Jeremy Bowen
 Jeremy Bowen    | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 6 February 1960 |
| Alma mater | University College London, Johns Hopkins University |
Jeremy Francis John Bowen is a Welsh journalist and television presenter.
Jeremy Bowen was the BBC's Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem between 1995 and 2000, and the BBC Middle East editor from 2005 to 2022, before being appointed the International Editor of BBC News in August 2022.[1]
Misdescribing Hezbollah
Reporting on the Israeli–Lebanese conflict in September 2024, Jonathan Cook wrote:
With western media refusing to provide any meaningful context for Hezbollah’s actions, Israel’s self-serving narrative fills the vacuum: the assumption is that Hezbollah – and possibly all "Arabs" – are driven only by an irrational, antisemitic desire to murder Jews in Israel.
The implication is that Lebanon deserves whatever it gets from Israel.
The BBC’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen helpfully oiled that particular wheel on Monday’s evening news this week by describing Hezbollah in the following terms: "Fighting Israel is in their DNA, why they exist."
Let’s ignore Bowen’s conflation of the military wing of Hezbollah and its political and welfare arms – precisely the Israel-centric view of Hezbollah imposed by the British government in designating the entire movement as "a terrorist organisation".
Do Hezbollah’s politicians, and the civil servants, police officers, doctors, teachers and adminstrators it employs to run Lebanon’s institutions – the "state within a state", as media outlets call it – exist only to "fight Israel?" Is that really the sole reason they exist?
But even if we ignore all the civilians involved with Hezbollah and focus exclusively on its military wing, is Bowen’s characterisation impartial, fair, or even accurate?
Hezbollah isn’t driven by a simple bloodlust to "fight Israel", as the BBC’s Middle East expert suggests. For many Lebanese citizens, it is there to protect their country from an Israeli military that has aggressively interfered in its affairs for decades, long before Hezbollah even existed.
Israel has invaded Lebanon repeatedly, overseen horrifying massacres such as those at Sabra and Shatilla, occupied Lebanon’s southern lands for nearly two decades, bombed its infrastructure, meddled in its politics, littered its territory with cluster bombs, and carried out aggressive flights by fighter jets over its territory, violating Lebanese airspace, non-stop all that time.
For many Lebanese citizens, Hezbollah exists because Lebanon needed a credible military fighting force to push out Israel’s occupation army – as it eventually managed to do in 2000 – and prevent any reoccurence.
It exists to deter Israel from continuing to meddle in Lebanon – just as Hamas exists to try to exact a price for Israel’s otherwise profitable brutalisation of Palestinians under occupation.
But if Bowen really imagines this kind of reductive reasoning about Hezbollah is fair, he should be consistent and describe Israel’s military similarly. Does the so-called Israel Defence Forces exist only to "fight its Arab neighbours?"[2]
Event Participated in
| Event | Start | End | Location(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Herzliya Conference/2009 | 2 February 2009 | 4 February 2009 | Reichman University Tel Aviv Israel |
Related Document
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:The BBC is weaponising its Lebanon reporting to help disguise Israel's crimes | Article | 27 September 2024 | Jonathan Cook | By the third week of September, Israel had killed more than 750 Lebanese, compared to 33 Israeli deaths. The differential is even starker now. And yet the western media has not framed Hezbollah’s attacks as its "right to defend itself" – a right we are continuously reminded Israel has. |
References
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