BBC Neuters Palestinian Stabbing of Baby

[Teddy Bear]

Besides who did what to who, what do you notice different about this headline
Palestinian 'kills five Israelis' in West Bank
from these
Israeli troops fatally shoot three Palestinians in Gaza
Palestinian killed in West Bank clash with Israeli army
Gaza: Israeli air strike kills Palestinian militant
Israel kills Palestinian farmer near Gaza 'buffer zone'
Israel kills two Palestinian men near Gaza Strip border

I could go on, but you should get the idea. Why when it is Israelis that are killed does this part get inverted commas? What impression does it give you? That when Palestinians are killed or wounded by Israel, this is an absolute fact, but when it's the other way round 'it's only what Israel claims'.

Then to the story of the first article itself. A Palestinian terrorist armed with a knife, broke into the house of a family in a West Bank settlement and stabbed to death both parents, their 10 year old, 4 year old, and 3 month old baby. 2 other children were in the house sleeping but the terrorist did not know they were there. The family's 12-year-old daughter, who was at a youth group activity, returned to her home at approximately midnight and her calls for the door to be opened for her went unanswered. With the help of a neighbor, they managed to open the door and came upon the horrible murder scene.

Picture the gruesome scene that the 12 year old girl saw, and how it would be reported if it happened here. Could there be any justification? So let's look at how the BBC manages to neuter this incident, besides the inverted commas in the headline.

Whenever a Palestinian child is killed or injured in an Israeli attack, it is either reported in the headline or first paragraph of the article. Bear in mind that children are never targeted by Israel themselves, but being kept alongside Palestinian militants to ensure that any retaliatory strike by Israel will ensure child casualties, they are used for the PR value. Israel only strikes in a defensive role, a response to attacks against them.

Here, what the BBC want you to perceive as a 'freedom fighter' went into a house and consciously and purposefully stabbed to death everybody he found in the house.

The opening bold type paragraph in the BBC article tells us Israeli troops have launched a manhunt after five members of a Jewish settler family were killed in the West Bank

The next paragraph tells us Officials have blamed Palestinians for the overnight attack, which left a couple, two children and a baby dead in the Itamar settlement, near Nablus.

So no mention of the cold blooded stabbing of this family. Can you imagine what it means to stab a 3 month baby to death. Do you imagine for a moment that if it was an Israeli stabbing a Palestinian baby to death this wouldn't be in the headline?

But before we come to the particularly gruesome nature of how this family were 'killed', the BBC puts this sentence in The incident comes as peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians have ground to a halt.

So it's okay to kill children then.

Only after that we are told The family - including three children - were stabbed to death by an intruder who broke into their home, Israeli media reported.

Now we come to the children who survived, but only because 'the intruder' didn't know they were there; Army radio reported that two other children had been spared, while a third had discovered the killings when she arrived home. If it was anybody else than the likes of the BBC I might interpret the use of the word 'spared' as a colloquial way of expressing what happened, but as it is, the BBC want to give the impression that this sick scum, after brutally murdering a 10 year old, and a 4 year old, and a 3 MONTH old baby, suddenly took pity on the other 2 children and 'spared' them. Notice too, there is no mention of any of the ages of the murdered children in the BBC article, to spare you having to picture too much the mind of the culprit.

The final part of the article then puts everything into the BBC perspective for you;
International law
The Itamar settlement was the target of a previous attack, in 2002, in which five Israelis were killed and several injured in an attack by a Palestinian gunman.

US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians stalled last year over the issue of Israeli settlement building.

Palestinians have refused all direct contact with Israel until construction is frozen.

Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

They are held to be illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

No mention of the 10 month freeze on settlement construction by Israel when the Palestinians did nothing to achieve peace. Or that there is not ONE concession by Palestinians EVER to achieve peace, and that if they would have agreed a long time ago to a peaceful resolution they would have their state.

[Teddy Bear]

When I posted the above on Robin Shepherds website, also covering this topic, another poster did an excellent analysis of the final paragraphs of the BBC article, which I want to include here, as well as expand the real dynamics involved.

