Surprise? BBC ignores Fatah’s anniversary incitement

...Members of the BBC’s audience seeking to enhance their understanding of the topic of the failure of last year’s negotiations and the ‘peace process’ in general would no doubt find it helpful to be informed of the existence of such images and events. The BBC, however, continues to promote its stylized and sanitized portrait of the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas whilst studiously avoiding any real reporting on the crucial topics of incitement and glorification of terrorism.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
02 January '15..

Over the past few weeks we have repeatedly observed on these pages that BBC reporting of the recent surge in violence in Jerusalem and elsewhere was devoid of any serious attempt to inform audiences about the incitement and glorification of terrorism coming from official Palestinian Authority and Fatah sources and on occasion even attempted to airbrush those crucial factors from the story. On November 18th, for example, during an interview with Israeli politician Tsipi Livni, the BBC’s Tim Franks charged:

“…the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu equates the actions of Hamas and Mr Abbas. He says that they are both responsible for incitement. That’s not true, is it?”

As well as being the (long-since unelected) president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas is of course the chair of the PLO, with the largest faction in that organization being Fatah, which he also heads.

The BBC’s Palestinian Territories Profile informs audiences that:

“Many analysts regard Mahmoud Abbas as a moderate. He has condemned the armed Palestinian uprising and favours the resumption of negotiations with Israel.”

The BBC News website also offers its visitors two profiles of Fatah. In this one from 2011, readers are informed that:

“Under Arafat’s leadership, the group [Fatah] originally promoted an armed struggle against Israel to create a Palestinian state. But it later recognised Israel’s right to exist, and its leaders have led Palestinian peace talks aimed at reaching a two-state solution.”

And:

“With international pressure mounting, Fatah – though notably not the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades – signed a declaration rejecting attacks on civilians in Israel and committing themselves to peace and co-existence.”

So, to recap, the BBC informs its audiences that the party headed by the moderate Mahmoud Abbas recognizes Israel’s right to exist, rejects terrorism and is committed to “peace and co-existence”. Now let’s take a look at some of the imagery being used by Fatah to promote the 50th anniversary (on January 1st 2015) of its first terror attack on Israel: an occasion which some might find it odd for a party which supposedly now rejects terrorism to be celebrating at all.

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The Tangled Narrative

Rick Richman
Commentary/Contentions
04 May '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/05/04/tangled-narrative/


Yesterday the Palestinian peace partner’s military wing announced it was in mourning about Osama bin Laden and had joined the “deather” movement:

The Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Brigades said Tuesday they were mourning the death of Osama bin Laden, following announcements Sunday that he had been killed in a US raid, [Palestinian News Agency] Ma’an reported. According to a statement received by Ma’an, the group said bin Laden’s death “won’t stop our Jihad mission against injustice and occupation,” and added that they doubt the veracity of claims that the al-Qaida leader was assassinated.

Someone must have recognized these were impolitic things to say in the on-going run-up to September, when the Palestinian Authority plans to ask the UN to recognize a Palestinian state. So Ma’an reported later in the day that the Al-Aqsa Brigades denied making the statement Ma’an had earlier reported:

The spokesman of Fatah’s military wing on Tuesday denied issuing a statement marking Osama bin Laden’s death. Abu Uday of the Al-Aqsa Brigades said the group did not and had no plans to comment because bin Laden’s death was unrelated to Palestine. He said a statement received by Ma’an’s Gaza City office must have been forged as the armed group “doesn’t know anything about it.”

Good to have the “armed group” clarify that. But here’s the more interesting question: how could the Al-Aqsa Brigades issue a statement, much less retract one—or even have a named “spokesman”—since the PA announced in 2007 and again in 2008 that the Al-Aqsa Brigades had been completely dismantled?

The Palestinian news agency forgot to adhere to the “narrative”—central to the fiction that the Palestinians have built the institutions of a state—that the Fatah terrorist group was “dismantled,” replaced by professional police. As the old saying goes, when you substitute a narrative for truth, it is often hard to keep the narrative straight.

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Abbas represents jailed terrorist leader at his daughter's wedding

Elder of Ziyon
25 November '10

Palestine Press Agency reports that Mahmoud Abbas gave away Marwan Barghouti's daughter at a huge wedding ceremony in Ramallah.

The guests included a Who's Who of Fatah leadership, including Ahmed Qurei ("Abu Ala",) Tawfiq Tirawi, Mohammed Dahlan, Azzam al-Ahmad, Issa Qaraqe, as well as Arab member of the Knesset Ahmed Tibi.

