The first week of the US/Israel – Iran war has provided a case study in how the BBC uses carefully chosen language to minimize the suffering of Israeli civilians and the actions of Arab Muslim terrorists, while maximizing Israeli actions in order to present an asymmetric view of the conflict and ascribe blame and responsibility to Israel.
On the Radio 4 PM program on March 2 Anna Foster reported that Israelis don’t really care one way or another about the war, and Iranian missiles are simply sending people off to shelters, with no language of fear, trauma, or even war fatigue after over two years of conflict (emphasis added):
Anna Foster: “What I’ve found interesting actually is when you talk to people about this war, there doesn’t seem to be a strong feeling for or against people will say well, you know they did what they had to do, I wouldn’t have asked for it but now it’s happening I’m not going to complain about it which seems like, you know a war seems like the kind of thing that should provoke stronger reactions from people doesn’t it but certainly looking out at Tel Aviv you can probably hear actually I’m in a huge city but it’s very very quiet there are very few people on the streets because these waves of Iranian missiles keep coming sending people off to the shelters.”
Contrast that with the language used by Lucy Williamson on Radio 4’s Today program of March 4 to describe the situation in Lebanon and the image becomes one of comfortable, safe Israelis suffering only being “sent to shelters,” while Lebanese people are killed, injured, and evacuated (emphasis added):
Williamson: “This is a return to full conflict and we’ve seen that, as you were saying day by day, overnight, Israel continued hitting targets in Beirut and the Beqaa Valley, there are reports of at least 5 people killed in those strikes and it’s also this morning put out new evacuation orders for some 16 Lebanese communities it says need to evacuate urgently, which is, you know, obviously a sign of imminent strikes there. Hezbollah, for its part, has also kept firing rockets and drones over the border, including last night, one fired towards the Central Tel Aviv region.”
Notice how Hezbollah fires rockets over the border, while Israel strikes targets in Beirut and the Beqaa Valley. The language is passive for Hezbollah and active for Israel. Even more stark, for Laura Kuenssberg, on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg of March 8, the only active participant in the widening of the conflict is Israel, and the only civilians impacted are Lebanese (emphasis added):
Kuenssberg: “But many people in many democracies around the world think having a framework where there are rules for democracies to obey still matters, and you have been expanding this war you have attacked Lebanon again hundreds of people have been killed and thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes, why does Israel have the right to start dropping bombs on another sovereign country beyond Iran?”
Herzog: “Here’s another unbelievable question we didn’t do that, we were attacked vehemently from missiles from Lebanon from Hezbollah, when the sovereign Lebanese government says that they object to it, totally, but they don’t have the power to do it we’re doing their work for them.”
Kuenssberg: “But hundreds of civilians are suffering in Lebanon.”
Subtle shifts in language create a sense of agency and responsibility in the mind of the audience. Yolande Knell, appearing on BBC News 24 at 6am on March 6, reports that Israel strikes and causes heavy explosions, but when the Islamic Regime commits a grave war crime by hitting civilian targets with cluster munitions, there was simply a warhead in the sky that produced no more concern than a firework (emphasis added):
Knell: Overnight, Israeli warplanes launched their 14th wave of strikes since Saturday on targets across Iran. There are reports of heavy explosions in Tehran and also in other cities in the country. Yesterday, despite the fact that Israel says it has achieved these successes in targeting Iran’s missile stocks and missile launches, there were repeated air raid sirens that went off across Israel, 5 or 6 in the centre of the country. One warhead had cluster munitions attached to it and that could be visibly seen over the skies of Tel Aviv last night in footage that people filmed on their phones. No injuries reported as a result of that, but it does show that there is still this continuing Iranian threat. At the same time, the Israeli military is saying that it has continued to carry out strikes against Hezbollah strongholds in neighbouring Lebanon and colleagues in Beirut say the heavy explosions there overnight after those scenes of panic as the Israeli military told entire neighbourhoods that they, people had to leave their homes.”
In BBC reporting, panic, fear, trauma, and pain are reserved experiences which Israelis do not share. There are no traumatized children, there are no elderly people who can’t get to the shelter, and there are no deaths or injuries.
Meanwhile Israeli actions are described as active and devastating. Israel strikes, bombs, hits, injures, and kills, while the Islamic regime and Hezbollah simply send things into the sky, in the direction of Israel; they do not indiscriminately attack civilians with devastating weapons; they are perpetually passive.
This kind of asymmetric language use is a deliberate framing choice which consistently creates a biased image of the conflict and quietly dehumanizes Israeli civilians, while erasing Arab and Muslim agency. The BBC claims to hold itself to high standards of impartiality, but when its journalists continually make language choices which deliberately distort the audience’s view, they fail to meet that standard.
This posts originally appeared at CAMERA UK.