Author: Mick Hartley

stituted the word “Israelis” for "Jews" in its translation of interviews with Palestinians, its maker has admitted.

Lyse Doucet has stood by the decision to translate “yahud” as “Israeli” in subtitles on her hour-long documentary Children of the Gaza War, which airs on BBC Two tonight.

The correct translation for “yahud” from Arabic to English is “Jew”.

So any sense of antisemitism – god forbid – is removed, and we're left with a good old anti-imperialist struggle, which all decent BBC-watching people can understand and sympathise with. Likewise jihad. Wouldn't want any hint that this is an Islamic struggle to remove Jews from dar al-Islam, and that this war, this incessant violence, is all about Islam.

;t just make up sexes – and we don't have to agree with Californian bullshit. And we don't have to use "they" and "them" all the time. It's compelled speech, up with which we should not have to put.

At an earlier hearing, the court heard how Castellucci, a cyber security expert who moved to the UK from California, uses the title "Mx" and refers to themselves using they/them pronouns.

While they have undergone surgery and hormone treatment, they told the court they continue to use the name Ryan as it is considered unisex in the US.

Castellucci described the experience of trying to obtain legal documents listing them as non-binary as an "ordeal" and the court heard they worried about possible difficulties related to their gender identity when applying for British citizenship.

They also raised concerns about how their gender identity would be reflected on their death certificate, when their US documents state they are non-binary….

Non-binary is an umbrella term for those those who do not identify as exclusively male or female.

It makes no sense. He is either male or female, whether he likes it or not. How he presents himself on the other hand – with a handlebar moustache, in a frilly frock, dressed as a giant wombat – is entirely up to him. 

Anna Dews, associate solicitor at Leigh Day, the firm which represented Castellucci, said they were considering appealing the ruling.

She said: "Ryan's only registered gender is non-binary. Despite Parliament legislating for the UK to recognise foreign-acquired genders, the courts have so far ruled that non-binary foreign genders do not count.

"Ryan considers that there cannot be true gender equality without recognition of the fact that not all genders are binary."

Again with the meaningless statements. Not all genders are binary? It's confusing gender and sex, and hoping we don't notice. Gender – which use to be a polite term for talking about someone's sex without those nasty crude associations – now refers to people's presentation of themselves around the concepts of masculinity and femininity. It's cultural, not biological. So of course it's not binary. Admittedly it's something approaching binary in a strict Islamic society like Afghanistan – men in turbans and beards, women hidden away in burkas – but we don't do that. We do more or less whatever we feel like – even men with long hair and a lovely girly head tilt.

tic issue, which has taken root at the BBC, with regards to its anti-Israel bias,” she said….

Fresh questions over the documentary come ahead of a planned protest outside the BBC by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism on Tuesday night. The group has said the film is a breach of the BBC’s editorial guidelines and “a betrayal of licence fee payers” and will protest outside Broadcasting House, in central London, from 7pm.

A spokesman for the campaign said: “The BBC has no shame, and Britain has had enough. For over 16 months, we have watched our national broadcaster provide ever more sympathetic coverage to a proscribed terrorist organisation, hiding behind claims of impartiality.

“There is nothing impartial about giving credibility to the claims of terrorists. Providing a platform for terrorists’ propaganda, downplaying their crimes and continuing to refuse to call them terrorists is the BBC putting its thumb on the scale.

“Enough is enough. It is time for the BBC to stop whitewashing terrorism. There must be an independent investigation into its bias in relation to its Middle East coverage.”

e=”padding-left: 40px”>We seek a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender and sexuality. We are open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches.

Not too diverse, obviously. Strong dislike of Jews is a given.

Applicants must hold a PhD in one of the aforementioned fields or one closely related, provide evidence of a publication record and of excellent teaching and mentorship, particularly of undergraduates. Ideal candidates will also have a record of public engagement and community action.

A photo of you holding up a "Stop the Nazi/Zionist genocide now" placard at a Free Palestine demo would go down very well.

plummeting fortunes? Joan Smith at UnHerd:

There’s something about these events that doesn’t add up. According to The Times, Stonewall’s chief executive, Simon Blake, warned last week that up to half of the organisation’s 114 staff might lose their jobs in a “restructuring” exercise, something that has been blamed on Donald Trump’s cuts to foreign aid. Yet American money makes up a relatively small proportion of the organisation’s annual income of almost £7 million.

Stonewall’s financial problems existed long before Trump’s second stint in the White House. Organisations have been leaving its “Diversity Champions” scheme in droves, belatedly realising that the annual fee isn’t good value for money, given that Stonewall’s advice often reflects the law as the organisation would like it to be, rather than it actually is. Private donations and money from wills are falling, and its accounts for 2023-24 showed a deficit of £858,461, up from £574,269.

Local authorities, health trusts and other publicly-funded bodies have discovered that disciplining employees who don’t toe the Stonewall line is likely to land them in expensive — and reputation-damaging — employment tribunals. The organisation has squandered its good name through overreach, piggy-backing the demands of trans activists onto an outstandingly successful campaign for gay rights.

The question that has to be asked is whether Stonewall’s hand-wringing is an attempt to secure access to yet more public funding. Money from UK “Government sources” is one of the few metrics that has increased in recent years, rising from £572,868 to £618,757 last year. That’s almost three times what Stonewall received from the US (£233,583), and several of the donors, including the Scottish and Welsh governments, are as dogmatically attached to gender ideology as ever.

Stonewall has also enjoyed a close relationship with leading members of Keir Starmer’s Cabinet: Health Secretary Wes Streeting was formerly a campaigner for the group, while Women and Equalities Minister Anneliese Dodds seemingly uses its prescriptions as a guide for Labour policy. Trump is a hate figure for many within Starmer’s party, but the Government should not allow him to be a scapegoat for problems Stonewall has brought on itself.

It struggles on then, Stonewall, awaiting that final stake through the heart.

tyle=”font-size: 11pt”>He may also have one eye on domestic politics. He has made no secret of his hatred of Peronism and might hope that research of these documents could lead to further scrutiny on the role of the movement’s founder in the flight of Nazi war criminals to Argentina.

It is unclear what, if anything, will be achieved in terms of accountability. After all, most, if not all, of those involved will surely now be dead. The contribution to the historical record on the other hand could be considerable.

Unfortunately the whole Eichmann issue has been clouded by Hannah Arendt's famous conclusion that he was just a dull bureaucrat following orders – "the banality of evil". As we know now, Eichmann was far from being a mere cog in the machine, but was an enthusiastic and highly intelligent Nazi and, as the article here states, one of the main architects of the Holocaust. His defence in the Jerusalem trial – just following orders – fooled Arendt, but didn't fool the Israelis. 

A reminder that Russia didn’t just start a territorial war on Ukraine, but aims to wipe out Ukraine’s right to exist and have its own identity. https://t.co/d5oM5wIbgW

— peter pomerantsev (@peterpomeranzev) February 25, 2025

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Now, terrifyingly, with the full backing of the US.

The latest from David Collier:

As we learn more about more about the BBC documentary on Gaza.

This is an updated thread on who @bbcnews gave £400,000 to for a propaganda documentary that whitewashes Hamas

— David Collier (@mishtal) February 25, 2025

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

His conclusion:

The BBC paid £400,000 (of our money) – and then aired the sum of these parts to the British public as if it were the truth. Acting as a raw propaganda outfit for a proscribed terrorist group.

This is beyond disgraceful. We cannot just move on. Heads must roll.

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…

prompting questions about his impartiality. In one post from October 7, 2023, he referred to the Hamas attack that day as a “mass breakout,” describing it as “audacious (and yes brutal).” The following day, he called the massacre “the day Gazans broke out of their dismal prison and exacted terrible revenge.”

On October 17, Adams suggested Israeli forces had bombed the al-Ahli hospital, a claim later contradicted by intelligence reports that linked the explosion to a failed rocket launch from within Gaza.

He wrote: “Deeply disturbing reports from Gaza City tonight, with suggestion that 100s of Palestinians have been killed at al-Ahli hospital. Full of the wounded and those seeking shelter from Israel's bombardment. IDF can't yet say if this was an air strike.”

Deeply disturbing reports from inside the BBC.