For those of us determined enough to keep up our attack on the BBC for its hair-raisingly Zionistic look at the attack on the Freedom Flotilla there will be in our files a 'stage three' letter referring to the entire body of complaints being treated as one and being looked at by an 'independent' editorial 'advisor', whose paper will be distributed to the complainants and the BBC Executive to give all a further opportunity for comment before it is distributed to the "Committee", whose finding will be 'ratified' by the BBC Trust in April 2011 and then published.
I'd say baroque is a good enough metaphor. I've listened to one or two sessions of the United Nations, and in fact, their deliberations sound very like this. If they lead to anything at all it tends to be an agreement to set up a sub-committee. In such lumbering scenarios, the so-called Palestine 'peace process' grinds ever onwards while the destruction of the country leaps ahead.
One of my fellow-complainants has written an excellent response to the BBC's latest:
Sir,
I would refer to the 'consolidated appeal' procedure which Michael Fadda, Editorial Assistant to the BBC Trust, has described in his email of 3rd December. This was in response to Richard Lightbown’s complaint of 24th August that the Panorama programme, Death on the Med', was biased and lacking in impartiality. The procedure described by Mr Fadda is Byzantine and the process so drawn out as to make any final BBC decision, apparently due in April, meaningless.
It has become increasingly clear that the programme was a whitewash of the truth and represents a nadir of the consistent bias displayed by the BBC in its reporting of the Palestine/Israel situation.
This lack of impartiality was confirmed by John Pilger who told us on the Today programme (on 10/12/10) that the BBC had failed to report the UNHRC report on the Mavi Marmara affair on its main news channels – censorship by omission.
The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was released on 27/9/10. It is revealing and damning and should have been the subject of much publicity; it shows conclusively that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered ‘execution-style by Israeli commandos’.
The report states that both activists and journalists on board the flotilla were treated in a cruel and inhuman way and confirms that cameras, laptops, mobiles, passports, credit cards and cash were stolen by the IDF. As John Pilger stated, war crimes were found to have been committed and the report recommends that there is a clear case for prosecution for wilful killing etc – *see extracts from the report shown below.
This Mission report gives unquestionable evidence that ‘Death on the Med’ was a travesty of truth. The BBC should now make an unreserved apology and offer the resignation of the Director General. Under the watch of the current DG the BBC has increasingly shown bias and lack of impartiality in their reporting of the Palestinian/Israeli situation. The BBC appears to be in thrall to Israel – as is much of the American media – it is understood that the UN Mission report did not appear in any US media whatsoever.
The Israeli military and its government have again behaved in flagrant contravention of the Geneva Conventions and should be regarded as a rogue state. For the UK to seek to protect members of the Israeli government from international law procedures – as they are attempting to do on 13th December by tampering with Universal Jurisdiction – makes them complicit in Israel’s serial wrongdoing, as does also the moral support they give in avowing that they are ‘Friends of Israel’
The UK government would be well advised to read the attached UN Mission report, and then to rethink that friendship and their whole policy towards the Middle East.
Ted from Liverpool
