The problem with the DEC appeal

Michael Hargrave

Having seen the clip on Four, I agree that it does cross the line into propaganda. I don't decry the aim, but the clip should have been very carefully structured.

THX1138

Oliver Kamm thought the BBC coverage was fair.

http://timesonline.typepad.com/oliver_kamm/

So do I.

Publius

The BBC's reporting is so pro-Hamas that it differs little with this propaganda-charity ad. No wonder the BBC doesn't want to show it. It looks just like their emotive decontextualized reporting.

Alison Aldridge

The BBC is currently suppressing the news that 30 universities are, and have been for some time, occupied by students protesting about the war in Gaza.
This is a news blackout. As was the BBC's failure to broadcast the pro-ceasefire marches that took place throughout the world, including the USA, during the bombing. Widespread suppression of news that suggests the Israeli position is unpopular, points to a pro-Israeli stance in the BBC newsroom. Reporting from Israel during the war journalists claimed to be hampered by Israeli news management and the fact that entry into Gaza was verboten by the Israeli military.
What proof do you have for the claim that "Israel did carefully target its attacks.."? Given the evidence, I don't think you'd be so disingenuous as to believe such a claim from our own politicians/military men so what's your excuse for believing the Israelis without question?

Tony

Michael, the clip was carefully structured... to convey the charities' bias against Israel and ignore the involvement of Hamas in the destruction. Hamas terrorists based themselves among civilians and were firing things somewhat larger than peashooters during the conflict. Of course the DEC prefer to saddle the responsibility for the emergency solely on the shoulders of the Israelis.

Chuck Unsworth

The question one should ask is 'is the footage geniune?'. If so then that's an end to it. It's not a matter of 'message' is it? Either these deaths and injuries and damage occurred or they didn't. Which is it?

drakes drum

But Newsnight last evening showed pretty much the whole thing...Perhaps the DG should consider sacking the editor of that programme and the editors of the news as well.

An interesting fact is that the Vagrancy Acy 1812 was brought in and much of which was to stop soldiers, back from the Battle of Waterloo showing their wounds, begging. I often think of that when we see the videos on the televsion from charities asking for our money showing children and mothers in great distress. The charities should be nationalised because much of the money raised goes towards their 'running costs' and little gets to where it is needed.

Panorama ran a programme a few weeks ago, where it proved that much of the aid from our government was being sold on the black market and not reaching the people!

But surely whilst governments throw money at these places What is the function of the United Nations, if not to provide the aid required? and what about the Arab States? Instead of buying football clubs they should consider looking after their own!

I am sick to death of the despairing liberals and lefties lecturing to me that I am to blame!

Alison Aldridge

The US is part way through a contract to supply 30billion dollars of military aid to Israel. Perhaps they should consider redirecting some of that money, generously supplied by the US taxpayer, to the regeneration of Palestine.

David Bouvier

Chuck - I don't think the footage is simulated, but the existence of: one flattened building, one damaged apartment block, several children upset, a man running with a child, and a women wailing does not an international emergency make. Particularly if a Hamas minder has set it up (plenty of past examples).

The implication is that significant parts of Gaza are flattened. But if "thousands are homeless" (not tens of thousands) then that is less than 1% of the population.

And if you persist in firing rockets from apartment blocks - even if empty, then yes some homes will be destroyed.

Essentially, the DEC is asking for aid for Gaza per se, and hanging it on the peg of the recent conflict.

T J Calvert

As instructed I have considered the friendly fire statistic.

In the terms of this article, all it indicates is the high degree of asymetry in the conflict - nothing else.

Elaine

drakes drum
Took the words out of my mouth. Especially about Arabs buying footballers. And we all know that the money raised will not go to help the people of gaza, as the money for Darfur and Zimbabwi will not reach the needly.

Sempronius

"The BBC is currently suppressing the news that 30 universities are, and have been for some time, occupied by students protesting about the war in Gaza.
This is a news blackout."

