Mick Hartley

This is how BBC bias works.

In explaining Israel’s targeting of military infrastructure in Iran over the weekend, @BBC News offered a backgrounder, with the anchor saying: “Let us just remind you now of exactly how we got here.”

She proceeded to say that “Tensions rose in… pic.twitter.com/yO9GIdwKKZ

— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) October 28, 2024

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In explaining Israel’s targeting of military infrastructure in Iran over the weekend, @BBC News offered a backgrounder, with the anchor saying: “Let us just remind you now of exactly how we got here.”

She proceeded to say that “Tensions rose in Lebanon last month” due to the explosion of pagers that had been purchased by Hizballah and distributed to its members.

Apparently 10,000 unprovoked rockets fired by Hizballah at the Jewish state, causing the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israeli civilians from their homes for over a year now, were not relevant to “how we got here”, because it all began when Israel randomly decided to blow up pagers.

Of the pagers, the BBC said that “some [were] owned by members of Hizballah.”

The pagers, the BBC implies, were not purchased by Hizballah and distributed to its members, but rather found their way to Lebanon somehow and a few just happened to be in the possession of Hizballah members when they exploded.

What a coincidence!

She goes on to say: “Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated in Israeli air strikes on southern Beirut.”

So far in this backgrounder, Israel has been doing everything, and Hizballah and Lebanon have done nothing at all. The viewer is presented with no possible motivation for Israeli action, which is portrayed as unilateral and unwarranted.

Moreover, Hizballah is not described as a terrorist organisation. Whatever it is, it just has a leader who was assassinated by Israel for reasons that are apparently unfathomable. Once again, the BBC’s failure to describe Hizballah as a terrorist group is not impartial but inaccurate. No context is provided for why this organisation, which began firing rockets at Israeli homes on 8th October in solidarity with Hamas, might have provoked a response from the Jewish state.

“Three days later, Israeli tanks crossed the border into southern Lebanon opening up a new offensive in the conflict.”

Another ‘bad’ Israeli military action, with seemingly no cause, in which it is Israel that expands conflict rather than Hizballah terrorists who created the northern front in this war in the first place.

“Within hours Iran had launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles towards Israel.” Iran is presented not as the financier and puppet-master of Hamas and Hizballah terrorists, which it is, but as a third party merely showing solidarity with Lebanon after Israel attacked for no reason whatsoever.

Of the Iranian missile attack – the largest barrage of ballistic missiles in history – the BBC is at pains to point out that “Most were intercepted”. But Israel, it seems, decided to target Iran for no good reason anyway.

This is how the BBC understands this war.

Our polling shows, year after year, that British Jews believe that media bias against Israel fuels antisemitism.

When the Jewish state is falsely portrayed, as in this BBC report, as needlessly aggressive and the methods and motivations of its enemies are whitewashed, it invites viewers to view Jews negatively and gives licence to antisemites to attack them.

In this surge of antisemitism in Britain, the BBC is not innocent.

We will be writing to the BBC.

Please also sign our petition calling on all broadcasters to call Hizballah what they are: terrorists: http://antisemitism.org/HizballahAreTerrorists