Israel Matzav

The charities are guilty, not the BBC

On Saturday night, I noted a flying pigs moment brought about by al-Beeb's refusal to run a 'charitable appeal' for Gazans affected by the recently concluded Operation Cast Lead. On Monday morning, Sky News has joined with al-Beeb in refusing to run the ad. At the Times of London, Andrew Roberts has a great piece of commentary about the story.

Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, is quite right to refuse to broadcast the appeal of the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) for humanitarian relief for Gaza, but not for the reason he thinks. He is under the impression that it will damage the BBC's reputation for impartiality in reporting the Israel-Palestine question, but the fact is that the BBC does not have any such reputation, having for years been institutionally pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli. The reason that his decision is brave and right, however, is that many of the 13 charities that make up the DEC are even more mired in anti-Israeli assumptions than the BBC itself.

Mr Thompson rightly appreciates that the issue of humanitarian relief in this conflict is quite unlike humanitarian relief for victims of a tsunami or a famine.

Who adjudicates on which victims to support via such charitable aid - and according to whose political morality? Why did the BBC not launch an appeal for the victims of collateral damage during Nato's bombing of Serbia in 1999 during the Kosovo campaign? And had it done so, would it have given money to ethnic Serbs as well as to Kosovars and Bosnian Muslims, all of whom were “cleansed” during the Balkan wars of that decade? What about the victims of insurgencies and counter- insurgencies in Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Chechnya or Georgia? Or Israeli victims of the next Hamas suicide attack? Indeed, what about the Palestinian victims of Hamas's hideous human rights abuses, still so shamefully under-reported by the British media as a whole?

And who are these supposedly impartial charities who are attacking Mr Thompson's (albeit belated) attempt to uphold the Corporation's traditional standards? While groups such as the British Red Cross and Christian Aid are generally impartial in other areas of the world, that cannot be said to apply to their role in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, where they regularly view the conflict through a deeply partisan lens.

Read the whole thing. Unfortunately, at this point, they have gotten so much publicity that even if al-Beeb doesn't run the ad, the word is out. This 'aid money' is likely to be routed through Hamas (anyone know where they got all those crisp $100 bills we've seen them handing out this week?) , allowing the terror group to tighten its hold on Gaza's population, just like Hezbullah did in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:45 PM