It only counts as a news blackout if its blacking out something newsworthy. A few students causing inconvenience to their fellow students and university staff isn't exactly earth shattering stuff.

Frank P

I wonder if your researchers could find out how many appeals there were broadcast by the BBC during the WW2 for all those injured and starving German kids? And how much money was raised? I remember many cities being razed, but not too much charity. When are these people going to wake up to the fact that Israel is on the front line of a war - Jihad - WW4 - that could have more disastrous results for the West than the 39 - 45 show. Stop kicking our best ally in the shins and tell the enemy to Foxtrot Oscar with their begging bowls. All they have to do is sit down and cut a territorial deal with the West and then, as after WW2, lots of money will be showered on them to help them join the civilised world, rather than attempting to drag it back into the middle ages. They love to wage war, but don't appear to be able to accept the consequences. Let the bleeding hearts go huddle and cuddle in a corner. There's a war to be won. Wake up and stop trying to turn everything into a moral dilemma. There is no dilemma!We're either in it to win it, or we are buggered (sorry - anal intercoursed - I'd hate to be politically incorrect - pass the smelling salts James).

RW

Alison Aldridge, you could not be more wrong-headed - or, I suspect, more deliberately provocative and disingenuous. The US should, and I am sure will, double or triple its military assistance to enable Israel to defend its innocent citizens against "palestinian" terrorism. And while we're on the subject, the area known as the Gaza Strip is not, has never been and will never be "Palestine". It should not be regenerated, as you choose to put it, but razed to the ground.

Cogito Ergosum

BBC and Sky are right to refuse to show implicitly partisan emotional proselytising.

If anything, the BBC should encourage Jonathan Ross to make rude remarks about the appeal.

salieri

A hypothetical question: suppose any Israeli organisation had made a film in order to raise charitable funds for the relief of its own injured or homeless citizens (and let's assume further that those funds would actually have reached their intended destination); suppose, then, that a body like the BBC had declined to broadcast it for exactly the reason it has cited here. How many protests about freedom of speech would we have seen or heard?

Exactly.

TGF |UKIP

Frank Pulley and Salieri are exactly right.

This whole affair ties in, however, with the whole question of "What are Charities?" Increasingly, it seems that the more they are scrutinized the more that most so-called "charities" are revealed to be leftist campaigning/lobbying organizations where the monies that they receive go not towards providing food, shelter, clean water or blankets but towards employing more and more highly paid unctuous handwringers to either oppose Western, and particularly US, foreign policy or campaign for increasingly extreme and distorted child-centric social policy. Indeed, in recent years these child related "charities" appear to have spawned at a most peculiar rate.

Interestingly this was touched on in a piece on the Today Programme on Monday with a debate between Daniel Hannan and some hyper posh woman named, I think, Peacock who had been "Chair" of the Charities Commission.

One point which Hannan made was particularly telling. In the debate on the EU Constitution/Treaty in parliament Miliband cited in justification the support of Oxfam, NSPCC and two other bizarre sounding childrens "charities." However, as Hannan pointed out what Miliband chose not to say was that each of these had been recipients of substantial sums from the European Commission -Oxfam 37m euros in 2007 alone.

I strongly urge all Coffee Housers to donate only to local and military charities.

Occasional Lurker

If any of you can read Italian, this is a rather different, non-Hamas propaganda-based report.

http://www.corriere.it/esteri/09_gennaio_21/denuncia_hamas_cremonesi_ac41c6f4-e802-11dd-833f-00144f02aabc.shtml

salieri

Thanks for the link, Lurker. No chance of the "other" voice of the people of Gaza being heard on the BBC, and three cheers for the Corriere della Sera for allowing us to hear it.

The most striking comment: "Anyone with a narrative which differs from the one imposed by the 'muhamawa' (Resistance)autmatically becomes an 'amil' or collaborator, whose life is at risk."

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

JONNY

No flies on the Israeli spin, judging by the bulk of comments here..
It would seem it touches parts other propagandas can't even reach.