Here's what 'Another Joshua' wrote:

# Another Joshua Says:
March 13th, 2011 at 1:35 pm

When one edits out the BBC’s report of the incident itself and focuses on the “background” the BBC provides, one can easily identify what the BBC’s opinion is. Settlements have caused all of this because they are the real obstacle and that the Jews have only brought this all on themselves and to expect more of the same.

A gross oversimplification. Nothing about terrorism and murderous intent. Thus they justify murder

The BBC writes and my comments in parenthesis:

“The incident comes as peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians have ground to a halt.

US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians stalled last year over the issue of Israeli settlement building.(Israel’s fault)

Palestinians have refused all direct contact with Israel until construction is frozen.
(Palestinians are justified)

Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.(It’s clearly wrong of Jews to be there)

They are held to be illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.” (The ubiquitous legal breach, and only by Israel. They would dispute it wouldn’t they. Murder is not a breach of law).

And my attempt to simplify what is really going in common sense terms

The fact that the general public has gotten so used to the absurd position spouted by the BBC, and supported by dubious politicians to appease militant Islam, that they accept it without thought.

The basic dynamics operating here are:

• 1. Two ‘families’ are each legally allocated a portion of adjacent land.
  
• 2. Family P doesn’t agree to to this legal decision as it wants all of the land. So it tries several times to wipe out Family I, but is unsuccessful each time.
  
• 3. Because of the continued threat, Family I takes additional land from Family P to better secure its borders and to penalise Family P for their continued aggression.
  
• 4. Family P also know that if Family I has to assimilate its members then democratically Family P will soon control all of the land, so never agree to ‘borders’. In this way they can force a victory for themselves. Either Family I will have to accept borders they cannot safely secure, or else face a political defeat and lose everything. Either way, Family P will be victorious.
  

Fact is, Family P never agreed to the legal boundaries first set, so they can no longer use these demarcations to claim what is theirs. If they want to live side by side in peace now, then they can negotiate with Family I to establish who gets what.

What the BBC and their ilk wants to make ‘law’, is that somebody can pick and choose when they want to have law enforced and when they want the world to look the other way. Had the Arabs achieved their goal to get rid of every Jew from the land, they would not be asking for territory they were allocated prior to 1967.

Since they were defeated they want to use these borders to get an untenable concession from Israel, but still don’t want to recognize the existence of Israel.

They want a win/win situation, and the BBC among other scum, are only too happy to sacrifice Israel for them to achieve it, but also want the public to think they are being fair while they do it.

[Teddy Bear]

Honest Reporting has also picked up on this piece, and focusses particularly on how the BBC reported this incident. Quite something considering they are based in the USA. They note too, that today the BBC has removed this story from their 'Mid-East' main page despite yesterday it being the most viewed story. The BBC have replaced it though with one about Israel settlements.

Can the BBC sink any lower?

Baby Killers: BBC Butchers the Real Story
March 13, 2011 15:42 by Simon Plosker

Only days after HonestReporting’s Managing Editor wrote about the thread that links Palestinian incitement to inevitable acts of terror, Israel has suffered a shocking and brutal terrorist attack carried out by baby killers. Yet the BBC has still managed to turn this into a story about settlements.

As the JPost reports:

A mother, father and three of their children were stabbed to death late Friday night by at least one suspected terrorist who infiltrated the Itamar settlement southeast of Nablus.

The killings occurred shortly after 10 p.m., when one or two attackers jumped the fence that surrounds Itamar and broke into the home of Ruth and Udi Fogel, aged 35 and 36, respectively. The attackers went room to room, stabbing the parents, a three-month-old girl, Hadas, and two boys, Elad, three, and Yoav, 11.

Clearly, those who are capable of the premeditated murder of babies and children are driven by something far deeper than an aversion to the existence or building of Israeli settlements. There is nothing more innocent than a three-month old. Yet, many media outlets still chose to politicize the horrific slaughter of innocents by focusing less on the despicable act itself and more on making an issue of the location of the attack and dehumanizing the victims as “settlers”.

