Bias by deliberate omission: BBC censorship of Palestinian rejectionism continues unabated

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
24 November '10

Two items of fundamental importance to understanding Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians have come to light this week, and both have been completely ignored by the BBC’s news teams. The first (see last entry but one) is the comprehensive survey of Palestinian public opinion showing that a solid majority of Palestinians view a two-state solution to the conflict as a mere stepping stone on the way to destroying Israel and taking “back all the land for a Palestinian state” ruled by Islamic law.

The second is a “study” approved by the Palestinian Authority which denies that the Western Wall in Jerusalem has anything to do with Judaism and the Jews and is in fact the western wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

It is, of course, simply impossible to understand Israeli doubts about Palestinian sincerity in forging a lasting peace unless one knows such things.

If dominant opinion in Palestinian society has no intention of forging such a lasting peace and aims to use a two-state solution as nothing more than a first move in a two-stage strategy of annihilating the Jewish state, then why on earth should Israel be expected to make concessions for a deal? If the Palestinian Authority itself is now making the ludicrous claim that the Western Wall was originally a Muslim construction — a claim that would mean an archeological site dated as being more than 2,000 years old is no more than 12-13 hundred years old — then it is clear that it remains mired in the kind of denial about Jewish ties to Jerusalem and the rest of the region which is nothing short of deranged.

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