Since October, the Israeli satirical show Eretz Nehederet (“It’s a Wonderful Country”) has repeatedly mocked the BBC for its coverage of the war, in one memorable sketch presenting a fawning interview with the Hamas strongman Yahya Sinwar. It has singled out the state-backed media company for good reason: not only is it one of the worst offenders among news outlets worldwide, but it is also regarded more highly than most of its competitors and has a truly global reach, including channels in a variety of languages.

The veteran British journalist Tom Gross takes a good look at the BBC’s many failures in covering Israel. Perhaps most clarifying is a story he tells about interviewing for a journalism training course it offered many years ago. His interviewers asked what he would change about the previous night’s broadcast, and he replied that more attention should have been paid to Saddam Hussein’s gassing of Iraqi Kurds:

I pointed out that this horrific act was the largest use of chemical weapons against a civilian target since World War II. Between 3,000 and 5,000 Kurdish children and adults had been gassed to death. Yet the BBC had only mentioned it in passing about twenty minutes into its news bulletin, after a light-hearted item about Prince Charles.

There was silence in the room. The members of the BBC interviewing panel glanced at one another with expressions of bemusement. The chair then turned and asked me, with a slight scowl, “Are you a Zionist?”

And then, before I could answer, my interview came to an end. . . . At no point in my BBC interview or application process had I mentioned Israelis, Palestinians, or Jews. In what was the pre-Google era, my family background is not something that the BBC could easily have discovered. . . . It was the BBC that brought up the subject of Zionism. Needless to say, I wasn’t granted a place on the BBC trainee course.

Looking back at various attempts to reform the institution over the past decade, Gross concludes that the network’s problems are “longstanding, profound, and seemingly ineradicable.” He suggests that the best remedy might be the most obvious: the British government should stop funding it.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.