SCOTTISH MP Kenny MacAskill, who has described Israel’s assault on Gaza as “ethnic cleansing”, has accused the BBC of being “supine and sanitised” in its reporting of the “horrors being inflicted” on Gaza in the continued assault by Israel.
The depute leader of Alba alleges that the Corporation’s coverage of the recent International Court on Justice case “veered towards being slanted”.
The ICJ at the Hague last month ordered Israel to take measures to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza, following South Africa’s accusation of genocide.
ICJ issues orders against Israel in Gaza genocide case
The Court put a series of provisional measures in place to ensure "the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from genocide" but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire.
The death toll in Gaza, according to figures released by the Hamas-run Health Ministry, is now in excess of 27,000.
Recently the East Lothian MP wrote to the BBC director general, Tim Davie, to clarify the Corporation's coverage of both side's arguments at the ICJ.
He asked Mr Davie whether both countries’ submissions were live-streamed - and, if so, on which channels.
It adds: “Both cases were included in bulletins, live coverage and reported by BBC News Online, and both cases were live streamed in similar amounts on BBC iPlayer.
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“The South African case was the lead story on both the international and UK feed during the evening of 11 January. Further to this, segments of the South African case were also played during coverage of the Israeli defence on Friday 12 January to give UK audiences as complete a picture as possible”.
Mr MacAskill told The Herald today: "The BBC has been supine and sanitised in its reporting of the horrors being inflicted on Gaza. Its coverage on the ICJ was veering towards being slanted. The ICJ was clear and unequivocal and the least we should expect is that will be reflected and reported by the BBC”.
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In a post on X/Twitter yesterday he wrote of the Gaza situation: “Despite being put on notice by the Court, Israel has ramped up. Wall Street Journal hardly a pro-Palestinian outlet even before the judgement had detailed that 70% of Gaza homes had been damaged or destroyed and it’s continuing. This is ethnic cleansing”.
The BBC said today that it had nothing to add to letter that was sent to Mr MacAskill.
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