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The Beeb are getting hammered by all sides. The right are criticising them for describing Hamas as militants rather than terrorists, even whilst the defence editor of the Telegraph is on GB News, also calling them militants rather than terrorists.
You say the issue is not complex. However, the way it is being described by commentators is that it is less complex than it really is. They are saying basically that you have to pick a side. You are not allowed to consider both sides cases. It's being used as yet another wedge issue.
ELbowloh-
The right are criticising them for describing Hamas as militants rather than terrorists, even whilst the defence editor of the Telegraph is on GB News, also calling them militants rather than terrorists.
This is a minor technicality, especially in the context of the BBC's coverage of this escalation, and says a lot about the media environment in the UK around this story.
I couldn't agree more with what @samrensho wrote really. Israel and Israeli voices have so much air time, so much share of voice, so much soft power. We hear almost nothing from Palestinians.
We constantly hear families of the Israeli victims and hostages, eyewitness accounts of people who were at the Supernova festival, or in the Israeli villages which were attacked. We hear the Israeli military pretty much continually and they are almost never properly challenged by the presenters.
We don't hear from the families of the over 800 people killed in Gaza. We don't hear the perspectives of people living in Gaza who might help us understand the context of the Hamas attacks. We certainly don't hear from the families of the 1500+ Hamas fighters who died about what motivated them to embark on what was effectively a suicide mission into Israel (to understand is not to glorify).
The headlines on the BBC homepage right now versus Reuters says a lot:
BBC: "Hamas attacks on Israel 'an act of sheer violence' - Biden"
Reuters: "Israel pulverises Gaza after Hamas attack as it collects its dead"The BBC would never use the p-word, but that is what's happening.
As an aside - but one I feel says a lot - if you want to see the photos of the hostages they're everywhere. If you want to see photos of the record number of children Israel killed last year you have to visit sites like Human Rights Watch or DCI Palestine.
I hope Hamas don't kill the children they've taken hostage. But if they do (they have already in this war) do you think we'll have to hunt down their pictures on humanitarian websites?
This is an unbalanced, unequal war, David versus Goliath. Unfortunately the media simply reflects this.
Fox
I was not trying to get involved in the conversations on the forum about this, but the one thing I do want to say is that the reporting - especially on the BBC is extremely bad.
In the quote above,
, we can see an extreme example of 'passive voice'.
People in Israel have been "killed" in a "massacre". In Palestine people have "died" in a "strike".
This seemingly minor inconsistency reveals a great deal of bias in the reporting.
Violence directed at Palestine in retaliation for the attacks is implicity considered to be justifiable, whereas Hamas' actions are considered evil; that is to say, for the sake of violence and terror itself.
We can go futher - the language used to describe Israel's counter-attacks are that of methodical, almost surgical precision whereas the initial attack is described in terms of barbarian-like slaughter.
You will be hard pressed to find any political analyst employed by large media outlets arguing that Israel does not have right to fight back against the attacks. But does Palestine not have a right to fight back against the decades of terror emposed upon it?
If you frame this recent violence as beginning yesterday it would seem commonsense to assume Hamas' began the fight. But when you frame it within the context of the occupations and settler-colonial project you can see a more truthful picture of who is 'at fault'.
And as I final note I want to say this: there is a lot of vague statements floating around, on this forum and elsewhere, gesturing towards an idea that 'this is a complex issue' and that 'both sides need to cease the violence' and this mythical 'peace process'.
This issue is not complex.
One nation involved (the nation of wealth, intergovernmental support and massive weapons capability) is commited to the complete erradication of the other. Borders agreed upon by international law have been continually encroached upon for decades and decades. Apartheid is policy.
War, and war crimes are commited everyday in the occupied territories. Gaza itself is well known as 'the largest open air prison in the world'. Palestine has a right to fight back.
To keep asking the oppressed to only resist in ways you consider to be moral, while never expecting the oppressor to be moral is a biased, inconsistant, and ultimately reactionary way of viewing the conflict.
To return to a state of generalised 'peace' is for peace to return to Israel, the violence (physical and economic) will continue in Palestine.