BBC Claim: Israel ‘Carved Out of Palestinian Land’

A BBC World Service presenter told his audience that the modern State of Israel was “carved – as it was – out of land which had belonged to the Palestinians.”

The unsupported claim was made in the August 7 edition of the ‘The History Hour’ that included an item (from 26:40) dissecting the meaning and achievements of the Camp David Summit. It that had been aired previously on the same station’s corresponding segment ‘Witness’ and was discussed here.

The global audience listening in to one of the state broadcaster’s most prestigious networks heard presenter Max Pearson introduce the segment with this untested assertion [emphasis added]:

“But before that we’re going to focus on a region which has seen tension and violence for the past 70 years. Just the phrase ‘tension in the Middle East’ has become shorthand for referencing the decades of mistrust between Jews and Arabs following the creation of the State of Israel, carved – as it was – out of land which had belonged to the Palestinians. Giving the Jewish people of the world a homeland was supposed to be the answer to one problem but it created another. There have of course been attempts to broker peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. One of the last major efforts ended in failure in the year 2000. At that time the two sides had been brought together by the American president Bill Clinton. Farhana Haider has been speaking to the senior diplomatic interpreter Gamal Helal who attended that fateful Camp David summit.”

At no time does the segment acknowledge the long and historically-recorded relationship between Jews and the land of Israel. Nor does it acknowledge that some of Judaism’s holiest sites are located in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem; the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron; and Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus.

This year will see commemorations in Israel and the UK marking the centenary of the formation of the modern Jewish State.

As Breibart Jerusalem reported, Britain is proud to have played a key part in the establishment of Israel and the document that started that process, the Balfour Declaration, needs no apology from the nation that framed it 100 years ago.

That remains the UK Foreign Office response to the continuing call by the Palestinian Return Center rights group for the UK to apologize for the document and pay reparations to those it says are affected by it.

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