Note some of the following headlines:

* Suspecting Palestinians, Israeli Military Hunts for Killers of 5 West Bank Settlers – New York Times
* Israeli troops scour West Bank villages for killers of 5 Jewish settlers – Washington Post

But the most shocking and callous treatment of the incident was produced by the BBC. While the news cycle moved on and media outlets turned towards an announcement of approval for construction in Israeli settlements, most at least gave prominence to the appalling details of the terrorist attack even if this became part of a story relating to settlements.

The BBC, however, virtually buried the Fogel family’s massacre, once again demonstrating its obsession with the settlement issue above all other issues relating to the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

No dedicated reportage of the brutal attack was featured elsewhere on the site. Instead, subsumed in a story of settlements, it warrants only a few lines. The BBC does, however, report that the attack “has shocked many Palestinians”. Of course, the BBC failed to mention that Hamas described the attack as a “heroic operation” while sweets and candies were handed out in Gaza in celebration.

The BBC has exercised its own moral judgment that says that the issuing of building permits in settlements is the cause of terror. Otherwise, the story may have included statements from Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu attributing the terror attack to Palestinian incitement.

The BBC has a well-staffed bureau in Jerusalem with the same access as other media outlets. Yet it chose not to publish any photos or specific details of the terror incident.

In the BBC’s world, it is all about the settlements. By politicizing such a heinous terrorist crime perpetrated against a baby, two small children and their parents, the BBC is as guilty as the perpetrators of dehumanizing innocent Israelis based on where they live. For the BBC, it seems that the location of the murders and the stress on how settlements “are held to be illegal under international law” is more important than the murders themselves.

If the BBC ever had any moral compass, it has demonstrated that it has completely lost it. In the BBC’s eyes, there is no moral difference between deliberately murdering innocent babies and the construction of homes in disputed territory. Indeed, for the BBC, the settlement issue at best allows one to “understand” why such an atrocity could take place and at worst, justifies it.

The BBC is by no means the only guilty party in creating an environment where Israeli Jews living in West Bank communities are dehumanized to the point that a three-month old is merely a “settler” – the Palestinian Authority’s continuous incitement in the Palestinian media and education system bear much responsibility. But the international media have bought into this narrative of demonization and helped to create such a toxic environment that the murder of innocents is deemed to be almost acceptable and the human story behind a tragedy is cynically removed.

[djfearross]

I'm so happy someone else noticed this.

so nine armed adults aboard a ship attack soilders and are killed and there is world wide condemnation.

5 people, 3 of which are children including a 3month baby are stabbed to death... a BABY! Where is the world wide condemnation..?

Instead the BBC justifies the murder.. sick.

[Teddy Bear]

The only 'good' thing is that by the BBC showing its true colours in such a marked way as they have here, it gives further ammunition to hasten their demise. I hope some interviewee trying to put Israel's case across will confront the BBC on their foul agenda. But then I presume the BBC will find an excuse to not show it.

I wonder who will be the next BBC journalist that retires and then writes a book telling us how disgustingly biased the BBC was, to show that they weren't really one of them but were 'acting under orders'.

[djfearross]

Count the words settler/settlements... are Israelis not humans?
Once you get to the last sentence you understand the over emphasis on this point.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12730403

Mahmoud Abbas condemns West Bank settler family murders
Thousands of Israelis attended the funerals in Jerusalem on Sunday

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has strongly condemned the murder of a family of five Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Mr Abbas said the killings, which happened on Friday, were "immoral and inhuman".

Israel suspects the murders were carried out by Palestinian militants.

Tensions are running high on the West Bank with some settlers having already carried out revenge attacks on Palestinian cars and houses.

The killing of five members of the Fogel family, including three children, has shocked both Israelis and many Palestinians.

Officials said the assailants cut through a fence around the settlement of Itamar and entered the Fogels' home, stabbing to death parents Udi and Ruthie, Yoav, 11, four-year-old Elad and baby Hadas, aged three months.

The bodies were found by a 12-year-old daughter when she returned home from a youth group meeting. Two other children sleeping in another room in the house were not hurt.

Revenge attacks

Thousands of Israelis attended the funerals in Jerusalem on Sunday.

The Israeli Army has strengthened its presence on the West Bank and has arrested tens of Palestinians in an attempt to find the killer or killers.

