Time to Shut Down the BBC
The BBC’s anti-Israel bias has been fully documented over the years. It never misses an opportunity to condemn the Jewish State even though it has been forced on a number of occasions to issue retractions when the facts proved that it had been duped by Palestinian propaganda.
Day after day during the Gaza War it reported the Hamas Health Authority’s figures for the number of Palestinian casualties as though they could be relied upon for truth and accuracy knowing full well that Hamas had been classified, among others by the United Kingdom, as a terrorist organization and had used its hospitals as command posts and sanctuaries in their war against Israel.
There is even documented evidence of Israeli hostages having been dragged into Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip following the Hamas pogrom in which innocent, unarmed civilians, including even babies, were massacred on October 7, 2023.
Back in 2006, a Report was commissioned to adjudicate on the impartiality of BBC reporting of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict after a slew of complaints and concocted scandals. The Report concluded that the BBC had failed to “consistently give a full and fair account of the conflict”.
Michael Prescott, a former independent adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee, recently stood down and sent an internal memo setting out his concerns about the Corporation’s reporting. In his dossier, he set out extensive evidence of the BBC’s attitude towards Israel.
Unfortunately, the BBC remains incalcitrant. An indication of its bias is evidenced in its report this week carrying the headline: “Children in Gaza return to school after years without formal education”. It states that ” Of the Strip’s 658,000 school-aged children, most have had no formal education for nearly two years. During that time, many learned first-hand how hunger, displacement and death can shape their young lives”.
While the Israel Defence Forces repeatedly claimed that Palestinian terrorists used civilian infrastructure including schools to carry out its attacks on Israel (referred to by the BBC as “operations”), the report alleges that “it has rarely provided solid evidence”.
We are told that “Before the war … students learned in fully equipped schools – science labs, computer labs, internet access, educational resources. All of that is gone”. Nowhere in the report is Hamas held responsible for breaking into Israel, killing over 1,000 civilians and taking hundreds hostage, leading to a bloody and tragic war for which the Palestinians were entirely to blame.
Most people reading the report will hold Israel responsible. No wonder that there is so much anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment in the world today when the media, including the BBC, are stoking the fire and fanning the flames! In that sense, they bear some responsibility among other things for the massacre that took place at Bondi beach last month.
The BBC’s report was filed by Shaimaa Khalil, who grew up in Egypt and studied at El Nasr Girls College in Alexandria. Anti-Israel sentiment is widespread in Egypt, with high opposition to the recognition of Israel and frequent anti-Israeli messaging in media and society. Khalil can hardly be viewed as a neutral correspondent.
The British government has now decided to review the BBC’s governance, public obligations and funding as part of the process of renewing its Royal Charter given that the Corporation is primarily funded by the UK’s mandatory television license fee, which totaled nearly £3.8bn. last year.
The BBC was once viewed as a faithful and objective reporter of world events. It was admired and respected as such. Gone are those days. One might then well ask why the British taxpayer should continue to foot the bill.
