Has Islamic Terrorism Bought the BBC, Reuters

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

Tel Aviv----July 13......It's one a.m. here in Israel and I can't sleep.
Maybe it was the trauma of the barbaric terror attack this evening in Netanya, Israel - fresh off the heels of blood spilled in London.

Perhaps it's because I am boiling at the BBC and Reuters callously calling bloodshed inflicted upon innocent children in New York, London, Spain, Turkey and Israel as the act of "militants" or even more politically correct - "bombers".

I can't sleep thinking that the BBC and Reuters may have been bought out by Islamic terrorists - perhaps bin-Laden and company.

Recent investigations into al-Qaida by the Sept. 11 commission and others have altered the once commonly held view that bin Laden's inheritance and massive fortune - estimated at $300 million at one point - were used to finance his operations. A network of businesses in Sudan, his base from 1991 to 1996, is also not thought to be backing al-Qaida.

"There has been a revision of collective thinking," said Kenneth Katzman, a Congressional Research Service expert who has studied terror groups. "The new thinking is that bin Laden's fortune didn't really enter into al-Qaida that much or wasn't the driving force in al-Qaida." The commission's report concluded that al-Qaida has many financing avenues and easily could find new sources, particularly given that the Sept. 11 attack cost just $400,000 to $500,000 over two years. While the report said the government has been unable to determine the source of the attack's financing, the commission said it appears al-Qaida's financial support does not come from bin Laden personally.

"The CIA now estimates that it costs al-Qaida about $30 million per year to sustain its activities before 9/11 and that this money was raised almost entirely through donations," the report said. The belief that bin Laden's net worth was so high gathered steam shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Katzman released a report, which he said recently drew on a 1996 State Department fact sheet, that indicated al-Qaida was tapping bin Laden's $300 million personal fortune and other sources. By February 2002, Katzman had updated the estimate, indicating that bin Laden may be worth anywhere from $50 million to $300 million, but that the group had apparently become self-sustaining.

The revision attracted little notice. Bin Laden was believed to have inherited money from his father, who oversaw the growth of a construction empire, making the bin Ladens one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia. The 17th of 52 children, bin Laden was thought primarily to be using the money to finance operations in Afghanistan and Sudan, as well as to help him secure his place as al-Qaida's leader. His Sudanese businesses were believed to include an Islamic bank, an import-export company and other operations that exported agricultural products.

But the Sept. 11 commission said the businesses did not provide significant income, and that when bin Laden left the country in 1996, it appears the Sudanese government took his assets. "He left Sudan with practically nothing," the commission found. "When bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan, he relied on the Taliban until he was able to reinvigorate his fund-raising efforts by drawing on ties to wealthy Saudi individuals that he had established during the Afghan war in the 1980s." Responding to an inquiry from a Senate panel last year, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control said the overstated estimates about bin Laden's wealth and his financial backing of al-Qaida actually trivialized the threat posed by his group.

Bin Laden's benefit to terrorist Islam draws on his ties to "a wealthy and influential family, which enabled him to be considered a trusted person with the ability to receive and dispose of charitable money, according to memo from the Treasury office that The Associated Press obtained in April. Bin Laden could then direct the money to support local institutions in many countries, in an attempt to radicalize those communities and give him a base to recruit and train. U.S. officials found information in early 2000 indicating that from 1970 to 1994 bin Laden received $1 million a year, the Sept. 11 commission found.

Bin Laden was effectively cut off from the money in a 1994 crackdown, the commission said, when the Saudi government revoked his citizenship, forced his family to find a buyer for his share of the company and later froze the proceeds of that sale. His family disavowed him. In a recent interview with the AP, bin Laden's estranged sister-in-law said she does not believe that family members have cut him off entirely. Carmen Binladin, who has changed the spelling of her name and lives in Switzerland, said bin Laden is not the only religious brother in the family, and she expects his sisters support him, too. Today, U.S. authorities do not believe bin Laden is tied to businesses anywhere, given that he is in hiding, said a counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

But who is not to say that bin-Laden has not bought out the BBC and Reuters?
After all, bin-Laden invested millions into hi-tech warfare, warfare which he originally learned from the CIA fighting Russians in Afghanistan. It is believed that bin-Laden spent more money on the New York and Washington terror attacks of September 2001 than the US spent on counter-terrorism against Islamic terrorism.

So let's get back to the BBC and Reuters labeling bin-Laden, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and every Islamic terror group as "militants." As British blood flowed through the tubes and off the buses of London last week, the BBC and Reuters would not declare that an act of terrorism had taken place against their own people in England.