On Sunday some settlers set fire to Palestinian cars and attacked Palestinian homes in revenge. There are fears there could be more violence.

In an interview with Israeli Army Radio, Mr Abbas said no human being should be capable of such an act. He described the murders as "despicable, inhuman and immoral".

Israel has accused the Palestinian Authority of inciting hatred against Jewish settlers, something Mr Abbas denies.

There are almost five hundred thousand settlers living on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Settlements are regarded as illegal under international law although Israel disputes this.

on another point, look at the reference towards 'Jewish' but the Palestinian Islamist is simply referred to as a 'militant' with no reference to religion.

Of course, find the odd Christian and suddenly the religion is relevant;
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12630879

Or, when the story has a positive angle the BBC is more than willing to over emphasis the 'Muslim' factor even though the religion is totally irrelevant. You will also note, the BBC really goes looking for these stories...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12670110

[Teddy Bear]

Good point dj.
I notice they write 'The killing of five members of the Fogel family, including three children, has shocked both Israelis and many Palestinians.'
Many Palestinians - hmmm, but no mention of Hamas calling it a heroic act or giving out candy in celebration, as that would show their true colours. I notice they give out a lot more of the gory details of the murder in this article, once they could 'balance' it with Abbas' 'horror' of the event.

Somebody also must have brought the fact about the inverted commas in the original article headline. It has no gone from this Palestinian 'kills five Israelis' in West Bank to this 'Palestinian' kills five Israelis in West Bank

So now it's not debated whether the family of 5 were killed, but whether it was really a Palestinian that murdered them.

Some pictures of the family would have been nice and 'human' instead of a picture of a soldier standing by a signpost with little relevance to the story.

[Teddy Bear]

Honest Reporting has issued an update following numerous complaints to the BBC, and also note the various points we found disgustingly covered by the BBC, and commented above.

Baby Killers Update: BBC Responds to HR Criticism
March 15, 2011 12:41 by Simon Plosker

HonestReporting’s criticism of the BBC’s coverage of the brutal terrorist murders of the Fogel family prompted a huge number of complaints to the BBC as well as attracting coverage in the Jerusalem Post.

Much of our critique was directed towards the BBC’s decision to promote an article concerning the Israeli decision to build new homes in settlements, an article that paid mere lip service to the shocking terrorist attack by a baby killer and demonstrated the BBC’s obsession with the settlement issue at the expense of all others.

Our criticism stands as does the charge that the BBC buried the story of the terrorist attack. While the BBC did cover the story immediately following the attack, the coverage disappeared from the BBC News homepage, the Middle East news page and nowhere in the story of the settlement building did any links to the existing BBC piece on the murders appear.

Below is the related story section from the BBC’s settlement article as it appeared on the morning of March 13.

The BBC usually links to related materials on later stories such as the settlement one critiqued above. Instead, the story of the terror attack disappeared from the main news pages, including that of the Middle East news where such items usually stay visible online for a period of at least a few days.

We issued an update to our original critique, also taking issue with the problematic nature of the BBC’s initial coverage of the terrorist attack – note the use of quotations in the headline below.

The BBC later removed the quotation marks, which had cast doubt on the veracity of the terror attack itself. Incredibly, however, those quotation marks reappeared around the word “Palestinian” so moving the doubt from the attack itself on to the identity of the attacker. Such is the BBC’s habitual need to eliminate all responsibility for Palestinian terror.

In addition, a photo of a soldier standing by a signpost pointing towards the settlement of Itamar still remains. Would it have pained the BBC that much to replace this with a photo of the slain family? Or is humanizing the Israeli victims of Palestinian terror too much for the BBC to contemplate?

Even when the BBC does cover the murders, the visual emphasis remains firmly fixed on the location of the event on a West Bank settlement and the portrayal of Israel in militaristic terms.

The BBC Response

This is the standard response sent by the BBC to many of your complaints:

Thank you for your e-mail. We initially covered the murders here on Saturday: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12721170


On Sunday, the announcement about new settlers’ homes was made. Our West Bank correspondent offered analysis saying that it was “hard not to see the timing of the announcement as linked to the killings”. We felt it was appropriate therefore to recount the events at Itamar in this context, and the photograph on the page highlighted the importance of the killings.


