Last week, BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen conducted an interview with Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas. What ensued was an exercise in propaganda, not only licensed but amplified by the interviewer himself. Alan Johnson writes:
Bowen . . . allowed Meshal, an anti-Semitic terrorist who has exulted in the killing of Jews as Jews, to preen and pose, without challenge, before a global audience—with the full imprimatur of a respectful BBC—as a heroic Palestinian democrat, a moderate man, a peacemaker, and a reluctant liberator in the glorious tradition of Nelson Mandela and George Washington.
Bowen even allowed an incitement to go unchallenged. “Netanyahu likes to shed blood,” spat Meshal—an old image about Jews-with-power that has a certain, ahem, history. Bowen didn’t blink. . . . Bowen [also] allowed Meshal to claim that Hamas was not Islamist. . . .
Bowen didn’t just leave Hamas spin unchallenged. He actually spun for Hamas himself. “Mr. Meshal said he and the group had agreed to accept the boundaries which existed before the 1967 Middle East war as the basis for those of a future Palestinian state,” wrote Bowen. But that is just not true. It is, to be frank, Hamas propaganda.
Read more on Harry's Place: http://hurryupharry.org/2015/04/02/%E2%80%98hey-khaled-looking-good%E2%80%99-the-bbc-as-an-enabler-of-antisemitic-terrorism/