(LifeSiteNews) — A May 29 report reaffirms years of British media soft-pedaling of Israel’s war crimes due to the existence of a powerful Zionist lobby in the United Kingdom.
Building on recent studies of pro-Israeli bias in British coverage of the ongoing genocide, an anonymous source at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) says its reporting routinely favors Israel at the expense of the Palestinian perspective – and of the facts themselves.
“Fundamentally the BBC is hamstrung by its particular proximity to British establishment power and, by extension, the Zionist cause,” said the source in a report published by U.K. leftwing outlet Jacobin.
“That, unfortunately, is why we have failed in our reporting on Gaza — and will continue to do so.”
Yet the issue is not itself news. Reports going back almost twenty years confirm a long standing pro-Israel bias in Britain and its broadcasting, vouchsafed by a powerful and secretive Zionist lobby.
Double standards
The failures include “double standards” favoring Israel, a willingness to believe unevidenced claims made by pro-Israel guests, and the absence not only of the historical context, but of the “Palestinian perspective” itself.
Two recent investigations into this alleged bias were cited in the report. OpenDemocracy published one in December, which said, “[t]he Palestinian perspective is effectively absent from the coverage,” explaining that “[t]he BBC’s coverage locates the origin of the conflict in the recent actions of Hamas — but Palestinians see themselves as resisting the actions of Israel stretching back decades.”
A second study, conducted by data scientists, “analyzed a total of six hundred articles and four thousand live-feed posts on the BBC website between October 7 and December 2,” according to the source, and found “a systematic disparity in how Palestinian and Israeli deaths are treated.”
The lexis – the choice of language in describing deaths – also showed a strong bias.
Shocking terms like “massacre,” “murder,” and “slaughter” were almost exclusively applied to Israeli deaths. By contrast, the far larger number of Palestinian deaths caused by Zionist since 1947, with a high percentage being women and children, are routinely passively stated with words like “died” or “killed” – omitting the culprit.
LifeSiteNews has reported recently on how pro-Israel groups consistently seek to undermine official death tolls coming out of Gaza.
READ: Pro-Israel groups attempt to downplay Gaza death toll by manipulating UN figures
The anonymous report cites one obvious case where the BBC has permitted these tactics. In a February segment on its HardTalk show, the source says “Israeli propagandist Mark Regev… was allowed to easily pivot to a well-rehearsed denunciation,” repeating the lie that the major relief agency in Gaza UNRWA is effectively an arm of Hamas.
“Hamas would have you believe that there are a lot of casualties… that Israel is killing children… that’s the story that Hamas wants,” Regev said, saying that stating the fact that Israel has killed children is simply assisting terrorism.
The source contrasts this with an April 28 interview conducted by Norwegian TV, which directly challenged the baseless claims of Israeli government spokesman David Mencer.
Journalist Yama Wolasmal does not permit Mencer, the former head of the British Zionist group Labour Friends of Israel, to make false claims without challenge – as Mencer was permitted to do so by the BBC on March 27.
Wolasmal says instead, “The international community is not buying what the Israeli government is saying.”
He challenges Mencer’s claims, all staples of Israeli propaganda, that “Thirteen thousand Hamas operatives have been killed, hospitals have been used as control and command bases…. UNRWA workers took part in terror attacks…” and asks bluntly, “Why should the world believe your side of the story when you keep pushing unfounded claims?”
Breaking Point also ran a report 3 months ago, as did many other independent media sources, noting that most legacy media typically ran with the Israeli accusations against UNRWA without making any effort to verify them. The Breaking Point hosts noted there is no evidence to substantiate the Zionist claims, as frequently happens with Israeli accusations against any who criticize or oppose its actions.
A rising death toll
How many children has Israel killed? See some of the facts for yourself. This infographic from May 29 shows that to date, 15,000 children have been killed by Israel, which has dropped nearly 80 thousand tons of explosives on the Gaza strip.
After only eight weeks, the bombardment of Gaza was described on December 6 by the Irish Times as “One of history’s heaviest conventional bombings.” It has since intensified, with the New York Times reporting in May that U.S.-supplied 2000 lb. bombs “were responsible for some of the worst attacks on Palestinian civilians since the war in Gaza began.”
The latest shameful attempt to account for this horrific slaughter is that the civilian population which Israel intensely bombs, including in United Nations “safe zones,” is a “human shield” for Hamas.
This claim was made by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on October 12, 2023.
It has been repeated ever since, despite being demonstrably false.
In a moving interview, Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian anesthesiologist and emergency medicine specialist, relates the horror he has seen and confirms the deliberate destruction of almost the entire medical system in Gaza.
The doctor, “who has made frequent trips since 1982 to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza to help deliver urgent medical care to Palestinian victims of Israeli atrocities,” says there has been no evidence for the excuses given by the IDF for these attacks. In addition to all the destroyed hospitals, he said “130 ambulances have been destroyed and 493 healthcare workers have been killed by the Israeli forces in Gaza.”
Mass graves, bombed hospitals, torture
With the atrocities increasing in size and severity, the anonymous BBC source said even the U.K. state broadcaster had shifted from “haranguing” Palestinian guests, and from compelling them to “vigorously endorse Israel’s ‘right to defend itself.’”
