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BBC Censors “ Palestine ”, “Palestinian Holocaust”, “Palestinian Genocide”
And “Anti-racist Jews”

By Dr Gideon Polya

10 April, 2012
Countercurrents.org

The BBC censors the word “Palestine” and, in addition, using the BBC Search function one finds that the BBC  completely censors the term “Palestinian Holocaust”  (2 million dead) and largely censors out the term “Palestinian Genocide” (2 million dead,  7 million refugees, 90% of Palestine ethnically cleansed and only 6% of 12 million Palestinians can vote for the government of Apartheid Israel that rules all of historical Palestine plus an ethnically cleansed part of Syria). In addition to its blatant anti-Arab anti-Semitism, the anti-Semitic BBC exhibits anti-Jewish anti-Semitism by censoring out the “anti-racist Jew”, “anti-racist Jews” and “anti-racist Jewish” humanitarians. The BBC has an appalling record of pro-Zionist, pro-US, pro-war, pro-imperialism,  pro-neocolonialism and racist  censorship, lying by commission and lying by omission (e.g. see Gideon Polya, “Censorship by the BBC. How the BBC censors US-UK atrocities”, MWC News,  8 April 2012: http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/18092-bbc.html .

1. BBC censors “ Palestine ”.

Anti-racist Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein (author of “My Israel Question”, Melbourne University Press) and others have exposed BBC censorship of the very word “ Palestine ” from a broadcast of a rapper's song. Thus Antony Loewenstein reports: “ Appearing on the popular Charlie Sloth Hip Hop M1X last February, the artist Mic Righteous performed a rap which included the lyrics: “I can scream Free Palestine for my pride/still pray for peace.” BBC producers replaced the word ‘Palestine' with the sound of breaking glass and this is the version that was aired and which can be seen on a  video on the BBC website (the censorship occurs at 2:59)… The edited performance was repeated in April on the same show. Palestine Solidarity Campaign  (PSC) has spent the last eight months trying to find out why the decision to censor an artist who raised the issue of Palestine was made. During the course of a long correspondence, the BBC's head of editorial standards for audio and music, Paul Smith, wrote that the show's producer “did not edit out the word ‘Palestine' because it was offensive — referencing Palestine is fine, but implying that it is not free is the contentious issue”” (see Antony Loewenstein, “BBC censors “Palestine” because, well, I mean, really, who says its occupied?”: http://antonyloewenstein.com/2012/02/04/bbc-censors-palestine-because-well-i-mean-really-who-says-its-occupied/ .

2. BBC censors “Palestinian Holocaust”.

A BBC Search for the term “Palestinian Holocaust” elicits zero (0)  results. Yet  it is estimated that since 1936 a total of about  0.1 million Palestinians have been killed violently and Palestinian avoidable deaths from invasion,-, war-, occupation- and expulsion-related deprivation total 1.9 million. In stark contrast, thje Israeli Foreign Ministry estimates that about 3,700 Jewish colonizers  had been killed by Palestinians since 1920   (see “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/  ). A BBC Search for “Jewish Holocaust” yields 44 results. A BBC Search for “Holocaust” (which the racist, lying and holocaust-ignoring  BBC regards as synonymous with the Jewish Holocaust part of the WW2 Holocaust in which 30 million Slavs, Jews and Gypsies were killed) yields 3,312 results (of which 2,783 results are for BBC News).  In contrast, a BBC Search for “Palestinian Holocaust” yields  89,300 results.  

3. BBC censors  “Palestinian Genocide”.  

A BBC Search for the term “Palestinian Genocide” elicits  only two (2) results, specifically (1) “Two Stoke-on-Trent councilors snub Holocaust book”, BBC News, 26 January 2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-12290915 ( Kassem Al-Khatib, a Palestinian, and Gavin Webb, a Libertarian,  would not add their signatures to the Stoke-on-Trent City Council Holocaust Memorial book, Mr Al-Khatib saying he would be happy to do so if there were a Palestinian Genocide memorial and Mr Webb protesting the "gross stink of hypocrisy" throughout the British government's foreign policies); and (2) “Turkey accuses Israel of genocide”, BBC News, 4 April 2002: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1911609.stm (“The Prime Minister of Turkey - Israel's longstanding and sole Muslim ally - has accused the country of genocide against the Palestinians.” )   In contrast,  a Google Search for “Palestinian Genocide” yields 28,000 results.

