bed it in his report for the BBC: ‘Once again, there was a stage, flanked by huge posters highlighting the catastrophic consequences of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the Palestinian determination to stay put.’
Why did he miss the Netanyahu cartoon with all its Nazi-esque anti-Semitism? The clue, perhaps, might be found in a post on X he wrote the day after Hamas’s 7 October massacre, which gives the lie to the idea that the BBC’s reporters have any degree of neutrality on this war: ‘7 October was the day Gazans broke out of their dismal prison and exacted terrible revenge. When Israelis, soldiers and civilians alike found themselves on the receiving end of a red mist of pent-up rage.’ Those poor Hamas terrorists. Who could blame them for what they did?
From top to bottom, in both its news and documentary departments, the BBC has a problem. Perhaps a head will roll for this documentary debacle, but the problem is much bigger. The entire organisation needs a root and branch cleansing of this tendency to whitewash a murderous, rapist, Islamist terrorist group. Because I don’t want to pay my licence fee for it any more.
Kemi Badenoch has now joined the fray. From Steerpike at the Spectator:
To the BBC, which has received a rather scathing letter from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch over a controversial documentary on Palestine. The Conservative party leader blasted the BBC 2 film released last week – titled ‘Gaza: How to Survive A Warzone’ – which was narrated by none other than, er, the son of a Hamas official and has questioned whether licence fee payers’ cash has been paid to the terrorist organisation. Dear oh dear…
"There have been repeated and serious allegations of systemic and institutional bias against Israel in the BBC’s coverage of the war. These include repeated drawing of a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas; the seemingly endless revelations of bias and malpractice at BBC Arabic; the views of some staff members expressed candidly on social media; the actions of certain individual journalists, including senior figures; and the practice of interviews where Israeli interlocutors are robustly interrogated and Palestinian officials can speak with little challenge."
In fact, the Tory leader has even threatened to pull her party’s support for the Beeb’s licence fee if there isn’t ‘serious action’ taken over the documentary. Will BBC bigwigs now conduct an inquiry? Stay tuned…
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