Foreign secretary’s call comes after group releases video of British-Israeli hostage it says died after being wounded in Israeli airstrike
David Cameron has urged the BBC to describe Hamas as a terrorist organisation, reviving an accusation that the corporation shies away from a valid description of the Islamist group that is holding Israeli hostages.
The UK foreign secretary told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that the organisation should reconsider its guidelines in light of a video released by Hamas showing the British-Israeli hostage Nadav Popplewell, who the group said had died in Gaza.
Hamas released a statement on Saturday saying the 51-year-old had died after being wounded in an Israeli airstrike a month ago. The video showed him with a black eye.
Making an exception for one organisation, pressured by politicians, would be harmful. BBC has the following policy about neutral reporting:
We don’t use loaded words like “evil” or “cowardly”. We don’t talk about “terrorists”. And we’re not the only ones to follow this line. Some of the world’s most respected news organisations have exactly the same policy
this is very relevant. thanks.
Hamas is a terrorist organization
Wikipedia first lines summarizes the 7th of October quite well:
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims.
Hamas still haven’t released the civilian hostages. Hamas hides among civilians. The list goes on and on.
The only sad part is that the Palestinian people once voted for a terrorist organisation to represent them.
People can call Hamas for “Freedom Fighters” all they want but it doesn’t erase the fact:
Hamas is a terrorist organisation.
You spelled Israel wrong.
Both can be true. But that doesn’t mean the BBC should give up its neutral stance.
If Great Britain labels Hamas a terrorist organization, why shouldn’t the BBC then to the same?
Because the BBC is not the PR arm of the British government. It is supposed to be an independent and impartial entity.
Isreal isn’t labeled a terrorist organization by any institutional body that I know of.
Which is ironic considering at this point Israel has most likely killed more innocent civilians than Hamas ever did
So has the US, Russia, China etc. by that metric. The killing of civilians is not what determines a terrorist organization.
The zionist paramilitaries that were consolidated (read: Likud) into the first iteration of the IDF were proud, avowed terrorists because they knew they couldn’t win a territorial conflict using conventional methods while outnumbered on hostile turf. Labeled, ha.
Continuing the tradition of British conservative prime ministers labelling things “terrorism” when the poor get uppity.
How’s Thatcher looking these days for insisting that Mandela was a terrorist?
If Hamas isn’t a terrorist organization then what would you call them?
What’s your definition of terror tactics?
My definition of terrorist tactics is irrelevant to how the OP would classify Hamas.
Regardless, here’s how terrorism is defined on Wikipedia: it seems pretty reasonable to me.
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants
So would you agree that Israel as an ethno colonialist state uses these tactics?
I’ll put this back to you this way: is Likud also a terrorist organization? Is the IDF? Because they do a lot of the same stuff.
There are definitely terrorists associated with Hamas, and Hamas definitely carries water for them, but they’re also the duly elected government in Gaza and if I were Israel I’d be asking why Gazans feel like they were so wronged that the only option seems to be a political movement that’s sympathetic to terrorist tactics.
Saying “they’re terrorists” without acknowledging how we got here is a lot like calling the ANC in South Africa “terrorist” in the 1980s. It’s stupidly reductionist and ignores complexity for the sake of jingoism.
It’s also why Cameron is a disingenuous jackass.
Can we label him as a pig-fucking PM? Oh wait, we already do.
To be clear, there’s no evidence he did.
I honestly could not care less whether or not it’s true. He’s told so many lies that if a lie is told about him that makes it sound like he stuck his dick in a pig, good. He deserves it.
Personally, I don’t think that two wrongs cancel out, and I’m not particularly keen on hypocrisy. Just wanted to point out for people who might not know that story has no evidence.
Sorry Dave, I trust John Simpson. You’re just a pink-faced ham botherer.
How this dickwipe managed to get in the spotlights again after what he did I’ll never understand. He’s right though, they should be called terrorists because they are. And bbc while you’re at it also call the genocide of remaining Palestinians a genocide.
He’s not right. He’s asking the BBC to forego it’s neutral stance. That’s not okay.
They say in almost every story on the BBC News TV channel that talks about Hamas that they are designated a terrorist organisation by the UK government.
Palestinian military defending their country
By shooting rockets at random and kidnapping civilians
are you talking about Hamas or IDF?
