Making The Ghosts Grin: The BBC Trust's White Decision

"There were ghosts haunting the Third Committee that day: the ghosts of Hitler and Goebbels and Julius Streicher, grinning with delight to hear, not only Israel, but Jews as such denounced in language which would have provoked hysterical applause at any Nuremberg rally and justify a special edition of Der Stürmer.

 And there were other ghosts also at the debate: the ghosts of the 6,000,000 dead in ... extermination camps, listening to the same voices which had cheered and jeered and abused them as they made their way to the gas chambers.

For the fundamental thesis advanced by the supporters of the resolution, and approved by the majority of the Third Committee, was that to be a Jew, and to be proud of it, and to preserve the right to be a Jew, is to be an enemy of the human race."

In the above words, the Oxford-educated Welsh journalist and author Goronwy Rees (1909-79) – no rightwinger, he, by the way – expressed his disgust for the adoption by the United Nations in 1975 of the notorious resolution equating Zionism with racism.

More obscenity from The Age's notorious Michael Leunig

Fast forward 37 years, and another British journalist, former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie, suggested following Operation Pillar of Cloud (Defence) that media hostility to Israel is "a form of proxy for antisemitism by journalists in the West".

He observed:

"It is a massive puzzle because journalists normally are on the side of the little guy, and there can’t be a smaller guy in the Middle East than Israel....

[Israel] is pro-gay, pro-democracy, pro-women. It’s the most liberal establishment probably for 1,000 miles in any direction. You would have thought every journalist would embrace that thought process – but for some reason they don’t.

The most interesting thing was the way the people from Gaza treated those guys they claimed were Israeli spies – they shot them in public and dragged around their bodies.

Compare that with the Israelis when they captured the guy who let off the bomb in Tel Aviv and then followed due process and the law. That is never portrayed in the British media. Never...."

There is, of course, no British media outlet more accomplished at misrepresenting Israel by sins of both commission and omission than the BBC.  The consequences inevitably impact to Israel's detriment upon the public mind:


Commented an apparent apologist for the Corporation on a November BBCWatch post.

"Israel should be starved of resources by an international blockade. Only allowed reduced medical and food supplies, given dirty water to drink, UN overwatch present at every place where the IDF are active, and no more military materiel provided by the west. Once you have run out of guns and ammo, all your bulldozers and tanks and iron dome lie by the roadside and your Israeli population is desperate and willing to kill themselves in protest at the conditions of their imprisonment and repression, only then will it be a fair fight.

But Iran will probably nuke you before that and save the world the trouble."

And now the potential for more incalculable harm has been unleashed by the BBC Trust's bizarre and unconscionable decision to uphold a complaint by anti-Israel zealot Ben White regarding the a BBC Radio 4 broadcast's coverage of the so-called Nakba.  To quote the Jewish Chronicle report by Marcus Dysch: 

'.... A “lack of clarity” had been evident in the coverage of West Bank protests last May which marked “Nakba Day”, when Palestinians mourn the creation of Israel, the BBC investigation found.

The report breached the Corporation’s accuracy guidelines by failing to note the “degree of force or coercion in the manner of the departure” of Palestinians, the Trust concluded....

Mr White complained to the BBC, claiming that the introduction to the news report was “deeply offensive” to Palestinians who had “lost everything as a result of ethnic cleansing”.

The introduction had stated that 60 Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli forces while marking Nakba Day, which the piece said was “the anniversary of Israel’s declaration of statehood which resulted in thousands of Palestinians leaving their homes”.

A Radio 4 editor who worked on the introduction told an initial BBC editorial standards committee that referring to Palestinians “leaving their homes” had not been “dynamic” enough.

The Trust concluded that the language used had “failed adequately to convey the reality of the departures”, and had “understated” the number of Palestinians affected by Israel’s creation....'

Dysch also notes:

'Ben White is a campaigner who accuses Israel of being an apartheid state and who wrote in 2002 that he could “understand” why people were antisemitic.

He encouraged his Twitter followers to protest against Israeli theatre company Habima last May by posting a picture of Jewish author Howard Jacobson, saying the Booker Prize winner’s face was “another reason to support the boycott”.'

As Robin Shepherd remarks at the end of his must-read piece on this unsavoury decision by the BBC Trust and and its implications, 

"Bear in mind that the (fairly) new chairman of the BBC trust is former European Commissioner Chris [Lord] Patten, a well known Israel basher. So, in this case, essentially, the complaints procedure broke down as follows:

Anti-Zionist fanatic makes complaint to watchdog organisation run by Israel basher that broadcaster already well-known for anti-Israel bias is not being biased enough. Watchdog organisation run by Israel basher upholds complaint made by anti-Zionist fanatic and warns broadcaster well known for anti-Israel bias that it should be careful to be more biased in the future."

Alan Aziz, executive director of the Zionist Federation, observes of the Trust's decision that  the BBC’s obligatory commitment to impartiality

“seems never to apply when it comes to Israel. The BBC, by recognising a false narrative that Israel committed a catastrophe against the Palestinians, is providing a biased picture demonising Israel.'

And, as Robin Shepherd says,

"The BBC Trust has now effectively sent a signal to reporters and editors that they have a duty to distort the historical record to suit the pro-Palestinian narrative"

The ghosts of Hitler, Goebbels and Streicher cannot be the only ones grinning.