However, this was not, as you suggest, our only coverage of the deaths, but the latest version of developments, a normal practice in 24-hour online journalism.

Indeed, whether to deflect criticism from its overall coverage or to avoid admitting burying the story of the murders in the first place, the BBC has quietly updated its settlement story page to include links to the initial story of the terrorist attack.

This may be the closest we will get to seeing the BBC acknowledge a serious error. Regarding the BBC’s overall coverage of the horrific terror attack, the BBC was not the only media outlet guilty of bias. By its actions and focus on the settlement issue at the expense of the murder of a three-month old infant, two small children and their parents, it demonstrated a level of callousness that was not seen elsewhere.

Don’t let the BBC and other major media players downplay the murders by dismissing them as “settlers”. Ensure that the media honors the humanity of the victims. Join the more than 1,400 people who shared the initial communique on Facebook.

The BBC’s response is utterly inadequate and deserves a redoubling of your efforts to hold this media monster to account. Keep sending those complaints to the BBC and demand that it addresses the issues that we have raised above. We cannot bring back the victims of terror but we can at least make every effort to see that the international media, including the BBC, treats them with the respect they deserve and not as anything less than the human beings they were.

[Teddy Bear]

A friend of mine sent me a copy of a complaint that she sent in to the BBC about their article

{URL:} www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12721170

{Complaint:} In your reporting of todays heinous incident in a home of a
Jewish family you justify the crime by informing your readers that "they
[the settlements] are held to be illegal under international law,
although Israel disputes this".
In your readers minds this therefore justifies the five murders. Please
explain to this reader how a political dispute justifies slitting a one
month old babies' throat in her sleep?

You go on to say that 'two other children had been spared'. The two
brothers 'spared' - by no stretch of the imagination did these cold
bloodied killers spare anyone - they merely did not know that they were
asleep in the next room.

I could already imagine what the BBC response would be, and true to form she got this back:

Thank you for your e-mail. There is no suggestion that the issue of settlements is a just cause for the killings, but it is clearly a
central element and it would be remiss of us not to incorporate at least
some of that background.

The use of the word "spared" was a direct quote from Israel Army radio
and was attributed as such. However, it should not have been used
outside of this context in subsequent reports.

Best wishes,

BBC News website
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/handle.shtml

Hmmm, seems to me 'some of the background' of settlements occupies more content than the murders itself, as dj also noted in a related article above.

[Teddy Bear]

In direct contrast to how the BBC have covered the cold blooded intentional murder of 3 children, including a 3 month old baby, and their parents, there is the story today that following over 50 mortar rounds and a Grad rocket fired from Gaza into nearby Israel towns, Israeli retaliation caused the death of a Palestinian family including 2 children when their house was hit by a tank shell.

The first thing to note is how the headline for this BBC story appears on the Yahoo site: Strikes on Gaza 'kill children'

Then to the story on the BBC website which has the headline
Children die in Israeli attack on Gaza, say doctors

Notice the fact that children were killed is put directly into the headline and attributed directly to Israel without any inverted commas, unlike the case where it was an Israeli family killed.

It is not until the 5th paragraph that we learn On Saturday, Palestinian militants fired a barrage of rockets over the frontier, prompting Israeli retaliation

'Barrage of rockets' is all we get from the BBC, not the fact that it was over 50, and neither is their any other story about this aggression from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza against Israel.

Neither is their any mention that the this barrage of rockets are purposefully fired from civilian areas by these terrorists who know full well that any retaliation by Israel will result in probable civilian casualties, which 'allies' like the BBC will omit to tell you in their report.

The BBC doesn't hesitate to mention in every story related to the West Bank that settlements are what is standing in the way of peace. Yet when the story relates to Gaza aggression against Israel they never mention how all Israeli settlements and residents of Gaza were abandoned when Israel turned Gaza over to the Palestinians there.

Pure bias without even the pretence of balance. In a way it's a good thing, the BBC bias is becoming so blatant and recognizable, very soon it will will be recognized by most for the insidious forces it really serves.

