While American Jews are familiar with the hostility and inaccuracy that have plagued reporting on the Jewish state in the New York Times and other major media outlets, in the United Kingdom the issue takes on a different character, as the principle offender is the state-run British Broadcasting Company (BBC), which has a near-monopoly on broadcast news. This summer, the BBC gained a new director, Tim Davie, who has expressed an emphatic commitment to bringing impartiality to reporting. Manfred Gerstenfeld sees at least the potential for change:

The British Jewish lawyer Trevor Asserson, now living in Israel, invested his own money from 2000 to 2004 in four well-documented studies detailing the BBC’s systematic bias against Israel. He concluded that the BBC’s coverage of the Middle East is infected by a widespread antipathy toward the country. This distorted reporting creates an atmosphere in which anti-Semitism can thrive.

Asserson noted that the BBC’s monopoly derives from a legally binding contract with the British government. He defined the BBC’s fifteen legal obligations under its charter and then showed instances in which the BBC breached many to most of the guidelines.

Asserson’s reports had some effect. In November 2003, the BBC created a senior editorial post to advise on its Middle East coverage. A former editor of the BBC’s 9:00 News, Malcolm Balen, was selected for the position. . . . In 2004, Balen undertook an internal inquiry into the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The report was never released, which led to a series of legal battles. After eight years, the [British] Supreme Court decided that the Balen report is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. The BBC had, however, to disclose its legal costs on the matter, which were about half-a-million dollars at the time.

One wonders why, if the inquiry found that its reporting was impartial, the BBC would spend so much to keep it secret.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.