This is how the BBC constructs its biased news reports

This Q&A is reproduced below, in sections, along with PSC’s analysis of each section. Our analysis shows how the BBC carefully constructs its reporting to portray Israel, the occupier, as the victim, and the Palestinians, the occupied, as aggressors.

The BBC says:
Is social media driving Israel-Palestinian violence?

Violence between Israel and the Palestinians is once again spiralling, with casualties mounting by the day.
Here are some key questions and answers about what is going on.

What is happening between Israelis and Palestinians?

There has been a spate of stabbings and gun attacks on Israelis by Palestinians since early October, and one apparent revenge stabbing by an Israeli.
The attacks, some of which have been fatal, have struck in Jerusalem and in northern and central Israeli cities and towns, and in the occupied West Bank.
Israel has tightened security and clashed with rioting Palestinians, leading to deaths on the Palestinian side.
There has also been associated violence in the border area inside the Gaza Strip

The BBC says:

What’s behind the latest unrest?

After a period of relative quiet, violence between the two communities has spiralled since clashes erupted at a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site in mid-September.
It was fuelled by rumours among Palestinians that Israel was attempting to alter a long-standing religious arrangement governing the site. Israel repeatedly dismissed the rumours as incitement.
Soon afterwards, two Israelis travelling with their four children were shot dead by Palestinians in the West Bank. Two days later the stabbing attacks began.
Both Israel and the Palestinian authorities have accused one another of doing nothing to protect each other’s communities.
Israel says the Palestinian leadership is inciting attacks, while Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas blames “acts of aggression” by the Israeli authorities and Jewish settlers for causing the latest violence.

PSC says:

There is no such thing as a ‘period of relative quiet’ for Palestinians. They are living under a brutal military occupation and constantly under attack, whether from Israeli soldiers or settlers. (130 settler attacks on Palestinians in the first week of October).

Again, the only focus for the BBC is Israel. Because things have been relatively quiet for Israel, the occupier, the BBC applies this to the situation in general. It is staggering bias.

And it is a method of reporting – reporting which ignores constant Israeli aggression against Palestinians – which allows the BBC to pin the shooting dead of two Israelis in the West Bank as a starting point for the violence in October.

The BBC says:

Are the attacks being driven by social media?

While there is no clear evidence that the attacks have been centrally organised, Palestinians have taken to social media to celebrate and encourage them.
In the wake of the first attacks, Hamas, the militant group which dominates Gaza, published a video online showing Arabs how to knife Jews. The staged scene, set to dramatic music, depicted two “Jews” bullying Arab children, before an Arab bystander knifes them both.
The clip was removed from Hamas’ YouTube channel after Israel’s foreign ministry complained that it glorified violence and incited more attacks. Other posts praising and encouraging attacks on Israelis have also emerged on YouTube and Facebook, while Twitter hashtags including “Jerusalem Intifada” or “Intifada of the Knives” are gaining traction on Palestinian social media.
Many of the attacks and aftermath have been filmed on mobile phones and CCTV, getting quickly uploaded and shared. Israeli officials have expressed fear that images of assailants being shot could fuel anger and inspire further attacks.

PSC says:

The question itself is insulting. Responsibility for what is happening lies with the occupation, but the BBC will try and allocate responsibility and blame anywhere except Israel, even resorting to trying to make social media a culprit.

The bias also lies in the BBC’s decision to highlight only Palestinian ‘glorification’ of violence.

This video shows an Israeli mob chasing 19-year-old Fadi Alloun through the streets of Jerusalem on 4th October and shouting ‘Death to the Arabs’ and ‘Shoot him, bi***’ to Israeli police who appear on the scene. Alloun is blocked in all directions and shot dead.

Israel later claimed that Alloun had a knife. The video clearly shows he didn’t. This was a racist lynching, an execution of a teenage boy in which Israeli civilians and Israeli police participated. The BBC, which has dutifully reported all of Israel’s claims of stabbing attacks in its reports, has not used or mentioned this video in any of its reports, and fails to do so in this Q&A.

As an additional point, Alloun had not seen his mother or brother for 18 years as Israel refused to allow them to return to Jerusalem after visiting his dying grandfather in Jordan. This is the true face of the occupation, an occupation the BBC chooses to ignore as much as it can, and which from it tries to shift the blame for any violence, putting the blame, instead, on the occupied Palestinians.

However, the BBC never puts any blame on Israel for the violence it commits. Israel merely tightens security measures to protect itself and this happen to lead to Palestinian deaths, as far as the BBC is concerned.

The following are examples of Israeli Facebook pages and Twitter posts inciting murder against Palestinians, which the BBC has chosen not to highlight during previous ‘periods of unrest’:

Kill a Palestinian every hour
Next time you kill an Arab boy, call me and let me torture him

There are many, many more. The point is, they never receive any attention from the BBC – which also ignores regular racist incitement against Palestinians from Israeli politicians – because the image they give isn’t the image the BBC wants to portray of Israelis and Israel as peace loving victims.

The BBC also chooses to ignore statements by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, made on 11th October, that Israel is ‘deliberately killing’ Palestinians. Such statements, made by international human rights group, destroy the idea of Israel as an innocent victim, and are ignored in BBC news reports.

Palestinians, however, are regularly portrayed by the BBC as loving and glorifying violence, particularly in its documentaries/Panorama programmes.

Another attempt to remove responsibility from the occupation is the last sentence in this BBC answer, which gives an Israeli line that sharing images on social media could fuel further attacks.

The simple fact is that Palestinian resistance is not fuelled by social media, it is fuelled by the occupation. However, the BBC will not even examine this as a line of journalistic inquiry in its allegedly impartial Q&A.

The BBC says:

Is this a new Palestinian intifada?

There have been two organised intifadas, or uprisings, by Palestinians against Israeli occupation, in the 1980s and early 2000s.
With peace talks moribund, some observers have questioned whether we are now seeing a third.
The stabbing attacks seem to be random and opportunistic and although they have been praised by militant groups and supporters of Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction on social media, Mr Abbas has said Palestinians are not interested in a further escalation.
However, there is a danger that the attacks could gain momentum and become orchestrated by militant groups, and beyond any control of the recognised authorities.