Mixed feelings

This is Orla Geurin’s report, and the topic of BBC Watch’s recent post.  Orla  gives the Palestinian side of the story. 

But not all of it. 

Shafi Halabi, the killer’s father is grief-stricken but unapologetic, Orla tells us. He says he feels pride and sorrow. As Hadar says, it’s a sympathetic portrait.  Here’s the bit that the BBC didn’t feature, from Palwatch.org:

“I speak while I am blessing my son on his martyrdom death and I am proud that he died to defend the women of Palestine. He avenged the women carrying out Ribat (religious conflict/war over land claimed to be Islamic) at the Al-Aqsa mosque.
He avenged them. He avenged them against the impure enemies. He avenged them and made everyone lift his head up high. May he find favour in the eyes of Allah, praise Allah.”

I wonder why he didn’t say that to Orla. Or if he did, why she didn’t show it in her film. Could it be that it makes him seem like a religious fanatic? An Islamist extremist of the type we're supposed to disapprove of?      Might that lose him a little of that empathy that the BBC works so hard to foster.?

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"Muhanned Halabi killed 2 Israelis, Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Ahron Bennett, and injured Bennett’s wife Adele, and their 2 year old son in a stabbing attack in the Old City of Jerusalem on Oct 3rd 2015. Following the attack he was shot and killed by Israeli security forces. Prior to his attack, in a post to his private Facebook page, the terrorist referred to recent terror attacks as part of a “third intifada,” and said that it was a response to Israel’s actions at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and that the Palestinian people would not “succumb to humiliation.” This is a reference to the PA libel that Israel is plotting to take over and destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and to the PA’s portrayal of Jews praying on the Temple Mount as “an invasion of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”