Inspection  of the multi-author book “The Plight of the Palestinians” (editor William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ) reveals numerous well-known writer  and scholar co-authors  explicitly referring to a “Palestinian Genocide”, a “Palestinian Holocaust” or an “ethnic cleansing” pr “liquidation” of Palestine, these anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish humanitarian writers including Dr. Elias Akleh, Uri Avnery , Omar Barghouti, Professor Francis Boyle, Kathleen Christison, Bill Christison,  Professor William Cook, Curtis F. J. Doebbler, Professor Richard Falk , Stephen Lendman , Ilan Pappe, Kim Petersen, Professor James Petras, John Pilger, Dr Gideon Polya , and Professor Tanya Reinhart.

18 leading Jewish and non-Jewish writers and entertainers have including 3 Nobel Laureates slam Apartheid Israel's  Palestinian Genocide as “[Israel's] long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation ”, these signatories including John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter,  José Saramago, Eduardo Galeano, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Howard Zinn, Charles Glass, Richard Falk, Gore Vidal, Russell Banks, Thomas Keneally, Chris Abani, Carolyn Forché, Martín Espada, Jessica Hagedorn, and Toni Morrison (see “A letter from 18 writers including 3 Nobel laureates”, The Nation, 18 August 2006: http://www.thenation.com/article/letter-18-writers ).

4. BBC censors the “anti-racist Jew”, “anti-racist Jews” and “anti-racist Jewish” humanitarians.

Do a BBC Search for the terms “anti-racist Jew”, “anti-racist Jewish” and ‘anti-racist Jews” and you get 37, 28 and 14 results , respectively, but none of these stories relate to an “anti-racist Jew”, “anti-racist Jewish” people or “anti-racist Jews” i.e.  the BBC completely ignores the large body of such decent, anti-racist, Jewish humanitarians who are necessarily opposed as decent anti-racist humanitarians to the ongoing Palestinian Genocide by racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel (for an alphabetic compendium of the views of such outstanding  anti-racist Jews see “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ ; see also “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ ).

For anti-racist Jews and indeed all anti-racist humanitarians the core moral messages from the Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) and from the more general WW2 European Holocaust (30 million Slav, Jewish and Gypsy dead) are “zero tolerance for racism”, “never again to anyone”, “bear witness” and “zero tolerance for lying”.

However these sacred injunctions are grossly violated by the anti-Arab anti-Semitic racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel and their Western backers variously involved in the ongoing Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Genocide, Somali Genocide,  and Afghan Genocide (post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths from war-imposed deprivation  2.0 million (Palestine 1936-2012), 4.6 million (Iraq 1990-2012), 2.2 million (Somalia 1992-2011) and 5.6 million (Afghanistan 2011-2012), respectively; and refugees totalling 7 million, 5-6 million, 2 million  and 3-4 million, respectively, plus a further 2.5 million NW Pakistan Pashtun refugees generated by US –backed war) (see “Muslim Holocaust, Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ ).

All decent, anti-racist, humanitarians must vigorously oppose and sideline those supporting racist Zionism, Apartheid Israel and racist Western wars and occupations who are currently complicit in  0.7 million non-violent excess deaths annually; continuing, racist perversion of human rights, humanitarian  values and rational discourse in the Western democracies (aka Murdochracies and Lobbocracies) ; ignoring of worsening climate genocide (that may kill 10 billion non-Europeans this century through unaddressed man-made climate change); and egregious anti-Jewish anti-Semitism through sidelining outstanding anti-racist Jews and falsely identifying decent, anti-racist Jews with these appalling crimes.

PS. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the taxpayer-funded Australian equivalent of the UK BBC. The ABC, like the BBC,  is pro-Zionist, pro-war, pro-US, pro-imperialism and holocaust ignoring – and also censors, lies by omission and lies by commission (see “ABC Censorship”:   https://sites.google.com/site/abccensorship/ ). The ABC also has a Search device that enables one to do an ABC Search of the “entire ABC site”. ABC Searches for the terms discussed above in relation  to the BBC yield the following results for “Palestinian Holocaust” (3 but actually effectively zero, 2 involving a reader comment referring to the “Palestinian Holocaust” and the remaining article being irrelevant);  “Palestinian Genocide” (0); “anti-racist Jew” (0); “anti-racist Jewish” (0); and “anti-racist Jews” (0).  

PPS. The Australian ABC is clearly worse than the UK BBC when it comes to censorship as well as anti-Arab anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish anti-Semitic pro-Zionism. However other Mainstream media are involved in egregious censorship and mal-reportage  e.g. see “Boycott Murdoch Media”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottmurdochmedia/  ; “Censorship by The Age”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-age ;  “Censorship by The Conversation”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by ;  “Mainstream Media Lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/ ; and “Mainstream Media Censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/ .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/ bengalfamine_programme.html ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .




 


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