Comment for The Campaign against Antisemitism

Whilst Googling for "BBC antisemitism", so as to draw some light on what I consider the deep prejudice against Israel in some, but perhaps not all elements at the 'Beeb', I came across a very erudite pledge by one Steven Hoffman. Here is my entire contribution (only short comments are allowed on that site, but links to longer ones such as this one are encouraged.)

Stephen-

Thank you so much for bringing attention to this pressing problem. I also think anti-semitism is very prevalent and not always immediately obvious due to political correctness and the fact that, thankfully, there are nowadays also a lot of people who strongly oppose antisemitism, so it has to hide itself more. One of the ways it appears to do this is by not just criticising Israel, which is legitimate, but by doing so in an extreme and unfair manner. You can tell by the way people phrase things and the way their face srews up.

After seeing the way the BBC covered the war in Lebanon, I was left with the sickly impression that they cared less for the ruined lives in the region, than for using the situation as propaganda 'ammunition', to undermine Israel. They tried to present Israeli strikes as random, ignoring the fact that they were on sites from which deadly missiles were launched or guided, or at least thought to be such. Now this may be, as many have reported, because they were actually set up by Hezbollah, who organised rushing ambulances and got people to pose with the rubble, even hinting at death-threats to make reporters toe the line-

'Green Helmet Man' staging the scene

(To be fair the BBC did after a time have reporters covering the situation in Israel and interviewing people there, though these were more like normal reporting than propaganda pieces.)

This is all not to defend needless harm to civilians, but to draw attention to the way the reporting was twisted to undermine Israel rather than present a balanced view. Why does the BBC and so much of the mass media so often do this? Why can't they show a natural respect for Israel for managing in such a difficult situation, or even show a desire to make things better? Isn't this extreme lack of sympathy for Israel a kind of anti-semitism in itself? For example, your comment about Israel offering to help develop Lebanon, which pretty much proves they would like it to be a successful country, just so long as it isn't being used as a base by Iranian-sponsored groups like Hezbollah as a base, didn't appear in a single report.

I really think that for some reason they and many others, want to undermine Israel and try to present as somehow acceptable truly vicious regimes and organisations in the Middle East such as Hezbollah, which care nothing for their own people (if they did, they wouldn't set up bases amongst civilians). The reason I suspect the BBC does this is to appeal to mainstream conservative Arab opinion and to people who don't care about Israel. It's not to help British people understand the crisis and it's not to do their job well. I'm not saying everyone at the BBC is antisemitic but some of them must be, and this bothers me a lot.

Let's not forget that as a modern democracy Israel could really help the people in the region and use her energy in a positive way this way. All this demonising of Israel by the Arab dictatorial regimes is just a waste of time and energy and I hope the people in the region finally wake up to this. They could be going to university and enjoying life, instead of being subjected to a stream of medievalist, hate-saturated propaganda. This is the real story of the Middle-East.

So once again, Steven, thanks for exposing these issues to the light.