[djfearross]

Headline change again

"Gaza: Children die in Israeli attack, say doctors"

Which is more accurate, as Israel never attacked Gaza, it attacked a area from where rockets were fired. Someone must have complained about that.

And no commas around the word 'doctors'?

[Teddy Bear]

It is not often a British MP speaks out against the BBC in support of Israel, yet the way the murder of this family was dealt with by the BBC so disgusted Louise Bagshawe, MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire, herself a mother with 3 children a similar age to those murdered, that she writes about it in The Telegraph today. I also discovered from her article that the 3 month old baby actually had her head sawed off in this attack.

You can judge by the over 1300 comments posted already on the article that it has attracted a lot of emotion.

Full credit to Ms. Bagshawe, I hope she goes on to become Prime Minister.

How I detest the BBC!

A family slaughtered in Israel – doesn't the BBC care?
The corporation's coverage of murder in Israel reflects apparent bias against the state, argues Louise Bagshawe.

By Louise Bagshawe 12:20AM GMT 24 Mar 2011

1329 Comments

Who is Tamar Fogel? The chances are that you will have no idea. She is a 12-year-old girl who arrived home late on Friday, March 11, to discover her family had been slaughtered. Her parents had been stabbed to death; the throat of her 11-year-old brother, Yoav, had been slit. Her four-year-old brother, Elad, whose throat had also been cut, was still alive, with a faint pulse, but medics were unable to save him. Tamar's sister, Hadas, three months old, had also been killed. Her head had been sawn off.

There were two other Fogel brothers sleeping in an adjacent room. When woken by their big sister trying to get into a locked house, Roi, aged six, let her in. After Tamar discovered the bodies, her screaming alerted their neighbour who rushed in to help and described finding two-year-old Yishai desperately shaking his parents' blood-soaked corpses, trying to wake them up.

I found out about the barbaric attack not on BBC news, but via Twitter on Monday. I followed a link there to a piece by Mark Steyn entitled "Dead Jews is no news'. Horrified, I went to the BBC website to find out more. There I discovered only two stories: one a cursory description of the incident in Itamar, a West Bank settlement, and another focusing on Israel's decision to build more settlements, which mentioned the killings in passing.

As the mother of three children, one the same age as little Elad, who had lain bleeding to death, I was stunned at the BBC's seeming lack of care. All the most heart-wrenching details were omitted. The second story, suggesting that the construction announcement was an act of antagonism following the massacre, also omitted key facts and failed to mention the subsequent celebrations in Gaza, and the statement by a Hamas spokesman that "five dead Israelis is not enough to punish anybody".

There were more details elsewhere on the net: the pain and hurt, for example, of the British Jewish community at the BBC's apparent indifference to the fate of the Fogels. The more I read, the more the BBC's broadcast silence amazed me. What if a settler had entered a Palestinian home and sawn off a baby's head? Might we have heard about it then? On Twitter, I attacked the UK media in general, and the BBC in particular. I considered filing a complaint.

The next morning, the BBC's public affairs team emailed me a response that amounted to a shrug. The story "featured prominently on our website", they said. It was important to report on the settlements to put the murder in context, they said. In reply, I asked a series of questions: for how long did the massacre feature on TV news bulletins? On radio? On BBC News 24, with all that rolling airtime? Why were the Hamas reaction and Gaza celebrations not featured? And what about the omission of all the worst details?

It was only when I tweeted about their continued indifference that the BBC replied. Then they informed me that the Fogel story had not featured on television at all. Not even News 24. It was on Radio Four in the morning, but pulled from subsequent broadcasts. The coverage of Japan and Libya, they said, drowned it out. Would I like to make a complaint?

Do you know, I think I would. The BBC has long been accused of anti-Israeli bias. It even commissioned the Balen report into bias in its Middle Eastern coverage, and then went to court to prevent its findings being publicised. As a member of the select committee on culture, media and sport, I was at the confirmation hearing of Lord Patten of Barnes as chairman of the BBC Trust. I asked him about political neutrality. In reply, he said that he would give up his membership of a Palestinian aid organisation. Both I and another member asked about bias against Israel. Lord Patten denied any existed. What would he do if shown an example of it? He would ultimately take it to the BBC Trust, he said.

