BBC - The Capital of Israel is Tel Aviv!

It's the Olympics and Israel's head honcho of hasbara, Mark Regev is putting pressure on the BBC to legitimise the zionist occupation of Jerusalem
by getting the BBC to refer to it as the capital of Israel, even though Tel Aviv is the recognised capital.

As the letter above to the BBC's Middle East Bureau Chief, Paul Danahar shows, Mark Regev is heading up and intensifying Israeli efforts to ensure the London Olympics if fully exploited to reflect Israel in a positive manner.

These attempts to pressurise a British public funded broadcaster are not only deceptive but extremely offensive to Palestinians living under occupation, who see a major and credible news agency dismissing international law which considers neither East nor West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

In a land where for many Palestinians everyday living is a struggle for survival such reporting threatens to forget the silent persecution of a people whose history is systematically being re-written.

We would like to take this opportunity to remind the BBC that under UN Security Council Resolutions (237, 242 & 405) East Jerusalem is considered by the international community to be illegally occupied by Israel. Declaring Jerusalem as Israel's capital is an attempt to change this status, and is thus a violation of these Security Council resolutions. Israel's capital is recognised as Tel Aviv pending a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.

This controversy isn't a new one, previously the BBC have made such erroneous claims. In 2007 on the programme ‘Football Focus - Feature: Israel in Focus’ the BBC made the wrongful claim that Jerusalem was the Capital of Israel.

MPACUK launched a successful campaign forcing the BBC to remove the statement from their written article whereby there was an inadvertent referral to Jerusalem being Israel’s capital.

We don't wish to have to go through the whole process again, so if you're listening BBC, remember Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel and not the illegally occupied Jerusalem. Paul Danahar we know how annoying Mark Regev can be, but please don't buckle under the pressure of the bully boy tactics.