From: CHUMB@CHUBOO.ORG   
      
   Unseemly tears   
   (Filed: 07/11/2004)   
   Many listeners to the BBC were rightly outraged last week by the broadcast   
   from its Middle East correspondent, Barbara Plett, in which she cloyingly   
   described how she wept as Yasser Arafat was airlifted from Ramallah for   
   medical treatment.   
   She said: "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his   
   ruined compound, I started to cry . . . without warning." Almost as a   
   footnote, she later admitted that an "ambivalence towards violence" was one   
   of his failings.   
   When Mr Arafat took over the PLO in the 1960s, he supported a campaign of   
   hijackings and bombings which acted as the foundation for much of the   
   escalating Middle Eastern terrorism of today. He summarily rejected the 2000   
   Camp David deal, which offered a generous compromise between Israelis and   
   Palestinians, and his Palestinian Authority has since been linked to funding   
   Palestinian terrorists.   
   Ms Plett's flood of feeling is just the most overt and recent manifestation   
   of a pro-Palestinian bias endemic within the BBC. As a publicly-funded   
   organisation, it should remember that it is not paid to take sides. As   
   things stand, however, we might conclude that Mr Arafat's culpable   
   "ambivalence towards violence" is echoed by our national broadcaster   
      
   Telegraph   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)