The BBC's problem with Jews

The Economist Intelligence Unit and Freedom House come with divergent, if not opposite ideological baggage: the former is UK-based and liberal-leaning; the latter US-based and distinctly more conservative.  Yet they agree on one thing: the Middle East is the world’s most unfree region.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, based on 60 indicators, awards the Middle East and North Africa an average score of just 3.16 out of 10 – lower even than sub-Saharan Africa. Exclude Israel, with its score of 7.80, and the regional average drops to a mere 2.92.

Freedom House, which assesses political rights and civil liberties using 25 indicators, tells much the same story. On its 100-point scale, the Middle East and North Africa averages just 23.9. Take out Israel, with its score of 73, and the figure falls to 21.3.

By both measures, Israel sticks out – no, not like a sore thumb, but like a lighthouse in a sea of darkness. It is the only country in the Middle East that Freedom House classifies as ‘Free’ and that the Economist Intelligence Unit rates as a democracy – albeit a ‘flawed’ one.

So, when free and fair elections are held in the Jewish state, one would expect Western journalists to applaud – perhaps even to hold them up as an example for the rest of the region to follow.

Especially since – despite the usual prophecies of doom – the elections took place peacefully, with vanishingly few incidents of violence, and relatively minor ones at that.

But some of those Western journalists would sooner bite their tongues off than say anything positive about the Jewish state.

True to its chronic obsession with Israel, the BBC News website devoted ‘live coverage’ to the elections. It even went as far as to place Israel’s parliamentary elections (population 10 million, GDP $720 billion) on a par with elections to the US Congress (population 343 million, GDP $32,400 billion). Both elections – the BBC declared – could have

“profound consequences for the world”.

Yet, throughout its coverage, the BBC seemed rather less interested in celebrating the peaceful exercise of democracy than in dwelling on “polarisation” and portraying Israeli society as “split”.

In an article entitled “Israel's election deadlock is a sign of the country's deep divisions”, the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent James Landale offered this rather undiplomatic assessment:

“The risk is that this election, instead of putting Israel on a new path, has instead raised further doubts about what it is that unites its citizens. What are the common factors that bind this complex, varied collection of peoples into one polity?”

So there we are: in the Jewish state, the BBC views elections not as an opportunity, but as a risk.

And then comes this:

“Autocratic governments, which are growing in number, have long criticised democracies for producing weak and temporary governments, often fragile coalitions that struggle to hold together, let alone deliver what the people wanted.”

Is autocracy, I wonder, the BBC’s institutional recommendation for managing the ‘risk’ posed by democratic elections?  Or are these just the idle philosophical ruminations of a fifth-rate journalist – which, incredibly, a BBC editor has deemed fit to publish?

James Landale, BBC diplomatic correspondent, reporting on the elections in Israel.

Of course, in a democracy journalists are free to write whatever they wish – even to disparage the very democracy that grants them that freedom.  But BBC journalists are not mere journalists: they are – in a sense – public servants, paid largely out of the public purse.

The Royal Charter requires the BBC to reflect British culture and values in its output. One would have thought that those values include freedom and democracy…

Indeed, it seems that the BBC thought so too: its own Editorial Guidelines explicitly state that

“Impartiality does not mean detachment from fundamental democratic values.”

In other words, the BBC is not required to maintain a pretence of ‘impartiality’ between democracy and tyranny – presenting the shortcomings of the former alongside the supposed ‘advantages’ of the latter, as though the two were morally equivalent.

Elsewhere in its various rules and regulations, the BBC further clarifies that

“the democratic path is better than repression, corruption, discrimination and the restriction of these rights.”

Someone should perhaps tell James Landale – he obviously did not get that memo.

Or perhaps he thinks that it doesn’t apply to Jews.

Democratic processes, Jim dear, are by definition adversarial.  People argue – passionately – about what is best for their country.  That’s not a flaw of democracy; it’s the very essence and strength of democracy.

You wish to see division and split societies? Look at France, where political protests have degenerated into violent street clashes and looting – leaving dozens injured and more than a thousand arrested.

The BBC has reported extensively on these incidents. Yet, even confronted with such outbursts of violence, its journalists do not describe France as a deeply divided society with no national glue.

Nor does the BBC make such assessments about its own country – the United Kingdom – even when Scotland and Wales are flirting with secession and Northern Ireland with constitutional overhaul.

But peaceful elections in Israel? Apparently, those are a sign of deep ‘polarisation’ and societal division!

When it comes to the Jewish state, not just elections, but even diversity – another purported British and democratic value – becomes a flaw. It gives the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent reason to express “further [!!!] doubts about what it is that unites its citizens”.  For the BBC, Israel – unlike France or the UK – may not even be a nation, but merely a “complex, varied collection of peoples”.  Who, hence, may not be worthy of a “polity” – i.e. a state.

Unlike the Palestinians, of course.  While Arab opposition to Zionism has a longer history, the Palestinian Arabs’ claim to distinct peoplehood and their demand for a separate nation-state only crystallised into their present political form in the second half of the 20^th century.  Even then, those claims were less than crystal clear: while the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence proclaims the rights of the Palestinian people, it also describes Palestine as “an integral and indivisible part of the Arab nation, at one with that nation in heritage and civilization”; it calls the other Arabs “compatriots“.

Needless to say, the Palestinian claims of peoplehood are not without opponents (past and present), including among Arabs and Palestinians themselves.

And if we are to talk about political division… among Palestinians, political differences between the ‘secular’ Fatah and the Islamist Hamas have boiled over into civil war followed by political and territorial separation.