I can excuse the BBC and Reuters for not calling terrorists "terrorists" in Israel.
They don't live here. There children are not shot down in cold blood in their beds or blown up on Israel buses or standing in line outside of shopping centers. No, the BBC and Reuters executives are from the green forests of London. But now London is in smoke and still they call these people "bombers."

Naomi Ragen, an Israel journalist wrote back on October 27, 2002: "It was eye-opening for me as an Israeli to listen to BBC World report on the terrorism in a Moscow theater in which 30 Muslim terrorists strapped with explosives threatened the lives of almost a thousand innocent theatre-goers. While the word "terrorist" was used once or twice at the beginning of the siege, when the hostages were saved, the BBC called the terrorists "separatists" and then "hostage-takers." They said that "it wasn't clear how the hostages were killed" prior to the Russian army's action and that "perhaps they had confronted the separatists, a dangerous thing to do." I see, it was the hostages own fault for trying to escape."

Ragen continues: "What is it going to take to get BBC to stop siding with terrorists? IRA "separatists" to blow up their building in London? What? Don't they understand that this constant propaganda which bends over backwards to "understand" those who commit inhuman crimes against humanity, encourages such crimes. Don't they understand that no one is safe as long as this kind of sympathetic spin is put on monsters? Everybody has a beef, BBC. But as long as you say anything goes to accomplish your agenda, the wails of mourning coming from the innocent will continue to shake the world, rising up from Bali, Australia, New York, Kashmir, Moscow, Tel Aviv, the Philippines. Everyone, everyone, is a potential target. Even Londoners. BBC, you should hang your heads in shame on the unemployment lines."

Ragen said back in 2002 - "even Londoners are a potential target."
Now we can delete the word "potential."

Tom Gross of the Jerusalem Post commented today: "Britain's first bus bombing took place barely half a mile from the BBC's central London headquarters, and for a day or so after last Thursday's multiple bomb attacks the BBC, the influential leftist daily Guardian and even the British-based global news agency Reuters all seemed suddenly to discover the words "terrorism" and "terrorist." In Saturday's Guardian, for example, one or other of these words appeared on each of the first 11 pages. In marked contrast to BBC reports about bombs on public transport in Israel – bombs which in some cases were even worse than those in London since some were specifically aimed at children and most were packed with nails, screws, glass and specially-sharpened metal shards in order to maximize injuries – terms like "guerrilla," "militant," "activist" or "fighter" were suddenly nowhere to be seen."

Gross continues: "The world's premier broadcast network appeared to throw away its own ridiculous "BBC Producer's Guidelines." BBC online reports, for example, had headlines such as 'Terror of passengers stuck on tube' and "London Rocked by Terror Attacks.' BBC executives had previously insisted that for the sake of what they call "evenhandedness" terrorists should not be called terrorists. Their Guidelines state: 'The word 'terrorist' itself can be a barrier to understanding... We should try to avoid the term, while we report the facts as we know them.' But the hope of many of the British taxpayers forced to fund the BBC that it had finally come to its senses and would henceforth call terror by its proper name turned out to be short-lived. By Friday, the BBC's World Service was slowly reverting to its old habits, both on air and on line. (Its domestic news broadcasts have for the time being continued using the word 'terrorist.') Presumably hoping that no one would notice, the BBC subtly and retroactively altered its initial texts about the bombs on both its British and international Web sites."

Gross states: "Unfortunately for the BBC, however, previous versions of its webpages remained easily accessible to all on Google, and enterprising British bloggers, long-fed up with the BBC's bias, recorded the changes. 'Harry's Place' noted, for example, that on Thursday evening a BBC News webpage headlined 'Bus man may have seen terrorist,' began "A bus passenger says he may have seen one of those responsible for the terrorist bomb attacks in London. Richard Jones, from Binfield, had got a bus just before it was blown up...." But on Friday at 10:14 a.m. GMT, that webpage was suddenly changed. The headline now reads 'Passenger believes he saw bomber,' and the text begins 'A bus passenger says he may have seen one of those responsible for the bomb attacks in London. Richard Jones, from Binfield, had got a bus just before it was blown up...' Early on Friday morning another BBC webpage headlined 'Testing the underground mood,' spoke of 'the worst terrorist atrocity Britain has seen.' But at 12:08 GMT, while the rest of the article was left untouched, those words were replaced by "the worst peacetime bomb attacks Britain has seen."

