2 August 2014

The other side of the coin……..


A couple of days ago someone reminded me about the middle eastern tv channel Al Jazeera and I realised that it was missing from my YouView menu. I retuned the box, recovered Al Jazeera in both Arabic and English and sat down to watch the alternative coverage of Israel's version of the 'War Against Terror'. And I'm not too sure that it was a good move.

What I saw almost immediately was just how sanitised is the coverage of Gaza that we are seeing from even our rabidly left-wing and wholly biased British Broadcasting Corporation.

BBC announcers warn us that "some of the images you will see are disturbing" and what we are shown is a lot of dried blood and the occasional shoe. What we don't ever see is the remains of the owners of the blood or the shoe. Al Jazeera doesn't spare us that comfort and gave me a close-up view of charred and bloated bodies piled up against a wall in a Gaza basement, probably courtesy of some newly acquired American munitions. You can find those selfsame images if you tune in or even if you google around the www.

Watching the BBC, its easy to think that, whilst Gaza is being reduced to rubble, most of the inhabitants are getting away with scratches. Yes, we see the coffins but what we don't see is the gory link between the relentless Israeli shelling and bombing of Gaza and the procession of coffins. What we don't see is the splattered brains and shattered limbs that are shovelled or scooped into bags to get them into the coffins. What we don't see is the reality of war and the reality of collective punishment as it is being applied by the Israeli armed forces in Gaza to the prisoners of the Gaza Gulag.

I wonder what would happen if the BBC started to show something approaching the reality of daily life and death in Gaza. Maybe we wouldn't be quite so smug and complacent.