Yet this has never caused the BBC to question Palestinian peoplehood or their entitlement to a nation-state of their own. In fact, contesting those claims is, in the Corporation’s view, the hallmark of extremism – if not of sheer heresy.

In contrast, the State of Israel has a track record of nearly 80 years of uninterrupted, stable democratic governance, complete with free and fair elections, lively but largely non-violent public political debate and peaceful transitions of power.

And yet, the BBC has, apparently, no qualms about questioning the very identity of its people and their entitlement to a nation-state.

The Palestinians are just one example.  In Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, sectarian wars have caused hundreds of thousands of casualties and millions of refugees.  I.e., a bit more than inconclusive elections in Israel.  Yet never has the BBC suggested that the Lebanese, Syrians and Iraqis are not real nations but “complex, varied collection of peoples” who perhaps should not share “one polity”.

Simply put, the BBC is not in the habit of casting such aspersions on any people or any state – except in the case of Jews and the Jewish state.

So this isn’t a complaint about lack of impartiality. The BBC isn’t guilty of pro-Palestinian bias or merely of imbalance in its reporting. Nor should we call this ‘double standards’.

James Landale’s article is an attempt at ‘soft’ denial of Jewish peoplehood and of the Jewish right to self-determination. But we should not allow the BBC to get away with confining the problem to one article and one journalist: this isn’t a marginal blog, but a large news organisation with strong editorial controls.

Nor is this the only problematic article; the entire BBC coverage is discriminatory. There isn’t much difference between the output of the various BBC journalists on Israel – because this is an institutional issue, deeply embedded in the Corporation’s culture, in its current organisational DNA.

Nor is this confined to Israel. In November 2021, Jewish children celebrating Chanukah were subjected to an antisemitic attack on a London bus. The BBC was the only media outlet that somehow ‘heard’ an ‘anti-Muslim slur’ coming from the victims. Even when evidence emerged that the supposed slur might actually have been a Hebrew cry for help, the BBC doubled down on its accusation. It even employed professional translators – at considerable cost to the public – to try to ‘demonstrate’ (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) that its version was correct.  Ofcom subsequently found significant editorial failings.

Earlier that year, BBC Politics Live invited four non-Jewish panellists to debate whether Jews should count as an ethnic minority – or whether their successful integration into British public life meant they no longer needed the protection afforded to other minorities. Apparently, Jewish minority status – and only Jewish minority status – is a matter for the BBC to dispute.

BBC Politics Live, 1 March 2021: 4 non-Jewish panellists discussing whether Jews should be considered an ethnic minority

And just days ago, the BBC itself reported that it had paid £400,000 to Lucie Kon, an Oscar-winning former BBC producer who alleged that colleagues had described Zionists as ‘evil’ and questioned her ability to exercise impartial judgement because she was Jewish. The BBC rejected her allegations of antisemitism, while acknowledging unspecified ‘shortcomings’ in its treatment of her.

From its reporting of antisemitic attacks, through questioning Jewish minority status, to its treatment of Jewish employees – the BBC clearly has a problem with Jews.

The BBC rejects the vast majority of complaints about impartiality. It will ignore and – if forced to take a position – reject my accusation. But prejudice and discrimination do not have to be intentional or even conscious; indeed, they are often subliminal.

In the words of the Macpherson Report:

“[Institutional racism] can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping…”

Written in 1999 about the Metropolitan Police, these words fit today’s BBC like a glove.

The BBC is institutionally antisemitic.

The Jew, the Jew, shalt thou pursue?

In a statement to the House of Commons on 8 September 2026, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced that His Majesty’s Government would introduce a ban on imports into Britain of goods produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria.

Much has already been said about this new measure.  The Palestinian Ambassador expressed satisfaction, while implying also that it was too little, too late.

Critics of the ban have generally focused on its effectiveness and its potential consequences for the United Kingdom.

Former Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel wrote that the measures were “counter-productive to achieving peace and a two-state solution”.

Current Shadow Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat, on the other hand, focused on their potential consequences for Britain’s national security, pointing to the importance of Israeli intelligence cooperation in preventing terrorist attacks in the UK.

Of course, the UK is a sovereign country, and its Government is entitled to propose legislation governing its foreign trade — even legislation that may prove ineffective, unwise or harmful to Britain’s security or economic interests.

But there is a fundamental problem with the proposed legislation: it is profoundly and blatantly discriminatory.

Consider a simple parable.

The legal speed limit on British motorways is 70 miles per hour. It is widely understood, however, that exceeding it by two or three miles per hour will not normally result in enforcement action.

Imagine that one day the Government announces new regulations requiring the police to fine black drivers whenever they exceed 70 mph — even by a single mile per hour — while leaving enforcement against everybody else unchanged.

The Government could defend the measure by pointing out that, according to its understanding of the law, driving at 71 mph is illegal. It could cite road-safety evidence.  It could remind us that black drivers have no legal right to exceed the speed limit.

Those claims may all be true.  But they are also beside the point.

The problem would not be that the Government’s measure was ineffective, difficult to enforce or potentially harmful in its consequences. It would be that the Government had selected one category of offender for punishment while declining to apply the same rule to others committing the same offence in similar circumstances.

 

Now let’s go back to ‘the settlements’.

