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BBC Cancels Negative Coverage of the Late Saeb Erekat

Nov 20, 2020 6:00 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald 10 Comments

The BBC has for decades been consistently anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian in its coverage. The latest example of that is its coverage of the life of the late Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the PA since 1994, and a tireless propagandist who accused Israel of every conceivable atrocity, including the “massacre” of 500 Palestinians in Jenin in 2002, a “massacre” that never took place. The BBC had scheduled an interview with an Israeli MK to talk about his death, but when she told them she would be critical of Erekat, they cancelled the interview; her unwillingness to join the BBC’s sanctification of Erekat as a “prince of peace” made her unfit to be heard. The story is here: “BBC cancels interview with Sharren Haskel about Saeb Erekat,” by Yonatan Gottleib, Arutz Sheva, November 10 , 2020:

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) canceled an interview it scheduled with Likud MK Sharren Haskel after, according to her, it became clear to them that she was not mourning the death of terror-supporter Erekat.

According to MK Haskel, she agreed to the BBC’s request to be interviewed about Erekat’s death, but in the briefing call she told them that he “promoted, financed, and pushed for an armed struggle against the State of Israel.”

After a few minutes, she was called again by the BBC and informed that the interview with her was canceled.

“A few hours ago, they contacted me from the BBC and asked to interview me about the death of Saeb Erekat,” MK Haskel wrote on her Twitter account.

“In a briefing call with me, I explained that although in English Erekat was portrayed as a peacemaker, in Arabic he promoted, funded, and pushed for an armed struggle against the State of Israel. In his last days, too, he fought the historic peace signed between Israel and the Arab states, which have finally recognized that the obstacle to peace is the Palestinians and not Israel.

“When I went on to remind them of his statement that Israel’s position has always [been to] retreat and therefore the Palestinians can stick to their refusal, the researcher politely ended the conversation,” she wrote. “After a few minutes they got back to me and informed me that the interview was canceled.”

It’s too bad that MK Haskel was so forthcoming; she might have avoided alerting the BBC to what she planned to say and then, once the interview had commenced, she could say what she wanted to about the late, and — for her and millions of Israelis — unlamented Saeb Erekat.

The BBC had no intention of allowing anyone to complicate their worshipful coverage of Erekat. No mention was made in any of their post-mortem coverage to Erekat’s 30 years of calumniating Israel as the PA’s Chief Negotiator. Every Israeli attack against the terror group Hamas constituted, according to Erekat, not just a battle, but a “massacre.” In several cases, Erekat went even further: the Israelis were guilty of “genocide” in Gaza. Erekat most famously accused Israel of a “massacre of 500 innocent Palestinians” in Jenin in 2002. No one could find the slightest evidence of such a massacre – not the U.N., not Amnesty International, not Human Rights Watch. There were 53 Palestinians killed in Jenin, almost all of them fighters, and 26 Israeli soldiers also died in the house-to-house fighting. But none of that mattered to Erekat, who never retracted his accusation but, instead, continued to repeat it, shamelessly and often. Erekat used to claim to Western audiences (but never to his fellow Arabs, who knew what nonsense it was, fit only for the Infidels) that the “Palestinians” simply wanted to live in peace, side by side and as “equals,” in their own state, with the Israelis. That’s flatly untrue. Every public opinion poll has shown that a majority of the Palestinians want the Jewish state to cease to exist. Erekat simply made up this narrative of the “peaceful Palestinians” and mentioned it whenever it suited him.

This past June, Erekat was again spreading his lies about the Israelis. This time it involved his own cousin, Ahmed Erekat. The young Erekat had been in his car at an Israeli checkpoint. When he had advanced to the head of the line, he suddenly stepped on the gas and swerved his car into the group of Israeli soldiers manning the checkpoint, sending one of them into the air. He then got out of his car, and was shot dead by an Israeli soldier who, quite reasonably, assumed that he was armed and determined to finish what his vehicular jihad had begun. Saeb Erekat was quick to call the Israeli action a “cold-blooded murder” and an “execution” of his own cousin, doing nothing more than waiting to pass through the checkpoint. Fortunately, there was a video of the whole event, and Ahmed Erekat’s attempt to ram into, and kill, Israeli soldiers with his car could clearly be seen. But that did not prevent Saeb Erekat from continuing to accuse the Israelis of a “cold-blooded murder.”

These false accusations by Erekat – about the Jenin “massacre,”the “murder” of his cousin, the “genocide” in Gaza — is not what the BBC wanted its audience to hear. It certainly did not want MK Haskel suggesting that Saeb Erekat was anything less than a tragic truth-teller, who so deeply desired “peace” for his people, and for the Israelis, too. So they canceled the interview.

The BBC has a long record of anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian coverage. There was its Middle East correspondent Barbara Plett, who described how she wept when she saw Arafat being lifted into the air to travel to France for the final treatment for his terminal illness: “the frail old man rose from his ruined compound, I started to cry,” she said. You can guess how, in her reportage, she covered the Israelis and the Palestinians.

