By New Worker correspondent
Palestinian solidarity activists
sprayed Broadcasting House in central London with red paint last week
in protest at the BBC’s consistent and long-term bias towards
Israel.
Palestine Action sprayed the
BBC’s Headquarters with blood red paint, in response to its recent
coverage of Palestine, which has been complicit in manufacturing
consent for the occupation’s genocide of Palestinians. The action
occurred before a protest for Palestine was due to begin at the BBC
HQ.
Since 7th
October the BBC has given biased and inaccurate reporting on the
Israeli massacre of the Palestinian people. It has only ever invited
Palestinians to comment when Israelis are killed, with little regard
for Palestinians killed by Israel, such as in the case of Palestinian
ambassador Husam Zomlot who was expected to condemn Israeli deaths
immediately after informing the BBC he had lost 6 family members.
The BBC has not reported on the
racist lies spouted by international media, including claims of mass
rape and decapitated babies, all of which have either gone
unconfirmed or been retracted once the damage has been done. Its
“guides” to the “conflict” do not mention the 75 year long
occupation and oppression of Palestine by the Zionist entity.
These guides make Al Nakba (which
translates as ‘The Catastrophe’ in English) sound like an
unfortunate tribal conflict during the first Arab-Israeli war (1948
to 1949) which accidentally resulted in Palestinians fleeing, and not
the deliberate and carefully planned campaign of ethnic cleansing
carried out by Zionist militias.
Words upon words are dedicated to
the Zionist settler colony’s declarations of genocide, the support
given by imperialists and the feelings of Zionists whilst large scale
loss of Palestinian life is treated almost like a footnote. These
actions come at a time when Palestine Action has expanded its reach,
starting what it calls Palestine Action Underground, which targets
any and all partners of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms
suppliers.
Providing a guide and a map of
over 50 Elbit sites, Palestine Action asks those who want to do
something about the Israeli arms trade to form autonomous groups able
to independently strike at the facilitators of Israel’s systemic
and military violence. This action follows that principle, holding
the media accountable for facilitating Israeli terror. A Palestine
Action spokesperson: ‘We at Palestine Action cannot stand by and
let Western media justify and manufacture consent for genocide
through racist, callous coverage. The media has long been an
insidious weapon of Western imperialism against Palestine and other
Arab countries, with the use of colonial myths and orientalist tropes
laying the ground for millions of people to be murdered. As the
Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd said, “This is the Iraq war all
over again. The media has the bloodiest hands in all of this”.