The UK Government views the West Bank as Palestinian territory ‘occupied’ by Israel; consequently, it regards ‘Jewish settlements’ in that territory, including East Jerusalem, as illegal under international law.  It points at international courts, organisations and other states sharing that position.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with those views is immaterial for the purpose of this analysis.  The issue is that the West Bank is not the only territory which the UK Government regards as ‘occupied’.  And ‘Jewish settlers’ are not the only ‘settlers’.

Take Northern Cyprus.

Britain recognises the Republic of Cyprus as sovereign over the entire island.  Including the northern 40%, which it views as occupied by Turkey since 1974.  The European Court of Human Rights has likewise expressly referred to Turkey’s ‘occupation’ of Northern Cyprus.

It is a widely acknowledged fact that – encouraged by government incentives – tens of thousands of settlers from mainland Turkey have since moved there.

The European Parliament has explicitly condemned Turkey’s attempts to alter the demographic balance of Cyprus (an EU member state) through what it called a policy of ‘illegal settlement’.

In a resolution supported by the UK, the UN Security Council described attempts to settle an area of Northern Cyprus as ‘inadmissible’.

Yet Britain’s new ‘ban on settlement goods’ does not apply to those settlers.  Why not?

 

Then there’s Western Sahara.

In 1975, the International Court of Justice ruled that the former Spanish colony was not part of sovereign Moroccan territory.  Nevertheless – and in defiance of that ruling – Morocco occupied Western Sahara later that year.

Since then, tens of thousands of Moroccans have settled in Western Sahara, drawn by the prospect of higher salaries, tax advantages, subsidies and other government benefits.

Motivated by political interests – rather than truth or morals – the UK refrains from officially calling Western Sahara ‘occupied’, preferring to refer to it as ‘de facto administered’ by Morocco. Still, it does not recognise Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory – and ‘de facto’ is the opposite of ‘de jure’. In other words, Morocco’s ‘administration’ is a reality, but not one based on legal rights.

Political euphemisms notwithstanding, International Law knows no halfway house called ‘de facto administration’. It defines any territory effectively controlled by a state outside its sovereignty and without consent as ‘occupied’.  By default, it assigns the sovereign rights over that territory to its inhabitants – in this case the Sahrawis, whose representatives demand independence.

Yet far from trying to punish or deter the Moroccan settlement enterprise in Western Sahara, the UK Government has quietly facilitated it.

Under the UK–Morocco Association Agreement, products originating in Western Sahara and passing through Moroccan customs benefit from the same preferential trade terms as products from Morocco itself.  The Government confirmed this explicitly in Parliament in May 2025.

So while Britain is now preparing to ban imports from ‘Jewish settlers’ in one ‘occupied territory’, it expressly gives preferential tariff treatment to goods produced by Moroccan settlers in another occupied territory.

The contrast could hardly be starker.

 

Israel often complains of bias and double standards.  But in this instance, the term ‘double standards’ masks the gravity of the facts: this is not merely a biased policy; it is discrimination inscribed in law.

That such a law can even be contemplated in 2026 by the government of a democratic country is deeply concerning.  It is a widely accepted principle of ‘rule of law’ that laws should proscribe offences, not offenders defined by ethnic, religious, national, or even ideological identity.  For instance, anti-terrorism legislation rightly refers to ‘terror acts’ in general – not to ‘Islamic’ or even ‘Islamist’ terrorism – even though some of that legislation had been triggered by acts of Islamist terror.

Yet the law proposed by the new Labour Government targets a particular ‘offender’, not a general offence: it is not a law against ‘settlements in occupied territory’, but one targeting only ‘Jewish settlements in the West Bank’. To return to the earlier analogy, it does not punish speeding on the motorway; it punishes black drivers speeding on the motorway.  This is the epitome of an unjust, discriminatory law.

Of course, the British Government will claim that the West Bank is different from Northern Cyprus and Western Sahara. And of course it is, just as far-right terrorism is different from Islamist terror.  They are all different; no two situations are ever identical.

But that is no excuse for enacting a law against one named offender.  A just law defines the offence, so that anyone who commits it – now or in the future – can be judged by the same rule.

A law that defines who should be punished, rather than what is unlawful, crosses a dangerous line.  The Nuremberg Laws – the infamous epitome of ‘legal’ discrimination – did not appear out of nowhere; they emerged from a process in which discrimination based on identity had been progressively normalised in law.

 

So why make a law against ‘Jewish settlements’ rather than just ‘settlements’?

Firstly, while no two cases of ‘settlement’ are exactly the same, it would be very difficult to claim that West Bank ‘settlements’ are materially different from those in Northern Cyprus or Western Sahara. Unless the Government can demonstrate such a fundamental difference, why should the former be punished, while the latter are ignored – or even (as in the case of Morocco) rewarded?

Enacting a just law – one defining the offence, not the offender – might get the UK into trouble with Turkey and Morocco – and potentially with other countries, as well – because judicial review could determine that the same law applies also to their ‘settlements’.

Secondly, for the new Labour Government, Israel is a politically convenient punching bag.

Starmer was virulently attacked by Labour’s hard Left for being ‘too soft’ on Israel. Gaza turned that grievance into raging anger and an electoral threat: Labour lost votes and seats to the ‘Gaza Independents’, while the Greens are increasingly crowding Labour from the Left. In 2024, five independents campaigning prominently on Gaza took seats in which Labour finished second, and subsequent polling shows Gaza has been an important factor among former Labour voters defecting to further-left alternatives.

The current Labour government is neither extreme nor naïve: it understands that the effect of the new ban in the Middle East will be minor at best and harmful most likely.  But it is interested in Middle England, not the Middle East.  So let us be clear: this is not about virtue, but about votes.

