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523 points mhga | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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topspin ◴[] No.44496856[source]
Recent BBC World headlines:

    Gaza doctor whose nine children were killed in Israeli strike dies from injuries (June 2)
    Gaza now worse than hell on earth, humanitarian chief tells BBC (June 4)
    Three journalists among five killed in Israeli strike on Gaza hospital (June 5)
    Four killed near Gaza aid centre, health workers say (June 8)
    Dozens of Palestinians killed while seeking aid in Gaza, hospitals say (June 11)
    More than 20 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire near Gaza aid sites, Hamas-run ministry says (June 16)
    Israeli forces kill 51 Palestinians waiting for flour at Gaza aid site, witnesses and rescuers say (June 17)
    Eleven killed by Israeli fire while seeking aid in Gaza, rescuers say (June 18)
    At least 12 Palestinians killed waiting for aid in Gaza, say medics (June 19)
    Israeli military kills 23 Palestinians near aid site in Gaza, witnesses and medics say (June 20)
    GHF boss defends Gaza aid operation after hundreds of Palestinians killed near sites (June 27)
    At least 81 people killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, Hamas-run health ministry says (June 28)
    Israeli military investigates 'reports of harm to civilians' after hundreds killed near Gaza aid sites (June 30)
    Hundreds of families displaced by wave of Israeli air strikes on Gaza, Palestinians say (June 30)
    Dozens killed in Gaza as Israel intensifies bombardment, rescuers say (July 3)
    Israel's strike on bustling Gaza café killed a Hamas operative - but dozens more people were killed (July 4)
Now, perhaps these anonymous staff make some distinction between headlines and whatever they mean by "PR," but there appears to be zero hesitation reporting everything the BBC can find on the crimes of Israel, real or imagined. Reading the open letter makes no such distinction, citing "reporting" many times. At least two of the above are directly attributed to "Hamas-run ministry," which is somehow a source for BCC's supposedly pro-Israel reporting.

How am I supposed to not see what I'm seeing with my lying eyes? I don't believe I'm capable of this tier of cognitive dissonance.

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1. somenameforme ◴[] No.44497057[source]
Imagine China started doing to the Uyghurs exactly what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, and on the exact same scale. For that matter you can even say for the exact same justification - there have indeed been multiple mass death terrorist style incidents carried out by Uyghurs. Would you expect remotely similar framing?

The entire population of Gaza was only ~2 million and Israel has now killed/wounded hundreds of thousands of Palestinians directly, and it's likely some multiple of that have been killed indirectly (starvation, disease, deaths of despair, etc). If this was China, we would have long since been calling it a systemic genocide, done all we could to economically sanction them out of existence, and perhaps even flirted with direct invasions which would entail risking not only WW3 but global nuclear warfare.

But because it's Israel, we're instead shipping them weapons to keep carrying out this "war" and the media continues framing it as just a regrettable conflict with unfortunate collateral damage.

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2. topspin ◴[] No.44497399[source]
> we would have long since been calling it a systemic genocide

Without knowing what "we" means, allow me to cite a few more recent BBC headlines, these related to "genocide":

    Gaza war: UN rights expert accuses Israel of acts of *genocide* (March 26)
    UN experts accuse Israel of sexual violence and *'genocidal acts'* in Gaza (March 13)
    Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of *acts of genocide* in Gaza over water access (December 19, 2024)
    Amnesty accuses Israel of *genocide* against Palestinians in Gaza (December 5, 2024)
    Saudi crown prince says Israel committing *'genocide'* in Gaza (November 11, 2024)
    Brazil's Lula compares Israel's Gaza campaign to the Holocaust (February 28, 2024)
    ICJ says Israel must prevent *genocide* in Gaza (January 26, 2024)
So the "genocide" narrative appears to be alive and well around the world, and the BBC is a fine place to read all about it. The ICJ is literally investigating a genocide case against Israel as we speak.

Again, this notion that there is some pro-Israel bias plaguing the BBC just doesn't compute for me. Were the claims of this anonymous open letter valid, I wouldn't be able to tap a couple keywords into X and dump a list of such BBC headlines. Apparently any leader, pressure group or institution on Earth that cares to make a headline need only accuse Israel of "genocide" and it will be on the BBC the same day. Whatever supposed editorial bias is in effect appears to be highly ineffective.

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3. somenameforme ◴[] No.44506410[source]
Effective propaganda, when truth is not on its side, does not simply ignore the truth. There's an ICC arrest warrant out for Netanyahu for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and so forth. Never saying genocide and ignoring all allegations would be a red flag to the point of absurdity. You'd never convince anybody that wasn't already completely convinced.

So the way that real propaganda works is by taking some issue people generally feel a way about, expressing some empathy towards that, and then working to shift that person's perspective. For instance here [1] is the first article you linked: "UN rights expert accuses Israel of acts of genocide". It not only spends much of the article softly trying to undermine these claims, but even leans on one of the most classical propaganda techniques - appeals to emotion. This is a quote from that article:

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Not surprisingly, Israeli diplomats are angry [at the claims]. Its ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Meirav Eilon Shahar, described the report as "an obscene inversion of reality", and accused Ms Albanese of questioning Israel's right to exist. Many Israelis, too, are likely to be shocked. And the suggestion of genocide, towards a state which was founded as a direct result of Nazi Germany's genocide of Jews, will cause deep offence.

In the wake of 7 October attack, and the fact that so many Israeli families are still waiting for news of loved ones taken hostage, hearing such outspoken condemnation is hard. Noam Peri, whose father Chaim was taken hostage, also travelled to Geneva. Her focus, naturally, is that her father not be forgotten.

"My father was kidnapped from his own home," she said. "He's an 80-year-old person that was sitting in his home with my mother, and he was brutally taken from there, and has essentially disappeared since. He has no communication, with no-one in the world."

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[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68667556