The BBC Trust Editorial Standards Committee has censured its Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen for breaching the BBC's rules on impartiality and accuracy in his coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The ruling was in response to a formal complaint filed by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) and a similar complaint filed independently by a member of the UK's Zionist Federation about two specific reports.
The first point to note is that, using the narrowest possible criteria to judge the items in question, the Trust found only relatively minor failings – conclusions which managed with singular obtuseness to ignore the real sting of what Bowen had said. For example, in his report to mark the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, 'How 1967 Defined The Middle East', the committee concluded about Bowen's reference to 'Zionism's innate instinct to push out the frontier'
that this statement had been unqualified and, as a result it had not been clear and precise and that there had been a breach of the guideline on accuracy in this respect.
'Unqualified' seems to be a reference to differing views about the 'innateness' of Zionism – including the absurd justification by Bowen that, since the first Zionists had started with one kibbutz, the frontiers had clearly been pushed out to found the state itself! But since the history of Zionism has demonstrably involved not a pushing out of the frontier but a successive pulling back of the frontier – with the British first shrinking the putative Jewish homeland in Palestine by some 75 per cent, and then proposing to cut it in half, and with Israel subsequently giving up Sinai and Gaza and having offered to give up most of the West Bank in 1967 and in 2000 -- to criticise this statement for being merely 'unqualified' and not 'clear and precise' seems, to put it mildly, understated to the point of obduracy.
On Bowen's statement that Israel showed a 'defiance of everyone's interpretation of international law except its own', the Trust found that
'everyone' was a loose use of language. It would have been perfectly possible to have qualified this as 'nearly everyone' or 'the vast majority', and that would have been acceptable.
This was a nod towards the fact that noted experts in international law, such as former U.S. Under-Secretary of State Eugene Rostow who was instrumental in drawing up the seminal UN Resolution 242, have said not only that the settlements are legal but have drawn attention to the fact that under still-binding Mandatory law Jews have been legally entitled to settle throughout the West Bank and Gaza for the past six decades.
What the committee chose completely to ignore was the innate (to coin a phrase) bias involved in focusing upon Israel's alleged illegal actions while ignoring altogether the sustained illegality of the Arab states and the Arabs of the territories in maintaining their belligerency against Israel's existence – in conspicuous defiance of international law since 1948; indeed, one might say since the 1920s – not to mention perpetrating acts of terrorism and promoting genocide. If the BBC's Middle East Editor is fulminating against breaches of international law in the Middle East, doesn't the most conservative interpretation of the word 'impartiality' in the BBC's handbook necessarily mean that the Arabs' egregious breaches of such law – the actual cause of the Middle East conflict -- should be acknowledged in such a report?
On Bowen's statement that
the Israeli generals, hugely self-confident, mainly sabras (native-born Israeli Jews) in their late 30s and early 40s had been training to finish the unfinished business of Israel's independence war of 1948 for most of their careers
the Trust found
that the phrase 'hugely self-confident' was used in this context to characterise the different attitudes to war between the native-born generals and the older, largely immigrant, politicians;
that this was a generalisation and that it would hold even if some of the generals had episodes of doubt or fear; and
that there had been no breach of the guideline on accuracy.
ii) On 'unfinished business'
that, although the Middle East Editor stated that he had meant it to be understood that he was referring to the capture of East Jerusalem, it would have been impossible for a reader of the article to know which 'unfinished business' had been meant; and that there had been a breach of the guideline on accuracy with regard to the use of 'clear, precise language' in this respect.
To say that this language wasn't 'clear 'or 'precise' enough is a judgment of quite perverse marginality. To accuse the Israelis in 1967 -- fighting a defensive war which they certainly had not sought; indeed, they were petrified of losing it and thought their end had come -- of trying to 'finish the business' of the previous war of self-defence they had fought in 1948 implies that both these events were wars of Israeli aggression rather than, as they actually were, defensive wars against annihilation. It's as if Britain's generals, after war was declared against Nazi Germany in 1939, stood accused of having been 'training to finish the unfinished business of the fight against German aggression in 1914-18 for most of their careers'. As CAMERA observed at the time of Bowen's report:
It is nothing short of shocking to read this last quote on the Web site of a mainstream media organization, as it absolutely turns reality on its head. It was not Israel, but rather the Arab world which by its own admission had sought to take care of the 'unfinished business' it had failed to achieve in 1948 — the destruction of Israel. This view was epitomized by Iraqi president Abdel Rahman Aref, who shortly before the war declared: 'The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948.'