 

But why should a ‘tough stance on Israel’ buy British votes?  In fact, why would any foreign policy issue, especially one that is geographically remote and economically inconsequential?

It’s not like the UK Government does not (or should not) have more burning concerns: economic growth is sluggish, competitiveness degrading, public debt bulging, national security weakening – and the list could go on and on.

So why Israel?

To some, the answer is obvious. Britain has nearly three million Muslim voters, many concentrated in Labour constituencies; Gaza matters intensely to a substantial proportion of them. Then there is Labour’s hard Left, for which hostility towards Israel has become an article of faith.

Yes, all that matters.  But it cannot be the whole answer. Muslim voters are still only around six per cent of the electorate, and to most of them Gaza is not even the overriding concern. Nor does the hard Left remotely represent British public opinion as a whole.

The real question is why hostility towards Israel is so widespread beyond those constituencies.  Why does the Jewish state excite passions that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran or Morocco simply do not? Why can events in a tiny country thousands of miles away dominate British politics for years, while wars and occupations elsewhere barely disturb the national conversation?

The answer is uncomfortable: anti-Jewish prejudice is far more deeply embedded in British society than most Britons care to admit.

I deliberately say prejudice, rather than ‘antisemitism’. The two are not synonymous. A person need not hate Jews, vandalise a synagogue or subscribe to some lunatic conspiracy theory to harbour prejudicial ideas about Jews. A major 2017 study found that roughly one Briton in three held at least one recognisably anti-Jewish belief. That does not make one Briton in three an antisemite. But it does mean that anti-Jewish stereotypes find remarkably fertile soil.

And prejudice matters precisely because it often operates below the level of conscious hatred. It affects what seems plausible, whose motives we instinctively distrust, whose wrongdoing excites us most – and, crucially, what discrimination we notice and what discrimination we fail to see.

That, I believe, is what makes Israel such a politically convenient punching bag. Electoral convenience is the effect. The deeper prejudice is the cause.

That’s what explains the fascination with Gazan children killed by Israeli bombs or starved by Israeli blockade.  There is always the suggestion – and often even the accusation – that the Jewish state kills, maims and tortures children deliberately.  There’s very rarely a similar suggestion when Iranian schoolchildren are killed by American missiles; or when Yemeni children are killed by Saudi bombs or by Saudi blockades; or when Sudanese children are butchered or simply waste away.

Jews killing children… hmmm… isn’t there something rather ‘classical’ about that accusation?

There is, of course, an often-heard objection to the charge of anti-Jewish prejudice: how can a policy promoted by Ed Miliband possibly be anti-Jewish when Miliband is himself Jewish?

An exchange on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme was revealing. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee had accused the British Government of ‘Jew-hatred’.  Presenter Anna Foster challenged him: did he realise that Ed Miliband was himself Jewish?

Huckabee confirmed that he did. He pointed out, by analogy, that there are Americans who despise America, burn the American flag and campaign against their own country. Foster appeared not to hear the point. Incredulously, she asked him again whether he knew that Miliband was Jewish. Again, Huckabee said yes. It was a dialogue of the deaf.

Foster’s question rested on a remarkably weak assumption: that because Ed Miliband is Jewish, a measure promoted by him cannot possibly be motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice.

Of course it can. A woman can support a law discriminatory towards women; a member of an ethnic minority can harbour prejudices about that minority. There were Africans who collaborated in the transatlantic slave trade; there were black slave masters who owned black slaves. Identity is no inoculation against prejudice – or against its poisonous fruits.

But Foster’s question also smuggles in another assumption: that Ed Miliband is ‘Jewish’ simply because his ancestry is Jewish.

Well, is he?

Unless one is a Nazi, Jewishness cannot be reduced to a blood test. As I have argued elsewhere, it is a rather peculiar mixture of ethnicity, religion, culture and national identity. One need not believe in God to be Jewish; plenty of Jews don’t. But Jewishness does imply some palpable manifestation of that identity – whether religious, cultural, national, or (very often) some untidy mixture of all three.

Miliband’s ‘bloodline’ is unquestionably Jewish. So was Karl Marx’s – and Marx managed to write things about Jews that most Jews today would regard as blatantly antisemitic.

Both Miliband’s parents were Jews by birth. But they were also committed, ardent Marxists.  He grew up in a household steeped in socialist politics and, by his own admission, outside Jewish communal life.

Miliband now calls himself a “proud British Jew”. That’s great. But politicians call themselves many things, particularly when those things are politically useful. So, since he brought it up himself in support of his policies, it is hardly outrageous to ask: what, exactly, makes Ed Miliband a ‘proud Jew’ in practice?

What has he done as a Jew – other than harshly criticising the Jewish state? What part has Jewish religion, culture, peoplehood or attachment to Israel played in his public identity? And how does that identity sit alongside another one he has proclaimed rather more consistently – socialism?

I don’t pretend to know the answer. Perhaps Miliband feels profoundly Jewish. Or perhaps socialism is his main identity. Perhaps both are. I do not know. But Anna Foster does not know either.

And that is the point. Saying ‘But Ed Miliband is Jewish!’ does not answer charges of anti-Jewish discrimination. It merely replaces a substantive argument with a Nazi-style ancestry test.

 

Political bigotry is ugly enough. Bias and double standards are worse. But once discrimination is written into law, something much more dangerous occurs: prejudice becomes state policy.  The law itself is turned into an instrument of persecution.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham rather pompously declared that “Britain must stand for something”.  Well, perhaps.  But must it stand on the neck of the Jewish state – and only of the Jewish state?