There was (and is) Lyse Doucet, now the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, who produced a documentary called “Children of the Gaza War,” a tear-jerker about the uncaring and mighty Israelis, and how the Gaza war – supposedly started by Israel and not by the Hamas terrorists — had damaged the lives of Palestinian children. The stories about Israeli children enduring Hamas rockets landing in their homes, schoolyards, and playgrounds, on the other hand, were given short shrift, about one-third the time that was devoted to the Palestinians. Nor was there a single shot of Israeli children having exactly 15 seconds to run for cover to the nearest bomb shelter. Doucet deliberately translated the word “yahud” — so often used by the Palestinians – incorrectly, as “Israeli”; audiences failed to realize that the Palestinian children were denouncing “the Jews,” not just Israelis, and were quoting Qur’anic verses and Hadith that were about the cursed Jews. When Palestinian children shout “Khaybar Khaybar, ya yahud, Jaish Muhammad, sa yahud,” this means, “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning,” which is used as a battle cry when attacking Jews, any Jews, not just today’s Israelis.

Perhaps the most influential anti-Israel figure at the BBC is John Simpson, who since 1988 has been World Affairs Editor. He has been consistently a defender of Islam and a relentless critic of Israel. John Simpson proclaims at his website that he is “doing my best to make sense of a crazy world.” On the subject of Islam, he has been among its stoutest apologists. When he interviewed Pim Fortuyn, he infuriated that supremely intelligent man with his absurd charges about Fortuyn’s “racism,” and his obstinate refusal to accept Fortuyn’s statement of the obvious, that Islam is not a race; the courtly Fortuyn ordered Simpson and his BBC crew to leave his home after accusing the newsman of “failing to show him any respect.” You can read Simpson’s report on the man he called “Holland’s anti-Islam dandy,” here. Notice the sneer in his description of Fortuyn’s “high-camp charm” and how the Dutchman “sat in his garden bower like an 18th century dandy whose wig had fallen off.” There’s a lot of this dismissive stuff, and hardly anything about what it was that made Fortuyn so apprehensive about Islam. Fortuyn is only quoted as saying that the Netherlands was already “too crowded,” but he had much more to say about Islam, which didn’t appear to interest John Simpson. Of course, even knowing exactly nothing about Fortuyn’s views on anything other than Islam, Simpson goes right ahead and pastes on Fortuyn that all-purpose epithet “right-wing.” He doesn’t pick up on Fortuyn’s remarks about the treatment of women and homosexuals in Islam; apparently that wasn’t worth Simpson’s while. He was too busy describing Fortuyn — quite unfairly — as a supercilious and dandiacal coxcomb.

Four days after their meeting, Fortuyn was murdered by a man who resented his views on Muslims. John Simpson felt no need to stop and express dismay. Instead, he described Fortuyn as the “archetypical right-winger” (there was nothing to support this assertion unless you think that Fortuyn’s opposition to Islam is enough to make him “right-wing,” though all kinds of well-known left-wingers, including the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, have been just as, or even more, anti-Islam than Pim Fortuyn) and ended with this bit of nastiness, very much in the john-simpson vein: Fortuyn, he concludes his “tribute,” is more likely to be remembered for “the hatred he gave rise to than for his own achievements.”

You will not be surprised to learn that John Simpson’s reports on Israel have been consistently, almost comically, unfair. This decades-long anti-Israel bias, with Israel being presented as an aggressive little Sparta, always hell-bent on making trouble for innocent Palestinians, is a staple of BBC reporting, usually on the lines of “the Israeli tail seems to wag the American dog.” In 2001, he described Ariel Sharon as “the architect of the massacre at Sabra and Chatila in 1982.” As everyone knows, it was not the Israelis, but the Christian Phalange, settling scores because of the PLO massacres of Christians in northern Lebanon, who were responsible for Sabra and Chatila. But twenty years after the massacre, John Simpson was still blaming the Israelis.

Erekat has been laid to rest. And the BBC has made sure that its worldwide audience received only the sanitized version of this man’s life, with his “unshakable commitment to peace,” even going so far as to cancel an interview with an Israeli MK that was not going to follow the BBC party line. Erekat went to his grave with too many of his lies about Israel unchallenged by the BCC, and with his remarkable hypocrisy, in insisting on being treated at an Israeli hospital, despite his half-century of accusing Israelis of “massacres” and “genocide,” going unremarked on the BBC, though it would have made for a terrific story. Even beyond the grave, Erekat remains loyally protected by the pro-Palestinian brigade at Bush House.

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Filed Under: Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, journalistic bias, Palestinian jihad, United Kingdom Tagged With: bbc, Saeb Erekat, Sharren Haskel


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Comments

  1. gravenimage says

    Nov 20, 2020 at 8:28 pm

    BBC Cancels Negative Coverage of the Late Saeb Erekat
    …………..

