From: Ismail Zayid
To: haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 9:05 PM
Subject: Where is the BBC balanced reporting?

Canada Palestine Association,
P.O.Box, 1085
Halifax, Nova Scotia,
Canada, B3J 2X1
 
 
June 28, 2006
 
Dear BBC World News.
 
We have always wanted to believe that the BBC World News offers reasonably balanced reporting of world news. But, alas, our expectations are wildly amiss.
I have just watched the BBC World News reporting on the Israeli onslaught on Gaza demolishing the power station, bringing hospitals and hundreds of thousands of people into darkness and threats of devastation. The news reader, Katty Kay, proceded to interview Amnon Shahak, former Israeli chief of staff, and then Isaac Herzog, Israeli tourism minister. The interviewees spoke at length of Israeli views without a single question by Ms. Kay about the illegal occupation and the recent and continuing almost daily killing of Palestinian men, women and chilrdren in Gaza. There was not a a word about the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli gaols for years, without charge or trial. There was not a word about the offer to release the Israeli soldier in return for Israel releasing the Palestinian women and children, held in Israeli prisons.
 
Is it too much to ask that some BBC balance might have been more appropriate by interviewing a Palestinian spokesperson instead of two Israelis?
 
Yours sincerely,
 
Ismail Zayid, MD.
President, Canada Palestine Association