Because no amount of sanctimonious talk about ‘international law’ can disguise the fundamental issue: like the laws of the Russian tsars, this new ban does not target ‘settlements’ – just ‘Jewish settlements’.  

It does not pursue justice – it pursues the Jew.

Let's talk about genocide(s)!

Storm over The Hague

We’ve all – at some point in our lives – heard the saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  But have we stopped to think why that should be so?  Why would good intentions produce bad outcomes?  I suggest the answer is “because those good intentions are taken to extremes”.  We tend to fall in love with those intentions, to the extent of suspending our critical thinking.

Take the biblical injunction “justice, justice thou shalt pursue”: what can be wrong with bringing more justice to the world?

Quite a lot, potentially.  Because the blind pursuit of justice can actually produce injustice.  When justice becomes an ideological project – something to be maximised at all costs – rather than a principle to be applied with reason and restraint, it can ultimately undermine both the rule of law it is supposed to serve and the peace it is meant to bring.

We are beginning to see precisely this problem in the almost fanatical drive to criminalise conflict and expand the role of international courts.

More than eight decades ago, as the Holocaust was unfolding (around 63% of Europe’s Jews would eventually be murdered), a Polish Jew called Rafał Lemkin coined the term ‘genocide’.  Linguistically, it derived from the Greek ‘genos’ (people or ‘race’) and the Latin ‘cidium’ (killing).  Lemkin’s moral sensitivity had identified that what the Nazis were doing was worse even than mass murder: what they intended to kill was not just ‘a very large number of people,’ but a people as such: they were attempting to erase a particular flavour of humanity.  No wonder that this was soon labelled “the crime of crimes”.

The term resonated.  By 1948, in response to the Holocaust, the governments of UN member states formulated and adopted an international treaty meant to criminalise it and prevent it from recurring: the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

At the heart of its definition were the words:

"acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group"

As we have seen, the essential idea behind ‘genocide’ is the intention to destroy a people.  So why “in whole or in part”?

That phrase was proposed by the Norwegian delegate, Finn Moe Wikborg.  His explanation could hardly have been simpler:

"it was not necessary to kill all the members of a group in order to commit genocide."

Of course not.  Otherwise, Hitler could theoretically have argued that the Holocaust was not genocide because he talked only about exterminating European Jewry: Jews in America might have survived.  Or a genocidaire intent on exterminating an entire people could claim that no genocide had occurred if he were stopped after murdering ‘just’ half of them.

In other words, “in part” appears to address the extent of the destruction, not to change the object of the intention.  The intended target remains a people as such.

Though in many ways different from the Holocaust, Rwanda provides another unequivocal example of genocide.  In 1994, Hutu extremists set out to destroy the Tutsi population of Rwanda.  The methods were different from those of the Nazis and the killing was compressed into little more than three months, but the essential intention was the same: the target was not ‘simply’ a large number of Tutsis because they were Tutsis, but the Tutsi as a people. Hundreds of thousands were murdered as the perpetrators sought a Rwanda in which that particular flavour of humanity no longer existed.  This was genocide according to the Convention, but also in the original, intuitive sense of the word.  The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), a UN criminal tribunal created by the Security Council, had no problem ruling this was a genocide.

Then came Srebrenica.  In July 1995, towards the end of the Bosnian war, Bosnian Serb forces under General Ratko Mladić captured Srebrenica, a predominantly Muslim enclave that had been declared a UN ‘safe area’.  They forcibly removed some 30,000 women, children and elderly people.  Over the following days, Bosnian Serb forces systematically killed between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslim men and boys, the overwhelming majority executed in cold blood after capture rather than in combat.

Srebrenica Genocide Memorial

There is no question that this was a horrendous war crime.  But was this an attempt to exterminate the Bosnian Muslim people as such?  The murders were horrific, but they were localised; even within Srebrenica, the women, children and elderly were expelled rather than killed.

Yet the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) eventually ruled that the Srebrenica massacre was genocide, even though Srebrenica’s Muslims represented a relatively small proportion of Bosnia’s entire Muslim population.  With the world shocked by the enormity of the crime and demanding justice, the judges must surely have felt considerable pressure not to appear timid by withholding the label of genocide.

To get there, the judges interpreted “in part” literally: the intention did not have to be to destroy the Bosnian Muslim people as such; it could be to destroy a part of that people – in this case, the Muslim community of Srebrenica, through the killing of its men and boys.

However, the literal interpretation creates an obvious problem: every community is “part” of a larger “whole”.  What if antisemites attempted to murder all five Jewish families living in a particular village?  This would be a horrific pogrom; but is every pogrom a genocide?  Taken to its extreme, “in part” could make any racially motivated murder a genocide.

The judges recognised the problem. Their solution was to introduce a term that does not appear anywhere in the Convention: in order to qualify as genocide, the targeted “part” had to be “substantial”.

But what is “substantial”?  The judges established no numerical threshold.  Instead, they created an ad hoc test: numbers were the necessary starting point, but they could also consider the prominence of the “part” within the larger group, whether it was “emblematic” of that group or “essential to its survival”, and even the geographical reach of the perpetrators.  None of these considerations was decisive; they were merely “useful guidelines”, to be considered according to the circumstances of each case.

So what’s wrong with that? Well, for starters, the judges may have misinterpreted the original intention behind the Convention’s “in whole or in part”: that phrase may have referred to how much of the group was actually destroyed, rather than how much of it the perpetrators intended to destroy.

