The BBC yesterday: Why BBC doesn’t call Hamas militants ‘terrorists’ – John Simpson
I wrote the following for the “Biased BBC” blog in 2006. Depressing to think that seventeen years and God knows how many thousands of terrorist murders later, I can repost it unchanged and, bar one or two place names and the reference to the London bombings of 7/7/2005 being ‘a year ago’, it is as relevant now as it was then.
But … you talk like war crimes are a bad thing.
I was listening to the ten o’clock news with half an ear and I caught Jeremy Bowen saying something like if Israel can’t prove that bombing the bridges in Lebanon was justified “then it’s a war crime.”
I don’t get it, BBC. So what if it is. Why do you care?
Note, I’m not asking why you, the readers of this site, might care – or you, the BBC audience, or you the Lebanese or you the Israelis or you the Palestinians or you the world. You all might have many and different opinions on whether it’s a war crime in law, or whether it’s a war crime in the sight of God – but I’m not asking you.
I’m talking to you, the British Broadcasting Corporation. When Hamas and then Hizbollah attacked Israel you never troubled to tell us the legal status of the acts. When suicide bombers killed Israelis at pizza parlours and bar mitzvahs you never gave us any of this war crime schtick, although attacks targeted at non-combatants are the epitome of a war crime. “Terrorist” is a term with meaning in international law, yet when bombers murdered your own countrymen in London a year ago you were so anxious to avoid being judgemental that you had someone go through what your reporters had written in the heat and pity of the moment, carefully replacing the word “terrorist” with the word “bomber.”
(God, what a shameful job. While they were still scrubbing the blood off the streets and the rails, some hack was scrubbing out any suggestion that the killers might have been bad people. Was it a junior hack under orders or a senior hack doing his own dirty work? Or were you all sent slinking back to your desks each to expunge his own words? I’d really like to know, but whichever it was you were anxious to avoid any talk of “crimes” then.)
“Bomber” not “terrorist”: by your own account your only job is to describe projectiles hitting meat. So what’s up now, with your “war crimes” and your “Israel kills Lebanese civilians”? You don’t need these fancy legal concepts, as if it mattered to you whether they were civilians or not. By your own stated standards moral distinctions between killings are “a barrier rather than an aid to understanding.”
I just don’t get it.
John Simpson is a personally brave man, as is Jeremy Bowen. It makes their use of language harder to excuse.
Sure you do. Not journalism, but advocacy. They chose a side.
I don’t understand this reasoning, in what reality being brave denies the possibility of them being evil?
‘Terrorists’ does sound like an under-statement, when dealing with genocidal mass murderers.
A hard-hitting piece by Natalie, all the same.
It’ only a war crime if you lose the war. Just ask Curtis LeMay.
Luckylucky
Simpson’s bravery in covering war zones etc at least makes me wonder why he can’t see the moral issues, and be bolder.
Of course like many supposedly “sophisticated” people he has taken the world weary and easy way out and adopts a “plague on both houses” option.
I had a quick look at their web site. They called Joe Biden “President” Biden. Isn’t that taking a side on a controversial issue? Or is the data that he is President undeniably clear?
I also can’t believe they are constantly putting forward the very one sided view that the earth is spherical. Constantly siding with that Columbus guy. Damn europeans.
You can tell by the language they use whose side they’re on, let alone the double-standards applied.
Same crap went on with regards to the US; we got attacked from mosques and other cultural sites (war crime, for those ignorant), found weapons stored there (another one…), had un-uniformed combatants indistinguishable from civilians shooting at us from among civilians, and then we were the bad guys when any of those civilians or “cultural sites” got hurt or damaged…
The Israelis are the only ones who have to uphold the law of war, apparently. Same-same with the US and other Western nations.
What we should have been doing throughout the so-called “War on Terror” was upholding the law, period. Which would have meant military tribunals and executions for all those captured terrorists we let loose to form ISIS when Obama came into office. That’s the smart way of doing these things; don’t continually play catch-and-release, like you’re running some kind of fishing tournament. Catch ’em in the act? Can prove they’re operating unlawfully? Execute them. Period.
Hamas demands that others follow the rules that they don’t, as does the media. Were any of those Israeli women and children who were set on fire and burned alive afforded any of the rights demanded by the Hamasniks and their next-of-kin? Nope. So, they don’t get any, either.
