I have just watched this evening's News at Ten report about Gaza, and have come away with a bad taste in my mouth. The anti-Israel bias was, as ever, clearly evident throughout. For example, you allowed a Hamas leader's statement about resisting Israeli occupation to go unchallenged. In fact, Gaza has not been occupied since Israel withdrew in 2005.
Viewers have a right to learn that Israel does not occupy Gaza and that Hamas's resistance is for religious, not political reasons (as is set out in their Charter).
Again, your presenter stated that 1500 Gazans had been killed in Operation Cast Lead. He did not clarify that half of these deaths were of Hamas and other terrorist fighters and that many of the others were caused when Hamas used civilians as human shields. This left the impression that Israel had aggressively targeted civilians when, in fact, the Israeli Air Force dropped tens of thousands of leaflets and the IDF made phone calls and sent e-mails expressly warning civilians to leave areas occupied by gunmen.
The rest of your segment the stereotypical 'suffering Palestinians' images, while omitting more recent images of a flourishing Gaza City with packed food stores and luxury restaurants. You showed nothing of Sderot, an Israeli city that has been bombarded with rockets almost daily for several years.
How do you justify so many lapses in a single short report? People can be inflamed by such tendentious reporting, and some may be moved to lend support to Hamas, a criminal terrorist outfit so designated by countries round the world. Why does the BBC always seem to favour the extremist side and to have so little time for positive reports from Israel, where thousands of Palestinians are treated in hospitals every year? Can you please at least agree that you could do much more to present balanced reporting from the Middle East?
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