West Bank: bookmarks

On many occasions you find that organizations like BBC have the ability, capacity and resources to make the world look like a global village, a place where no barriers stop crossing over borders and boundaries.

In the case of recent tragic happenings in Gaza one does not found if enough efforts were made to demonstrate diversity of sources and opinion on issues related to Gaza.

When access to Gaza was denied, what pragmatic, proactive and timely actions were taken that the audience does not end up with an unbalanced, if not a totally one sided story.

1. For sake of clarity, BBC can easily give the number of appearances and duration form 26 December 2008 and 17 January 2009 for those appearing across its various channels in different bulletins/news programmes:

Mark Regev
Avil Leibovich
Issac Herzog
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and others.

2. For establishing a comparison, (even if there were restrictions on entering and reporting from Gaza), how many times genuine, credible and qualified professionals were interviewed, quoted and shown i.e. persons including:

UNRWA director John Ging
John Holmes, UN Humanitarian Affairs,
Donatella Rivera, Amnesty's Jerusalem investigator,
Navi Pillay UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Katherine Ritz,ICRC
Norwegian surgeon Erik Fosse
Norwegian anesthesiologist and professor in emergency medicine Mads Gilbert

Such comparisons are necessary especially when in bulletin after bulletin Israel's spokespersons were (and still are) given airtime. So how does the tally looks like vis-à-vis human right activists and medical experts in urban casualties?

3. How much interaction, consultation BBC had to provide the version of civil liberty advocates from groups such as B'TSELEM - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories were consulted and interview as to how BBC can verify reports about civilian killings in Gaza? How many representatives from Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and other emergency assistance networks were interviewed?

4. How many medical personnel with experience of humanitarian relief and medical assistance in urban war settings i.e. Serbia, Bosnia were interviewed to help BBC audience get a comparative perspective of consequences of armed incursions into civilian areas.

5. BBC claims that because of restrictions imposed they could only cover the incursion on Gaza from what many name as the hill of same since most coverage despatched from the same spot in Israel overlooking Gaza's outskirts. How many times did BBC air reports from the Palestine-Egyptian border in Rafa from the Egyptian side which would have served to bring a new dimension to provide the story from more than one restrictive angle?

6. Why a comprehensive picture of the gravity of the situation at hospitals in Gaza is not being given? What is the daily pressure on the medical personnel? What kind of shortages are they facing?

7. What prevents BBC from using commercially available satellite images for a then and now perspective to allow the viewers have an idea how the sea side strip has changed say from 25 December 2009 and today.

8. Perhaps an exercise similar to the above will prove helpful to clearly determine if BBC is fair, neutral and objective in covering Gaza in particular and other similar matters in general.

Could one now hope that the uproar caused by BBC's lame logic and lazy excuses will make everyone clearly see that their arguments have no legs to stand on.

The BBC need to salvage itself from a credibility crisis and it must now think how the confidence of the audience will be restored.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplaye...

here is the link..Israeli Interior Minister Meir Shitreet was interviewed in the programme..something appropriate about his surname...

I think that the organisations mentioned in this blog are the sensible way forward for Palestine and Israel

The USA keeps sending Israel AID by AID i mean free weapons to allow Israel to continue to commit genocide and the illegal occupation of Palestine, nice going USA, why does the world hate you exactly, oh yes it's your lifestyle not your foreign policy! America is all for Illegal occupations after all.

In the official American 9/11 report Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's main motivation behind the attack was Americas continued support for Israel.

http://www.9-11commission.gov

There was the public 9/11 commission on c-span stating that the main reason for the 9/11 attacks was the continued support for Israel in their quest to cleans the occupied state "Palestine" C-Span video can be found on youtube and here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Israel Violates UN Security Council, Occupying Syria's Land with Noam Chomsky: http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Analysis: New US-Israeli arms deal (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/...

FTA: Thursday, 16 August 2007, 16:02 GMT 17:02 UK
This new agreement sets increased levels of US military aid for Israel over the coming decade.
In broad terms, Israel will receive a total of some $30bn (£14.8bn) in military aid, a significant increase over $24bn (£12bn) it received over the past 10 years.
US ARMS AID TO ISRAEL
$30bn over 10 years
1st payment of $2.55bn in 2008
Annual payments rising to $3.1bn by 2011
26.3% can be spent in Israel
Rest must be spent on US arms

(AID = FREE weapons Paid for by the USA Tax payer)

But will it actually take a strike against Israel before the machine decides to "obliterate Iran" anyway? In anticipatory self-defence of course(sic).