{"id":198711,"date":"2026-05-21T09:40:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/198711\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T09:40:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:40:07","slug":"the-trope-of-perpetual-reactivity-the-bbc-flattens-reality-in-bethlehem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/198711\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trope of Perpetual Reactivity \u2013 The BBC Flattens Reality in Bethlehem"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BBC\u2019s\u00a0Wyre Davies<\/a>\u2019 recent reporting from the West Bank epitomises the main issues with BBC coverage from the region in general. Oversimplifications, omissions, misleading framing and the construction of a neat victim-oppressor narrative pull together to create misinformation, even when the facts themselves are broadly accurate.<\/p>\n

On the episode of\u00a0\u201cFrom Our Own Correspondent\u201d<\/a>\u00a0aired twice on Radio 4 over the weekend of May 16th\u00a0and 17th, Davies reported from the Palestine Marathon in Bethlehem. From Our own Correspondent is a program which airs reportage postcards from around the world, and is generally more stylistic than most news and analysis coverage on Radio 4. It is still journalism however and poetic license should not compromise facts.<\/p>\n

Davies begins his coverage with a portrayal of Bethlehem as a city in crisis due to<\/p>\n

\u201cthe economic impact of a succession of Middle\u00a0East conflicts\u201d.<\/p>\n

Immediately he frames Bethlehem as suffering because of events outside of itself. Bethlehem is a flower on a battlefield, buffeted by external events. This is the trope of perpetual reactivity. It strips Palestinians of agency and frames them as only ever reacting and responding to external, usually Israeli, actions. Seconds later, we see this more clearly:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impact has been exacerbated by an almost\u00a0blanket Israeli ban on workers from Bethlehem\u00a0and other parts of the West Bank being allowed into\u00a0Israel for jobs that are vital to the Palestinian\u00a0economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two positions are immediately taken here.<\/p>\n

Position A \u2013 that Israel bears a responsibility for the Palestinian economy, a position that is entirely at odds with the notion of Palestine being an independent state recognised by the British government, and the reality of power sharing as laid out by the\u00a0Oslo Accords<\/a>.
\nPosition B \u2013 That Israel\u2019s ban on work permits is arbitrary, a simple cruelty imposed for no reason.<\/p>\n

Davies fails to inform his audience of the genuine reasons why Israel decided, after much internal debate, to impose a ban on Palestinian workers after October 7, at a\u00a0dramatic cost<\/a>\u00a0to the domestic Israeli economy. He fails to tell listeners about\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that Gazan workers were involved in intelligence gathering before October 7, nor does he mention the massive support in the West Bank for October 7th, polled in the immediate aftermath of the attacks\u00a0as 82%<\/a>, gradually reducing due to the misery of war, but still remaining a\u00a0majority view<\/a>.<\/p>\n

BBC journalists appear to have learned that to present a simple victim-oppressor narrative to their audiences they must erase Palestinian violence.<\/p>\n

Israeli victimhood occurred once and was\u00a0frozen in time<\/a>\u00a0on October 7th, with the obligatory repetition of the words:<\/p>\n

\u201cthe October 7th attacks in 2023\u00a0when\u00a0Hamas\u00a0gunmen broke through the Gaza border\u00a0into Israel, killing more than 1200 people and\u00a0abducting 251 hostages.\u201d<\/p>\n

A perfunctory statement which manages to erase the true horror unleashed that day while technically acknowledging the trigger event.<\/p>\n

Davies, like\u00a0so many<\/a>\u00a0of his\u00a0colleagues<\/a>, makes no mention of terrorism in his report. Even when describing the security wall and military checkpoints in Bethlehem, he makes no mention of why they exist. Once again, Israeli security measures are simply an arbitrary cruelty that exist in a vacuum:<\/p>\n

\u201cFinding a continuous 26 mile route around\u00a0Bethlehem was almost impossible, said marathon\u00a0organisers because of Israeli military checkpoints\u00a0and obstacles,\u00a0the biggest of which\u00a0is the huge concrete separation barrier that snakes\u00a0around the city. Some runners in the marathon race had to run laps\u00a0not uncommon in other races, but rarely will\u00a0runners have had to race under the gaze of border\u00a0guards in heavily armed watchtowers looking down on\u00a0them as they negotiated the sometimes-narrow gaps\u00a0between houses and the nine-metre-high concrete wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his emotive, travelogue-style description of the wall as a dystopian prop designed to impose misery on marathon runners, Davies fails to tell audiences that the security wall (only about 5% of which is actually a wall)\u00a0was constructed<\/a>\u00a0at the height of the second intifada as a response to a relentless wave of suicide bombings, and has been incredibly successful in achieving its military aims, as admitted even by the late leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad Abdallah Ramadan Shalah\u00a0who said the barrier<\/a>\u00a0was an:<\/p>\n

\u201cobstacle to the resistance, and if it were not there, the situation would be entirely different.\u201d<\/p>\n

This pattern, the erasure of Palestinian agency and violence and the arbitrary and total nature of Israeli cruelty continues when Davies chooses to compress and flatten the complexities of life in the West Bank and Settler violence into a cartoonish caricature:<\/p>\n

\u201cFew Palestinian towns and cities in the occupied\u00a0West Bank have been as adversely affected by the\u00a0growth of Jewish settlements, widely regarded as illegal under international law,\u00a0as Bethlehem.\u00a0Settlements like Har Homa, home to 25,000 people, and partly built on expropriated\u00a0Palestinian land, encroach on Bethlehem\u2019s\u00a0boundaries,\u00a0they in effect cut Bethlehem\u00a0off from Arab east Jerusalem and other Palestinian\u00a0cities in the northern West Bank\u2026. Emboldened by support from extremist ministers in the Netanyahu Government, violence committed by settlers against West Bank Palestinians, their land and property, has exploded in recent months. According to the UN\u2019s humanitarian agency OCHA this year has seen the highest number of incidents related to settler violence for at least two decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first major issue here is of course the \u201cillegal under international law\u201d mantra which we have discussed at length\u00a0here at CAMERA<\/a>, which ignores the reality that the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria as it was named before it was\u00a0occupied by Jordan<\/a>\u00a0from 1948-1967, is more accurately described as\u00a0disputed territory<\/a>\u00a0than belligerent occupation. Settlements like Har Homa are built in Area C, not \u201cexpropriated Palestinian land\u201d but land assigned to Israeli administrative control by the\u00a0Oslo Accords<\/a>\u00a0signed and agreed to by the PLO.<\/p>\n

The further issue is the way Davies lumps together the residents of Area C, who live there legally and for myriad reasons, with\u00a0extremist settlers<\/a>\u00a0responsible for the increased number of acts of violence against Palestinians, often committed from illegal outposts deep inside the territory. Almost half a million Israelis live beyond the green line. Davies labels them all as violent and illegitimate, while simultaneously entirely ignoring the\u00a012,558 terror attacks<\/a>\u00a0reportedly carried out by Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7th.<\/p>\n

As always, the Palestinians never act but are only acted upon.<\/p>\n

The difficult reality is that reporting like this is not only dehumanising to the Israelis whose trauma, complex realities, and security calculus are totally ignored, but also to the Palestinians who emerge as helpless and reactive, incapable of political will, self-governance or deliberate, strategic violence.<\/p>\n

The BBC should not be in the business of choosing victims and oppressors, its role, as set out in its\u00a0mission statement<\/a>, is to impartiality and accuracy. Once again, when it comes to the Middle East, it has failed.<\/p>\n

Comments are closed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The BBC\u2019s\u00a0Wyre Davies\u2019 recent reporting from the West Bank epitomises the main issues with BBC coverage from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-198711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}