I guess not strictly news - but with all of the vitriol I have seen in discussions on the Israel situation, that have boiled down to arguments over wording, I feel that this take from the BBC is worthy of some discussion.
Mods, feel free to remove if this is not newsy enough.
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There’s a reason every country that bitches about the BBC also gets accused of being far right authoritarians…
BBC calls them out, but pulls just short of saying it. And there’s nothing far right authoritarians hate more than someone calmly telling the world exactly what they want. If we flat out called them nazis, they’d argue they’re not technically nazis they’re sparkling fascists.
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The only people the BBC have ever called Nazis are the actual Nazis, because they called themselves Nazis. So fair enough.
I’m really sorry, but in case of Armenia, Artsakh and Azerbaijan BBC has been extremely pro-Azeri for many years, all the way to using Azeri place names which literally were invented 30 years ago when they were attempting (then unsuccessfully, now successfully) to depopulate those places.
Now they seem to have made a 180 degree turn (still using Azeri place names, though), but that can be explained by there no longer being Armenians in Artsakh, so lying is no longer that necessary.
Now, about nazis and Azerbaijan … you comment seems asinine in that context.
Bullshit. They’ve used the word ‘terrorist’ for every other attack in the past two decades (9/11, London Bridge, Manchester Arena, 7/7, etc.). Was that not ‘choosing sides’ then?
They just can’t admit that the UK fucked up and condemn Israel because the lawyers told them not to
Here is an article that doesn’t refer to it as “terrorism”:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-40008389
The articles I have seen that refer to it as terrorism, tend to be from local BBC services, rather than the national one.
No its not, they are legally considered terrorists and are on the same list as ISIS or the Taliban.
legally
Whose law?
UK Parliament added Hamas on the list of proscribed terrorist organizations in 2021. Press release here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/islamist-terrorist-group-hamas-banned-in-the-uk
The EU have them listed as well (didn’t bother checking since when).
The US has listed them since 1997 (US Department of Treasury Office of Foreign Asset Control is the agency in charge of sanctions enforcement).
So yeah.
Legally.
For better or (and very clearly) for worse, Hamas has been the government in Palestinian since 2006.
Either laws and governments matter, or they don’t.
You don’t get to have it both ways.
Hamas has been the government in Palestinian since 2006.
No theyre not.
The Palestinian Authority is in charge of the West Bank and Hamas is “in charge” of Gaza (even tho Israel controls everything).
If you think Hamas is the government of Palestine, it actually makes sense. Israel loves pretending that’s true in the media. And probably the only reason they haven’t done anything about Hamas despite controlling every aspect of life in Gaza
You didn’t have to give me a link showing me I’m right…
But you could edit your original comment now that you know.
Hamas absolutely controls Gaza with an iron fist. Everything from schools, to infrastructure, to daily life, to the electoral process.
You asked by whose law they are defined as terrorists. You got your answer: UK law, EU law, US law.
The BBC answers to UK law at the end of the day, not Gazan law, not US law, and not your law.
The BBC answers to UK law at the end of the day
Actually no, the role of journalism isn’t just to parrot and re-express the views of the current government from where they are based.
I agree they shouldn’t parrot the views of the UK government blindly. But the BBC are not above the law. Stop that nonsense.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. They organize and commit acts of intentional violence against civilians with the express purpose of spreading terror.
Calling them anything else other than that is a disservice to the readers of the BBC and implicitly condones their actions by not labelling them as such.
And the BBC will report the fact that Hamas has been designated a terrorist group by those bodies.
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Wikipedia is a lawmaking body?
I think you are missing the point.
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The UN doesn’t, according to your own source.
Critically, though, not the U.N. I linked to the same thing above before I saw your comment but came to a different conclusion. I personally call them terrorists but I’m not a journalist trying to be impartial on a global network. I think it’s fine for the BBC to just say which countries do label them terrorists without taking a side.
Kinda weird that New Zealand takes the time to differentiate calling the political arm of Hamas not terrorists and the militant arm of Hamas (Qassam Brigades) terrorists. Maybe someone should look into why.
The well known phrase is “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. I Imagine from their point of view, Israel is the ‘terrorist’ group, routinely bombing apartment buildings etc and that their actions are a proportionate counter (recent events nonwithstanding!)
Both sides of the current conflict have/are committing atrocities, but the reporting of those atrocities should be as factual and unbiased as possible.