There is a wider problem with the overly ‘literal’ interpretation of law.  Laws are made of words, and words cannot anticipate every circumstance.  Take theft.  Most of us have a pretty clear idea of what theft means: taking something that belongs to somebody else with the intention of keeping it.  But suppose I find a wallet containing £100 in a park.  I look around for its owner and ask the people nearby, but nobody can identify it.  Eventually I pocket the money.

Have I “appropriated property belonging to another”?  Literally, yes.  Does that make me a thief?  Most people would instinctively say no.  Yet an excessively literal reading of the law could produce precisely that result.  The definition would have perverted the concept it was intended to define.

Words matter, but the meaning of law cannot be reduced to textual dissection. Definitions must be interpreted in the light of the thing they were intended to describe and the purpose for which they were enacted.  The common law must not replace common sense.

By interpreting the genocide definition literally rather than logically, the Srebrenica ruling created a legal concept of ‘genocide’ that was different from – and arguably at odds with – the common understanding of the term.

Remember that ‘genocide’ fundamentally means the attempt to erase a people, an entire flavour of humanity.  In other words, the ultimate victim is not just the people targeted, but humanity itself.  Genocide is a ‘crime against humanity’ in common understanding, not merely in legal terminology.

Ironically, the judges themselves understood this perfectly well.  In the appeal judgment, they explained that genocidaires “identify entire human groups for extinction” and attempt to “deprive humanity of the richness” provided by its different peoples.

That profound description aligns both with the common meaning of the term and with the original intention of the Convention.  But it sits uneasily with the legal test they had constructed and with the Srebrenica ruling itself.  If humanity is the ultimate victim because one of its constituent peoples is marked for extinction, how can the destruction of a relatively small local community – let alone one whose women, children and elderly were deliberately allowed to survive – be construed as the same crime?

Srebrenica was far from the end of this process.  On the contrary, it established a precedent: genocide no longer necessarily meant an attempt to erase a people as such. Once the concept had been detached from that intuitive meaning, the door was open to applying the “crime of crimes” label to conflicts that looked very different from either the Holocaust or Rwanda.

Which brings us to Gaza.  According to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 73,000 Palestinians (civilians and combatants) were killed during nearly three years of war with Israel.  This represents circa 3.3% of Gaza’s population and 0.5% of the global Palestinian population.

But it didn’t take three years for the ‘genocide’ accusations to surface – they did so already in October 2023.  By 29 December, when the reported death toll stood at around 21,500 – approximately 1% of Gaza’s population and 0.14% of Palestinians worldwide – South Africa had already applied to the International Court of Justice, alleging that Israel was committing genocide and demanding that the Court make it stop.

Ultimately, the Court did not satisfy South Africa’s demands – but nor did it throw out the case.  It found that the Palestinians in Gaza had a “plausible” right to be protected from acts of genocide and that there was a real and imminent risk of irreparable harm to that right. It therefore ordered a series of “provisional measures”.

Crucially, however, it did not rule that genocide was taking place.  Deciding on the actual merits of South Africa’s claim – in other words, whether Israel had indeed committed genocide – will take years.  Meanwhile, South Africa has requested – and received – another 18 months to prepare its next submission. As a result, the written proceedings alone will now stretch at least into 2029.

But court proceedings are one thing and political activism quite another: for many, that the Jewish state is guilty of genocide has already become an article of faith and an incontrovertible ‘social media truth’.

Nor is Gaza unique. Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine has likewise generated widespread accusations that Russia itself is committing genocide against Ukrainians – although the existence of Ukrainians as a people does not appear to be at risk; not even at ‘plausible’ risk.

One can imagine a future – and not a remote one – in which every military conflict will be accompanied by accusations of genocide, with one or both sides being dragged before an international court to litigate the matter for years.

A certain category of political activists would like nothing better: they see this as strengthening international institutions and an end to impunity.  Many may even believe that this would eventually make war itself a much more costly – and therefore much less appealing – proposition.

But they are wrong: moral value, like monetary value, is subject to inflation. Printing more of the highest-denomination notes does not make us richer; it merely devalues that currency.  Calling ever more conflicts ‘genocides’ does not make war less likely – it makes genocide less exceptional.  It trivialises ‘the crime of crimes’ into the crime of many.

Worse, the relentless criminalisation of conflict may actually make disputes more difficult to resolve.  Why would Armenia and Azerbaijan negotiate in good faith and seek to resolve their differences through accommodation when they can both take the other to the ICJ, seeking legal vindication from above?  And how could any Palestinian leader make peace  with the Jewish state – a peace that necessarily involves mutual concessions – when it's become an article of faith that Israel committed genocide against his people?

And it’s not ‘just’ about war and genocide.  Since the ICJ ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is unlawful and must unconditionally end – why would Palestinians offer Israel any concessions merely for fulfilling what they now see as a legal obligation?

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  Even when pursued with the best of intentions, the relentless drive to expand the reach and power of international institutions (especially the courts) may lead to very bad outcomes.

But what is the alternative?  Restraining that drive may sound suspiciously like granting impunity.  If international courts cannot hold dictators, generals and governments to account, who will? Should we simply accept that terrible crimes will go unpunished because the international machinery capable of punishing them is imperfect?

No. The way forward is neither impunity nor ‘international’ moral inflation; it is enhanced national justice. After all, why do dictators so often escape justice – as in the case of Omar al-Bashir? Not because they’re not prosecuted internationally (they often are); but because they’re never held accountable at home.

