An important, painful read – and from the BBC too.
JVL Introduction
A detailed, well researched and a very painful read. This is by the BBC’s longtime BBC Mid East correspondent and now International editor by Jeremy Bowen. And an unusual piece. Bowen directly addresses the issue – is Hamas now acting as a defender of Palestinians or as a continuing aggressor? It shows how a good journalist can tell a story when he knows that what is happening is so horrific that he must rise above the BBC shackles of some phantom ‘balance’.
Bowen’s piece includes this: “The evidence is piling up that Israel has done things in Gaza that it does not want journalists to see, which is why they will not let us cross into the territory, except on rare and highly controlled visits with the army. I have been in only once, in the first month of the war, when Israeli firepower had already turned the areas of northern Gaza that I saw into a wasteland.” (My emph Ed)
We need much more of this from the BBC and so any other media outlets that let us down far too often.
NW/LL
This article was originally published by BBC Website on Thu 24 Oct 2024. Read the original here.
Gaza nurse who filmed moments after Israeli strike describes chaos and grief
From the outside, it is hard to comprehend the depth of suffering experienced by civilians in Gaza.
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The world sits silent while these horrific crimes go on unpunished! Complicit are all who defend the right for Israel to defend itself at any cost! That is our media our leaders and all the Zionists corporations!
So, after this dose of awful reality, can we expect Jeremy Bowen to be ‘retiring’ from the BBC in the near future?
The evidence is massive; it has been piling up since 7 October 2023 and has been shown for hours every day and night on Al-Jazeera TV, provided by excellent journalists and photographers on the scene of everything that has happened, and filmed and analysed, as well as reported. Too few people outside the Middle East have ever watched Al-Jazeera TV, even now, or read their reports, and that is why the outside world has no idea of the extent of the slaughter and the horror that is going on daily. NOT shown from the point of view of the BBC or any of the US, UK or European media, but of Gazans themselves. Al-Jazeera are of and with the people of Gaza and if you want to understand this non-stop genocide, and watch Israel causing the horrible deaths day and night of thousands of children, women and elderly people, who are their main victims, Al-Jazeera is the only source in English. No wonder attempts to spread falsehoods about them, silence them and kill them have been so strong. No wonder they were removed from Freeview TV here and attempts to ban them have been so persistent.
Thank goodness they’ve allowed Jeremy Bowen back on the case.
The Israeli’s must be made to pay for this. We must demand justice.
Bowen couldn’t manage to mention that many Israeli citizens were killed by their own military on 7 October though, when they enacted their Hannibal Directice, which is deeply disappointing, particularly as this has been acknowledged in the Israeli press and there is footage of Apache helicopters indiscriminately firing at people and cars, and footage of tanks in kibbutzim, as well as eye witness accounts.
How will Israel face the future as a pariah state? What will history say? Or will Israel under Netanyahu make the western world complicit in defending and empowering the once democratic state?