The best way I’ve heard it described is that they both view the other group of people as existential evil. Far beyond enemies, something which is evil just for existing. Not just the militaries, but the nation, race, state, religion, whatever classification. With that viewpoint, any action you take can be justified. Just as nobody would think twice about killing a million mosquito larvae in a country that has thousands die from malaria, killing a few thousand of the other side is morally neutral at worst.
This is going to continue to be horrific for a while.
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So do you call the Israeli army terrorists? Because they’ve done all of those things to an even greater extent than Hamas has.
You know, they BOTH do that shit, right? It’s important that you know this.
The military prosecuted and convicted the leader who ordered the killings, so implying the US military condones these actions is really stupid
Regardless of the wrist-slap the criminal President gave him, he was convicted. There is no legal recourse after a Presidential commutation.
My Lai was not an isolated incident.
Only one involved was convicted as stated, but then completely let off so who cares? The higher ups that enabled it were completely let off. Others who were involved in the cover up completely let off. The whistleblowers, etc were shunned and ostracized by the military for decades.
so who cares
Being that is invalidates the point you were making, you should care.
But then, your only interest in contrarianism, so no one really gives a fuck about your opinion either, you sick fucking terrorist apologist.
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…whataboutism sucks. Regardless if it’s true.
But complaining about whataboutism while you ignore the problem everytime somoeone powerfull or ally does sucks the same. A war of suckers.
But redirecting attention away from the topic being discussed just so you can whine about someone else doing the same makes it appear as if you’re justifying it so long as someone else does it.
Stop doing this. It’s juvenile and muddies the water. You want to discuss how shitty America is, do it in its own post where that can be discussed in full. Here, it doesn’t belong.
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And while you have every right to your opinion, your opinion isn’t a newsworthy or relevant fact.
Journalists should never label a group of people with an adjective. It’s Journalism 101. Your writing should be free of personal bias and report the facts and quoted statements. No assumptions are allowed.
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Alright, buddy… quit while you’re behind.
“Hamas is a terrorist organization”. Help me spot the adjective there, cowboy.
Sorry that my source did not invent the usage, the word or language itself.
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Neither does your opinion
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Lmao, you’re seriously linking to a deleted comment to try to make your case?
Laws are, by definition, a legal opinion— which can be overturned, by the way, by another legal opinion. The only fact here is that it is, is some jurisdiction, a law.
That just is not the point. I mean, if you are involved in the conflict you can totally believe in anything, but the point is in the moment you call them terrorist and call it a day you lost any possibility to analyze the situation and understand WTF is happening and why.
BBC is not saying they are NOT terrorists, but it does not matter in this context.
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The U.S., U.K., E.U., and others designate them as a terrorist group but the U.N. does not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_groups
The reality is that they’re the militant faction of the de facto government of a quasi-state under Israeli occupation. It is complicated so the BBC just says who thinks they’re a terrorist group. That seems reasonable for journalists striving to be neutral.
“Everybody wants to occupy ‘the holy land’ and everyone who is taking part of that sucks”
While Israel has been basically a terrorist state, attacking Palestinians nonchalant, bombing civilian districts, and Hamas has grown in number, also basically being a terrorist state (the iron dome exists for a reason), it feels like we are forgetting that this whole argument comes down to religious rights. The argument will never end. The conflict will never end. Both groups are thumping their book claiming it’s their land. The war will go on for centuries until there’s nothing left to claim. That’s how religious war works, unless some other great motivator stops it.
The war will go on for centuries until there’s nothing left to claim
The US is older than Israel. My grandfather is older than Israel and he’s still alive. There was no state of Israel in 1920 and the Jewish population in the region was ~11%. This hasn’t been going on for centuries. It’s been going on for century.
The history of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel has its origins in the 2nd millennium BCE, when Israelites emerged as an outgrowth of southern Canaanites, During biblical times, a postulated United Kingdom of Israel existed before splitting into two Israelite kingdoms occupying the highland zone
The Crusades, the Ottoman Empire, thankfully those only lasted a century and that’s when we determined who got what.
Yes I’m sure that since they didn’t have it before, and they wouldn’t try to have it again. My point is not about nations that rise and fall. It’s that they will continue to rise and fall for this holy war on what they consider to be “their land”
Are you really sure that without US intervention, and the nation of Israel starting, there wouldn’t be orthodox Jewish terrorists on the other side of the border claiming it was “their land?”
Those claiming it’s “their land” will continue to fight, until everyone is dead. That’s my point.
It’s pretty ballsy to start using an alt with the same name as the last account you got banned under…
How long you think this one will last?
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Nope.
You’re banned from all of lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/u/CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works
And admittedly using a bunch of alts to circumvent it and keep posting the bullshit that got you banned.
