The BBC’s new head of Arabic news coverage described Israeli cities as ‘occupied’ and people injured in rocket attacks on their homeland as ‘settlers’.
Mayssaloun Nassar took over as head of BBC News Arabic last month. The comments were made in a series of social media posts whilst she was working for France 24, reports The Telegraph.
This is not the first time the BBC’s Arabic service has been accused of bias against Israel. It has previously been accused of spreading lies about Hamas, lies that are circulated throughout the Arab world.
In addition, the scandal surrounding the BBC’s manipulation of footage and deliberate misinformation in connection with 6 January 2021 is still ongoing, for which US President Donald Trump has sued the British public broadcaster. Trump is seeking $10 billion in damages for defamation.
The BBC is trying to prove that Trump caused the riots on 6 January
During the fighting between Israel and Hamas in November 2012, Nassar referred to ‘the occupied city of Beersheba’. The following day, she wrote that 100 rockets had hit their targets and that 28 ‘settlers’ had been injured.
On 21 November 2012, she wrote that a missile attack from Lebanon had targeted “Israeli settlements”. A minute later, she reported that a missile had landed in Metulla, ‘within the occupied territories’.
Both Beersheba, in the far south of Israel, and Metulla, on the border with Lebanon, lie within Israel’s pre-1967 borders. The two targets were not in Judea and Samaria, the area which the Western media consistently refers to as the ‘occupied West Bank’. They were located within Israel.
The ‘West Bank’ has, admittedly, been occupied. Jordan officially occupied the area for 17 years, from 1950 – following the attacks on the new Jewish state – until Israel recaptured the area after its crushing victory in the Six-Day War in 1967.
Calling towns in Israel ‘occupied’ and their inhabitants ‘settlers’ is rather like singing From the River To the Sea. A large proportion of the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians will not be satisfied until Israel ceases to exist as a separate state and Palestinian Arabs have control over the entire area, from the Mediterranean coast to the River Jordan.
Nassar is originally from Lebanon, but eventually moved to France. She was previously deputy editor of France 24.
In September 2016, she interviewed the wife of Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, a Palestinian prisoner serving a life sentence in Israel. Nassar was careful to explain that Abu Ghoulmeh had been imprisoned by the Israeli authorities, and described him as someone who had ‘fought and made sacrifices’.
She did not mention what crime he had committed: Abu Ghoulmeh had been convicted for his involvement in the murder of Israel’s Minister of Tourism, Rehavam Ze’evi on 17 October 2001.
There are several examples of how BBC Arabic has presented news from the Gaza War in a biased manner. They have also invited regular contributors who have openly demonstrated hatred of Jews. Document has written about this scandal-ridden channel before.
The BBC’s biased reporting has spread Hamas’s lies across the globe
BBC management has acknowledged the errors and says it has tightened controls over both editorial standards and external contributors.
On Friday, a spokesperson for Camera, a pro-Israeli organisation that monitors the media, stated that the group had “no confidence” in Nassar’s ability to “finally get BBC Arabic under control”.
BBC Arabic was forced to issue 34 corrections during the first five months of the Gaza war, after mistakenly describing Israeli towns as ‘settlements’ or their inhabitants as ‘settlers’, including in connection with the aforementioned Metulla.
When the BBC was asked about Nassar’s social media posts, as well as the use of the terms ‘settlers’ and ‘occupied’ towns, the BBC did not provide any specific answers, but a spokesperson for the national broadcaster made the following comment:
“Mayssaloun Nassar was recently appointed editor of BBC News Arabic and was the best candidate for the post. She has extensive experience in journalism and has proven herself to be a capable leader.”
