The BBC
has apologized for referring to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and has promised it won't do it again. Never mind that Jerusalem has been Israel's official capital since 1951. The Beeb can't let little things like facts get in the way of their usual anti-Israel bias, particularly if some Arabs are offended by those facts. Heck, news reporting doesn't really have to be factual, does it? How old fashioned of me to think that it does.
This apology was a response to complaints about a reference to Jerusalem as Israel's capital on, of all things, a BBC sports program back in March. Who complained? According to the BBC it was a joint complaint from Arab Media Watch, Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Friends of Al-Aksa and the Institute of Islamic Political Thought. According to the Jerusalem Post article:
The Institute of Islamic Political Thought is run by Azzam Tamimi, a Hamas supporter and a member of the Muslim Association of Britain, part of the Muslim Brotherhood.So, Hamas and other violent, rejectionist, terrorist Palestinian groups get to decide BBC policy. Very nice. For those of you who have slept through the last few days Hamas just took over Gaza in a violent coup killing dozens of Palestinians in the process with nary a word of protest from the Arab or Muslim world.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev's comments hit the nail on the head:
Jerusalem is Israel's capital. It is the right of every sovereign state to determine which city will be its capital. If this is not accepted by everyone today, I am confident it will be in the future.This is hardly the first time
I've written about anti-Israeli bias at the BBC and sadly I'm sure it won't be the last. I guess this is par for the course in a nation that
won't even teach the Holocaust in schools for fear of offending Holocaust deniers in general and anti-Semitic Arabs and Muslims in particular.
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