BBC reporting on Israel

The BBC is inviting statements from members of the public about its impartiality on the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here is what I sent to them:

Dear BBC

On several occasions during the last few years I have had cause to complain to the BBC about its coverage of the Israel-Palestine issue, especially its various news programmes.

My concerns have invariably been about the anti-Israel bias in reporting, which is endemic across all aspects of the organisation including even its teletext service. The BBC's coverage of Palestinian suicide bombings has been particularly biased since inevitably the reporting focuses on Israel's response to these savage attacks and usually focuses solely on Palestinian victims. Bizarrely, BBC reports after suicide bombings have often focused on the families of the suicide bombers but rarely on the Israeli victims' families. Other examples of the systematic anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian bias include:

• failure to report on the widespread corruption and internal fighting within the Palestinian Authority;
• failure to report on the systematic anti-semitic indoctrination practiced by the Palesinian Authority, which includes the deliberate indoctrination of children (leading for example, to the stated desire of 80% of all Palestinian children to become suicide bombers);
• failure to report on the widescale, brutal slaughter and torture of so-called Palestinian 'collaborators' by the Palestinian authority, while at the same time exagerrating relatively minor instances of brutality on the Israeli side;
• failure to distnguish between the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorists on the one hand and the much rarer accidental killings of Palestinian civilians during Israel's targeted raids on terrorists;
• failure to report on the wild celebrations that take place on Palestinian streets following suicicide bombings, focusing instead on the words of 'condemnation' from the official PA officials who are known to say the exact opposite in Arabic of what they tell the Western media in English;
• failure to report on the widespread fanaticism of terrorist groups that completely dominate Palestinian society, while at the same time exaggerating the role and impact of the miniscule extremist minority of Israelis.
• general obsession with showing Palestinians as victims and Israelis as aggressors irrespective of the evidence in any situation
• failure to show the normal Israeli perspective at any time; thus, for example, the only Israeli civilians ever interviewed are usually the more extreme settlers who represent a tiny minority viewpoint;
• failure to acknowledge the unique vulnerability of Israel, which is the only country in the world that is existentially threatened. In particular, failure to acknowledge that the majority of Palestinians (as well as overwhelming majoirty of all Arabs) are committed to the destruction of Israel and this is also now the stated nuclear objective of another state (Iran).