The Treacherous BBC |
Once again, the BBC is pursuing its antisemitic, woke agenda and attacking the Jewish State.
This time its focus is on the beleaguered, suffering population of southern Lebanon. Its latest anti-Israel diatribe from its correspondent, Hugo Bachega, tells us that Nabatieh “a (Lebanese) city that was once vibrant … is now abandoned…. One in five people have (sic) been forced to leave their homes.”
“At one ruined ambulance station, a paramedic shows where a colleague was killed by an Israeli strike while he was talking on the phone to his wife…. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said troops had killed more than 20 Hezbollah fighters operating from a hospital compound.” (Note that Bachega does not acknowledge that this was indeed the case!)
“Among the latest victims of the weekend bombardment,” he reports, “was Taleen Saeed, just under two years old…. Her grandfather told Reuters news agency: ‘This isn’t humanity. This is a war crime.'”
Reading this kind of biased reporting day after day, it is not surprising that public opinion in many countries is largely anti-Israel, and that politicians are relentlessly voicing their criticism of the Jewish State at such international bodies as the United Nations and the European Union.
Note that Bachega refers to Hezbollah as “fighters”, not terrorists. He doesn’t tell his readers that they have been launching Katyusha rocket and mortar attacks against Israel’s civilian population for decades. Tens of thousands of Israeli families have been forced to abandon their homes, their businesses and farms in northern Israel. Bachega could also have acknowledged that Israeli efforts to reach a peace agreement with Lebanon are even now being hampered by Hezbollah terrorists, trained and equipped by Iran, whom Lebanon’s army is unable to contain and disarm.
He doesn’t mention UN Resolution 1701, which in 2006 aimed to create a weapons-free zone between the Litani River and the Israeli border, or tell his readers that UNIFIL has faced ongoing obstruction from Hezbollah, which maintains a powerful, armed presence in the area and often clashes with both UN peacekeepers and Israeli forces.
If reporting is to be more than one-sided propaganda, it needs to be objective and balanced. Bachega would do well to read what France 24 has to say about how Israeli families suffer because of Hezbollah’s unwillingness to stop attacking them:
“Residents of Kiryat Shmona (on Israel’s border with Lebanon) live their lives to the rhythm of rocket sirens. Young people have left the city, and those who remain feel neglected…. Ayala Amar, a 56-year-old educational assistant, told AFP: ‘There are no jobs here, there is nothing. We live in a half-empty city.'”
“Adva Cohen, the 38-year-old mother of four, spends her life between her home and the few meters separating it from the municipal (bomb) shelter. She sleeps there every night, with her neighbour and friend Olga, a mother of six…. ‘In Kiryat Shmona there is simply no life,’ Cohen said. Her nail salon has been closed since the fighting resumed on March 2…. Most businesses have shut down and relocated their activity.”
Now that is the other side of the story, which Bachega, who lives in Beirut, purposefully ignores and for which the BBC apparently has little sympathy even though it does begrudgingly acknowledge in the last sentence of his report that tens of thousands of civilians had been displaced in northern Israel.
The IDF is not sending soldiers into southern Lebanon, where their lives are constantly in danger and many have been killed and wounded, including my own son who was killed by Hezbollah terrorists, because they want to be there, but because Iran and its Lebanese proxy are not prepared to live in peace with Israel. When will the BBC acknowledge that simple fact and tell the whole truth?