Holding off

Discussing the BBC’s left-wing bias is mainstream now. It’s a given. I can’t be bothered to reenact the dead parrot sketch, but I’m starting to feel that this blog might cease to be. Its time is up. It needs to be an ex-blog. There’s no future in bringing up examples of bias that a hundred Twits have already Tweeted.

However, here is one example of the BBC’s abject double standards. 

Not that the BBC made much of the news that the UAE is to normalise relations with Israel, but when they did report it, their primary concern was that the ‘holding off” was only temporary and the “Annexation” part of the deal was “still on the table”. 

If you didn’t already know this, the new arrangement is that Israel will hold off its proposal to bring the parts of East Jerusalem where Jews already live under Israeli law in exchange for normal (cordial) diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE.

“Oh”, said Frank Gardiner. “Israel can still annex the West Bank if it wants to!” He’s not happy.  “Annexation is still on the table! What’s so good about that?”

Compare that for one moment if you would, with the BBC’s undiluted enthusiasm for Obama’s Iran deal. 

In case you’ve forgotten, that was an arrangement whereby Iran would hold off from developing its nuclear arsenal, (the one with which it intends to obliterate Israel) for ten years, the bribe being in exchange for the reinstatement of monies formerly withheld by way of (fully justified) sanctions.

 “Oh!”  said the BBC, “what a good plan! That’s ten whole years of not obliterating Israel, and the good part is that obliterating Israel with the nuclear arsenal that we’ve paid for is still on the table!  What’s not to like?”

Is bribing one's enemy to ‘hold off” a good thing, or a bad thing? Depends on who’s doing the holding-off and whether the instigator is Obama or Trump.

Another worrying aspect of the BBC’s coverage of Lebanon concerns Hezbollah.  The BBC’s reporting of the explosion (and of the political turmoil) in Lebanon hardly mentioned Hezbollah. After all, Hezbollah has infiltrated Lebanese politics to an alarming degree; the explosion occurred in the Hezbollah-controlled docks. Has the BBC ever reported anything about the 150,000 Iran/Hezbollah rockets pointing towards Israel? 

One must conclude that the BBC’s overtly pro-Palestinian advocacy makes it sympathetic to the Iranian Ayatollahs and hostile to the Gulf States, the US and of course Israel. The BBC’s obviously negative attitude towards ‘normalisation’ between Israel and the UAE simply amounts to the BBC opposing peace. 

 

Rumour-mongering from the BBC's Middle East editor

More from the BBC's BBC's Specialist Disinformation and Social Media Reporter Marianna Spring last night: 

And yet (h/t Terry), barely an hour earlier the "partisan news site" sharing one of the three "unfounded claims" she mentions - the claim the devastating explosion in Beirut might have been the result of an Israeli attack - was the BBC itself in the shape of its obsessively anti-Israeli BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen on Radio 4's Six O'Clock News:

A BBC journalist at the scene reported dead bodies and severe damage, enough to decommission the port - a huge blow in itself to Lebanon which imports almost all its needs. Smoke was already rising when the building was vaporized. Windows were broken across the city. Some local reports have suggested it was an accident at a fireworks storage warehouse, but many other theories have emerged including an Israeli attack. The Israeli military said it did not comment on foreign reports. Tensions in the heavily armed border region between Israel and Lebanon are high. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia and political party, threatened vengeance after one of its fighters was killed in an Israeli air strike in Syria. Israel has accused Hezbollah of mounting cross border attacks. If the explosion relates to the wider Middle Eastern conflict it's a serious escalation. If it is an industrial accident it could be another symptom of Lebanon's overwhelming political and economic crisis. all coming on top of a serious outbreak of Covid-19. That in itself will cause more national despair in a country that some local analysts fear it is collapsing under the weight of its problems.

As Marianna Spring says, that surely risks spreading misinformation. Both Hezbollah and Israel have ruled it out as an Israeli attack and the Israel government has offered to help Lebanon recover from this terrible catastrophe. Why on earth would he spread rumours of an Israeli attack? Isn't that astonishingly reckless and irresponsible from the BBC's Middle East editor so soon after a devastating event?