Family Slaughtered in Israel - Doesn't BBC Care?

By Louise Bagshawe, The Telegraph 12:20AM GMT 24 Mar 2011

1954 Comments

Who is Tamar Fogel? The chances are that you will have no idea. She is a 12-year-old girl who arrived home late on Friday, March 11, to discover her family had been slaughtered. Her parents had been stabbed to death; the throat of her 11-year-old brother, Yoav, had been slit. Her four-year-old brother, Elad, whose throat had also been cut, was still alive, with a faint pulse, but medics were unable to save him. Tamar's sister, Hadas, three months old, had also been killed. Her head had been sawn off.

There were two other Fogel brothers sleeping in an adjacent room. When woken by their big sister trying to get into a locked house, Roi, aged six, let her in. After Tamar discovered the bodies, her screaming alerted their neighbour who rushed in to help and described finding two-year-old Yishai desperately shaking his parents' blood-soaked corpses, trying to wake them up.

I found out about the barbaric attack not on BBC news, but via Twitter on Monday. I followed a link there to a piece by Mark Steyn entitled "Dead Jews is no news'. Horrified, I went to the BBC website to find out more. There I discovered only two stories: one a cursory description of the incident in Itamar, a West Bank settlement, and another focusing on Israel's decision to build more settlements, which mentioned the killings in passing.

As the mother of three children, one the same age as little Elad, who had lain bleeding to death, I was stunned at the BBC's seeming lack of care. All the most heart-wrenching details were omitted. The second story, suggesting that the construction announcement was an act of antagonism following the massacre, also omitted key facts and failed to mention the subsequent celebrations in Gaza, and the statement by a Hamas spokesman that "five dead Israelis is not enough to punish anybody".

There were more details elsewhere on the net: the pain and hurt, for example, of the British Jewish community at the BBC's apparent indifference to the fate of the Fogels. The more I read, the more the BBC's broadcast silence amazed me. What if a settler had entered a Palestinian home and sawn off a baby's head? Might we have heard about it then? On Twitter, I attacked the UK media in general, and the BBC in particular. I considered filing a complaint.

Israel Demands Apology for Media Coverage of Fogel

American network reporters present tendentious coverage of Saturday's gruesome murder in Itamar, question fact it was a terrorist attack. Israel's Government Press Office 'dumbfounded, astonished' Attila Somfalvi
Israel is demanding an apology from CNN over its coverage of Saturday's terrorist attack in Itamar claiming it was "tendentious and deceptive." Government Press Office director Oren Helman sent a letter to CNN's Bureau Chief Kevin Flower saying he was astonished at the network's coverage of the ruthless attack.

A CNN website report avoided describing the event as a terror attack, noting that the Israel Defense Forces consider it an act of terrorism. "Only you decided to use the term terrorist attack in quotation marks, as if this were not necessarily the case," Helman wrote. "There is a limit to the extent of objectivity regarding such a horrific deed."

CNN

Pope Speaks for Religious Freedom

Pope Benedict XVI has called on Pakistan to repeal its blasphemy laws, which can carry a death sentence for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

He said the laws served as a pretext for acts of injustice and violence against religious minorities.

The Pope referred to Pakistani governor Salman Taseer, whose assassination last week was blamed on his support for changes to the blasphemy laws.

A bodyguard of Mr Taseer has confessed in court to his killing.

Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri told the Anti-Terrorism Court in Rawalpindi that he had acted alone in the attack.

The Pope made his remarks in a new year address to diplomats accredited to the Vatican.

"I once more encourage the leaders of that country [Pakistan] to take the necessary steps to abrogate that law," he said.

"The tragic murder of the governor of Punjab shows the urgent need to make progress in this direction," he added.

The Pope also condemned anti-Christian attacks in Egypt and Iraq, saying they showed "the urgent need for governments of the region to adopt... effective measures for the protection of religious minorities".

The BBC's David Willey in Rome says it was one of the Pope's most robust defences yet of religious freedom.
Source:BBC

Chinese London Protest Never Seen on BBC

Congratulations Brits!!!
Your journalists have joined the US MSM in the bottomless pits of depravity.
You might airlift 2600 tanks to your precious sons in Basra. They could use the help.

'China: Chinese protest in London you never see on BBC'

by John Kennedy

Bridge-blogging has taken on a whole new meaning now in China since armies of multilingual netizens started scouring the known media universe last month for inaccuracy or distortions in reports regarding China or, more specifically, Tibet.

Though there was no mention of the anti-China protests which took place in London today on Chinese state-owned media and very little to be seen on all incoming media, many people inside and out of China are quite capable in English, and it took about nine seconds for someone at anti-CNN.com to find reason to start yet another 'anti-CNN' thread: the large protest from the London Chinese community right near 10 Downing Street wasn't covered today by the BBC.

You may view the latest post at

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/04/06/china-chinese-protest-in-london-you-never-see-on-bbc/