But even more influential Gross says and in respect to the London terror attacks, far more irresponsible – was the Associated Press (AP). "The AP played into the hands of anti-Semites by irresponsibly running a bogus "Israel advance warning" story on its international newswire shortly after the London attacks. Although the story has since been retracted by the AP, the damage has been done. As was the case after 9/11, 1,000 'Israel knew' -style conspiracy theories have already been spawned on extreme rightist and leftist websites worldwide. The AP story headlined "Netanyahu Changed Plans Due to Warning," written by Amy Teibel of the AP Jerusalem bureau and alleging that Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who was in London for an economic conference, had been tipped off "minutes before Thursday's explosions" was put out by the AP on its worldwide news wires at 11:14 a.m. GMT (7:14 a.m. EST) on Thursday. Fox News ran the AP story on air at 7:50 a.m. New York time," said Gross.

AP's story also appeared on the websites of over 100 credible news outlets in the US, Canada, Ireland, India and elsewhere. More disturbingly, it appeared on Al-Jazeera and other Middle East media. How could any serious editor or reporter not see that this was "black propaganda" and a replay of the post-9/11 libels? And how could the AP Jerusalem Bureau chief not have checked before running it? But despite the various shortcomings in the coverage of the London bombs, there was also much resolute and sensible commentary, not just from the Right and center but from some on the Left too. While the usual suspects, such as the notorious Robert Fisk of The Independent (who was singled out as a journalist one could admire in Osama bin Laden's video message last October), immediately blamed Tony Blair and George Bush for bringing the bombs upon London, most commentators saw the atrocities for what they were. "Face up to the truth," wrote Nick Cohen, a leading columnist for The Observer, the Sunday sister paper of The Guardian. Addressing what he called "my world of liberal London," Cohen said, "We all know who was to blame for Thursday's murders... and it wasn't Bush and Blair."

This was not the first time that the AP fell on its face big time.

On September 30, 2000, The New York Times, Associated Press and other major media outlets published a photo of a young man -- bloodied and battered -- crouching beneath a club-wielding Israeli policeman. The caption identified him as a Palestinian victim of the recent riots -- with the clear implication that the Israeli soldier is the one who beat him.

The victim's true identity was revealed when Dr. Aaron Grossman of Chicago sent the following letter to the Times: Regarding your picture on page A5 of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinian on the Temple Mount -- that Palestinian is actually my son, Tuvia Grossman, a Jewish student from Chicago. He, and two of his friends, were pulled from their taxicab while traveling in Jerusalem, by a mob of Palestinian Arabs, and were severely beaten and stabbed. That picture could not have been taken on the Temple Mount because there are no gas stations on the Temple Mount and certainly none with Hebrew lettering, like the one clearly seen behind the Israeli soldier attempting to protect my son from the mob. In response, the New York Times published a half-hearted correction which identified Tuvia Grossman as "an American student in Israel" -- not as a Jew who was beaten by Arabs.

The "correction" also noted that "Mr. Grossman was wounded" in "Jerusalem's Old City" -- although the beating actually occurred in the Arab neighborhood of Wadi al Joz, not in the Old City. In response to public outrage at the original error and the inadequate correction, The New York Times reprinted Tuvia Grossman's picture -- this time with the proper caption -- along with a full article detailing his near-lynching at the hands of Palestinians rioters. Read Tuvia Grossman's in-depth, first-person account of his ordeal, entitled Victim of the Media War. www.aish.com/jewishissues/israeldiary/ The photo of a bloodied Tuvia Grossman became a symbol in the struggle to ensure that Israel receives the fair media coverage that every nation deserves.

In April 2002, a District Court in Paris ordered the French daily newspaper "Liberation" and the Associated Press to pay damages to Grossman in the amount of 4,500 Euro. The Court condemned the Associated Press for "misrepresenting [Grossman] as a member of the Palestinian community," while the court censured "Liberation" for "publishing the litigious picture with a comment edited the same faulty way, giving the picture a meaning and a scope it could not have."

And two days after the terrorist bombings in London, British Prime Minister Blair gave a high-profile interview on BBC Radio, which Associated Press covered in this manner: Prime Minister Tony Blair said Britain must defend against terrorism - but must also strive to understand the underlying causes of the violence, which he identified as deprivation, lack of democracy and ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

"I think this type of terrorism has very deep roots," Blair said. "As well as dealing with the consequences of this - trying to protect ourselves as much as any civil society can - you have to try to pull it up by its roots." That meant boosting understanding between people of different religions, helping people in the Middle East see a path to democracy and easing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, he said. (emphasis added) Blair's apparent linking of Israel with the London attacks set off a firestorm, angering Israeli leaders while pleasing Palestinians.