And why is that?  Because dictatorships, almost by definition, start by emasculating the very institutions that might hold tyrants accountable.

Now imagine a world in which every national court is independent; the press is free, the public debate unfettered; rulers are all accountable to law and to the voter.  Why would we even need international courts?

You want a fairer world?  Fight for power to the people, not power over peoples.  Independent national institutions, not politicised international courts.  Democracy in every nation, not international judicial oversight. Just and judicious politics, not politics by judicial means.

Justice, justice thou shalt pursue!

Farmisht about Gaza?

In Yiddish, פאַרמישט (farmisht, pronounced almost exactly like 'famished' in English) means 'confused'.  So, is Gaza famished, or are we farmisht?

On 22 August 2025, the IPC Global Partnership – a coalition of charities, governmental and UN agencies – classified the situation in one of Gaza’s 5 governorates as ‘Famine’.  Now let’s unpack that label.

The shifting shifty definition

Famine isn’t a new phenomenon. What’s new in our modern world is an institutionalised effort to combat it.  This gave birth to a plethora of charities and aid agencies, each with its own priorities, standards, procedures and methods of providing relief.

Faced with recurring famine in Africa, by 2004 a UN agency sponsored the creation of a unified, scientifically rigorous methodology for quantifying food insecurity.  Dubbed ‘the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’ and eventually codified in a Technical Manual, it defined 5 degrees of severity, with ‘Famine’ being the worst level.  To assess that, it quantified 3 different criteria:

1. Household food consumption;
2. Acute malnutrition;
3. Mortality.

Thresholds were established for each of these, with ‘Famine’ requiring “[e]vidence that all three criteria” exceed their respective thresholds.

By 2009, a bureaucratic apparatus called IPC Global Partnership (backed by the UN, charities and aid agencies) was established to apply the IPC methodology.  In practice, this put the process in the hands of a small army of eager activists and activist scientists.  They’re typically keen to find ‘Famine’: it justifies their own existence, but also finds favour in the eyes of their stakeholders – charities and agencies whose role is to deliver aid.  That's where Science meets Politics.

In October 2024, as the conflict in Gaza entered its second year, the IPC produced a ‘Famine Factsheet,’ introducing a new concept: ‘Famine with Reasonable Evidence’:

“An area is classified in Famine with reasonable evidence if there is clear evidence that two of the three thresholds . . . have been reached, and analysts reasonably assess [that] . . . the third outcome has likely been reached.”

So instead of “all three criteria”, this new classification required just two, with the third left at the discretion of ‘analysts’ – rather than based on evidence.  But, at least, “clear evidence” was seemingly required for the other two criteria.

Yet in May 2025 – while Israel and the US promoted Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as an alternative to the UN aid apparatus – the IPC issued a Technical Note, this time claiming:

“An area is classified in Famine with reasonable evidence if minimally adequate evidence is available on two out of the three . . . to support the classification.”

To summarise: in 2019, the IPC required reliable evidence over all 3 criteria; by 2024, this was reduced in practice to “clear evidence” for 2 out of 3; and by 2025, the requirement was just “minimally adequate evidence,” again for 2 out of 3…

The Technical Manual has not been updated: that would require agreement from too many stakeholders.  Yet the goalposts were surreptitiously shifted by means of ‘factsheets’ and ‘notes’.  So much for ‘scientific integrity’!

Getting in vs. getting there

IPC assessments are entirely based on outcomes, not inputs.  I.e., they classify famine in an area only by looking at population data (food consumption, physical signs of malnutrition, mortality), not at the amounts of food going in.

This is justified: the fact that food enters a territory doesn’t mean it reaches everybody in sufficient quantities.  But, unlike the IPC, we may be interested in food input data, as well – if not to rebut the claim of Famine, then certainly to analyse its causes.

Fortunately, such data is available.  To preclude argument about its reliability, I’ll only use data from the IPC itself and from UN sources.  Israel claims that these numbers are understated, but let’s not get hung up on that; they’re certainly not overstated.

Firstly, however: how much food is needed in Gaza?  You may have heard or read (from the BBC and others) that the UN says ‘600 truckloads a day’.  Well, forget that number.  It’s a lie based on a misrepresentation.  UN’s own World Food Program (WFP) requires:

“At least 100 aid trucks per day to be allowed through northern, central and southern border points in a sustained and predictable manner.”

The IPC itself says:

“Estimates from the FAO21 and the WFP22 converge around 60,000 – 62,000 metric tonnes (MT) needed each month to meet minimum daily caloric requirements.”

Which boils down to the same number: 100 truckloads a day, given that a truckload of emergency food is equivalent to c. 20 metric tonnes.

So how much food is being delivered?  Again from the IPC itself:

“55,600 metric tonnes of food entered Gaza in the first half of August…”

That’s in excess of 3,700 metric tonnes (more than 185 truckloads) a day.

So how can there be famine?  The IPC, of course, blames Israel.  Even 185 truckloads daily, they say,

“remains largely insufficient to offset the prolonged deficits.”

But talking about “accumulated deficits” is utterly dishonest.  Yes, people may eat more in August, because they lived on lower rations in July.  But they cannot eat 85% more than normal; nor should they, even if they could.

In fact, in its own report, the IPC claims that, to recover the deficit

“can take months with 25% more calories than typically needed, depending on the severity of malnutrition.”

