Today: September 3, 2010

 

BBC’s Inaccurate Panorama

Posted: Wed 20th January 2010 5.34 PM  | Author: David Soakell

The BBC's Panorama programme this week once again proved just how biased the British Broadcasting Corporation have become. 

The documentary clearly distorted the Jewish history and rights to Jerusalem while promoting a one-sided and biased agenda.  

Many groups have been 'up-in-arms' this week over the Panorama programme, which focused on tensions in the area of eastern Jerusalem adjacent to the Old City.  One report by HonestReporting  stated, "Any pretence at balance is thrown out of the window as reporter Jane Corbin makes it clear that, under the BBC's own interpretation of international law, anything that Israel does in that part of the city is illegal, setting the tone for the entire 30 minute program." 

Thus, Israelis are presented as usurpers of Palestinian rights and property in eastern Jerusalem in a one-sided piece of agitprop. As analyst Robin Shepherd writes: "Rarely will you get a clearer insight into the flagrant institutional bias inside the world's most powerful media outlet than this. The slipperiness of the tactics employed, the unabashed censorship of vital historical context, and the blatant pursuit of a political agenda constituted a lesson in the techniques of modern day propaganda. It was something to behold."

In the HonestReporting article, they state, "The BBC's institutional anti-Israel bias often manifests itself not in what is broadcast but what is left out. Panorama is no different. The BBC reports events as though Jewish history in Jerusalem begins in 1948, thus omitting thousands of years of Jewish attachment to the city, including those areas of eastern Jerusalem that are the subject of Panorama's investigation.

"The only time that the eastern part of Jerusalem was exclusively Arab was between 1949 and 1967, and that was because Jordan occupied the area and forcibly expelled all the Jews.  As Mitchell Bard makes clear, before 1865, the entire population of Jerusalem lived behind the Old City walls (what today would be considered part of the eastern part of the city).

Later, the city began to expand beyond the walls because of population growth, and both Jews and Arabs began to build in new areas of the city.  By the time of partition, a thriving Jewish community was living in the eastern part of Jerusalem, an area that included the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. This area of the city also contains many sites of importance to the Jewish religion, including the City of David, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. In addition, major institutions like Hebrew University and the original Hadassah Hospital are on Mount Scopus — in eastern Jerusalem." 

We see on a daily basis how the Palestinian Authority [PA] continues to revise the history of Jerusalem. For example, Dr. Al-Tamimi, Chief Justice of the PA's religious court, said, Jerusalem is the religious, political and spiritual capital of Palestine - Jews have no right to it. Statements like this, and programmes like the BBC's Panorama back up the Palestinians propaganda which attempts to erase 3,000 years of Jewish history, enabling them to present Jerusalem as an exclusively Muslim city. 

If the EU, UN, and UK, along with US President Obama insists on saying areas of Jerusalem are occupied territory, it will be disastrous for us all.  God will not be mocked.  It is written in Zechariah 1:14-15: "...Thus saith the LORD of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy. And I am very sore displeased with the heathen that are at ease: for I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the affliction." 

Jerusalem is Israel's sovereign capital, and as the Jerusalem mayor, Nir Barkat, declared, "Israeli law does not discriminate between Jews and Arabs and between east and west Jerusalem. The demand to specifically halt construction for Jews is not legal in the US or in any other enlightened country... The attempt to demand this of Jerusalem constitutes a double standard and is unacceptable."

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