(Daily Mail-UK) Stephen Glover - On Tuesday evening, there was a blast at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza in which hundreds of people are reported to have been killed. Although Israel quickly denied any responsibility, reporter Jon Donnison declared on BBC News: "It's hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli air strike, or several air strikes." This opinion was broadcast to huge numbers of people, including in the Middle East. BBC is much-respected in the Arab world, and its word is taken seriously there by politicians and ordinary folk alike. The instant condemnation of the hospital bombing by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt - and their conviction that Israel was guilty - must owe a lot to the BBC's reporting in the immediate aftermath. Veteran BBC correspondent Jeremy Bowen observed that the missile which had hit the hospital was "very powerful" and questioned whether Palestinian Islamic Jihad (blamed for the blast by the Israelis) possessed missiles that "had that much power in them." Since the BBC rushed to judgment, the IDF has produced evidence which plausibly suggests that they weren't responsible for the attack on the hospital. Anyone watching Jon Donnison's report, and probably Jeremy Bowen's, would have got the impression that the Israelis were guilty of a war crime. Hamas' claims about the attack were taken at face value, whereas the BBC makes sure to tell us that Israel's claims haven't been verified. What a very odd state of affairs it is when our national broadcaster is readier to take the word of a barbaric terrorist organization than that of a democratically elected government.
2023-10-20 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive