Shocker: BBC Admits Reporter’s Anti-Israel Bias
In my research I found the draft of a letter I had written to Helen Boaden of the BBC a year ago. In the wake of the BBC Trust’s adjudication I need say no more; it speaks for itself:
May 8, 2008
Dear Ms. Boaden,
I would like to share my views with you on a recent BBC broadcast, Jeremy Bowen’s program The Birth of Israel on BBC2 May 4.
I was astounded to hear him repeatedly purveying the revisionist anti-Zionist story of rape, pillage, murder, and expulsions by rampaging mandate-period Jews. He never mentioned in 1947 that the tormented and starving refugees from the Holocaust made up that merciless and barbaric army. Many were turned back by British forces but the remaining teenage brigades fought fearlessly. In 1948 fledgling Israel managed to defeat five truly rampaging Arab armies. …
Bowen never once explained the evolution of Zionism: Why is it that he seemed blissfully unaware of the legacy of European and English anti-Semitism (I stress “English” because Jews have flourished for centuries in Scotland and were not expelled from Scotland during the English expulsion of 1290)? Why did Bowen make it look as if a group of avaricious Jews in 1897 decided to declare Zionism a movement and just take the Arabs’ land from under their noses? …
The various Jewish charities that by then existed were formed to combat the poverty and persecution the Jews suffered across Europe. Likewise, did he ever mention the huge expulsion of Jews from their homes across Europe during the Nazi occupations as far and wide as the eye of Eichmann could see? Why did he not mention the sheer terror Jews felt even in the U.S., Canada, South America, and Africa after the Wannsee “Final Solution” Conference of 1940, during which Eichmann drew up his list of 14 million due for annihilation? What I found iniquitous in Bowen’s script was a line about the Arabs “knowing nothing” about the Nazi genocide. They knew enough about Jew-hatred to join the SS and follow the grand mufti to Berlin to join German brigades to help in the Final Solution!
Jeremy Bowen never once mentioned the Dreyfus case and the publication of J’Accuse by Emile Zola, a Christian, who had had enough of European Jew-baiting. His screed inspired the Zionist movement and its adherents were non-religious Jews like the businessman Ahad Ha’am Theodor Herzl, the Austrian chemist and author. Herzl and others explored Uganda, Madagascar, Baja California, and Palestine as possible homelands. Whilst this was going on, a million Jews left the Pale of Settlement in Russia and neighboring countries and went to South Africa, Britain, and the U.S. …
Jeremy Bowen may not be an anti-Semite but his litany follows a pattern I encounter in European and Middle Eastern academia, which cherry-picks Jewish history and portrays to the world a vicious, murderous wave of humanity that was determined to displace Arabs and steal their homes. Jeremy Bowen is guilty of portraying the early Zionists as violent, merciless, and thieving, an image Joseph Goebbels promoted in Germany about Jews. …
My grandparents in Philadelphia put nickels into the little “Blue Boxes” carried by Jewish children to raise money for a homeland; the state was formed legitimately with UN approval. Every penny that has gone to Israel in the past sixty years from charities has been used to build scientific and agricultural institutions, schools, ballet centers, opera houses, concert halls, libraries, and theaters.
Why does Jeremy Bowen not ask why the Palestinians are living in squalor despite the billions poured in from the EU, UN, and U.S. for the past fifty years? Where does this money go? …
I urge you to commission a program celebrating the birth of a remarkable little nation the size of Wales that is a bastion of gay rights, press freedom, scientific brilliance, and cultural greatness. And by the way, did Bowen mention the Indian conductor Zubin Mehta, who has been the music director of the Israel Philharmonic for thirty years? Four major wars and sixty years of hatred from backward neighboring Arab countries — I challenge the BBC to tell the true story of the birth of the tiny Jewish state.
Yours sincerely,
(Miss) Carol Gould
The BBC has always been anti-semitic, ask anyone that works there! Its like that because its full of Lefties who have no moral compass. They see the Arabs as a third world underdog oppressed by Western imperialist colonialist invaders, when the opposite is the truth. Thier hatred of the Jew is greater than their loathing of the killing of gays, the oppression and honour killing or women, or even the military training and arming of children.
For the BBC history began in 1948, not 1917 or 1919 or 1922 when real International Law was created. Their ignorance is displayed when they parrot chapter 6 resolutions as International Law, which they are not!
What the BBC conveniently forgets is that Britain teamed up with Israel to invade Egypt when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, a British possession, back in 1956. How hypocritical can the BBC get? as bad as the tax it imposes upon the British public for its own support.
Thanks Carol for reminding me why I refused to pay my “BBC bill.”
It’s time to vote with your feet. If you don’t love Israel, if you are antisemitic or believe that Israel isn’t the homeland of the Jewish people, then Join the boycott! Do it today.