What was so outrageous about Bowen's article was that it rewrote history and inverted victim and belligerent to suggest Israel was the aggressor in 1967, was stronger than the Arabs and had a lust for war. As Sir Martin Gilbert pointed out to the committee, this was simply historically wrong:
The Arabs were not ready for combat …but they were in a stronger position overall so it's not an accurate reflection… To say 'the Jewish Goliath had never been stronger…' was not true – it was well armed to DEFEND itself against attack. I would disagree with that quite strongly.
But the reason the committee's criticisms of Bowen were so muted was that time and again it disregarded the opinion of Sir Martin Gilbert in favour of revisionist historian Avi Shlaim – Israel's equivalent of Jon Pilger with a chip on his shoulder the size of Iraq against the Ashkenazi world.
The second point to note, however, is that although the complaints against Bowen were only partially upheld the wave of reaction from the Israel-bashers to this limited censure of such obscenity has been enormous. This is because, regardless of the details, any finding of bias or inaccuracy by the BBC Trust against its most senior Middle East journalist is of the greatest significance. It is the first time the BBC has acknowledged specific bias in its Middle East reporting -- thus itself puncturing the assiduously created myth that any claims of such bias are merely a reflection of the absence of objectivity amongst those Jews who claim this to be so. The reputation of BBC News as a global kitemark of objectivity is accordingly badly tarnished – all the more so because, to fend off precisely such accusations of bias towards Israel (which led to the commissioning of a report on the BBC's Middle East coverage by Malcolm Balen, publication of which the BBC has actually gone to court to prevent and which remains secret to this day) Bowen was appointed Middle East editor in order to remove any accusations of bias.
Hence the foaming fury amongst the Israel-bashers, whose edifice of lies is maintained by casting critics who dare to call this by its proper name as a supremely manipulative lobby merely peddling their own paranoid propaganda -- and whose nefarious power is supposedly proved in turn by their very protests. Indeed, calls by Jews for this committee's findings to lead to further action -- along with criticism of the BBC's own attempt to paper over the crack that has now opened up in its own facade -- are being seized upon by the Israel-bashers as further confirmation of the World Jewish Conspiracy, just as criticisms by Jews of the committee's findings as weak are being seized upon as further confirmation of the World Jewish Conspiracy.
In the Independent, Robert Fisk appeared to be at risk of an aneurysm as a result of the committee's report. The 'cruelly named' Trust was
pusillanimous, cowardly, outrageous, factually wrong and ethically dishonest... pitiful... preposterous... nauseous (sic)
all because it offered highly circumscribed criticisms of a perspective that to Fisk cannot be gainsaid in any way, shape or form because the Original Sin of Israel is the Revealed and Perfect Truth. Just think what would have happened to poor Fisk's health had the BBC Trust upheld the complaints in full!
Indeed, so completely and utterly unbelievable is it that the Bowen /Fisk axis of propaganda can be faulted on anything at all that seemingly there can be only one explanation for what has happened. The BBC Trust's Editorial Standards Committee members are apparently incapable of having reversed the axis of the earth like this all by themselves. To Fisk, they have been manipulated into doing so by the evil of evils, the Israel lobby, which clearly has truly demonic power to take hapless BBC committee members, shut down their brain function and turn them into zombie-like pawns of the Zionazi conspiracy. It is the Protocols of the Elders of Portland Place.
Truly, Fisk is a national treasure. If there was ever any doubt that Israel and the Jewish people were up against a truly malevolent and irrational force, Robert Fisk repeatedly lays it to rest.
Bowen and Fisk -- the Mutt and Jeff of the Israel-bashing media world.
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