Agent of a foreign power? By William Bowles

31 December, 2008

I’m compelled once more to put pen to paper, or precisely fingers to keyboard as I traverse the flood of news that isn’t being shown on the mass media about the ongoing destruction of an entire country and its identity as Palestine and our collective non-response to this outrageous crime against Humanity.

I also have an admission to make about the last piece I wrote ‘No place to run, no place to hide’, I just picked the very first BBC piece on the destruction of Gaza that I came across. It wasn’t difficult, believe me, any person with the right approach to life and a reasonable command of the English language could do it.

And the clowns who write that garbage for the BBC actually think they’re smarter than I am, and you too, dear reader. Well maybe they are. But how do they sleep at night, like a baby (but not one in Gaza I’ll bet)?

But it’s at times like these that I really do like the computer, after all, my Mac has coded into its memory chips pretty much a condensation of every basic natural law we have discovered since we stood upright on a beach somewhere in Southern Africa and scratched our heads and wondered what the hell this was all about!

Well, I’m pretty sure that Nature never intended it too work out this way, that is, for us as fellow human beings to just stand and stare, speechless and powerless to speak as those who speak with forked tongue fill the airwaves with their misspeak.

So, in line with my catch as catch can approach to the news, excuse me while I nip off and find out what the BBC is up to on this, the fifth day of the slaughter of the innocents, or as a friend of mine put it this am, it’s like shooting ducks in a barrel.

Well, it’s as predictable as the sun rising, this from the first BBC Website story I came across on the Israeli destruction of the Gaza Strip,

“Air strikes continued on Wednesday, and more Palestinian rockets hit Israel.” ‘Israelis ponder ceasefire calls’

Note that Israeli airstrikes and Palestinian rockets are given equal weight. This is what the BBC calls ‘balanced’ reporting. I have no compunction in calling the BBC’s coverage as cold-blooded as Israel’s slaughter. Contrast this with the opening paragraph from one of the today’s PCHR’s press release I recieved:

“In a very horrible crime, last night and this morning, 22 Palestinian children were killed or wounded while they were sleeping at homes. Five sisters were killed in Jabalya refugee camp; 3 brothers were killed in Rafah refugee camp; and a 9th child was killed in Gaza City. Thus, the number of children killed in the past three days of the IOF offensive against the Gaza Strip has mounted to 31 out of 280 Palestinians who have been killed so far. The victims also include 9 women. Additionally, at least 140 children have been wounded.” — ‘9 Palestinian Children Killed Raising the Number of Children Killed Since the Beginning of the Current IOF Offensive against the Gaza Strip to 31’.

In another story on the ramming of the boat the SS Dignity by the Israeli navy, this is how the BBC opened its story:

“A boat delivering 3.5 tonnes of Cypriot medical aid to the Gaza Strip has been rammed by Israeli naval vessels in international waters, activists say.

“The Free Gaza campaign group, which operates the Dignity, also claimed shots were fired towards the crew.” — ‘Gaza aid boat ‘rammed by Israel’” [my emph. Ed]

Note the BBC’s use of “activists say’ and that it’s merely a “claim” that the Israeli navy fired on the boat. In other words, it’s just ‘one side’ of the story. Yet the evidence is overwhelming that the Israeli navy not only rammed the boat but rammed it three times.

“The [Israeli] gunboats gave us no warning. They came up out of the darkness firing flares and flashing huge floodlights into our faces. We were so shocked that at first we didn’t react. We knew we were well within international waters and supposedly safe from attack. They rammed us three times, hitting the side of the boat hard. We began taking on water and, for a few minutes, we all feared for our lives. After they rammed us, they started screaming at us as we were frantically getting the lifeboats ready and putting on our life jackets. They kept yelling that if we didn’t turn back they would shoot us.” — Caoimhe Butterly on the SS Dignity

And in yet another BBC piece titled ‘Truce diplomacy fails for now’, the BBC spin-meisters set the destruction of the Gaza Strip entirely in the context of the alleged reason for Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip as an attempt to destroy Hamas, why, because it is alleged that Hamas broke a cease-fire (see below).

So the BBC goes along with the view that it’s okay rain death and destruction on a defenceless community over 60% of whom are fourteen years old or younger!

Yet Hamas has not been destroyed and will no doubt emerge even stronger at the end of this disastrous and sickening week. The death and destruction is not about destroying Hamas (an organization that the Israelis created to take out the PLO), it’s about destroying the will of the Palestinian people to resist.

In fact the entire thrust of the BBC article quite clearly takes the position of the Israeli state that it’s the Palestinians who are at fault. It opens:

“Diplomacy suddenly played a brief role in the Gaza conflict with a proposal for a 48-hour ceasefire on which a more permanent agreement could be built.

“However, the plan was rejected by Israeli ministers on the grounds that it was not permanent and would give Hamas a chance to regroup.”

And just in case we still don’t get it, that it’s those damn Palestinians, it continues:

“At the same time, Hamas is continuing to fire rockets into Israel, including some of its newer longer-range ones based on the old Soviet Grad, also known as the Katyusha. Such a rocket represents a significantly greater threat to Israel and Beersheba was hit (a school, though empty) on Wednesday morning.”

But no mention of the F-16s, Apache helicopter gunships, ‘bunker buster’ bombs, missiles and warships, not even in passing. Yet the BBC feels we need a detailed description of the range of the Palestinian’s home-made weapons and the fact that one actually hit something, an (empty) school.

The Israeli intention is clear and the BBC has delivered the message for them, the Palestinian people are to be slaughtered into submission to the Zionist/Fascist state. Nothing short of complete surrender to the Israeli state’s demands. And it’s our taxes that are funding BIBC (the British/Israeli Broadcasting Corp) as it peddles the Imperial line.

It continues:

“The key issue seems to be whether Hamas can be persuaded to give a commitment that a new ceasefire would be permanent. It might also have to agree to stop arms smuggling, a potentially impossible condition for it to accept.”

The implication being that it was Hamas that broke the ceasefire and then drives the nail into the Palestinian coffin by drawing our attention to a demand that is impossible to enforce. In other words, it’s a done deal that has nothing to do with Hamas, a deal that even the BBC recognizes, that no matter what Hamas does, Palestine must be destroyed.

“Abu Zayd mentioned the lull when she was asked whether the population of Gaza was aware that this was all commenced by the Hamas government unilaterally ending the cease-fire and firing rockets.

“I don’t think they think the truce was violated first by Hamas,” she said.

“I think they saw that Hamas had observed the truce quite strictly for almost six months, certainly for four of the six months, and that they got nothing in turn – because there was to be kind of a deal,” Abu Zayd said.

“If there were no rockets, the crossings would be opened,” she said. “The crossings were not opened at all.” — Karen Abu Zayd, commissioner of the UN Relief and Works Agency, Ha’aretz, 30 December, 2008

The BBC is directly complicit in selling a war crime of monstrous dimensions and should the day arrive when the architects of the slaughter are brought to justice, I really hope the managers of the BBC ‘News’ are along there with them in the dock.

See also ‘Protesters glued inside BBC HQ