In the latest display of sickening hypocrisy at the United Nations, the Human Rights Council yesterday endorsed by 30 votes to one this month’s report by three anti-Israeli lawyers which charged Israel with “wilful killing”, “torture” and “inhuman treatment” over the Mavi Marmara Gaza-flotilla incident earlier this year.

The United States was the only country to oppose the report, while France and Britain were among 15 others abstaining. What really strikes one, however, are the liberal-democratic credentials of those who backed the motion. To think! Being judged on a human rights issue by China, Libya, or Saudi Arabia? Actually this is no laughing matter. It is a depraved and disgusting statement on what the United Nations has become. It is, therefore, worth looking at the backers of this motion in a little more detail.

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Following up on my previous two posts there is an interesting illustration of the way the BBC views the conflict between Israel, the Palestinians and the wider Muslim world up on its website in the form of a professionally laid out breakdown of the key issues up for discussion in the current talks.

In a piece entitled, Middle East talks: Core issues, BBC World Affairs Correspondent Paul Reynolds makes a decent fist of giving the Israeli, Palestinian and American positions on Jerusalem, borders, settlements, refugees and security. It’s biased of course, and I would have written it very differently, but there’s nothing especially dramatic to complain about.

What is so interesting, however, is that even in a relatively sober frame of mind top BBC journalists are completely incapable of recognising that the ultimate core issue in this conflict is the refusal of the Palestinian side to internalise the existence of the state of Israel as a legitimate nation in the world and to accept that Jews have a legitimate claim to their land in the Middle East.

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As obsession with the settlement issue as the “great barrier” to peace in the Middle East continues along its oh so predictable journey through the ministries and media establishments of the West, now might be a good time to reflect on some really rather significant items of recent news from the Palestinian side that somehow or other have not made it into the western public discourse.

The reason why you probably haven’t heard about them is that they paint an entirely different picture of Palestinian sincerity in the current peace talks than would support the narrative of oppressed Palestinian David battling vainly for peace and justice against a ruthless and exploitative Israeli Goliath, continually “stealing” Palestinian land.

So here, courtesy of the invaluable Palestinian Media Watch media monitoring organisation, is a summary of a few choice items about what the Palestinians have been telling their own people about the talks and just how sincere they have been in cultivating an atmosphere conducive to peace.

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In one of the most disgraceful displays of wilful bias that you will ever have the misfortune to witness, the BBC today covers a UN Human Rights Council report which castigates Israel over the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident in the Mediterranean Sea earlier this year.

The incident left nine pro-terror activists dead after they attacked Israeli soldiers in a bid for martyrdom. Gleefully, the BBC quotes the report as accusing Israel in the following terms:

“There is clear evidence to support prosecutions of the following crimes within the terms of article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: wilful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health”.

As good propagandists the reporters and editors are careful to relate Israel’s rejection of the report. But since any country accused of such crimes would instantly issue a rebuttal, the effect on the reader can safely be assumed to be minimal. What the BBC does is to censor out any of the relevant details, both about the incident itself and about the UN rights council. Here is a list of what they (quite deliberately) do not tell the reader:

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There’s an interesting story in today’s Jerusalem Post which reminds us of a side to the settlement issue that rarely makes it into the western press:

“One day after the Palestinian Authority reaffirmed the death penalty for Palestinians who sell land to Israelis,” the paper reports, “one of the most prominent Arab land dealers called on the Israeli authorities to help him and other Palestinians whose lives are at risk”.

If you deconstruct that one single paragraph, unpack all the assumptions contained within it and lay it out in the open for all to see, you can explain pretty much everything one needs to know about guilt and innocence in the entire Israel-Palestine conflict. That, of course, is precisely why the likes of the BBC and the Guardian are so quiet on such matters. So then, what exactly does it tell us?

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