TR18
Tribal Report no.18
26 March 2009 1 Nisan 5769
Contents:
1. Britain: BBC Anti-Jewish Prejudice Proven
2. Britain: Pro-Zionist War Hero Trained Jews to Fight Back
Wingate "The Friend" is Remembered, 65 Years Later
3. Belgium: The Muslim Threat from Inside the Country?
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1. Britain: BBC Anti-Jewish Prejudice Proven
The BBC During the Gaza War: Biased Coverage of the Conflict
http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/
critiques/new/The_BBC_During_the_Gaza_War_Biased_
Coverage_of_the_Conflict.asp
Extracts:
Our latest analysis reveals more BBC anti-Israel bias.
Previous Charges of Bias
Last year, we released an in-depth report analyzing one year of the BBC's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We found that the BBC has a consistent record of portraying Israeli actions in a negative light while increasing sympathy for the Palestinian point of view. Rather than respond to the criticisms in our report, the BBC chose to accuse us of bias:
"HonestReporting has a particular view of the conflict and cannot be seen as an independent arbiter of our output."
That previous analysis examined the BBC's reporting, based not on subjective opinion, but on the very journalistic standards that the BBC claims to uphold. We presented hard facts but our work was summarily rejected by the BBC, which has failed to provide its own analysis as to why HonestReporting should be considered an unsuitable judge.
HonestReporting is not alone in accusing the BBC of systemic bias against Israel. Several years ago, the BBC conducted its own investigation into whether the network held an anti-Israel bias. The result -- a report by senior news editor Malcolm Balen -- was a lengthy study that the corporation refuses to make public. In an ongoing legal battle to force the BBC to make the report public, the British House of Lords recently ruled against the BBC and sent the case back to the High Court. We hope the High Court will force the BBC to release its study into the public domain.
In light of this ongoing legal effort, we decided to examine the BBC's coverage of the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip. Images and accounts of the conflict have had a significant impact on public opinion, with many viewing Israel's actions as, at best, "disproportionate" and, at worst, "war crimes". The BBC is one of the most influential media organizations in the world. We wanted to see if its coverage encouraged such notions. What we found was an overwhelming tendency to highlight cases of both real and unproven Palestinian suffering while making Israeli actions appear trivial or illegitimate.
Comparison With Conflict in Sri Lanka
It is extremely appropriate to highlight the BBC's coverage of the Middle East considering the importance that the BBC attaches to the region. During the conflict, the BBC published, on average, 4.5 articles every day dealing with the fighting. In contrast, BBC coverage of the Sri Lankan government's campaign against the Tamil Tigers group -- a conflict that resulted in an estimated 2,000 civilian deaths in January of 2009 -- produced barely one article a day.
According to human rights organizations, the conflict in Sri Lanka includes intentional attacks by both sides on civilians, attacks on hospitals (twenty attacks from December through February alone), and the use of human shields. Yet the BBC gives this conflict, estimated to have resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, less than one quarter the average daily coverage of the Gaza conflict. If the BBC is going to focus this much on Gaza, it must expect scrutiny of that coverage.
Summary
We analyzed articles appearing on the BBC website beginning on December 22, 2008, when Hamas announced that it was ending the ceasefire, until January 19, 2009 when both sides announced a new temporary ceasefire. Over these 28 days, the BBC published 126 articles -- an average of over four each day. We found that the vast majority of these articles contained unproven accusations against Israel, graphic and out-of-context images, and highlighted quotations that reflected negatively on Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces.
The "Massacre" that Wasn't
One example that created a fierce anti-Israel backlash was the alleged Israeli attack on a United Nations school in which refugees had sought shelter from the fighting. On January 7, the BBC claimed that Israeli mortar shells had killed 40 civilians seeking shelter at the school. (While this report is focused on the BBC, it should be pointed out that the accusation was reported by almost all other major media).
However, investigations revealed that not only had the Israeli shells fallen outside the school, but according to the IDF only 12 people -- including 9 terrorists -- were killed. HonestReporting had predicted that there would be tales of a massacre that would later be proven false 48 hours BEFORE the incident. If HonestReporting could predict that Hamas would attempt such a propaganda coup, why couldn't the BBC?
Even when the truth emerged, the BBC's "correction", while acknowledging that the shelling occurred outside of the school compound, failed to correct the number of dead and continues to omit that the IDF was responding to Palestinian rocket fire in proximity to the school.
Conclusions
The BBC's coverage of the Gaza conflict painted a picture of an Israeli attack that intentionally targeted civilians and may have included war crimes. Specifically:
The BBC relied upon Palestinians who were given the opportunity to make dubious accusations without any supporting evidence.
The BBC published image after image of Palestinians suffering under Israeli attacks while giving readers few views of the impact that the conflict was having on Israeli civilians living under a constant and daily rocket barrage.
The most damning Palestinian statements about the Israeli operations were highlighted on the side of the articles, while Israeli statements were almost never treated in the same way.