Citing “…the discovery of mass graves at Gaza’s Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals, where Israeli soldiers conducted operations,” the source notes that Israel had likely committed war crimes at the site of two of the 36 hospitals it has bombed, rendering them inoperable.
“Some of the bodies retrieved had their hands tied. Some showed evidence of torture.”
Despite this, the source claims the BBC continues to favor Israeli and pro-Israel guests – highlighting the continuing “double standard.”
“In the light of these facts, one might be forgiven for supposing that every Israeli spokesperson on the BBC would be pushed to provide answers on this in the same uncompromising manner as that faced by Palestinian supporters in the immediate aftermath of October 7.”
The reason for this is a culture of fear at the U.K. state broadcaster. It is allied to a Zionist government, with a Zionist opposition poised to take power. On October 11, U.K. Labour leader Keir Starmer implied on live television that Israel has the right to commit war crimes in its siege on Gaza.
‘Living in fear’ of UK Zionist lobby
The source continues, naming also the fear of the Israeli government’s influence in the U.K.
“BBC editors live in fear of being reprimanded by their superiors, alerted to some perceived injustice or other by the ever-vigilant Israeli embassy.”
READ: Mossad is intimidating the international community into silence over Israel’s horrific crimes
The source recommends the example of other outlets and journalists as a model to replace the BBC’s “fictional credo of impartiality.”
“We should look to the examples of Al Jazeera and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. We should even look… to Piers Morgan.”
The source concludes that the reason for the BBC bias is the ideological capture of the British state and its broadcaster by “the Zionist cause.”
“That, unfortunately, is why we have failed in our reporting on Gaza — and will continue to do so.”
READ: Israel is censoring and killing journalists bravely covering their atrocities in Gaza
A long history of pro-Israel bias
Ten years ago, Jewish journalist Mira Bar-Hilel asked, “Why did our government ignore the slaughter in Gaza, and continue to sell arms to Israel?”
In her piece for the U.K.’s Independent, she said “The answer lies in two of Britain’s influential pressure groups.”
You have probably never heard of the fact that in 2014, Israel was engaged in the same kind of routine atrocities as it is committing today. That is due, Bar-Hilel says, to the existence of “the British equivalent of AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee]” – which dominates both main parties of government.
She writes of her shock at this discovery.
“I never imagined there was an AIPAC equivalent here in the U.K., not least because there are only around 250,000 Jews in this country – 0.5 per cent of the population.”
She also notes that its invisibility is a strategy itself.
“Another reason is that it deliberately keeps a vastly lower profile. But sheltering under the harmless-sounding titles of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) the pro-Israel lobby is incredibly powerful.”
She noted that leading British Zionists had taken to the airwaves to complain of “rising antisemitism,” as Israel killed hundreds of children, bombing schools in what the UN called at the time “a moral outrage.”
What is more, one leading pro-Israel journalist claimed the “antisemitism” was due to an insufficiently visible Zionist lobby in the U.K.
“Writing for The Jewish Chronicle last week, columnist David Aaronovitch addressed the alleged rise in anti-Semitism in this country and attributed it to the Jews being ‘too quiet and too separate up till now.’ He suggested a Jewish lobby would be a great idea, and starting with ‘Jews beginning to get themselves kippah-ed up and sitting in the audience at Question Time.’”
Responding to this, Bar-Hilel said, “It made me laugh, but coming from a highly reputable writer, it also made me cry.”
She began to ask herself why an extremely powerful lobby would cry persecution at any public attention directed at the actions of its client, and how it could then escape any consequences – by increasing its own power.
“It also made me wonder why this was the case, and also why the all-powerful nuclear-armed State of Israel was asserting itself over the Palestinians so murderously, killing hundreds of children without as much as a slap on the wrist from the British government.”
This line could have been written today, as then-Prime Minister David Cameron – a self-professed Zionist – refuses now as Foreign Secretary as he did then to halt arms supplies to Israel amidst a massacre.
Bar-Hilel’s report is depressingly familiar, noting the bombing of UNRWA facilities and unpunished Israeli war crimes. It does inform the reader that the U.K. is home to “the largest organization in western Europe dedicated to the cause of the people of Israel,” the Conservative Friends of Israel. A 2009 investigation found half of Conservative MPs were members. Channel 4’s report which revealed this fact, very seldom repeated since, was of course labeled “antisemitic.”
The “hard to find” documentary can be seen here.
Conservative Friends of Israel is partnered, of course, by Labour Friends of Israel, whose former chief now works for the Israeli government as shown above.
READ: How the ‘antisemitism industry’ became the biggest threat to freedom in the West
Almost a decade ago, Bar-Hilel’s conclusion remains relevant today. Whenever Israel is in the news for committing atrocities, claims of anti-Semitism arise. Calls are made for a stronger Zionist presence in the media, and laws are passed – as they have been in the U.S. and U.K. – to attach criminal penalties to an ever-expanding definition of anti-Semitism which now includes the Gospel of Our Lord.
“Maybe it is for this covert use of power that has led Aaronovitch to wonder where the U.K.’s Jewish lobby is. But for many of us, it is becoming clearer and clearer that it has been here all along.”