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What list is this?
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The same thing’s happening in Canada with the CBC; bunch of people calling them out for not saying “terrorist” implying it means they’re in favour of the attacks, when CBC simply has a policy of not saying that about anyone, because it’s not their job.
This is why we need CBC and can’t let the Conservative Party of Canada destroy them.
I generally don’t like the CBC, but I personally find their international political reporting top tier due to this kind of approach.
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Opinion and interview pieces are obviously different. I didn’t realize Trudeau worked for the cbc.
As long as they are balanced, if you only ever have opinion pieces from one opinion, your just being biased by proxy.
This can lead to being over balanced though and inviting climate deniers etc.
I have to disagree.
Best example comes to us via the BBC above, during WW2 they never called the Nazis wicked or evil, but they did not and did not need to have Nazi-apologists on air to present a “fair and balanced” view Fox-News style.
As long as you present opinion as opinion and reporting as reporting and refrain from loaded language in your reporting you’re perfectly fine. Could it be better? Yes. But while you might not have arrived at “morally good”, you have clearly left “morally bad”.
??? They call neo-nazis terrorists.
Because they unambiguously are. Nobody reasonable is debating that. We’re never going to look back and say “actually they were right”
So burning babies is ambiguous to you?
The lack of self awareness is almost as funny as the liberal fascist siding with the nazis.
It’s so refreshing to see real journalistic integrity once in a while. Thanks for sharing.
I mean the guy has integrity so that’s good. But the BBC and integrity are not two words that go together
Yeah, this was for the journalist, not the outlet. I agree with you on that front.
This is hardcore and I respect the shit out of it
No, it’s announcing their cowardice. They use ‘terrorist’ for any other non-Israel/Palestine attack (9/11, London Bridge, 7/7, etc) so the entire argument is invalid.
The lawyers told them not to because everyone’s scared of being called anti-semitic, that’s all
I approve of it. Terrorist is a loaded term designed to draw an emotional response from the reader. Every nation could be called a terrorist organization. Any rebellion could be called terrorists. It’s not a useful term. It’s especially not useful in this case because the number killed by Israel is so much higher than Hamas.
Terrorist is generally just a term used to describe those without power using the tools of their oppressor against them. Fear and violence are only “allowed” to be used if you’re the one with power, for whatever reason. It’s stupid.
Domestic attacks and attacks against allies will be called terrorist attacks obviously, because they see value in supporting the status quo.
The lawyers told them not to because everyone’s scared of being called anti-semitic, that’s all
Honest question, how would labelling the Hamas as terrorists get them to be called anti-semitic?
Anti-semitic, as far as I know, means “against Jews” both in academics and colloquially. Hamas aren’t Jews.
Maybe you meant something like islamophobe instead?
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It’s a very one-sided genocide. It’s just plain ridiculous to equate the two sides when it was Zionists who stormed the Arab mandate in 1947, Zionists (and later, Israel) who created hundreds of thousands of refugees with millions still stuck in miserable camps on the borders, Israel who has kept Palestinians under brutal occupation and blockade since 1967, and Israel who bombs densely populated cities with fighter jets while the brand new Hamas air force is using hang-gliders powered by fans.
It’s such a difficult thing to explain to people whose primary exposure to the conflict is through the Western media but these accounts, by two Palestinian and Israeli non-violent activists, are well worth a read. Unfortunately I can’t find the original transcripts so it’s a google books extract and is missing some of George’s testimony.
My man colonialism created India and Pakistan but if Pakistan started slaughtering Indian civilians that would still be Pakistan’s responsibility.
You seem to have replied to the wrong comment. Or Lemmy is fucking up the indexing.
John Simpson is a legend. His book, A Mad World, My Masters, is exceptional reading.
The guy has been reporting since before many of us were even born. If you can catch his show on the BBC it’s a great antidote to the sensationalized, biased reporting that passes for journalism there days.
I don’t think you need to call hamas what they are, a far right fundamentalist extremist terrorist organisation. Their actions speak for themselves.
What they mean as that they could also say Israel is a terrorist state. That’s what some people think. And some people, specially those who have friends or family who have been killed in Palestina, might say that Hamas are defending their people and are not terrorists.
But you and me, citizens without voice, can call them terrorists (that’s what they are) but doing so we are somehow chosing a band in a conflict.I’m not sure I’d call Israel a terrorist state, but absolutely an apartheid state.
