More BBC bias - The Frankincense Trail – episode 4

First broadcast on 16th September 2009.

Have now received a response from the BBC on my complaint about episode 2, from un unrepentant programme production assistant. Predictably as night follows day, it failed to answer the complaints made merely repeating the background given in my complaint, than adding a load of was full of mealy mouthed pointlessness not worth disclosing.

Therefore I’ve asked for the complaint to be escalated to the next stage I will however and publish any substantive reply I do get.

Now onto episode 4.

Another lamentable effort from the BBC.

In this episode we see among other things the evermore irritating Kate Humble crossing the border from Jordan into Israel anticipating a brutal beating by border sentries with horns sticking out of their heads, wielding huge tridents , guarding the hell hole she is expecting to enter. Instead, she finds the Israeli border officials are just as pleasant as their Jordanian counterparts.

Now in Israel, the producers use their opportunity to portray it as a country inhabited entirely by bearded religious zealots, filling their week with bizarre rituals, where men and women live segregated lives and who have nothing but contempt for outsiders.

The program does this by focusing on the ultra-orthodox minority, completely ignoring the vast majority of Israelis who live largely secular lives. Joseph Goebells could not have done better.
We see the presenter checking into an Eilat hotel. She appears to have booked a room in a hotel specialising in providing hospitality ultra-orthodox Jews, rather than the usual tourist or business hotel. Sshe has arrived just before the start of Shabbat (Sabbath), about which she appears completely ignorant. We are put through rather embarrassing scenes where a fanatical Rabbi shows her the convoluted way how the lift and coffee machines operate to enable using them on Shabbat, without it constituting “work”. The rabbi, who refused to shake her hands, shows her a synagogue in the hotel where woman are kept separated and screened off from male worshippers.

Eventually, Kate Humble maker her way to “Jerusalem for Jews, the Place where God created the world.” This statement is clearly nonsensical. It is a logical impossibility. I don’t have much Jewish knowledge. I struggled through my Bar-mitzvah 31 years ago and since then have preferred to avoid any place of religious worship, be it synagogue, mosque, ashram or church. However, I do know that the main significance of Jerusalem in Judaism that it was the capital of the first Jewish state under King David in the 10th Century BC. It is also the place where some Jews believe the messiah will appear.

Next we are told that the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 B.C. In fact, they did so in 70 A.D. If they’d done so when then Kate Humble thinks they, did, the usurers wouldn’t have been there to annoy Jesus.

She then goes onto meet another fanatical fundamentalist Rabbi, who wants to built a Third Temple in Jerusalem following where he believes the exact lines of the second temple. Such a construction would entail the destruction of the Dome on the Rock and would therefore be seen as an affront to Muslims.

In the last part of the program she goes to the West Bank and meets a Palestinian Journalist who is give a free opportunity to explain what is wrong with the Israel-West Bank barrier, called in the program, the separation barrier. For Israelis, it is a security barrier. This unfinished wall provokes strong emotions among sympathisers of both sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, whilst the Palestinian journalist was given several minutes of airtime, to vent his grievances against the barrier and other matters, no attempt at balance was given. The program failed to give any corresponding airtime to an Israeli (journalist).

The program therefore entirely lacks balance. It portrays Jews in negative religious stereotype and Israelis as the villains in the Arab Israeli conflict.