Please sign this open letter to the BBC. Ask your MP to sign it. Ask your friends to sign. Palestine Solidarity Campaign will be presenting this letter, with your signatures on it, to the Director General of the BBC, Lord Hall.



Dear BBC



Once again Gaza is under massive aerial bombardment from Israeli warplanes and drones, and, once again, the BBC’s reporting of these assaults is entirely devoid of context or background.



We would like to remind the BBC that Gaza is under Israeli occupation and siege.



We would like to remind you that Israel is bombing a refugee population – Palestinians who were made refugees when they were forced from their land in1948 in order to create Israel.



We would like to remind you that Gaza has no army, air force, or navy, while Israel possess one of the strongest militaries in the world.



When you portray Israel’s shelling of a civilian population as a ‘response’ or ‘retaliation’ to rocket strikes from Gaza, we would like to remind you that these events flow from the displacement of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people from their homes and communities, with millions now corralled as refugees in the Gaza Strip. That initial injustice was compounded and continues with the ongoing occupation and siege.



When you portray the occupier as the victim, and the occupied as the aggressor, we would like to remind you that resistance to occupation is a right under international law. And we would like you to remember that Israel’s occupation, siege and collective punishment of Gaza is not.



And, finally, we would like to remind BBC journalists, when interviewing Israel’s spokespeople over the coming days, to ask the one question they have all failed to ask: “If Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian land, and allows the people of Palestine to live in freedom from Israeli domination, would that bring peace?”



Yours

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As of 16:22 on 15th July, 45,500 people have signed the letter, including Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Ken Loach, Brian Eno, Jeremy Hardy and MPs.