National broadcaster ignores part Hamas played in border strife
“OUR” ABC now so regularly and definitively demonstrates its inability to abide by its charter it must be closed.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
THE abysmal ABC coverage of recent events in the Middle East can be ranked with the broadcasts of Lord Haw Haw from Nazi Germany and Tokyo Rose from Japan during World War II.
The fact that armed Palestinian terrorists using human shields were attempting to invade Israel with the specific goal of murdering or kidnapping civilians was ignored and valuable air time was devoted to apologists for the outlawed Hamas organisation.
Given that Hamas is a murderous, misogynist, homophobic regime, some card-carrying members of the ABC’s feminist and pro-homosexual cabal may have had some doubts about the organisation they were promoting but if they had any qualms they certainly weren’t voiced publicly.
The ABC’s obligation under 8(1)(c) of the ABC Act “to ensure that the gathering and presentation by the Corporation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism” was observed only in the breach.
The coverage of the border clashes last week took the ABC to a whole new level of disgraceful dysfunction. The bias at the ABC is palpable in most areas of news and current affairs.
In recent weeks, apart from the near-universal condemnation of Emma Alberici’s lack of the most basic understanding of structures integral to the round assigned to her, the organisation’s chief political reporter Andrew Probyn was found by the broadcast watchdog ACMA to have broadcast views that ordinary viewers would have understood to be “declarative” and “pejorative”.
Probyn, demonstrating the group-think that prevails at the ABC, stated former prime minister Tony Abbott was “the most destructive politician of his generation” conveniently overlooking those on Labor’s side who encouraged illegal immigrants to their deaths.
But when it came to the Gaza story, the ABC’s coverage reflected the same ongoing bias exhibited by its correspondent Sophie McNeill (who used her Twitter last week to air her views on the terrorist-inspired attacks on the Israeli border).
“Staggering. UN says 55 Palestinians were reported killed by Israeli forces on Monday in #Gaza including 6 children. 2,771 people were reported injured, including 1,359 by live ammunition. Among the fatalities was one health worker,” she wrote.
Missing from her account is the fact that Hamas was urging Palestinians to destroy the border fence and attack Israelis with knives or any other weapons they could carry.
The ABC 7.30’s Leigh Sales promoted the fictional conflation that the deadly protests were linked to the official foundation of the US Embassy in Jerusalem by the Trump administration, although successive US presidents had declared Jerusalem to be the Israeli capital since Bill Clinton promised he would recognise Jerusalem during the 1992 presidential race.
Sales also promoted the hoary line that murderous attackers must be greeted with some sort of “proportionate” response by legitimate defenders of national borders, asking a representative of Amnesty International for her views.
Magda Mughrabi told Sales it “was a completely disproportionate response”.
She said there had then been reports of over 52 deaths, including six children and that over 2000 people were injured including over 1300 with live ammunition.
As health workers reported the overwhelming nature of the wounds were to the legs, it would seem to indicate that the Israeli forces took pains to deliver non-lethal shots at the assailants.
While Sales was permitting the proportionality argument to get an airing, the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, was outlining Hamas’ incitement of the armed demonstrators and reporting that Hamas maps and social media show the fastest routes to reach Israeli communities in case demonstrators make it through the security fence as well as Hamas messages played over loudspeakers urging demonstrators to burst through the fence, claiming Israeli soldiers were fleeing, when in fact, they were not.
However, the ABC’s attempted whitewash of the nature of the terrorist attack was demonstratively undermined by the co-founder of Hamas Mahmoud al-Zahar, who told Al-Jazeera that the terror group was “deceiving the public” when it spoke of “peaceful resistance” before the violent protests began.
The ABC’s “peaceful protesters” line was further undermined on Wednesday when another Hamas official acknowledged that of the 62 Palestinians reported killed during Gaza border riots on Monday and Tuesday, 50 were Hamas and another terrorist group, Islamic Jihad, claimed three more, bringing the members of terror groups among the fatalities up to 56.
There is another facet to this violence which should also be explored but which the ABC is unlikely to look into.
While child sacrifice is unthinkable to most Westerners, we have in just the past fortnight seen children strapped with suicide vests by their jihadist parents in Indonesia and children placed in the line of fire in Gaza.
In Gaza, an interview with Dr Mahmoud Rantisi, the father of a young man who had been killed as he tried to tear down the Israeli border fence, went some way to explaining the difference in philosophy.
The 60-year-old professor reportedly smiled and waved his hand dismissively when asked about the death of his son Ahmed: “I am not sad, I’m very happy. We consider this event to be like a wedding for us. We think our son didn’t just die. He moved on to another life.”
When the ABC was established in 1932 it reached audiences commercial broadcasters didn’t service. That is not the case today. “Our” ABC now so regularly and definitively demonstrates its inability to abide by its charter it must be closed.