I was interviewed by the BBC a couple of weeks ago. They were interested in my opinion on our current presidential race and the now moot issue of the eligibility of two particular GOP presidential candidates.
The interview went well and I was asked to participate in a documentary they are filming on the race for the White House, to which I verbally and tentatively agreed. I was flattered by the offer.
Now I’m not so sure. It appears the BBC has been a bit unethical in its reporting of the perpetual conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, reporting retaliatory attacks IDF conducts against Hamas terrorists, but failing to cover the cause of those attacks, in this latest attack just days ago, a Hamas missile strike on the Israeli town of Sderot. If this is the case, it is clearly unethical.
One concern of note is that the author of the following article from United with Israel reports the attack as a “missile” strike, which would be the first I have heard of Hamas having missile capability. Heretofore I have heard of “rocket” attacks by Hamas.
There is a BIG difference between a rocket and a missile. Rockets are aimed in a general direction and fired to hopefully hit a random target. Missiles are precision-guided ordnance that can be guided to a target, typically by radar, although there are heat-seeking infrared (typically ground-to-air or air-to-air) and wire-guided missiles for line of sight fire, as in older anti-tank missiles.
I will presume that the attack was actually a rocket attack and the author simply doesn’t understand the difference between a rocket and a missile.
From United with Israel
Media bias against Israel is always obvious, but especially so when Hamas fires rockets at Israel because foreign media outlets barely report the attacks. Only when Israel responds do these same outlets suddenly decide the story is newsworthy.
By: The Algemeiner
At around 2:30 on the afternoon of August 21, terrorists based in the Gaza Strip fired a missile at the Western Negev town of Sderot.
According to one report, “The rocket landed between two homes, near a college and the local train station. Locals said it was ‘a miracle’ that nobody was injured.”
The IDF responded with strikes on Hamas infrastructure in Beit Hanoun, and later carried out additional strikes.
The BBC News English-language website did not provide any coverage of the missile attack against Israeli civilians.
The BBC Arabic website, however, produced two reports — here and here — about the Israeli response to the missile fire. The second report and the website’s homepage both used a photograph of a water tower allegedly damaged during the Israeli response to the missile attack.
However, as noted at the Israellycool blog, photographs showing the same damage to the same water tower were published by AFP nearly a year ago.
This latest missile attack from the Gaza Strip is the eighth such incident to have taken place so far in 2016. The BBC has not reported on any of those attacks on its English-language website, but has covered the Israeli response to most of them on its Arabic-language site.
January 1: BBC News ignores Gaza missile attacks, BBC Arabic reports Israeli response.
January 24: BBC News ignores Gaza missile attack again — in English.
March 11: BBC News continues to ignore missile attacks on Israelis — in English.
May 6: Patchy and selective BBC News reporting of Gaza border incidents.
May 25: BBC News fails to report another Gaza missile attack to English-speakers.
July 1: Another Gaza missile attack ignored by the BBC.
August 21: Missile attack not reported in English, response reported in Arabic.
The same pattern of reporting has been evident since the end of the conflict between Israel and terrorists in the Gaza Strip in 2014, meaning that English-speaking BBC audiences — including its funding public — are not receiving the services pledged to them in the corporation’s public purposes.
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