BBC’s blindness to the truth about Hamas

“Hear this, you foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear.”  – Jeremiah 5:21

This scripture verse accurately sums up how much of the news media has reacted in the wake of last weekend’s bloody attacks on innocent Israelis by Hamas terrorists.

Nowhere is the parallel universe in which alleged “journalists” operate more evident than at the British Broadcasting Corporation. Based in London – the scene of a pro-Palestinian march that attracted thousands of protesters waving Palestinian flags – the BBC has adopted the Ostrich Theory of reporting news: If we don’t see it, we don’t report it and we (BBC) refuse to call Hamas a terrorist organization.

Among the many things the BBC somehow managed to overlook in its reporting of the London rally was the fact that two marchers obscenely worked their way through the crowd near Trafalgar Square sporting large photos of paragliders taped to the back of their jackets.

However, that didn’t stop several “journalists” working for the BBC’s Arabic Channel from breaking company policy and expressing support for Hamas. (After receiving criticism, a BBC spokesman said the network was “launching an investigation” into seven “journalists” it employs at BBC Arabic.)

But back to the weekend’s London rally on behalf of Palestinians. Although the crack reporters for the BBC apparently missed them, London’s Daily Mail newspaper reports that, under the noses of police, two young women at the rally paraded toward Trafalgar Square sporting pictures of paragliders taped to the back of their jackets. Last Saturday, Hamas terrorists (see, I can call them that since thankfully I am not employed by the BBC network) used paragliders fitted with machine guns to float over an Israeli music festival…mowing down terrified young people who scrambled to escape their cowardly murderers.

One can forgive lapses in coverage of paraglider supporters at a rally attended by thousands. And hey, those BBC “journalists” expressing support for Hamas can be fobbed off by management as only seven employees who are now “under investigation.” (My advice: don’t bet a month’s wages on BBC executives actually concluding that probe before Halley’s Comet next returns in 2061.)

But lest you think the BBC’s recalcitrance to call out Hamas as a terrorist organization can be dismissed as young or inexperienced managers who just don’t “get it”– that slitting the throats of Israeli babies in their cribs is not standard operating procedure by aggrieved Palestinians – consider the disgraceful positions articulated by John Sergeant.

Sergeant is the BBC’s former chief political correspondent, a man who wielded awesome power over what Britons got to see and hear in the network’s political coverage. Appearing on GB News (a British opinion-oriented television and radio network not unlike Talk Radio in America) he defended the BBC’s refusal to brand Hamas a terrorist group. 

Hiding behind the premise of the BBC’s standards of ethics and impartiality, Sergeant smirked (literally) at critics. “They don’t seem to understand,” he stated, “that the BBC operation, the news operation, is not like a government. It’s not meant to have a policy on the Middle East.”

Confronted with the documented reports of Israelis being burned alive and babies being slaughtered in their cribs by Hamas, Sergeant clung to his position that, while murdering infants is “an atrocity,” it nevertheless is not the BBC’s job to determine which side is doing well in the current conflict. (Apparently notwithstanding the aforementioned seven BBC employees voicing support for Hamas.)

It must be nice for pontificating bloviators like John Sergeant to decree that listeners and viewers should comfort themselves with BBC policies regarding objectivity and ethics and impartiality. But from my vantage point, that’s ironic originating from a nation that was told by the BBC in World War II to trust its leaders like then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who cheerily reported that Adolf Hitler planned no further attacks on sovereign nations and Chamberlain thus – infamously – concluded that “Peace In Our Time” was upon the world.

If the John Sergeants and Neville Chamberlains of the world had prevailed, Hamas terrorists would have overrun Great Britain and that nation would today be flying the Swastika flag.

Meantime, half a world away, senior Pastor Jack Graham at Prestonwood Baptist Church in suburban Dallas on Sunday asked his congregation of several thousand members (including the church’s choir) to kneel and pray for the safety and security of the men, women and children of Israel in the coming military retaliation against Hamas terrorists.

Unlike BBC elder statesman John Sergeant, pastors like Jack Graham in Texas…Greg Laurie and Jack Hibbs in California, Allen Jackson in Tennessee and many others, clearly don’t have trouble determining good vs. evil in this war. 

Israel is wisely ignoring advice and observations from media jackals like the BBC or CNN who contort themselves into knots trying to find something – anything– to justify them not labeling ghouls from Hamas as what they are: Terrorists whose sole aim is to murder Jews and destroy the only real democracy in the Middle East.