The day after Lord Patten uttered those words, the Fogel children were butchered to almost complete silence from the BBC.

I have asked the corporation to let me know why, if the story was "prominent on the website", it was not deemed of sufficient merit to broadcast on television, and barely on radio. I have asked them to explain the inaccuracies and omissions in the reporting. And I have asked them what non-Japan, non-Libya stories made it to air, in preference. Twenty-four hours later, I have yet to receive a reply.

Like many of us, I consider the BBC to be a national treasure. I am not a BBC basher; I have never before complained. I do not support nor do I condone the Israeli settlement building. But none of that matters. This is a story about three children and their parents, slain with incredible cruelty, and its effect on the peace process. As a mother, I am shocked at the silence. As a politician, I am dismayed at the apparent bias and indifference. Yes, I will be filing a complaint – about a story I never heard. I hope Daily Telegraph readers will join me.

Louise Bagshawe is MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire.

[Teddy Bear]

I commented above on a contrasting story where Palestinian children were accidentally killed when Israel retaliated to rocket attacks from Gaza, and how the BBC covered it. Honest Reporting has also picked up on this obvious bias.

Gaza Mortar Barrage

While the media reported an initial 124 missiles launched at Libyan targets, Israel’s south came under a barrage of some 50 mortar shells fired from Gaza, which injured two, on Saturday morning. The media has come to treat the firing of missiles from Gaza as “normal” and therefore not newsworthy. Nonetheless, this escalation barely registered with the foreign press…. until the Israeli reaction.

BBC Bias Continues

Of course, any case study of bias wouldn’t be complete without a contribution from the BBC. The Palestinian mortar barrage barely registered on the BBC’s radar. Instead, the story was subsumed by one on March 20 headlined “Two Palestinians killed at Gaza-Israel border” where the mortar attack was certainly not the focus of the story.

The BBC, in typical fashion, concluded its article with the following:

Israel often opens fire on people who it says go too close to the fence to stop attacks by militants.

Dozens of people have been killed in this way, many civilians.

The UK’s Sunday Times recently focused on the Gaza buffer zone, an issue that HonestReporting took up, speaking with a high-ranking IDF officer to find out the facts that weren’t being reported. Unfortunately, the BBC also failed to explain the rationale and the very real security concerns behind the buffer zone.

The next day, on March 21, the BBC led with “Gaza Strip: Israel launches air strikes” and on March 23 with “Gaza: Children die in Israeli attack, say doctors“. Compare the opening paragraphs of these three BBC reports:

* March 20: The bodies of two Palestinian men have been found near the Gaza-Israel border, Palestinian medics report.
* March 21: At least 17 people have been injured by a series of Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics say.
* March 23: Two Israeli military strikes on Gaza have killed eight Palestinians, medical officials say.

Clearly the BBC likes to rely on “Palestinian medics” despite the numerous occasions where they have been found to be at best, unreliable, and at worst, outright liars. But the BBC continues to place its faith in the Palestinian narrative.

Also note from the headline below how the BBC treats Palestinian sources compared to Israeli ones. We previously addressed how the BBC employs the use of parentheses and quotation marks in its headlines to cast doubt on the veracity of Israeli accounts or stories that cast the Palestinians in a negative light e.g. “Palestinian ‘kills five Israelis’ in West Bank”.

Now look at the headline below. Note how, despite being attributed directly to Palestinian doctors, no quotation marks appear in the headline. The claim is taken as pure fact.

Despite the fact that IDF air strikes were in response to Saturday’s mortar barrage as well as a Grad missile attack on Ashkelon on Sunday (which also received scant press coverage), the BBC paid lip service to the Palestinian mortar attack in one line of the article.

Again, the BBC rounded off its March 21 article with a sweeping statement referring to Israel’s Operation Cast Lead yet lacking in any context:

More than 1,300 Palestinians as well as 13 Israelis were killed.

