The BBC And The ‘Angry Soldier’

Much has been made about the BBC’s anti-Israel stance, as manifest by its refusal to list Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Our very own Brian of London has been all over this like a bad rash.

But it bears reminding (or perhaps this has not been pointed out before?) that up until very recently, this was the photo greeting visitors to the BBC’s Israel profile page.

In other words, out of all possible photos to depict Israel, the BBC chose that of an “angry soldier.”

Following reader complaints, the BBC has changed the photo to this:

I guess they couldn’t have posted a photo of Jerusalem, given they aren’t willing to recognize it is part of Israel!

Meanwhile, you have to read Benji’s BBC, I’m the Capital of Your Mom.

Last I checked, the BBC is not a policy-making body. It exists to report the news, not make it. What if Sports Illustrated decided that Maccabi Tel Aviv won the World Cup? BBC, you can’t just make things up. Reporting that Lindsay Lohan took home an Oscar for her tear-jerking performance in “Schindler’s List” doesn’t make it so. If you write a story that Bar Refaeli and I were seen canoodling on Gordon Beach last night and expect people to believe it, think again. (Even though this did actually happen.)

Alright, I lied. It happened in a lush meadow in broad daylight.

Journalism is a serious field where the best reporters pay their dues for years to climb to the top of their profession. So what in the hell is going on at the BBC? How did the people over there determine that Israel simply has no capital? Did they send a crack reporter here to search and he just couldn’t find it? Was he embedded in an alpaca farm in the desert?

Or could it be that they simply chose the wrong news sources? Is their Middle East informant Perez Hilton? Is their Deep Throat a four-year-old drunk kid in gan? Hey, BBC, when your source of information on Israeli geography is a card-carrying member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, it’s probably time to re-examine your objectivity.

Read the whole thing.

15 thoughts on “The BBC And The ‘Angry Soldier’”

  1. It should be noted that not only Israel is at odds with the BBC due to their inaccurate reporting. Also in India they garnered a bad reputation and are sometimes referred to as the “Biased Brain-f*cked Corporation”

  2. I find it incomprehensible that the status of Jerusalem is controversial or disputable to anyone, except to those countries or groups, who don’t recognise the State of Israel. Please correct me if my understanding of the history is incorrect, but as I understand, Israel proclaimed independence in 1948, with Jerusalem as its capital, and in accordance with UN resolution. East Jerusalem fell under Jordan’s control as a result of war. Since 1967, Israel proclaimed Jerusalem “re-unified”. Between 1948 and 1967, the part of Jerusalem retained under Israel continued to be its capital. Where is the controversy? According to BBC, when did the capital move elsewhere, or disappear?
    Israel had never had any other capital. Even if (G-d forbid) Israel had agreed to return to pre-67 borders, the part of Jerusalem that is in Israel, would still be Jerusalem, capital of Israel.It was never capital of Jordan, or Palestine. Also, what is this “intended capital”? Who intends to give it away? Besides, their intention is for it not to be called Jerusalem anyway.
    Israel bends over backwards to satisfy all these invented rules of a democracy, a tolerant and humanitarian society,member of UN, and it gets treated as if it is the most murderous, lawless country anyway. Israel should make it clear, once and for all, that it is willing to take a stand on Jerusalem; that while anything else may be in the bargain for peace, Jerusalem will not be bargained or negotiated; that the only way it will stop being Israel’s eternal capital is if it is taken by force, and Israel would never let this happen. I think it’s only fair to be honest and transparent and not to give the vipers false hope.

    1. i think tel aviv was the capital for a bit. during the independence war. and then after jerusalem was reunified all the gov buildings were moved.

      1. Even acc to wikipedia, David Ben Gurion proclaimed Jerusalem the capital in Dec 1949, and the Knesset had been there since. If the “International community” or the Palestenians keep pestering, perhaps Israel should close all access to any part of Jerusalem for anyone without Israeli citizenship, until they learn to behave themselves.

    2. “I find it incomprehensible that the status of Jerusalem is controversial or disputable to anyone, except to those countries or groups, who don’t recognise the State of Israel.”

      That “countries or groups who don’t recognise the State of Israel” is quite a lot of people, and they’re more mainstream than usually realized. Basically, Islamic believers plus anyone who’s bought into the idea that Zionism is a “colonial settler enterprise” don’t recognize the State of Israel, or at the very least wants the State of Israel derecognized and acts that way. The BBC and the other Far Left owned media outlets (most of the worldwide media) certainly fit that category.

      The mainstreaming of the idea that the Jews have absolutely no right to anything here needs to be acknowledged. We’re not in the 1950s anymore or even in 1975 when the equation of Zionism with racism could cause shock; we’re in an age of a righteous minority up against the machinations of an evil majority (including useful idiots—far too many Jews among them, alas—who give aid to the evil cause). Our enemies everywhere are not here to discuss things, their minds are already made up; it’s war they want, whether it’s in the battleground of hearts and minds (like the BBC) or physically (like Hezbollah). There’s a reason the European Union refused to recognize Hezbollah as a terrorist organization: Because the EU and Hezbollah are on the same side in the war against the Jewish nation and its nation-state.

      1. GB does recognize the state of Israel, so the BBC does not have the right to invent its own version. Of all the sanctimonious, pompous, arrogant….

  3. A Holographic Representation of the face of the Prophet Mohammed

    Iran has announced it will forfeit any and all competitions with Israeli athletes. I wonder how hard al Beeb will pimp for them about that?

    1. This means that Israel should enter all competitions where Iranian athletes are scheduled to take part.

  4. Ironically all ambassadors make the trek from the wilds of Herzliya, Tel Aviv and Mevaseret Zion to present their credentials to the President of Israel in Jerusalem.

    Hard as it is to believe the current Israel profile is considerably better than the one that was online for years.

  5. I’m not sure you should be quite so all over the BBC on this one. As much as we may disagree, their stance reflects that of most Western governments, including those of the US and the UK. In other words, to acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, they’d have to go against their own government’s stated policy. Considering that the BBC is an arm of the UK Government, I don’t see that as being a realistic expectation. In any case they have plenty of other egregious examples of anti-Israel bias to address, and my hats off to the bloggers for challenging them so often.

    1. Having embassies in another city, in order to avoid inflaming tensions, is not the same as not recognizing Israel’s right to proclaim its own capital. Disputing Israel’s right to annex Eadt Jerusalem, even though it was done after Jordan attacked in war, and even though while Jetusalem was under Jordanian control, the Jewish population was expelled or murdered, Jews did not have access to the Kotel, and ancient synagogues and gravesites were desecrated with the specific aim of destruction and humiliation. This is another one of those episodes in Jewish history that calls on us to state unequivocally “never again”.

  6. Actually, the Israeli soldier doesn’t look that “angry” to me, just a bit annoyed (don’t blame him). I’m willing to bet the other person is a foreign “activist”.
    Also noticed the cameraman in the background.

    But to replace it with a random picture of a Tel Aviv apartment to represent the entire country? That’s just lazy, if nothing else.
    (I’m imagining that some intern was ordered to do a Getty image search for Israel images and using the first random image that popped up.)

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