2 Damaged Palestinian Graves is Top News for BBC

[Teddy Bear]

When I consider the stories around the world that the BBC doesn't report, especially when it comes to offenses committed by militant and extreme Muslims. For example, look at this one covered today by The Daily Mail Saudi girl, 13, sentenced to 90 lashes after she took a mobile phone to school and then search BBC online to find any report of it - you won't. To get a better idea of how many other similar type atrocities they avoid making public visit this site - Jihad Watch.

So with all this going on in the world that receives no mention, they think a story where some graffiti was scrawled and 2 tombstones damaged in a Palestinian village you probably have never heard of, is not only worthy of reporting, but makes it to their headlines for the Middle East area. While it's still conjecture, it alleges an Israel group was responsible, which is why the BBC deems it worthy.

Palestinian graves found damaged after settlers visit

Damaged graves and racist graffiti have been found in the Palestinian village of Awarta in the northern West Bank after a Jewish group visited the area.

Palestinians told an Israeli rights group they saw Jewish pilgrims and Israeli soldiers in the area which is also a Jewish burial site, on Tuesday.

The Israeli military says it is investigating the incident.

On Tuesday 10 people from a nearby settlement were arrested and questioned over an arson attack on a mosque.

At least two tombstones were damaged in the cemetery outside the village, and food and rubbish were left on graves.

In the village, offensive slogans about Arabs were found scrawled in Hebrew, English and Russian.

Israelis are forbidden from entering Awarta, but the Israeli military occasionally organises group trips for settlers to visit nearby Jewish tombs.

Palestinians told the Israeli rights group B'tselem that such a visit had taken place on Tuesday night, and the damage was discovered on Wednesday morning.

B'tselem said the tombs may have been ones that had been previously broken and repaired.

Local media quoted a group that organises visits by settlers to Jewish tombs as saying "we have no right wing or anti-Arab ideology and if someone from our group is found responsible for these acts, we would be the first to condemn them".

This comes two days after 10 Jewish settlers from the nearby settlement of Yitzhar were arrested in a pre-dawn raid.

Police said they wanted to see if there was a link between the individuals and the burning of a mosque in the village of Yasuf in December.

Offensive slogans were daubed on the mosque wall in Hebrew.

Some hard-line settlers have said they will attack Palestinians in retaliation for any Israeli government measures they see as threatening Jewish settlements.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently announced a ten-month lull in permits for new settlement homes on the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem.

All Jewish settlements in the West Bank, occupied by Israel in 1967, are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

[Teddy Bear]

Robin Shepherd has expressed his thoughts on the matter on his blog

BBC slams “racist” Jewish settlers on West Bank while continuing to censor Arab and Palestinian anti-Semitism
Coming hard on the heels of this week’s appalling Panorama documentary on Jerusalem (see last post but one), the BBC is now giving major prominence to a story about the alleged desecration of a Palestinian cemetery in the West Bank by a group of racist Jewish pilgrims.

The story stands in sharp and striking contrast with the policy of de facto censorship operated by the BBC on almost all instances of the deep-seated anti-Semitism that is a central feature of the political culture in the Palestinian territories, in Arab countries and in the wider Muslim world.

The incident in question is said to have taken place in the northern West Bank village of Awarta after a group of Jewish pilgrims were taken to nearby Jewish tombs by a settler group. Opening the piece on its website, the BBC, which is the world’s most powerful English language media outlet, said:

“Damaged graves and racist graffiti have been found in the Palestinian village of Awarta in the northern West Bank after a Jewish group visited the area.”

Now, from a journalistic point of view this is certainly a reasonable story to cover since it follows the arrest of 10 Israeli settlers earlier this week in connection with the arson attack on a mosque in the village of Yasuf in December, and the threats by some maverick settlers to respond to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s settlement freeze with attacks on Palestinians.

But in the context referred to above of a complete whitewash of Palestinian anti-Semitism the piece provides stark illustration of the insidious bias, by both commission and omission, that leaves the BBC’s audience with only one conclusion to draw about where our sympathies should lie in the wider conflict.

The agenda here is very clear: all illustrations of extremism among settlers are painted on as broad a canvas as possible; all instances of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim extremism and bigotry are brushed over or ignored.

I have remarked many times that the BBC continues to run a profile of Hamas which excludes all reference to the group’s Holocaust denial and its Protocols of Zion style anti-Semitism. Despite vast amounts of evidence of the daily assault on the Jewish people from “moderate” Palestinian leaders such as Mahmoud Abbas, who wrote a doctorate denying the extent of the Holocaust, that too is censored out of the reporting. In my recent book, A State Beyond the Pale (link below), I also provide polling evidence showing that negative sentiment about Jews even in “friendly” Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan runs at 97 and 98 percent respectively. Again, such realities are simply not referred to.

Without being aware of such a fundamental issue it is simply impossible to understand the Israeli point of view, which is presumably why the BBC is so adamant that it will not report on it.