Personally, I’m all for treating this as an “eye-for-an-eye”, visited tenfold upon the Arabs of Gaza. Herd them into a corner, cut off their water, food, and electricity. You want to live in the 7th Century, insofar as the law of war goes? Fine; you live in that century fully, to include technology, lifestyle, and medicine.
The next Israeli doctor that treats an Arab from Gaza is a damn fool; you’ve offered them humanity and charity for the last sixty years. Let them live as they like, wallowing in their own filth like the animals they behave as. If I were in charge of Israeli operations, I’d bottle those bastards up into the worst parts of Gaza, fence it off, and then tell them it’s root, hog, or die… They’re now subsistence farmers just like their great-grandfathers were, before the Jews showed up and starting buying wasteland from the Turks. If they can’t make a go of it, too bad, so sad… Shoulda thought of that before you started killing women and kids for grins and giggles.
If I were in charge of Israel, I’d start out by saying that every single dead Israeli had a price, in terms of land: You kill one, you lose a square kilometer or so of territory. Forever. At the rate Hamas and Hezbollah are going, the West Bank, Gaza, and most of southern Lebanon would likely be Israeli in a few years. They just can’t help themselves, or live like decent, normal human beings.
The number of Jews thrown out of Arab and other Islamic states is about equal to the number of Arabs who fled Israeli territory during the war in ’48. Only difference is, the Jews didn’t sit in squalor bemoaning the facts of life; they got with the program, and made productive lives for themselves. The Arabs? Did what they typically do, and turned the territories they were on into hellholes. I have precisely zero sympathy for them.
If you look at the satellite photos of Israel vs. the rest of the region, it’s amazingly clear who has worked and cherished the land. It ain’t the Arabs; the borders of Israel look a lot like the stark difference between North and South Korea at night, only with green during the day. Give Israel back to the Arabs? It’ll all be desert in a few years, again. That’s the sort of people they are.
Sad thing is, I really haven’t liked a lot of the Israelis I’ve met. Most of them are assholes, but they’re assholes I’d rather have as neighbors than the Arabs. You generally don’t have to worry about an Israeli blowing your house up or burning it down, and they don’t rape your daughters because they’re dressed “provocatively”.
As an aside, Sky News is reporting that four Jewish schools in London have closed their doors to protect the safety of the children. The Sky report does not mention the “terrorist” word in connection to Hamas, but it does, to be fair, spell out the number of attacks/attempted attacks on Jewish citizens and their properties in the UK. Schoolkids are, it reported, too scared to take public transport.
As a Brit, I am ashamed. The absolute fucking state of it.
Kirk, I hope and expect that Mossad, and other agencies of the Israeli state, are as we write working through lists of facial recognition materials to track down and eliminate the killers, and for that matter, their leaders and other big shots. One of them is in Qatar. His days are hopefully numbered.
Listening yesterday to TalkTV, the interviewer asked an Israeli woman who managed to flee the terrorists what “message you have for Hamas if you were able to talk to them?” She replied, cold as ice: “Goodbye.” You could have heard a pin drop. The interviewer looked visibly shocked because he got a blunt response, not the usual emotional stuff that such questions are designed to elicit.
It is not just the BBC.
It is also the “right wing” GB News and Talk T.V.
“Israel must not kill civilians”.
“It is impossible for the civilians to go to South Gaza – the United Nations says so!”
So Israel must surrender and be exterminated – if it “must not kill civilians” and “it is impossible for the civilians to move”.
Tobias Ellwood MP is what GB News thinks of as an unbiased expert.
I have said it several times on this site and I now say it again.
If Israel does what must be done, Israel will find that she has no real friends.
Many years ago, I read an article in a serious publication (name now long forgotten) that that land never belonged to the Palestinians. Allegedly, for hundreds of years, it was the province of Judea, occupied and ruled by the Romans. Fed up of continual attacks and rebellions by Jewish activists, the Roman governor of Judea, Hadrian, he who later had the wall built in the North of England, asked who were the traditional enemies of the Jews. Told it was the Phillistines, he changed the name of the province to Phillistinia which, in time, became Palestine.
Whether this is true, or not, you just admit it is a terrific story, and explains, to a point, why today’s situation is as it is. I look forward to someone more knowledgeable than me correcting this.