We have said before that as one of the world's top news sources, the BBC has a tremendous responsibility to report accurately and fairly. While the BBC claims to be impartial, it has done everything possible to deflect scrutiny of its work from being made public. Right now, a pending lawsuit in the House of Lords seeks to compel the BBC to make public an internal review that allegedly found that its Middle East reporting was biased against Israel.
2. Britain: Pro-Zionist War Hero Trained Jews to Fight Back
Wingate "The Friend" is Remembered, 65 Years Later
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/130588
by Hillel Fendel
Extracts:
(IsraelNN.com) Moshe Arens, a former three-time Defense Minister and Foreign Minister, will be the Guest of Honor at a memorial ceremony honoring the late Maj.-Gen. Orde Wingate of the British Army in Mandatory Palestine.
The ceremony will take place on Tuesday afternoon at 2 PM, at the Ammunition Hill Museum in Jerusalem.
Wingate died 65 years ago today, on March 24, 1944. He is known in Israel as HaYedid, the friend, because of his devotion to the Jewish People and Zionism. This was a product of his upbringing in the Christian "Plymouth Brethren" movement, which believed strongly that the Jews must return to Israel. He carried a Bible with him at all times.
Wingate arrived in Palestine in 1936 as a British Captain in military intelligence. He quickly became known as somewhat of a curiosity for his appreciation and sympathy for the Jews.
In light of the ongoing Arab intifiada campaign of riots, massacres and attacks organized against the Jews by Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini, Wingate initiated a plan to fight back and deter the Arab attacks. In 1938, he submitted a report entitled, "Secret Appreciation of Possibilities of Night Movements by Armed Forces of the Crown - With Object of Putting an end to Terrorism in Northern Palestine." This plan became the basis for the British Special Night Squads (SNS).
The SNS was based primarily in Ein Harod in the Jezreel Valley, mainly because Wingate's favorite Biblical figure, Gideon, had hand-picked a small army there with which he defeated a large Midianite enemy force.
The Wingate Strategy
Wingate's strategy, later used in several important World War II battles, was to "carry the offensive to the enemy," ambushing Arab saboteurs behind Arab lines and raiding border villages used as bases by the Mufti's men. His methods and missions were generally crowned with success.
Wingate's British forces worked together with the Haganah to fight the Arabs. Haganah commander Yitzhak Sadeh later said, "For some time we did the same things as Wingate, but on a smaller scale and with less skill. We followed parallel paths, until he came to us, and in him we found our leader."
Wingate's personality and military genius made a profound impact on the Jewish defense forces in the 1930s, and these in turn became the basis for today's Israel Defense Forces. His contribution to Jewish defense in the Land of Israel is considered enormous.
No Entry to Palestine
His pro-Jewish positions ultimately led to his undoing, and his political enemies managed to have him transferred back to Britain in 1939; his passport was stamped, "No Entry to Palestine." After leading World War II battles in Sudan, Ethiopia, India and Burma, and after being promoted to the rank of acting Maj.-Gen., he was killed in a plane crash behind Japanese lines in Burma.
A memorial was erected to him in Britain, and The Wingate Institute in Netanya, Israel's National Center for Physical Education and Sport, is named for him. In addition, the Israeli youth village Yemin Orde was named for Wingate; founded in 1953 to accommodate Holocaust orphans and immigrant children, it is today home to more than 500 children from around the world.
3. Belgium:
The Muslim Threat from Inside the Country?
Politicians Fret as Muslim Population Swells in Europe Amid Little Integration
Extracts:
BRUSSELS, Belgium. A clash of civilizations may be taking place on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it's also happening a lot more quietly in European cities.
Old Europe's population is dwindling even as immigration and high birth rates among Muslim groups are swelling in cities all over the continent.
And in Belgium, it is no different.
Filip Dewinter, a leader of the far-right separatist party Vlaams Belang, predicts there will eventually be a kind of civil war when the longtime residents of Brussels, the nation's capital and administrative seat of the European Union, realize their city is about to be taken over by Muslim immigrants.
Although there are no official statistics on how many Muslims live in Brussels, it is believed they make up about 25 percent of the city's 1 million urban residents. Dewinter, who opposes immigration and has called Islamophobia a "duty," claims three of the 19 sections of Brussels, each with its own mayor, now have Muslim majorities.
"In those neighborhoods it's not our government that's in power," he said, "but the Muslim authorities, the mosques, the imams, who are in charge."
Capital of Eurabia?
"Halal food is served in the schools, not only for Muslim children, but for all the children," said Dewinter, adding that municipal pools in Brussels now have separate hours for men and women to swim.
The anti-immigrant Vlaams Belang, once considered a pariah party, now controls about 24 percent of the Belgian vote, a trend matched in other European countries with burgeoning Muslim populations.
Though the immigration debate has not yet reached the fever pitch it has in the U.S., a real test will come when a major European city has a Muslim majority. The first could be Marseilles, in France, or Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. But don't count out Brussels, the heart and capital of Europe.
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