An editorial from Israel's largest paper, Yediot Ahronot, responded 'With all due respect, the British Prime Minister is wrong,' while Palestinian spokesman Saeb Arekat quipped that Blair had 'touched reality and spoke strategically of the need to deal with the problems of this region.' But HonestReporting subscribers in England who had listened carefully to Blair's BBC interview noticed something strange -- in the interview (available here), Blair never actually mentioned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What did Blair say? That 'some of the critical issues in the Middle East' need to be 'dealt with and sorted out'.

AP editorialized Blair's vague statement to mean the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After receiving complaints from the HR subscribers, Associated Press issued an official correction: In a July 9 story about Prime Minister Tony Blair's comments on overcoming global terrorism, The Associated Press erroneously reported that he spoke of easing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Blair did not specifically mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. Kudos to media monitors for eliciting the correction, but two questions remain: At what point in the editorial chain did AP filter Blair's words, artificially introducing Israel as one of Blair's 'root sources' of Islamist terror? And what is being done at AP -- the world's largest wire agency -- to rectify this apparent anti-Israel bias, and the misrepresentation of UK policy?

But let's get back to the BBC and Reuters.
Compared to AP, they are consistent.
We all make mistakes. Let's forgive AP for the time being.

HonestReporting.com, a media watchdog organization for Israel, has repeatedly denounced media outlets' categorical refusal to call terrorists 'terrorists' in news reports. As Islamic terror continues to spread worldwide, with buses in London and Israel being blown to pieces, one major news outlet decided that enough is enough -- it's time to call terrorism by its name. CanWest, owners of Canada's largest newspaper chain, recently implemented a new editorial policy to use the 'T-word' in reports on brutal terrorist acts and groups.

So when CanWest's National Post published a Reuters report on Sept. 14, they exercised their right to change this Reuters line that whitewashes Palestinian terror: ... the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which has been involved in a four-year-old revolt against Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. (Jeffrey Heller, 9/13 'Sharon Faces Netanyahu Challenge') to this, more accurate line: ... the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a terrorist group that has been involved in a four-year-old campaign of violence against Israel.

Reuters didn't like the adjustment, and took the unusual step of officially informing CanWest that if it intended to continue this practice, CanWest should remove Reuters' name from the byline. Why? The New York Times reported (emphasis added): "Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone," said David A. Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. "Any paper can change copy and do whatever they want. But if a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline." Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations. "My goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity," he said.

This is a stunning admission - Reuters' top international editor openly acknowledges that one of the main reasons his agency refuses to call terrorists 'terrorists' has nothing to do with editorial pursuit of objectivity, but rather is a response to intimidation from thugs and their supporters. In every other news arena, western journalists pride themselves on bravely 'telling it as is,' regardless of their subjects' (potentially hostile) reactions.

So I ask: Who owns the BBC and Reuters? Is it bin-Laden with his ability to buy governments or is it British intelligence using the BBC and Reuters as covers for their operatives? Can one really imagine a BBC or Reuters editor or producer interviewing bin-Laden? The age old cover of being a foreign journalist.

Bin-laden is too smart for that.
Come on - this guy took down the World Trade Center in New York with box cutters!

I suspect that it is Western intelligence or the lack of intelligence which pressures the BBC and Reuters to use the neutral terms - "militants" and "freedom fighters". I also suspect that by doing so, the BBC and Reuters are now encouraging the global campaigns of Islamic terrorism.

It appears that British intelligence is now actually appeasing those terrorists who attacked innocent civilians in London by using the BBC and Reuters as covers. If you appease a terrorist, then you actually assist the terrorist. You encourage them to perform more acts of barbarism against every innocent civilian who rides a bus, drinks coffee in a restaurant, takes an aircraft or a train for business or holiday. To attack innocent civilians in their shopping centers and in their homes. By appeasing terrorists, you give them a green light to strike all of our children - from the schools of Chechnya to the beaches of Tel Aviv.

It time the public speaks up.
Turn off BBC news. Boycott every newspaper which carries Reuters copy until they call a terrorist - a terrorist.
If they don't stop encouraging global terrorism by calling these Islamic terrorists hero "militants", then we and our representatives in Parliament and in Congress must and will take action.

Who owns the BBC and Reuters? Is it bin-Laden or Western intelligence?
Surely, we the victims of terrorism have no ownership.