Independent Jewish Voices

I have pasted below my complaint to the BBC over its poor coverage of the counter demo on Sunday at Trafalgar Square - especially its failure to mention jfjp and ijv.

The BBCcoverage link is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7822656.stm

Submitted text is as follows:

As someone (Jeiwhs/Israeli) who attended the event as a protester against the pro-Israeli rally, I found your report a lamentable platform for British-assisted Israeli dissimulation: where offense is represented as defence, and the victimiser represented as victim.

Concretely: you quote one of the pro-Israeli protesters as saying "No sovereign state should, or would, tolerate continued attacks and the deliberate targeting of civilians.” No mention or contextual comment is added here - i.e. that this is a case of a state that has for at least 40 years oppressed another people, and has erected the only remaining apartheid regime in the world. In fact no clear-minded person would view such a state as victim needing to uphold a sacred law of self-defence – accept perhaps self-defence against it own folly.

The report is also seriously deficient on other fronts and thus again very poor in terms of the standard of fair reportage that the BBC is famed for: it exaggerates the numbers of pro-Israeli protestors, but most alarmingly, it fails to mention the presence of Jewish opposition groups – groups such as Jews for Justice for Palestinians and Independent Jewish Voices (opposing Israel’s bombardments, continued occupation and apartheid).

As this demo was a vehicle for the Jewish community to air its opinions, the presence of these groups should have been given due mention and due air time. This is not a secondary fact - its omission serves to disguise the fact that there are different voices in the Jewish community and different views of the nature of the conflict, and the manner in which it could be solved.

I think one is entitled to expect a more contextualised and informed type of reporting from the BBC, especially in the context in which so many lives are being lost. Please employ fairer and more informed reporters in the future, as by producing these kinds of reports you are discrediting your famed impartiality.

I caught a shot of IJV banners on a BBC Arabic news item on the demo - only a second or two but deliberate, not accidental; my basic Arabic wasn't up to catching the accompanying commentary.