This is the best summary I could come up with:
Government ministers, newspaper columnists, ordinary people - they're all asking why the BBC doesn't say the Hamas gunmen who carried out appalling atrocities in southern Israel are terrorists.
We regularly point out that the British and other governments have condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation, but that's their business.
As it happens, of course, many of the people who've attacked us for not using the word terrorist have seen our pictures, heard our audio or read our stories, and made up their minds on the basis of our reporting, so it's not as though we're hiding the truth in any way - far from it.
No-one can possibly defend the murder of civilians, especially children and even babies - nor attacks on innocent, peace-loving people who are attending a music festival.
There was huge pressure from the government of Margaret Thatcher on the BBC, and on individual reporters like me about this - especially after the Brighton bombing, where she just escaped death and so many other innocent people were killed and injured.
That's why people in Britain and right round the world, in huge numbers, watch, read and listen to what we say, every single day.
The original article contains 595 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
No-one can possibly defend the murder of civilians, especially children and even babies - nor attacks on innocent, peace-loving people who are attending a music festival.
No-one, except for racists who work for the genocide of that population.
But this doesn't mean that we should start saying that the organisation whose supporters have carried them out is a terrorist organisation, because that would mean we were abandoning our duty to stay objective.
That makes it sound as if the Hamas was a regular, military organization with legitimate goals, which eventually settles their dispute at the negotiating table. And I think that's giving a false picture of that organization. But let's hear what they have to say about themselves:
Quoted from article 7:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
Quoted from article 13:
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.
These people (Hamas, not Palestinians) see it as their religious duty to kill all Jews.
I think the BBC's position makes sense in most conflicts, but not in this one. They probably just try to appease both sides, with an explanation that sounds reasonable, if you don't look too much behind the curtains.
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