The BBC’s Ineradicable Jewish Problem

March 28 2024

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.

Read more at Sapir

More about: Anti-Semitism, BBC, Media

The Mass Expulsion of Palestinians Is No Solution. Neither Are Any of the Usual Plans for Gaza

Examining the Trump administration’s proposals for the people of Gaza, Danielle Pletka writes:

I do not believe that the forced cleansing of Gaza—a repetition of what every Arab country did to the hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews in 1948— is a “solution.” I don’t think Donald Trump views that as a permanent solution either (read his statement), though I could be wrong. My take is that he believes Gaza must be rebuilt under new management, with only those who wish to live there resettling the land.

The time has long since come for us to recognize that the establishment doesn’t have the faintest clue what to do about Gaza. Egypt doesn’t want it. Jordan doesn’t want it. Iran wants it, but only as cannon fodder. The UN wants it, but only to further its anti-Semitic agenda and continue milking cash from the West. Jordanians, Lebanese, and Syrians blame Palestinians for destroying their countries.

Negotiations with Hamas have not worked. Efforts to subsume Gaza under the Palestinian Authority have not worked. Rebuilding has not worked. Destruction will not work. A “two-state solution” has not arrived, and will not work.

So what’s to be done? If you live in Washington, New York, London, Paris, or Berlin, your view is that the same answers should definitely be tried again, but this time we mean it. This time will be different. . . . What could possibly make you believe this other than ideological laziness?

Read more at What the Hell Is Going On?

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Palestinians