BBC Removes Misinformation on US, Israel, Geneva Convention

Gilead Ini
CAMERA Media Analysis
05 January '10

As a result of CAMERA's formal complaint to the BBC, the British media giant removed inaccurate information from its Web site about the Geneva Accords and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The BBC's online informational piece, which since 2004 had been featured on the BBC Web site's "In Depth" section under the headline "The Geneva Conventions," included two egregious distortions. It sharply misled readers by concealing the extent of the United States' departure from its Carter-era position on the legality of settlements; and it quoted a passage from an American report's section on the "Palestinian perspective," casting the passage as representing the view held by the author of the report when in fact it was merely describing the Palestinian position.

The Historical US Position on Settlements

The article asserted: "The United States has in the past called the settlements illegal, but has more recently used milder language, at least in public."

This reference to "milder language" was extremely disingenuous. It was during the Carter administration that the US last referred to settlements as illegal. But the president that followed, Ronald Reagan, explicitly and publicly asserted that the settlements are "not illegal." In the Feb. 3, 1981 edition of the New York Times, Reagan noted: "As to the West Bank, I believe the settlements there — I disagreed when the previous Administration referred to them as illegal, they're not illegal."

Reagan's explicit statement that settlements are "not illegal" cannot fairly be described simply as "milder language" than that of previous administrations. It represents nothing less than an overturning of Mr. Carter's position.

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