headlines (a total of eleven Israelis have been killed by Palestinian rockets according to the BBC compared to the hundreds of Palestinians whose deaths rarely get a mention). I wait in vain for a BBC story headed ‘Israel’s rocket threat to the Occupied Territories’.

What explains this indifference to the lives of Palestinians by the BBC? How is it possible for those who ‘report’ events in the Occupied Territories to ignore the reality of the situation?

Of course the inbuilt racism of Western journalism explains in part this indifference but far more important is the necessity for the BBC to rationalise the British government’s unconditional support of a racist and murderous settler regime which can only be accomplished by dehumanising Palestinian lives, which in turn makes international law simply not applicable to them. They are, it seems, beyond the Pale.

Note
All references to applicable international laws quoted can be found at ‘Collective Punishment’.

 

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