Channel 4's "The Promise" Is A Bit Empty

I think I mentioned the new BBC4 Channel 4's series on "Palestine", then during the Mandate period as well as at present.

Channel 4 "is a publicly owned corporation whose board is appointed by OFCOM, in agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport".

The programme's site.

After being shown some outrageous elements, I left there a comment or two:

In writing "When the Jewish state was created, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee...", Ms. Hilsum is displaying not only ignorance but insidious and wilful distortion. Her sentence should have been composed so: "Upon the UN decision to seek territorial compromise by partitioning the Mandate, the Arabs refused to accept that recommendation, while the Jewish side did. The Arabs, first locally and then on May 15, 1948 from other Arab countries, engaged in an aggressive war of extinction, as they declared. Their attempts at ethnic cleansing failed and in the end, they themselves either left their towns and villages voluntarily, hoping to return after a surmised Arab victory, or in losing battles, were necessitated, as every other losing side, to re-adapt their living conditions.

Moreover, in writing "For Jews, it was the promised land. For Palestinians, it was the 'nakba' - the catastrophe" only highlights a basic problem: was this a "national homeland" for the local Arabs? Why did they not even have an Arabic name for their country but needed a Roman name? Why was it not even a recognizable administrative unit within the Ottoman Empire but rather three (or more at times)? Why does Ms. Hilsom not remind us that in 1922, the eastern section of "Palestine" was lopped off the Mandate territory for a Jewish national home and awarded to a Saudi Arabian, Abdullah the Hashemite?

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UPDATE

So far, my comment hasn't been uploaded. Others, critical, are up.

The author of this historical dreck is Lindsey Hilsum who reported for the BBC and the Guardian from Africa and Latin America. She was in Baghdad during the 2003 Iraq war, Belgrade during the NATO Kosovo campaign and has worked extensively in Zimbabwe and the Middle East.
Lindsey has won numerous awards, including Royal Television Society awards for her reporting from Fallujah, Beslan and with Palestinian refugees.

Any wonder her "history" is off and biased?

And they attempt to excuse her:

"Lindsey Hilsum is an experienced and impartial journalist who has worked extensively in the Middle East region and who is more than aware of the background. In order to provide more information to viewers of The Promise, we asked Lindsey to write a short overview of the current situation in the region. For more in-depth historical facts, please take a look at our Further Reading page (http://bit.ly/f5kKeH), which points to various online sources that viewers may find interesting."

But the list of sites there is biased, one-sided and doesn't have official Israeli views or of those groups portrayed in the series, the Irgun or Lechi.


By the way:

How to make a complaint to Channel 4 if you are unhappy with any aspect of Channel 4.

You can use the Contact Us form or you can call 0845 076 0191 or write to

Channel 4 Enquiries
PO Box 1058
Belfast
BT 1 9DU


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