THE BBC slipped up badly in not having procedures in place to switch the cameras away when the attention-seeking duo Bob Vylan began shouting “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]” from the stage at the Glastonbury Festival last weekend. Producers should have been ready to act swiftly. They had been warned about the prospect of such behaviour after the prosecution of the Irish band Kneecap. Had government cuts not forced the BBC to make hundreds of senior managers redundant in recent years, the music producers at Glastonbury might have had a senior editorial executive present to advise them.
All this is the more surprising given the pusillanimous care the BBC generally takes to avoid offending supporters of Israel in its coverage of the war on Gaza. (Switch to Channel 4 News if you need proof.) The BBC has become more timid since screening a documentary on the lives of children in Gaza, which turned out to be narrated by a child whose father worked for the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza. Now the BBC has pulled a second documentary, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, which Channel 4 — operating under the same public-service remit and Ofcom regulation as the BBC — felt able to show this week.
That said, it is unsurprising that our national broadcaster is so fainthearted, given the propensity of some of Israel’s most vocal supporters to hurl allegations of anti-Semitism against anybody with the temerity to criticise Netanyahu’s reckless policies. There are fine journalists within the BBC, such as the Middle East specialists Jeremy Bowen and Lyse Doucet, who are utterly scrupulous in their impartial truth-telling. Journalists of such unimpeachable integrity must be defended.
Rows about the BBC take the spotlight off the real story. This week, no fewer than 130 of the world’s biggest charities called for the abolition of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, set up by the Israelis, with the backing of the Trump administration, to distribute aid to starving Palestinians. Under the United Nations, there were 400 distribution points for food aid in Gaza; under the Israeli body, there are only four. Some 500 of the people forced to queue there have been killed — and 3000 injured, many of them children — in just one month by gunfire from the IDF, whose soldiers told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that they were ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed civilians.
The formidable skill and intelligence of the Israeli security services has been made clear during its 12-day attack on Iran. There, 60 key military chiefs and nuclear scientists were isolated and assassinated with an extraordinary precision, which stands in stark contrast to Israel’s careless killing of civilians in Gaza. No wonder critics speak of genocide.
Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian farmers continue to be hounded in their own homes by extremist Israeli settlers — many of their settlements illegal under international law. Homes are burned and families are terrified while Israel’s security and police forces stand idly by, or, on occasions, shoot dead unarmed Palestinians.
The Netanyahu policy of creeping annexation is clear, and largely free from the scrutiny of the British media. BBC-bashing is so much easier — and, of course, it fits far better with the business plans of the BBC’s media rivals.
