Going down well (so far)

I haven't seen much of the BBC's coverage of the Trump administration's military strike on a Syrian regime airbase but I'm getting a strong sense from the Twitter feeds of many familiar BBC reporter that the US military action is going down well with the (duly impartial) BBC.

Here's a small selection, beginning with the the BBC's Washington bureau chief, Paul Danahar:

...a point that Newsnight presenter James O'Brien has already taken on board: 

Even Katty Kay is positive about the strikes:

And for the first time ever, I've actually seen BBC reporters re-tweeting criticism of Stop The War types opposed to US military action - including Hugh Sykes:

...and John Sweeney:

John Sweeney is also among those BBC reporters re-tweeting Arab appreciation for President Trump's actions (and not - for once - re-tweeting Arab criticism):

...as is Katty Kay:

Others, like Kim Ghattas, are following their earlier tweets criticising the lack of action (by persons unspecified) over the last few years:

...with attacks on those critical of last night's strike:

Others are tweeting about editorials that back the action (and not tweeting about editorials which criticise the action), such as Ian Pannell: 

...while others are placing a positive gloss on the politics of the military strike, such as Barbara Plett:

Others are even hoping that President Trump might go even further and do something even better, such as Laura Bicker:

The BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, has tweeted nothing about the strikes yet. Nor has the BBC's World Affairs editor John Simpson.

How much of any of this is feeding into the BBC's actual reporting I can't yet say (as I've not had time to check it out), but a definite BBC point of view is emerging on Twitter. 

There are also, naturally, plenty of digs at Donald Trump for his past flat-out refusal to back military action in Syria, though even here - as with Quentin Somerville - there are surprising defences of Trump:

As for my Twitter feed in general, it's been fascinating seeing nearly all the anti-Trump types backing the strikes and nearly all the pro-Trump types opposing them - and Trump. 

It's all gone topsy-turvy today.

Why the BBC's biased coverage of Israel matters

The Times reported today that Amnesty International (famously no supporter of Israel) has accused Hamas of being responsible for the deaths of 11 Gazan children at the Al-Shati refugee camp on July 28, 2014:

Misfired Hamas rockets’ killed children in Gaza

A rocket salvo that killed 11 Gazan children and hit a hospital on a Muslim religious holiday was the work of Palestinian militants hitting their own people, a report has found, in a damning indictment of Hamas’s conduct during last summer’s war with Israel.

The explosion at the Al-Shati refugee camp on July 28, which killed the children buying sweets on the first day of Eid ul Fitr, was the result of misfired rockets by Hamas, Amnesty International concluded.

Hamas blamed Israel for the bombing at the time, but a relation of one of dead child said that Palestinian militants went to the scene and tried to hide the evidence of their involvement.

“I saw the body of the rocket [and] I knew it was a local one,” the family member told The Times. “Some people came and hid it on the spot — however, it was really hot.”

He said that he held Hamas, as governors of Gaza, responsible but that no one from the group had ever visited the family or apologised. Two adults also died and another 19 were injured. 

That tragedy was widely blamed on Israel at the time, despite the Israeli government's prompt offering of counter-evidence absolutely refuting the claim.

Amnesty has now endorsed the Israeli government's version. 

As BBC Watch notes, the impact of this one news story - extensively reported on the media outlet that most British people use to get their news, the BBC - was so strong that the CST noted a spike in UK anti-Semitic attacks in its immediate aftermath. 

Did the BBC help create that anti-Semitic zeitgeist?

That's quite a charge, but it's a reasonable one to make.

Please judge for yourselves by watching this short BBC report from Ian Pannell - a report I remember seeing at the time: 

If anyone wants a single concrete example of BBC News being blatantly biased against Israel - and why that matters - I'd say that report provides it.

It's a piece of flagrantly emotional reporting: suffering children, suffering parents, suffering BBC reporter. It's unequivocally one-sided. It amplifies Palestinian claims - and downright lies - without questioning them. It fails to provide any context. It avoids wondering if Hamas intimidation might lie behind some of the claims against Israel. It seeks to undermine the Israeli case by (a) not giving it and (b) featuring Palestinian voices sneering at it.

Its reporter clearly believes that Israel did it. And he didn't hold back on projecting that feeling, did he?

Frankly, it's just an awful piece of reporting - made all the more awful by being so moving.

And, given its prominence, lots and lots of British people will have seen it. And lots of British people would have been appalled by it. And lots of British people will have blamed Israel for it. And some may have gone on anti-Israel protests because of it. And some may even have attacked Jewish targets (here in the UK) because of it.

Re-watching that report now, several months on, knowing what we now know (and which many knew at the time), doesn't this show that the BBC's reporting of Israel is clearly, demonstrably faulty and irresponsible?

*****

P.S. Unusually, the BBC's most Israel-unfriendly Twitter users seem very quiet about Amnesty's report and the media's coverage of it today. Jon Donnison is clearly keeping his counsel. So is Jeremy Bowen. Where are they?