DoubleTapper
DoubleTapper@gmail.com
DoubleTapper, blogging on Guns Politics Defense from Israel
The British know they’re paying taxes to support BBC. Americans often forget. Action should be taken to remove BBC programming from publicly funded stations here in the US.
Well done Ms Gould! The entire BBC is biased, not just the objectionable Mr Bowen and their own internal enquiry proved it – although they refused to publish it after spending 200,000 pounds! (The Balen Report)
Their bias is even more incidious than it first appears since they have succeeded in convincing an entire nation that the victim is the instigator of violence. Shame on them!!!
I think actor John Malkovich had the definitive statement on Robert Fisk.
Hard to improve on it.
However, it does lead me to a fairly obvious question:
If so many people in the UK hate the BBC, why doesn’t someone organize a boycott of the license fee, and be willing to publicly go to jail for it?
The Chief Rabbi is too much of a wimp to do that; but might there be some prominent Tory politician or conservative journalist (Melanie Phillips, Stephen Pollard, Richard Littlejohn and Peter Hitchens all come to this American mind) willing to risk it?
And Carol, if not them, what about you?
Or you can turn leftie weapons against them and sue them for willful promotion of hatred. Words have consequences. Enough is enough don’t you think?
Every time I see an employee list from the BBC (or credits on who produced/wrote programs), it seems like a huge percentage of the names are Arabic. No wonder they’re anti-Semitic, but one has to wonder what kind of hiring program is in place for them to end up with *sooooooo* many Arabs on their staff.
That letter at the end was an epic pwn of the entire anti-Israel movement
It’s not just the BBC that is virulently anti-semitic; all of Europe is so and has been so for centuries. Post WWII Europe did not “see the light” and become largely tolerant of Jews. Rather, they stopped being PUBLIC anti-semites and became CLOSET anti-semites. All the same biases, prejudices and insults are bandied around when groups who trust each other get together. Let the topic of Israel or Jews come up at a small dinner or cocktail party and if no one reacts, the flood gates will open and all manner of hateful vitriol will pour forth! This is true in Germany (of course), but also anywhere from Austria to Norway and including all of Britain. None are above the name, Anti-Semite.
Yes, this is painting with a broad brush. Yes, there are many individuals who are definitely NOT Anti-Semites and who ARE sympathetic to Israel. But that’s not new; there have always been those who stood against the tide. But the ugly truth is that there is little difference in modern Europe from pre-WWII Europe with regard to common attituedes regarding Jews.
The Muslim world is a diseased old man wasting his last days railing against his condition and blaming his neighbors for his failures. And right there at his heels, barking furiously in unison with him is Europe, his always-faithful, mangy and toothless mongrel.
I think it would be great if the Zionists took over the BBC, the Islamists have been running it for years.
Turnabout is fair play.
Jeremy Bowen may not be an anti-Semite…
He is, though, and he’s not the only BBC “reporter” that is – think of Orla Goebbels (Guerin) or Barbara “weep for Arafat” Plett, fortunately now shipped off to Afghanistan and Africa.
The BBC is not monolithic, and there are some excellent documentaries, including “Six Days that Changed the World” on the six day war. But the place is infected with leftist antisemitism, these days more common that right-wing antisemitism. Jobs are advertised in the Guardian, which says it all.
I believe the BBC even produced a report which found news coverage to be biased against Israel, then conveniently suppressed it. A fight is on in the courts to get it released. If it tells only a small part of the truth, that will be a start.
Carol,
The USA is ready to ignominiously throw the Jews of Israel under the bus too. Depressing.
The BBC is run by the Guardian reading classes for an audience that reads the Daily Mail & the Daily Telegraph. We know that it is biased but are wary of throwing the baby out with the bath water. After all, most of us in the UK read a daily newspaper. We know that they all have their axes to grind and keep that in mind when we read them. The BBC is institutionally biased in favour of socialism. So, in the case of the USA, they will always favour the Democrats. They don’t like the USA because it shows you can do quite well without being socialist. They have a major problem because socialism doesn’t work. In the end, their bias is counter-productive, because people don’t believe anything they say and often just stop listening. Our current government is just the same – no one believes a word they say.
There is a new front to the war against Israel. It is an economic front. The new tactic is to get European governments, and Europeans to boycott Israeli products. Norway has just capitulated to this scheme and has authorized the labeling of any Israeli products with a special sticker. In all fairness, Norwegian products should be boycotted, their consulates and embassies notified why. Turn-about is fair play.
PLEASE BOYCOTT ALL NORWEGIAN PRODUCTS AND LET NORWAY KNOW WHY.
There is a fantastic blog which documents the relentless left wing bias of the BBC on a daily basis, much of it anti-Israel and antisemitic.
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/
“In all fairness, Norwegian products should be boycotted”
Both of them??
Harry
They sell lots of sardines and lox in this country. If we started looking we would find some more. Their GDP isn’t that big, any boycott would hurt them and fast.
now this is a shocker. could it be these liberal leftists r beginning to grow a spine and a conscious