article in the BBC online Viewpoint section

Dear All,



Frank Baigal alerted me earlier to an article in the BBC online Viewpoint section, which chilled me to the bone. Unpleasant reading as it is, you should all read it. It argues that all the prisoners released last week were ‘heroes’ and calls Gilad Shalit a ‘legitimate target’. I have written a comkplaint, and urge the rest of you to do so. This has passed well beyond the limits of what a civilized country should publish.



Here’s the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15419949

And here’s my complaint.

Denis





I was aghast to read a viewpoint piece by Palestinian Nasser Ziad, 'Released Palestinian prisoners are heroes'. Even in a free society, there must be limits to the kind of opinion presented, especially on an established website such as yours. The author argues that the Palestinian prisoners released as part of a deal for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit are heroes because of their struggle for the Palestinian cause. This is truly disgusting. The prisoners included women like Wafa Biss and Ahlam Tamimi. Tamimi planned a suicide attack on the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem in 2001. 15 people including 8 children died in the bombing. When told she had killed 8, not 6 children, she smiled. Avraham Yitzhak Schijveschuurder was 4, his sister Hemda was 2. Since her release, Tamimi has spoken about waging jihad as before. She is not a heroine by any measure. Biss had been treated for severe burns in an Israeli hospital in January 2005 and returned in June using her out-patient pass to try to go to the same department that had saved her life, wearing an explosive belt, with instructions to kill as many children as possible. Since her release, she has spoken to Palestinian children, calling on them to grow up to become martyrs. She is utterly despicable by all civilized standards, and as far from being a heroine as I can imagine. Muhammad Wael Daghlas was sentenced to 15 life terms for co-planning the Sbarro massacre. He is thought too dangerous to return to the West Bank. A hero? By what warped standards can such a man be a hero to anyone?



These are only a few of the terrorists released by Israel. Ziad's article describes the Israeli soldier Shalit as 'a legitimate target'. By what military standards may a soldier be kidnapped across his own border and subjected to over five years of solitary confinement, denied access by his family or the Red Cross.



You have published an article that turns all civilized standards on its head. Will you now publish a piece claiming that the London 7/7 bombers were heroes? That the Taliban who kill British soldiers and cause so much grief here are heroes? That murderers in the UK are heroes who deserve to be released? That kidnapping people is right? That those who executed the Omagh bombing in 1998 were fighting for a just cause, that we should build a memorial to them and give them medals?



You have gone too far this time. I can see no possible vindication for the publication of such a one-sided piece, which reads like a transcript from a Palestinian newspaper or a pro-terrorist opinion piece from The Guardian, which never plays by the rules. Fair argument about Palestinian aggression or Israeli responses would make a valid article, a piece that criticized violence, even if it promulgated a Palestinian position, would form part of dialogue, and I would not complain. But I am much minded of the repeated criticism that the BBC is biased against Israel. I have seen that bias played out too many times to doubt the broad accuracy of the criticism. But to publish a blatant piece that tries to exonerate mass murderers of their crimes is to pass well beyond the limits of civilized and legal discourse. Who will you choose to exonerate next? Adolf Hitler? Mu'ammar Qadhafi? Pol Pot.



I ask for an apology, to me and to all the victims of the sorry contingent who saw their release last week, not because they had come close to finishing their sentences, but because of an illegal act that used kidnap to extract benefits they might never have hoped for. You owe that apology to the Israeli mothers and fathers who have lost children, to brothers who have lost sisters, sisters who have lost brothers, friends who have lost friends, to little Tamar Fogel, who lost her parents, two brothers and tiny baby sister in a terrorist attack on their home last March, while the two killers have expressed no regret, to those who have lost limbs in explosions, to the people of Sderot, who live in a daily round of rocket attacks. None of these people consider the Palestinian prisoners heroes or heroines, and I cannot see how you are justified in giving a voice to someone who thinks they are. I'm a professional writer, and if necessary I will write a second opinion piece for you, setting out my arguments above. But the apology first, please.