If you live in Gaza, you really don’t have a lot to lose by attacking Israeli non-combatants, because you have no hope, and the Israeli gov’t keeps going farther and farther to the right. Gaza looks a lot like the Warsaw ghettos prior to rounding all the Jews up and murdering them. The uprisings in the Warsaw ghetto were punished with the same kind of wildly disproportionate force as we’re already seeing Israel use against Gaza.
Hamas and Palestinian militants were, and are, wrong to target and murder non-combatants. And, at the same time, Israel has been doing exactly the same fucking thing for 20-odd years now; from 2008 through 2020, more than 120,000 Palestinians–mostly non-combatants–were wounded or killed by the Israeli military. In that same time period, 6,000 Israelis were wounded or killed by Palestinian militants.
Israel can not claim to be a democracy, because they refuse to give Palestinians a voice in government at all.
As an aside, the parallels between how Israel has treated Palestinians, and how the US has treated Native Americans is uncomfortable.
As an aside, the parallels between how Israel has treated Palestinians, and how the US has treated Native Americans is uncomfortable.
Which is even more ironic when you realise that that’s exactly where a certain mustachioed German dictator got his ideas from.
IIRC, Hitler originally wanted to ship all the Jews out. Except that no one else wanted them either. Extermination became the “logical” conclusion.
I’m not sure I’d call Israel a terrorist state, but absolutely an apartheid state. […] Israel can not claim to be a democracy, because they refuse to give Palestinians a voice in government at all.
There are two million Arab citizens of Israel, the vast majority of whom are Muslim. They vote. There are Arab Muslims in the Knesset.
This is a somewhat different situation from that of blacks in apartheid South Africa, who were denied civil rights on the basis of their race and ancestry.
I’m not saying Israeli society treats Arab Israeli citizens fairly or that there isn’t social discrimination. I haven’t been there; and from all reports there certainly is. But I think you’re exaggerating … or else understating how bad “actual” (South African) apartheid was.
“Arab citizens of Israel” =/= Palestinians.
Given that Israelis can, and do, burn out Palestinians in the occupied areas in order to seize their land, and Israeli authorities do nothing, and even help the arsonists, I don’t think that I’m overstating that. Moreover, the Arab voices in the Knesset are a minuscule minority; I think it’s something like a total of 5 seats, while Likud and their far-right allies have 63 seats.
While I get what you mean, I don’t think it should automatically mean (even a lot of people think it does) that you can either say Hamas is a terrorist group or Israel is a terrorist state.
In my own view both are terrorist, both commit atrocities and the result of that are innocent lives lost from both sides.
I despise centrism so saying that hurts a little bit on the inside, but this is one of the rare cases where fighting at all is meaningless and both sides that are fighting (and commiting atrocities) are in the fault.
Commendable to resist such pressure and remain as objective as possible
Based
And be sure to follow them on the fediverse: @BBC_News_Labs@social.bbc
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Government ministers, newspaper columnists, ordinary people - they’re all asking why the BBC doesn’t say the Hamas gunmen who carried out appalling atrocities in southern Israel are terrorists.
We regularly point out that the British and other governments have condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation, but that’s their business.
As it happens, of course, many of the people who’ve attacked us for not using the word terrorist have seen our pictures, heard our audio or read our stories, and made up their minds on the basis of our reporting, so it’s not as though we’re hiding the truth in any way - far from it.
No-one can possibly defend the murder of civilians, especially children and even babies - nor attacks on innocent, peace-loving people who are attending a music festival.
There was huge pressure from the government of Margaret Thatcher on the BBC, and on individual reporters like me about this - especially after the Brighton bombing, where she just escaped death and so many other innocent people were killed and injured.
That’s why people in Britain and right round the world, in huge numbers, watch, read and listen to what we say, every single day.
The original article contains 595 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
No-one can possibly defend the murder of civilians, especially children and even babies - nor attacks on innocent, peace-loving people who are attending a music festival.
No-one, except for racists who work for the genocide of that population.
But this doesn’t mean that we should start saying that the organisation whose supporters have carried them out is a terrorist organisation, because that would mean we were abandoning our duty to stay objective.
That makes it sound as if the Hamas was a regular, military organization with legitimate goals, which eventually settles their dispute at the negotiating table. And I think that’s giving a false picture of that organization. But let’s hear what they have to say about themselves:
Quoted from article 7:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
Quoted from article 13:
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.
These people (Hamas, not Palestinians) see it as their religious duty to kill all Jews.
I think the BBC’s position makes sense in most conflicts, but not in this one. They probably just try to appease both sides, with an explanation that sounds reasonable, if you don’t look too much behind the curtains.
They are terrorists
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