    Just appalling–but scarcely surprising.

    Reply
    • Jayell says

      Nov 21, 2020 at 5:26 am

      This is just the latest in a catalogue of appalling censorship maneuvers and cover-ups by this disgusting excuse for a so-called ‘national broadcaster’ that 90% of the UK population now view with total loathing and avoid consuming their rubbish at all costs – but are legally are required to subsidise through an outrageously outdated TV license if they own a set which can receive live transmissions off air. However, more and more UK citizens are now relying on internet providers through computers and phones rather than TV’s or watching DVD’s, so the BBC has had to deal with an increasing surge of licence cancellations (up to 500 a day?) and is losing money hand over fist. Rather than taking a long, hard look at themselves and trying to show some respect for their reluctant subscribers who are paying them all those £billions, BBC bosses have retreated into their subsidised ivory bunkers and emulated Stasi tactics to wrest ‘their’ money out of a gullible public by through their stooge company ‘Capita’ with unannounced harassment visits to ‘unlicensed’ homes and issuing inaccurate ‘official guidelines’ that try to frighten people into buying licences when the law says they don’t have to. JW readers can find quite a lot of very interesting videos on this subject on Youtube.

      The BBC has clearly had it, and even the UK Government won’t talk to them (I really liked the way Donald Trump dealt with one of their so-called ‘reporters’). Highly profile presenters are now leaving them as they transparently fill their ranks with unwelcome gender/ethnic box-tickers irrespective of talent. You’d think that they’d have the sense bow out gracefully now rather than make continuing to make a hideous public exhibition of themselves as though they’re Satan’s gift to the Universe, but their (currently) legally-sanctioned financial feather-bedding seems to have induced terminal delusions of secure entitlement and grandeur based on a reputation that they lost with what remains of their audience many years ago – although they don’t seem to have notice that quite yet. No doubt the Mandarins of Broadcasting House will have thought that they’d got away with with this latest debacle. Well, I haven’t had a chance to consult Youtube yet because this is the first I’ve seen of this particular little episode, but the usual bright sparks will be no doubt be blowing this one open as they’ve done with rest of the ‘Corporations’ noble exploits (sic). Keep up the good work, Mr Spencer & Co. !

      Reply
      • Jayell says

        Nov 21, 2020 at 11:18 am

        Here’s another piece of the BBC’s amazing management prowess. Apparently, a producer recently upset a BBC management snowflake, so he was suspended for 2 years with a £200,000 payout for ‘walking aggressively’. Does that mean that John Cleese can now sue the BBC for not paying him extra for doing his Monty Python ‘Ministry of Silly Walks’ sketch?

        Reply
    • revereridesagain says

      Nov 21, 2020 at 8:13 pm

      If British institutions of today had behaved during WWII as they do towards the invasion of conquest and dominance-bent Muslims there would be a statue of Adolf Hitler in Trafalgar Square and Big Ben would be renamed “Big Goering”.

      Reply
      • gravenimage says

        Nov 22, 2020 at 12:24 am

        There *was* a lot of apepasement of Fascism in Britain at first–it was due to the heroisim of those like Winston Churchill that this changed.

        Reply
  2. owensgate says

    Nov 20, 2020 at 9:16 pm

    Not a clue who this “late Saeb Erekat” is, but if the “BEEB” is nixing criticism, he must be well deserved worm food indeed.

    Reply
    • gravenimage says

      Nov 20, 2020 at 9:48 pm

      He was pretty nasty, owensgate:

      “Erekat remembered as a peace-seeker by some, a demonizer of Israel by others”

      https://www.timesofisrael.com/erekat-remembered-as-a-peace-seeker-by-some-a-demonizer-of-israel-by-others/

      This article rather downplays things, but you still get a sense of how ugly he was.

      “…right-wing Israeli politicians highlighted Erekat’s propagation of false stories about alleged Israeli atrocities, his support for boycotting Israeli settlements, and his advocacy of the PA’s ongoing payments to the families of terrorists.

      Erekat reportedly visited the home of an officer in the PA security services killed during a terror attack against Israeli soldiers and paid his condolences to the family.

      The senior PLO official also sent a “humanitarian letter” to Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine chief Ahmad Sa’adat in which he expressed polite affection for the terror chief. Sa’adat currently sits in Israeli jail for his involvement in the assassination of the nationalist politician Rehovam Zeevi…”

      Reply
  3. Keith O says

    Nov 21, 2020 at 2:48 am

    Another terrorist entering the gates of hell.
    No great loss.

    Reply
  4. Michael Copeland says

    Nov 21, 2020 at 6:51 am

    The BBC does not cover the news. It covers it up.

    Reply
    • Alice W says

      Nov 21, 2020 at 1:14 pm

      👍 these days many news sources have to be checked to find out the news.
      How in the world can we function if we can not even agree on the facts?

      Reply

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