Media Finally Focuses on Despotic Palestinian Leadership, But Still Manages to Whitewash Terrorism
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kazakh capital Astana. Photo: Reuters/Vyacheslav Prokofyev
In a rare and surprising move, the BBC decided to turn its reproving gaze away from Israel for a change, and focus on the oft-ignored tyrannical rule of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which hasn’t held a single election in the West Bank since 2006.
The piece by the broadcaster’s World Service, “As Palestinian youths, the political process has failed us,” highlights how younger Palestinians have “little faith in the Palestinian leadership” after never being given the opportunity to vote, as well as how many reject the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Based on data that was exclusively shared with the BBC by the West Bank-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, the article quotes several Palestinians aged under 30 — including a terrorist in the Jenin Battalion that the BBC’s Yousef Eldin apparently met during the group’s nightly “training exercises” — who talk of their distrust in the Palestinian political process.
While the piece rightly draws attention to Palestinian Authority’s authoritarianism, Eldin’s subtle whitewashing of the activities of several Palestinian terrorist groups leaves a bitter taste:
In the past year, numerous new militant groups have sprung up in the northern West Bank towns of Nablus and Jenin, challenging the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces.
The most well-known are the Lions’ Den and the Jenin Brigades, which have carried out attacks in the West Bank against Israeli forces and settlers.
Although it is true that the majority of the Lions’ Den and Jenin Battalion’s terrorism has been confined to the West Bank, Eldin ignores the fact that both groups have actually targeted civilians in Israel proper, including a planned pipe bomb and gun attack by the Lions’ Den in southern Tel Aviv that was thwarted by Israeli police.
Meanwhile, the Jenin Battalion is believed to be behind a number of shooting attacks on a kibbutz in northern Israel earlier this year.
There is also the subtle dehumanizing of Israeli civilians who are labeled “settlers” in the piece, which tacitly suggests they are legitimate targets for Palestinian violence. For obvious reasons, Eldin fails to name any of these “settler” victims, like the innocent Israeli taxi driver who was injured when terrorists opened fire on his vehicle.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the BBC if there wasn’t at least one barely-veiled barb directed at the Jewish state.
This came in the form of an interview with a young Israeli Arab, who lives in Ramallah but was born in a town in northern Israel, and claims to feel excluded from Palestinian society:
Palestinian citizens make up 20% of Israel’s population and like many in his generation he prefers to identify as “from ’48” – a term that describes Palestinians who remained in the land which became Israel following its creation in 1948. As a result, he finds himself excluded from Palestinian society.
‘I’m not recognised as part of the Palestinian system in the West Bank,” Majd continues. ‘I’m not supposed to vote [in Palestinian elections]. Actually, according to Israeli law, I’m not even supposed to be here [in Ramallah].’
Israeli law prohibits citizens from travelling to Palestinian areas in the West Bank for security reasons.
Without a voice in the Palestinian political process, Majd also has no faith in the two-state solution.
What Eldin fails to tell readers, however, is that as an Israeli citizen, Majd does have a say in elections — Israel’s elections — where he can also vote for Arab politicians, some of whom have previously been in the government. That’s because Israel is actually a democracy that holds elections and gives every citizen the right to vote.
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