Abbas told the audience that he was "honored to represent my brother Marwan Barghouti" in giving his daughter away.

Barghouti was a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist groups responsible for many attacks against civilians on both sides of the Green Line.

Here are some of the terror attacks he oversaw:

Jun 12, 2001 - The murder of a Greek Orthodox monk on the road to Ma'ale Adumim.

Jan 17, 2002 - The shooting attack during a bat mitzva celebration at a banquet hall in Hadera. Six Israelis were killed in this attack, 26 were injured.

Jan 22, 2002 - The shooting spree on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem. Two Israelis were killed, 37 wounded.

(Read full post)

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West Bank Murder Puts Peace Advocacy in Perspective

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
15 June '10

In recent weeks, all the focus in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been on Gaza. So far Israel’s government, supported by the vast majority of its people, has resisted international pressure to lift the blockade of Gaza, a measure that would grant both a psychological victory to the Islamist terrorists of Hamas as well as facilitate the rearming and refortification of the region.

But while Israelis and their friends are rightly focused on preventing Hamas from resuming its rocket attacks on southern Israel, attacks on Jewish targets in the West Bank have been largely ignored. Part of the reason is that the security fence that separates the area from pre-1967 Israel has effectively halted the flow of suicide bombers. But there have been literally hundreds of incidents of shootings as well as many attacks with lethal rocks on Israeli motorists in the West Bank. Fortunately, most have not resulted in casualties. Yesterday, however, a Palestinian shooter in the Hebron area ambushed a police vehicle. The attack left one officer dead and another wounded. Interestingly, the New York Times article that reported the shooting also included some interesting information about the supposedly draconian Israeli security regime in the West Bank. Since Israel has been trying to hand over security responsibilities in the region to the Palestinian Authority’s forces, according to the left-wing group B’Tselem, which opposes Israel’s presence in the West Bank, 20 staffed security checkpoints have been closed in the past two years.

The point is, the much-lauded administration of PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his boss, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, tells Americans and other Westerners that they want peace with Israel. But the PA-sponsored incitement against Jews and the presence of Jews in their midst continues. Fayyad’s boycott of Israeli goods may be intended to boost his popularity, but it also feeds into the demonization of Israelis, which is the primary obstacle to lasting peace and implicitly legitimizes the Palestinian sport of taking potshots at Israeli vehicles.

(Read full post)

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Why glorify the murderers?

By Ron Kehrmann, Yossi Mendelevich and Yossi Zur
Los Angeles Times
17 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

Vice President Joe Biden took umbrage last week when Israel announced during his visit that it had approved new housing construction in East Jerusalem. But another contentious incident that took place during Biden's visit got far less scrutiny.

March 11 marked the 32nd anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel's history, and this year the Palestinian Authority decided to honor the 19-year-old leader of the attack, Dalal Mughrabi, by naming a square in a town outside Ramallah after her. The commemoration was scheduled for the anniversary.

The official ceremony was ultimately canceled to avoid antagonizing Biden during his visit, but the square was nevertheless named for Mughrabi, and several dozen Palestinian students from President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement gathered in her honor for an unofficial dedication.

So what was the deed that deserved this commemoration? On a Saturday in March 1978, the squad of Palestinian terrorists led by Mughrabi entered Israel by boat from Lebanon and made their way to the main road between Haifa and Tel Aviv. By day's end, they had murdered 38 innocent men, women and children.

The first person Mughrabi and her gang of terrorists encountered was Gale Rubin, an American photojournalist taking photos of birds near the beach. They killed her and continued on their deadly path.

(Read full article)
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Stuck in Oslo with George Mitchell

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
08 January '10

Yes, the man has an impossible job. But making himself complicit in the Palestinian Authority’s desire to have it both ways on terrorism — talk up PA security cooperation in English but celebrate terrorism in Arabic — isn’t going to make it any easier.

As I wrote a couple of days ago, one of the Obama administration’s diplomatic rules appears to be that the Palestinians will never be publicly criticized. Israel, of course, gets publicly criticized by the administration on a near weekly basis. Predictably, this has given the PA room to engage in its favorite double game.

Over the past couple of weeks, the PA leadership has repeatedly lauded Fatah terrorists and their acts of murder. Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad have personally engaged in the celebrations. This finally provoked the Israeli PM’s office to protest to the Americans that:

(Read full post)
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