The Reach of the BBC

A video was recently released of Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter who remains a kidnapped hostage in Gaza for over 10 weeks.



The transcript is thus (from zombietime via Little Green Footballs):

First of all, my captors have treated me very well. They’ve fed me well, there’s been no violence towards me at all, and I’m in good health.

In three years here in the Palestinian Territories, I’ve witnessed the huge suffering of the Palestinian people. And, uh, my message is that their suffering is continuing, and that it is unacceptable. Every day, there are Palestinians arrested, imprisoned for no reason, people are killed on a daily basis, the economic suffering is terrible, especially here in Gaza, where there’s an Israeli ... [technical glitch in the video] ... in absolute despair after nearly forty years of Israeli occupation, which has been supported by the West.

The situation in Iraq is even worse. We see every day, uh, maybe a hundred or more Iraqis being killed in the violence there, which followed the failed invasion of Iraq by America and Britain. Ordinary people who are losing everything and can’t live their lives properly because of not just the violence but the shortage of everything they need for normal lives for bringing up their children.

Uh, Afghanistan, the situation again, terrible, you see on your television screens, ordinary people, village people, villagers suffering as the armies of America and Britain [glitch] attack. In all this, we can see the British government endlessly working to occupy, uh, the Muslim lands, against the will of the people in those places. From history the British, eh, worked to bring about the state of Israel, which is the cause of all the suffering of, uh, the Israeli — uh, of the Palestinian people. And we the British are completely to blame along with the Americans for the situation in Iraq, and the British are the main force in Afghanistan, causing all the trouble to ordinary simple Afghans, who simply want to live.

One thing is puzzling.

How did the BBC get this opinion piece through to Johnston?