No mention of disputed casualty figures or how many of those Palestinians were active combatants. In the BBC’s world, all Palestinians are victims of Israeli policy irrespective of whether they are armed terrorists or not.

So it appears that the BBC remains unaffected by the high volume of other foreign news from around the globe, continuing its well-documented bias. Unfortunately, as less well-resourced news outlets struggle to cover everything, the contagion has spread.

[Teddy Bear]

The BBC finally answered MP Louise Bagshawe's condemnation about the way they covered this story. It took the head of news Helen Boaden 5 days to reply, and the excuse was

In her response Ms Boaden said: "I agree with you that the significant nature of this murder of an entire family meant it should have been included on our television news output."

However, she denied that the BBC had ignored the story "either because we did not care or because we pursue an anti-Israel agenda". She instead blamed "a remarkably busy weekend" because of the disaster in Japan, events in Libya and the spring meetings of the Liberal Democrats and the SNP which had to be covered "to ensure due political impartiality".

"[These] left little room in the main television bulletins for a host of competing stories".

Point is, nobody was talking about their lack of coverage on TV, but the way they covered it on their website. One thing I'm also very sure about, if it would have been an Israeli slitting the throats of a Palestinian family that story would have gone ahead of ANYTHING else going on in the world at the time - on their website - and on the TV.

Boaden is probably congratulating herself on well well she handled this complaint, and Bagshawe will probably buy it. It's what the UK media do covering events related to Israel, and the largely ignorant public and MP's buy into their slant.

There are many violent incidents going on throughout the Arab world right now, especially in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, (also that Israel discovered over a thousand underground bunkers controlled by Hezbollah in Lebanon, - though there is no mention of that on the BBC website). However on their Mid-East webpage they run 3 stories concerning Israel -

Court win for Palestinian plotter
A Palestinian jailed for 45 years for plotting to blow up an Israeli airliner, wins a court challenge against (UK) government refusals to allow his early release.

'Abducted' Palestinian engineer appears in Israel court
A Palestinian engineer has appeared in an Israeli court after being captured in Ukraine and jailed in Israel.

Israel 'gets Argentina pledge' on Buenos Aires attack

One would almost think they want to minimise the amount of violent events going on in the Arab world right now by filling their webpage with the BBC's real enemy - Israel.

BBC backs down on its Fogel coverage
By Jennifer Lipman, March 31, 2011

The BBC has admitted that the horrific murders of the Fogel family last month should have been covered on their 24 hour news channel.

The massacre, in which a three-month-old baby was decapitated and her siblings' throats were slashed, did not appear anywhere across the BBC's television channels, and was mentioned only briefly on the broadcaster's news website.

The BBC gave no mention of Hamas' statement praising the attack, or of celebrations about the killings in the West Bank, yet did cover the Israeli government's announcement about settlement construction the following day.

The broadcaster's poor coverage was highlighted by Louise Bagshawe, Conservative MP for Corby, who registered her disgust at what she called the BBC's "inexcusable" failure, in the JC as well as on Twitter and in a comment piece for the Daily Telegraph.

Ms Bagshawe, a member of the Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport, called on the BBC to admit their "lack of evenhandedness". She also demanded a list of the other stories which were featured on BBC News 24 on March 11, in preference. Her complaint was passed to the BBC's director of news, Helen Boaden, but it was five days before Ms Boaden replied. During that time Ms Bagshawe received thousands of messages of support.

In her response Ms Boaden said: "I agree with you that the significant nature of this murder of an entire family meant it should have been included on our television news output."

However, she denied that the BBC had ignored the story "either because we did not care or because we pursue an anti-Israel agenda". She instead blamed "a remarkably busy weekend" because of the disaster in Japan, events in Libya and the spring meetings of the Liberal Democrats and the SNP which had to be covered "to ensure due political impartiality".

"[These] left little room in the main television bulletins for a host of competing stories".

Ms Bagshawe said: "I'm not wholly satisfied with the answer which does not reflect the gravity of the lack of coverage. I would consider the matter finished if the BBC gave an expression of regret because of the hurt they have caused the Jewish community."

She added: "I believe that this shows that the BBC will listen and will not merely reflexively defend a clear mistake."