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April 29, 2005

Orla Guerin's Award-Winning Reporting

An earlier entry referred to BBC's Orla Guerin receiving an award for "outstanding service to broadcasting," despite reporting that many say is characterized by a blatant anti-Israeli bias.

A BBC Radio 4 broadcast from April 28 provides a good example of Guerin's "award-winning" work.

In the broadcast, Guerin joins the virulently anti-Israeli Jeff Halper — a proponent of a one-state solution — to paint Israel in a negative light, repeating old canards along the way.

Guerin describes the half of Jerusalem formerly occupied by Jordan — which includes the Jewish Quarter, the ancient Jewish cemetery on Mount Olives, the most sacred Jewish site, and a Jewish population almost equal to the Arab population — as "Arab East Jerusalem." In this way she endorses Arab claims to the disputed area, and ignores the Jewish connection.

She erroneously claims the newly approved neighborhood in Maaleh Adumim "will block the Palestinians of East Jerusalem from the remainder of their notional state, the cities and towns of the West Bank," and suggests that it will "split the West Bank in two, north and south." These claims are false, as CAMERA has noted.

Guerin also stands by silently as Halper claims that "Jerusalem is being grabbed and turned into a Jewish-only suburb," even though Arab home construction has actually outpaced Jewish building since Israel unified the city in 1967.

It's appalling that the this type of reporting is considered "outstanding service to broadcasting" in the U.K.

TS adds:

Guerlin's partisanship is evident in her reliance on Jeff Halper, whom she admiringly whitewashes:

This Israeli anthropologist is an impassioned defender of human rights, and a critic of his own government's policies.

But, as mentioned by GI, Halper is not merely a "critic of his own government's policies"--he is also opposed to the very existence of his state. NGO-Monitor provides a detailed report on Halper's justifying terrorism, his demonizing Israel as an "apartheid" state guilty of "war crimes," his advocacy of a one-state solution, and his support for sanctions and boycotts of Israel.

Posted by GI at April 29, 2005 10:39 AM