BBC Reporter Cries Over Arafat

I'm not surprised really, but I somehow thought the BBC's blatantly pro-Palestinian slant would be better concealed.  No stiff upper lip here.  From the Jerusalem Post, via Drudge:

Senior editors at the BBC are understood to have remonstrated with their correspondent, Barbara Plett, over her "misjudgment" in revealing on air that she had cried when Yasser Arafat's Jordanian helicopter carried him away from Ramallah en route to hospital in France.

The BBC has received some 500 complaints about Plett's broadcast, which was broadcast on its Radio 4 program, "From Our Own Correspondent."

In her report, Plett said: "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry . . . without warning."

She went on to reflect that, "in quieter moments since I have asked myself, why the sudden surge of emotion? I suppose there was a pathos about the strong contrast between this and other journeys Yasser Arafat has made."

In her report, entitled "Yasser Arafat's unrelenting journey," Plett noted that "foreign journalists seemed much more excited about Mr. Arafat's fate than anyone in Ramallah We hovered around the gate to his compound, swarming around the Palestinian officials who drove by, poking our microphones through their dark, half-open windows."

She lamented that amid all the media activity just a few hundred loyalists turned out to see him off from Ramallah, "waving and calling out one of his favorite sayings: 'The mountain cannot be shaken by the wind'."

Where were the people, she asked, "the mass demonstrations of solidarity, the frantic expressions of concern?" Then she answered her own question: "I think this history explains Palestinian emotions better than mine.

"For me, it was probably the siege. I remember well when the Israelis re-conquered the West Bank more than two years ago, how they drove their tanks and bulldozers into Mr. Arafat's headquarters, trapping him in a few rooms, and throwing a military curtain around Ramallah.

"I remember how Palestinians admired his refusal to flee under fire. They told me: 'Our leader is sharing our pain, we are all under the same siege'. And so was I. Maybe that gives me some connection to the man whose presidential compound became a prison.