CAMERA BLOG
The BBC News website’s airbrushed portrait of Saeb Erekat
by Hadar Sela
November 11, 2020

Unsurprisingly, the BBC’s portrait of Saeb Erekat in the wake of the Palestinian official’s death airbrushes him as a “negotiator” committed to the “two-state solution.” The BBC doesn’t tell audiences that Erekat’s idea of the “two-state solution” was that of a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli state in which Palestinian “refugees” were given a “right of return”–meaning, the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. Nor does it mention that in three decades as a “key negotiator,” Erekat failed to achieve his ostensible goal. Of course audiences don’t hear about Erekat’s support of the pay-to-slay program that rewards the murder of Israeli civilians, nor his central role in promoting the myth of a “massacre” in Jenin in 2002 (a myth that remains in the BBC archive to this day). READ MORE