The Palestinian Intifada in 2000 in British Media

The British Media on the Intifada

View Point

MEDIA GAMES, Jan 23, 2001

by Tim Llewellyn*

After more than four months, British reporting of the al Aqsa Intifada has reached that stage where only sensational developments---usually blood-soaked ones---are enough to catch editors’ and producers’ attentions. As with most newspaper, radio and TV coverage, any expert or observer with first-hand experience of the events described will be struck by its lack of depth and its propensity to fall victim to easy mistakes and over-simplification.

With notable exceptions in certain zones of The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Independent, the assumption continues to be made that “peace”, of itself and however induced and whatever it comprises, is a “ good thing.” “Violence”, which is what ( we are led to infer) Palestinians use and are endemically prone to, is “ a bad thing”---but “ force”, which is what Israelis use and are entitled to use in the face of “violence”, is a necessary arm of the lawful state.

In Britain, the Israel lobby has caught its breath and reorganised---after a slow and nervy reaction at the outset of the Intifada. It has launched organised letter campaigns and exerted much pressure on, for example, ever-responsive BBC bosses. TV and radio interviewers have been noticeably more hostile to the Palestinians and to the Arab case, and the “balance” is between those who “favour peace”, that is to say, backers of or vague sympathisers with the pro-Israel American proposals, like the comatose British Government, and those who do not, generally perceived as awkward Arabs and pro-Arabs who prefer violence.

BBC bosses, it must be remembered, are responsive to the Arab case as well---if it is well and firmly made. It mostly is not. It is up to Palestinians, to readers of this journal for example, to make use of their rights to ring up the BBC duty officers ( on duty round the clock at TV Centre, Broadcasting House and Bush House ) and the editors and producers of particular programmes, if they spot bias or error.

At a recent discussion among leading London Middle East editors ( from the Financial Times and Guardian) and Middle East correspondents and commentators at the Arab League offices in London, the point was repeatedly made that even in the serious newspapers and on the worthier TV channels, there remains, editorially, the basic conception of an equation between the occupiers and the occupied, between the illegal and the legal. These organs also base their coverage and thinking on an assumed “parity”---that between a heavily armed, ultra high-tech. state army---the most formidable in the region, with the best armaments ( helicopter gunships, for example ) the United States can make, muster and donate and Israel’s own state-of-the-art domestic military products, including tanks---and a barely organised hotchpotch of civilians, police and trainee militia with some side-arms, home-made bombs, slingshots and well-honed throwing arms feeding off piles of stones.

The same meeting noted, with a mixture of sadness and asperity, that whereas Israel’s friends and representatives here in Britain work and conspire to convince editors, writers and producers of their versions of events, including at private dinners and lunches and cocktail parties, for example, and even in diplomats’ homes, the Arabs, as a community and as a diplomatic corps---with the brave exception of Afif Safieh, the Palestinian delegate to the UK, and a tiny and overworked sprinkling of London Palestinians and other Arab individuals---do either nothing or as little as possible, as ever.

The assembled experts urged the Arab League itself to galvanise its Embassies and Friends into speaking up for the Palestinians publicly, and pleaded with all concerned here in Britain to help organise an influx of Arab and Palestinian speakers and activists to button-hole and inform the media and the public in Britain in the same way as do the Israelis.

Where is the fabled Arab hospitality when it comes to chatting up media figures?

My latest awards for media errors and bias:

The Associated Press news agency ( and others, including the New York Times and the Washington Post ), for the continued description of Gilo as a Jerusalem “neighbourhood”, whereas it is in fact an illegal Jewish settlement built since 1967 on land confiscated from the Arabs of Beit Jala.

The Daily Telegraph ( or Daily Tel Aviv ) for its editor’s, editorial writers’, reporters’ and sub-editors’ abject obeisance to the proto-Zionist line of the arch-Zionist wife, Barbara Amiel, of the newspaper’s owner and publisher, Conrad Black;

The BBC “ Correspondent ” programme, for Jane Corbin’s two references in one broadcast to “ disputed ” territories, a weaselly and post-1993 Clintonesque circumlocution, when what she meant—and knew she meant---was “occupied” territories, a big slip for an experienced correspondent who is familiar with the Oslo process and the people it has traduced;

The Observer, for using an ancient picture of armed men in the Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Sidon, in South Lebanon, to illustrate a tendentious article about present-day Palestinian activities in the West Bank and Gaza.

The BBC did apologise---the Observer did not. Neither corrected the errors on air or in print.

No British newspaper or magazine or TV channel ( unlike the Israeli daily Ha’aretz) has yet done a proper job on the man who may well be the next Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, a monster whose predilection for slaughtering Arab civilians goes back 50 years. One American reporter dared to observe that he had had “ a chequered career. ” This is akin to saying that Genghis Khan was “ restless ” or Nero “ excitable.”

It will be interesting to see how the West---planning international justice for Balkan and other war criminals---greets the election of one such as leader of the Middle East’s much-vaunted “ only democracy”. Could it happen with impunity anywhere else than in Israel?
BBC numbers to ring:
( all TV &Radio news,current affairs & BBC World)020 8743 8000.
Broadcasting House ( all other programmes )020 7580 4468
Bush House ( all World Service Programmes ) 020 7240 3456
ITN ( All news bulletins, including Channel 4 ) --- 020 7833-3000.
Ask for the Duty Officer and make sure you know the title, time and date of the specific bulletin or programme about which you are complaining, and are absolutely sure of the words or images used.
And remember, every complaint is recorded and investigated as part of the broadcasters’ statutory obligation.

* Tim Llewellyn is a veteran Middle East expert and a former BBC producer and report with many years exeperince in the region. He is well respected by commentators and journalists in Britian and elswhere for his knoweldge of the Middle East.

Copyright © Tim Llewellyn 2001. All rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means or used for any business purpose without the written consent of the publisher.

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