Sunday, January 18, 2009

BBC and the UN: the Same Hydra

Jeremy Bowen, the BBC correspondent sent to tell about the war in Gaza, informs us that

I just broke off writing for a couple of minutes to take a call from Chris Gunness, who is the spokesman for Unrwa, the UN agency that looks after Palestinian refugees.

He was ringing to say that Unrwa wanted an investigation into whether Israel has committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Civilians are protected by the laws of war.

I have known Chris for years, as he used to be a BBC foreign correspondent.

Interesting, isn't it? The fellow from UNRWA used to be a fellow from the BBC. Two organizations with very little goodwill towards Israel, with interchangeable personnel.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You need cheering up. This article here is the best reporting I've seen on the conflict to date. Objective, presents both sides of the argument reasonably and lets readers make their own conclusions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/world/middleeast/17israel.html

If all reporting was like this Israel wouldn't have any image problems. It doesn't deliberately favour Israel as such, it's just honest & truthful reporting. From the NY Times no less. There's hope for them yet.

Anonymous said...

Nice catch!

Anonymous said...

Yaakov,
Speaking of the BBC, could you do a little investigative reporting on this please:

http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2009/01/16/bbc-silent-about-being-terrorized-in-gaza-discretion-or-cowardice/

The author of the article is a respected writer. I can't find anything on the web about it, but it was apparantly reported on Israeli radio.

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

> when four children were found
> emaciated, next to their dead
> mothers.

this is odd. Why were the children emaciated? Even children don't become emaciated after a few days. It takes longer than that.

How did the mother's die? I don't mean to seem cruel, but how did the children live?

Who was moving them from house to house? Whoever that was, did they kill the mothers? Did they strategically position them to be killed by shelling?

Really. Was this whole thing staged and directed right down to the emaciated children grieving over the bloody bodies of their mothers?

If so, what does that make this? AP snuff? Are the press, the IRC and even the IDF all being manipulated into to playing their part in some kind of horrible snuff reality show?

Anonymous said...

FROM CAROL HERMAN

AHEAD: Fully recorded tapes by the IDF! (Just like you saw of the belly-flop plane landing in the Hudson River. And, the first responders.) Spectacular results after the fact let you see it happening. As often as you like. Since this stuff has been posted on the Internet.

AHEAD: ONE PICTURE IS WORTH 1000 WORDS. Believe it or not, Israel retaliated with FIRE, AFTER a rocket got launched. And, that's going to be the beauty of it. You just can't stop the pictures.

I learned this at the knee of Ronald Reagan. Reagan certainly got a lot of bad press! Didn't matter. Finally, the frustrated press called him "The TEFLON Man."

You could learn something from all that press activity that wasn't worth bupkis.

Besides, you can almost write, ahead of time, what they're going to say. Until they get exhausted. And then? A couple of the media presstitutes find their parent company is dead.

To make good business you've got to be more aware of your customers; and less aware of the turkeys who keep up the old "song and dance." Exit "vaudeville."