How I’ve been betrayed by the BBC

We are all being betrayed by the BBC. And it hurts.

I grew up trusting Britain’s publicly funded broadcaster. I got a radio for my 10th birthday and while other kids listened to 70s pop, I had the dial permanently set to Radio 4, the BBC’s news and current affairs station.

To my young ears it was the unfiltered truth from a corporation that proudly displayed “Nation shall speak peace unto nation” on its coat of arms.

The BBC was my third parent, a responsible – and impartial – adult shaping my world view over the airwaves.

Today, as I listen to its coverage of events in Gaza, I feel duped, disillusioned, angry and betrayed.

Full disclosure: I’ve been a journalist all my working life, so I understand the challenges of achieving balance, and as a proud Jew and a proud Zionist, I have made Israel my home since 2014.

That said, all I crave from my once-beloved BBC is a degree of neutrality. All I see, hear and read is blind, unequivocal support for an organization that demands armed struggle to wipe my homeland off the map. An organization that has no respect whatsoever for human life (especially that of its own people) or for the truth.

My criticisms undoubtedly apply to many other news outlets globally. But the BBC feels (or felt) like family.

Airtime is a finite and highly-prized commodity. Gaza gets it in spades. But Sudan, Haiti, Myanmar, Central African Republic, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are all squeezed out, despite the mass killings, sexual violence, forced displacement, and ethnic cleansing.

I have barely heard a BBC bulletin since 7 October 2023 that hasn’t had at least one story (often the lead) about Gaza. And in those 650-plus days I can barely recall hearing a single item about any of the other countries.

It’s obsessed, and as any psychiatrist will tell you, obsessed patients typically see situations and choices as “all good” or “all bad,” with no grey in between.
The BBC is legally required by a Royal Charter of 1927 to provide impartial news and information. But its Gaza obsession pushes aside any sense of objectivity.

Here’s an incident that set the tone for its coverage. Days after the 7 October atrocities there was an explosion in the courtyard of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital, in Gaza city. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry was able, with astonishing speed, to count all the bodies buried in the rubble and announce that 500 people had died.

The BBC’s correspondent Jon Donnison confidently informed his audience: “It’s hard to see what else this could be really given the size of the explosion other than an Israeli air strike or several air strikes.”

But both the Gaza Health Ministry and Jon Donnison were wrong. The death toll was significantly lower. And the culprit turned out to be a rocket fired not by Israeli forces, but by a Palestinian terror group allied to Hamas – a conclusion accepted by Human Rights Watch, not known for supporting Israel.

My point is not that Hamas knowingly lied. You’d expect that. It’s not even that the BBC got it wrong. All news gatherers make mistakes. It’s the fact that, in the moment, the BBC reporter assumed Israel must be to blame.

And so it has been ever since. Every jaundiced report contributes to what has, sadly, become the “mainstreaming” of antisemitism. The BBC has become so blind to its prejudice against Israel that it failed to recognize what was happening at Glastonbury. They’d have pulled the plug in a flash if the Bob people had chanted death to gays, blacks, opticians or diving examiners, instead of the soldiers defending Israel.

The bottom line now is that antisemitism at the BBC has now become institutionalized. In news reports Hamas says, while Israel claims. Always. There’s no need to confuse the listener with nuance because there’s a good guy and a bad guy.

It’s just that, in our upside-down world, the “good guy” happens to be proscribed terror organization and the “bad guy” is a civilized democracy that happens to have a majority Jewish population.

The “good guy” believes in taking hostages, embedding itself among civilians, deliberately endangering the lives of men, women and children, stealing food from aid trucks, teaching martyrdom as the highest possible achievement, ignoring the wellbeing of the 2.3m people it governs, building a vast network of terror tunnels, crushing free speech, discriminating against women and pushing gay people off tall buildings.

The “bad guy” has been dragged into a war it never wanted, and is fighting it with one hand firmly tied behind its back. Victory for Israel would be security and the return of 50 hostages still being held in Gaza.

Victory for Hamas is exactly what it has today – the BBC and the rest of the world’s media parroting its lies and blaming Israel for the death and destruction for which it, not Israel, is responsible.

The BBC knows full well that Hamas is a death cult that celebrates martyrdom and forces its own people to suffer to defame its enemy.

But it’s prepared to overlook those inconvenient truths because the alternative would be to give Israel the fair coverage it deserves. So much for nation speaking peace unto nation.