“I think I first really thought about [antisemitism] when I was at a concert with my older sister. I went to see Sabrina Carpenter with her, and we heard Hebrew; we started joining in. Someone, one of the people we’d made friends with, asked, ‘What country are you guys from? Israel?’ An older man overheard it and started screaming, ‘You’ve committed a genocide! You’re killing babies!’ He saw me and my sister sitting there crying, and he just carried on. He didn’t care.”
Those were the words of 16-year-old Libby, a Jewish girl from London, in an interview on May 1 with the British Broadcasting Corporation. Libby spoke with presenter Anna Foster on the BBC’s Radio 4 flagship politics program “Today” just two days after an assailant stabbed two Jewish men in the street in Golders Green, a well-known Jewish neighborhood in North London.
The BBC has dedicated a huge amount of coverage to the latest wave in a stream of antisemitic attacks in the United Kingdom. Too often, however, this coverage has focused on whether the violence and threats targeting British Jews represent simply “misplaced anger” at the actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Some media personalities have even argued that British Jews should not be attacked because the victims’ stance on Israel isn’t known. The unspoken suggestion, of course, is that those who do support Israel may be “fair game.”
Take BBC Newscast presenter Paddy O’Connell’s May 2 framing: “What lies at the heart of it is an argument over when people take their hatred for the actions of the Israeli state to a read-across to behave against Jews. That is the kind of starting point for the problems ... the big error, the big crime, is the read-across to attack Jewish people in Britain assuming you know what they think, assuming you know their political views because they are Jewish.”
There are serious problems with this framing. At CAMERA, we have addressed this victim-blaming stance on multiple occasions. Given the (problematic) belief that violence against Jews in the United Kingdom is simply misplaced anger at Israel, shouldn’t the BBC be more vigilant than ever in platforming unproven allegations against the Jewish state?
If the BBC’s editorial teams truly believe that anger at Israel translates directly into violence against Jews, then surely the country’s national broadcaster should rigorously require proof before reporting anti-Israel allegations as fact and insist on qualifying unproven allegations as such.
Instead, speakers on BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service radio and BBC One TV accused Israel of genocide at least 15 times in the week following the attacks in Golders Green. In most cases, guests leveled the toxic accusation, but on at least one occasion, a BBC correspondent joined the chorus of demonization.
Discussing the next American elections, North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher said on BBC’s “Americast”: “Democratic opinion has shifted dramatically on Israel, so it may not be that controversial to say things about Israel and Netanyahu and genocide the way it would have been in 2020.”
On the public phone-in BBC program “Any Answers?,” presenter Anita Anand failed to challenge a caller named Beverley, who accused Israel of genocide three times in less than two minutes and suggested that the real solution was to “deal with” Israel: “Arresting some protesters for shouting ‘globalize the intifada’ ... does not necessarily equate [to murder]. It means, you know, globalize the resistance against the genocide in Gaza. ... It’s about dealing with the situation in Israel and in Gaza. The thing that really bothers me is the fact that the Israeli regime has done such a good job of saying that anything that is criticism of their state is antisemitic ... it is not anti-Jew, it is anti-Israel.”
Additionally, Green Party Leader Zach Polanski repeatedly accused Israel of genocide on both BBC’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg” on May 3 and BBC’s “Today with Nick Robinson” on May 6. Even in a discussion about local elections, he met no pushback when he alleged: “I think what people have seen in this country is a genocide for two and a half years. ... I think lots of people feel very strongly ... about the fact that there is a reprehensible genocide happening.”
Plurality of opinions and a commitment to impartiality are the keystones of the BBC’s mission. While it is crucial to allow people to tell their side and express themselves, the BBC’s own guidelines require its journalists to clearly identify guests’ unfounded or unproven allegations as unverified or as merely an opinion.
But the BBC has effectively framed the genocide allegation—a new iteration of the ancient medieval blood libel and a form of Holocaust inversion—as fact.
Guests as disparate as “Beverley from Wakefield” and the leader of one of the United Kingdom’s fastest-growing political parties routinely hurl the baseless slur, while the very journalists and presenters who claim that misplaced anger at Israel causes violence against Jews do nothing to clarify or label this as an unfounded allegation.
At the beginning of the week, 16-year-old Libby told the BBC that a man screamed at her that she had committed genocide. The BBC spent the rest of the week telling her attacker that the genocide was real.
The BBC has a unique position in the United Kingdom as an institution built on impartiality and accuracy. The publicly funded broadcaster must take on the responsibility to clearly call out the demonization of Israel and to connect the dots between the “misplaced anger” it covers and the anger it stokes.