This is new:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/13_basic_facts_to_defend_israel.html
Jonathan Pierce wrote:
I don’t see what the big deal is. Just a reminder that per Mayor Khan, religious violence, school attacks, and your basic politically-focused terrorism are just part and parcel of living in a major city.
Heydrich was a brave and very talented man. The dark side is not composed exclusively of cowards and stumblebums.
Though it has its fair share.
Which leaves you marveling at the essential lack of sense among those who voted for him, whether numpty native Brits who wanted the frisson of political correctness, or the various immigrants who wanted one of “their own” running things.
Not too damn bright, any of them.
Very nearly as stupid as the average Biden/Obama/Clinton voter… I mean, they all say clearly what they mean to do, like “fundamentally transform the nation”, so why do they fall for it?
Of course, there are abundant idiots that fall for the various Nigerian Prince cons, sooooo… I guess we all expect a bit too much.
I can understand if you are saying that physical courage should make that person more capable of resisting his peers pro terror extremists. That implies he do no think like them in first place.
Note also that we are talking about BBC a political neo marxist organisation in many of their departments that have at least one treasonous episode against the British forces in Falklands War.
lucklucky said:
Not to take up defending the BBC, but… I am gonna have to point out that there’s another explanation: They’re idiots.
Anyone remember Geraldo Rivera’s sterling performance in Iraq?
As well, the embedded journalists we had in Iraq were incredibly obtuse; the crap they pulled during train-up? And, once over there? Dear God… The only one of them with any sense whatsoever was the cameraman. The rest were just… Dumb as bricks about anything you told them. Adding insult to injury, anything you told them during an interview would get distorted; they were worse than toddlers, in terms of selective hearing. You’d tell them one thing, clearly, they’d pick out the “hot button” words, edit accordingly, and then you’d be broadcast as advocating for war crimes… When confronted with the distortions, they’d claim that they “misunderstood”, but the consistent way they would slant it all led me to suspect that they might not have been as stupid as they behaved.
On the other hand… Complete lack of survival instincts, once in Iraq. It was like Yellowstone tourists with the bears and the buffalo… “Let’s get a picture!!!” Uhmmmm… Dude? WE’RE GETTING SHOT AT FROM THAT LOCATION!!! GET BACK IN THE TRUCKS!!!
The information that i have is that BBC disclosed a forthcoming land attack and the position of an unit that was to participate.
They also referred to the “British” like if they are not have British in the name. I wonder when they will take the first B from BBC – i guess when people are not anymore forced to pay them.
I repeat it is not just the BBC – and the words “terrorist” or “Hamas” are a diversion from the main matter.
In what way does the “Palestinian Authority” (Fatah) differ in fundamental theology, and it is THEOLOGY that this war is about, from “Hamas”?
It is the school textbooks of the “Palestinian Authority” that teach that infidels are pigs.
The international community teach that killing Islamic civilians is wrong (which it is), but they also demand that Islamic civilians NOT move out of Gaza city.
I repeat – that means the de facto policy of the international community is that Israel surrender and be exterminated.
That is what a policy of “demanding Islamic civilians move is Ethnic Cleansing, it is a crime against International Law – against the rules based international order” means, it means the defeat and extermination of Israel.
As for the British and French (especially French) television stations denouncing the “Ethnic Cleansing” of telling Islamic civilians to move out of a war-zone – well, the way demographics are going in many Western countries, you are going to find out what “Ethnic Cleansing” really means, what your precious “Diversity” leads to – then the smug looks will leave your faces, when you find out that it is not just Jews who are “pigs and dogs” – it is Christians and atheists as well.
Let us hope that the people of Poland reject this genocidal insanity of the international community, of the rules based international order (with its mass rallies pushed by the social media companies in partnership with the American intelligence agencies), in the election and referendums this weekend.
Here are several examples of BBC using word terrorism and terrorist. So John Simpson is lying.
https://twitter.com/israel_advocacy/status/1712559973945782763
How the BBC will give the “news” of this attack on refugee convoy ?
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1713241560752533662.html
1. Hamas may have just hit an evacuation route from northern Gaza with a VBIED, framing it as an Israeli air strike. This would be in line with previous actions and intentions.
2. Israeli air strike. Possible, but more unlikely, the explosion was primarily from gas canister(s) in the vehicle.
3. Random accident. Also a possibility, but it does take a bit of work to make an explosion that big without doing something very wrong.