Rare Animals for the Israeli Occupation
July 10, 2007
BBC published the following story on its website without any apparent sense of irony:
A 30-strong platoon of elite Israeli paratroopers has taken part in a mission to rescue a pair of rare golden eagles in the West Bank town of Hebron…
The eagles were eventually tracked down to a pet shop, confiscated and taken to a zoo. Two Palestinians were detained.
My friend Paul de Rooij comments: ‘This is a disgraceful article and should be read in conjunction with another article about a lioness in Gaza. The fact that they appear concurrently in the BBC website indicate that they are meant to be interpreted in conjunction.
- First, the BBC continues the nasty habit of not identifying the authors of such articles. There are several Israelis working for the BBC together with zionist operators in London, and it would be nice to know if it was one of them who wrote this article.
- So, 30 paratroopers storm a pet shop in Hebron to “rescue” the eagles. In any other country, if illegal poaching, trafficking or capture of wild animals had occurred it would be a police matter. But hey, the Israeli army is doing “a good thing“! Well, this is the principal message of the article without revealing that the army is there to safeguard the expanding settlements, occupy Palestinian land, and suppress the Palestinian resistance.
- One can only interpret this article to be a subtle piece of propaganda. In general, British people love animals and here one finds the Israelis saving endangered eagles. Concurrently, in Palestinians in Gaza have abused a lioness… Both articles appear next to each other in the BBC website
- The raised quotes usually summarize an article, and the implication of this quote is clear: “This was not the first time and, unfortunately, not the last time this will happen”. Notice also the last paragraph: “Last year, Mr Atar used another Israeli army unit to help him rescue two golden eagles from a group of Bedouin in the desert. The birds were found shackled in chains.” Both suggest that the Israeli military will continue to pounce on the nasty poachers/traffickers… who also happen to be Palestinian. In any other country a naturalist seeking to save wild animals would be working with civil society groups and seeking to educate the public. In Israel, this naturalist works with to teach the natives a lesson… at gunpoint – and to boot steals their eagles.
- This is the only indication of an Israeli occupation of a Palestinian city: “The town, which is home to about 120,000 Palestinians and several hundred Jewish settlers, has been a frequent flashpoint of Israeli-Palestinian violence.” 120,000 should classify as a city, but not when it is occupied, then it is merely a town. There is no indication in the article that a few hundred nasty settlers have stolen land, built settlements on it, and consequently the Israeli army and armed settlers make the lives of Palestinians miserable. There is no suitable context with this article, but then it is merely meant to be a propaganda piece.
- When the BBC has been confronted in the past about similar stories, the journalists stated that their audience is tired of the same old stories about violence and confrontation, and they like to read something “uplifting”. Most probably this will be their silly justification for this article too.’
On the same day, BBC published another story,
A lioness has been reunited with her brother in the Gaza Zoo after being released by Hamas from a clan who had abducted her nearly two years ago…
“The thieves had cut off the end of her tail, the black hair that is considered to be the symbol of pride of African lions. I am very sad for her. She must have felt very humiliated,” zoo veterinarian Saoud al-Shawa told the Reuters news agency.
While in the previous one the Israeli army is portrayed as the saviors of endangered eagles, in this article the Palestinians have abused a poor lioness.
Paul de Rooij adds: ‘Fortunately, this article provides one positive comment about the fact that Hamas has rescued the lioness, and is bringing some order to Gaza. This article is not as bad as the one about the eagles, but it is curious that when Gaza is under siege and most Gazans survive on humanitarian assistance, a BBC article focuses on the fate of one animal. Is this the case of misplaced emphasis? ‘
July 10, 2007 at 5:52 pm
The only animals the BBC should be telling us about are the settler-fascists who,aided and abetted by the Israeli army,by stealing and settling Palestinian Arab land are in total breach of international law.
These are the animals who should be in Gaza Zoo.
Rather than subtle this is so much in-your-face propaganda that it shows just how low the BBC will sink in its now notoriously pro-Zionist coverage.
British people are laughingly derided for their love of animals precisely because people who are not British but who have a perceptive understanding of culture have not missed our abject indifference to, and culpability for,human suffering.
It therefore comes as no surprise that the BBC thinks the suffering of a few animals is a far more important issue than the suffering of Palestinians living under the brutal Israeli occupation.No wonder Auntie calls herself the “British”Broadcasting Corporation.
We might also read this drivel in order to glean just what a low opinion of its audience the BBC has as to think we need bashing over the head with this blatant Israeli propaganda.If the item had been covered on John Craven’s Newsround when I got back from school as a boy my parents would probably have complained that the BBC was trying to indoctrinate credulous children with sick propaganda.
My parents would have been right too if they’d refused to pay the licence fee forthwith.
The BBC has had an extremely bad three weeks.
Week 1:New Labour’s fawning mouthpiece fell over itself to celebrate the new dawn of Brown’s rule from No.10.This exceedingly dull and uninspiring man was of course beyond rescue even by the BBC.
Week 2:They droned on and on about the terror threat to stiffen up what they rightly sensed was a lull in the level of public hysteria.Muslims were rolled out to consecutively and to order denounce the Islamists,who supposedly live among them.Some of these poor appointed spokespeople for their community had to sit opposite and pay heed to batty Zionists like Melanie(Londonistan)Philips.
How the BBC got it into its head that having such a rabid Zionist and one with such an inflammatory and ill-considered tabloid view of the world was neutral and restained coverage one cannot begin to fathom.
Week 3:Began with master of deceit and spin,the absurdly arrogant and hectoring Alastair Campbell peddling his no doubt execrable memoirs on Blair’s Iraq War chorus leader Andrew Martian’s breakfast show.Campbell insisted he was not responsible for Dr Kelly having taken his own life,which was clearly the one true thing he managed to utter.Since Kelly was obviously bumped off the denial was irrelevant anyway.
That the BBC has made itself the abject and supine cypher for Israeli/US/New Labour propapaganda is no revelation of course but the sheer banality clumsiness of the last three weeks has plumbed hidden depths.
July 11, 2007 at 1:21 am
It all seems to fit in a new Israeli public relations strategy, to focus attention on diverting little tidbits portraying the situation there in a lighthearted way.
Didn’t they recently finance the flaunting of Israeli beach beauties in some ‘Men’s Magazine’ as well?
It is a strategy not without risks, I would say. If they keep portraying things there as if all is hunky dory, a fit environment for frolicking on the beach, the American tax payer might start to wonder why the place has to be shored up with American money to the tune of three billion dollars a year.