Dicey Doucet

After recent revelations by Israel-based journalists that bias as well as sloppy journalism works against Israel, purposefully and unintentionally, we know that the end result is the same: Israel maligned.

Now, here's an insight into BBC's thinking:

...the BBC’s chief international correspondent admits the targeting of civilians, and in particular children, she has witnessed over the past two years in Syria and Gaza has prompted “an editorial shift in my journalism”, evident in last month’s BBC2 documentary The Children of Syria. [Lyse] Doucet is already working on a follow-up based on her experience of reporting from Gaza during the Israeli onslaught this summer.
“The way the wars of our time are fought, as punishing, sustained attacks on neighbourhoods, towns, cities, means assaults on families and childhood,” Doucet says. “Most places I cover young children are everywhere, in Gaza they are pouring out of every crevice.”

She is responsible for The Children of Syria, broadcast in August, "which showed the devastating effect of the war through the prism of six different children’s experiences".

As regards her new, upcoming documentary on Gaza, she'll be taking a similar approach:

 “I keep thinking of the children, the families we spent time with there. I don’t get nightmares, but we are going back and following some of the stories.”  She is cagey about saying too much but explains: “We are trying to tell a very old Middle East story in a new way.”

This will include the impact on both sides, a method established in Children of Syria, which included two heavily politicised boys...

Doucet says she believes in being “compassionate, not emotional”, suggesting she would not go so far as Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow’s anguished online video about the children of Gaza. “Empathy is a good thing. [But viewers] don’t want to see me, or anyone falling apart. It is not about us.”

Who will be the boys in the new film and what are their politics to be is one set of questions that pops into my head.

Ms. Doucet has been problematic. And here is some insight:

"Many Israelis had been willing to pay a huge price if it meant a final end to the Gaza conflict but there is now a silent majority that now believes it is better to stop, even if the operation did not achieve all its goals," says Mr Shavit, the author of My Promised Land.  He is speaking against an idyllic backdrop of a revolving pink carousel and a few fishermen casting rods into the sea. "People want to return to the beauty of Israeli life, not its horrors."

Gazans also want lives worth living. For them, that means not just an end to this war, but also the end of a seven-year blockade to allow greater movement of goods and people through crossings into Israel and Egypt.

"People don't realise how densely populated and poor Gaza is," remarks Dov Hartuv as we stand at the furthest edge of the kibbutz that he says it is safe to go.  From that vantage point, you can see, in detail, the jagged skyline across the entire length of the Gaza Strip.

Letting people on both sides of this border live their own lives used to be seen as a more achievable goal than reaching a peace deal.  But even reaching that kind of calm seems to get ever more difficult.

Get ready.

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