That's because eating 25% more than normal is the feasible and safe way to recover past deficits.  But in the 1^st half of August what entered the Strip was not 25%, but 85% more than needed.  And, by the way, it did not stop: truckloads continued to enter at pace.  According to COGAT (but not expressly contested by the UN) 320 truckloads entered on 17 August, 250 on 20 August, 220 on 21 August…  In total, 1,600 truckloads during the week 18-24 August alone – though some of them carried non-food aid.

Eventually, the IPC gets to the crux of the matter:

“In addition, security and operational challenges have prevented much of the incoming food from reaching the population. Aid deliveries have been severely disrupted—with 87 percent of UN trucks reportedly intercepted—reflecting the extreme desperation of the population.”

In other words, the food got into Gaza – but it didn’t reach the hungry people, because the vast majority was “intercepted” (read: looted or taken over) en-route.  IPC rather spuriously attributes this to “the extreme desperation of the population”.  But one would expect those most in need to also be the most desperate.  On the other hand, it is also claimed that those most in need were not the ones getting the food.

It's impossible to accurately determine who are the looters – whether hungry and angry people, criminal gangs or Hamas operatives (or a combination thereof): none of those groups is in the habit of issuing membership cards – and they all consist primarily of males aged of 12 to 60, who are dressed in civilian clothes and look exactly the same.  What’s clear is that Hamas and fellow travellers continue to fire their weapons for nigh on 2 years now – and they haven't subsisted all that time just on fervent prayer!

August 2025: Gazan men taking over a truck transporting aid

The point is that, if Gazans don’t get the food, it’s not because Israel doesn’t allow it in – but because it gets stolen by other Gazans.

Assessing the assessments

But, as mentioned, all this is of little relevance to the IPC: they make their determinations based on outcomes, not inputs.

Except that, in the case of Gaza, it’s not easy to reliably determine those outcomes.  Take for instance the first criterion, which assesses household food consumption.  In the Gaza Governorate, this was based mostly on surveying a sample of respondents: 504 were interviewed over the phone.  A second survey, involving 350 respondents, was apparently also conducted among the same population, but the IPC report does not make it clear how they were interviewed and whether the two samples overlapped.

Respondents are asked: “How many times, in the last 7 days have you eaten meat, fish or eggs?  Beans, lentils and peas?  Vegetables?  Fruit?  Milk/yoghurt/cheese?  Sugar?  etc.” 

Also “In the past 7 days, how many times did you have to eat less preferred/less expensive food?  How many times did you have to reduce portions?  To skip meals?  To borrow food from relatives?”

And finally “In the past 30 days, was there ever a time when there was no food in the house?  When you had to go to bed hungry?  When you went for an entire day with no food?” (answers: “Never”, “Rarely”, “Sometimes”, “Often”).

Responses are distilled into numeric scores which (after some additional ‘expert manipulation’), are compared to IPC thresholds – resulting in an assessment of food consumption.  For ‘Famine’ classification, at least 20% of households must experience ‘extremely poor food consumption’.

The second criterion is ‘Acute Malnutrition’.  This is normally assessed by surveying children aged 6-59 months.  Their weight and height are measured and compared with age-specific thresholds.  A famine classification requires at least 30% of children below norm.

But, says the IPC, performing such measurements in a conflict area is difficult.  Surveyors would have to visit remaining neighbourhoods and tent cities, armed with scales and measuring boards…  Which is why the IPC instituted a shortcut: instead of performing rigorous height-and-weight surveys, it makes do with measuring the children’s upper arm circumference.  And instead of representative population samples, they measure children who are ‘normally’ brought to medical facilities (clinics and hospitals), usually because they need treatment – either for malnutrition or for any other illness.  The age is considered irrelevant, as long as it’s within range (6-59 months).  All that’s needed is a special measuring tape, one available anyway in most such facilities.  The measurement itself takes seconds and is part of the child’s routine examination.  The ‘Famine’ threshold in this case is 15%, rather than 30%, since the method is supposedly less sensitive.

Measuring a child's upper arm circumference. Red means 'below threshold'. Obviously younger children have smaller arms - but in a representative sample age is supposed to 'even out' statistically.

The main issue here is response/result bias.  This is a known problem in all such surveys and the IPC claims that it knows how to deal with it.  But their tendency is to see under-, rather than overstating.  Not necessarily wrong: in some cultures, people hide malnutrition, out of a sense of social shame.  But Gaza is surely different.  Firstly, many inhabitants have been publicly receiving aid – for many years.  Secondly, there’s not just a political, but also a huge practical incentive to exaggerate: given the unusually high ‘interest’ that ‘the international community’ manifests in this particular conflict, reports of catastrophic famine are seen as more likely to bring not just more aid, but also an end to the war.  If you were a Gazan responding to such a survey (after 22 months of hardship, displacement, bombardments and generally shitty life – how likely would you be to ‘embellish a bit’ when answering those questions?

And how likely would you be, if you were a Palestinian nurse or doctor, to deliberately report lower arm circumferences?  All you’d need to do is ‘steal’ a few millimetres by tightening the tape a tad more; or just skew the results by preferentially measuring younger children (say, more 2-year-olds and fewer 4 year olds…)

The IPC says it ‘validates’ the data by ‘triangulation’ – meaning they look not just at one parameter, but at several; they point at the convergence of that data.  The problem with that is we’re talking about sets of unreliable data, which should all be expected to err in the same direction.

The raw data, by the way, is not published – just IPC's 'expert interpretation' thereof.  Like medieval catholic priests, the IPC 'experts' want to ensure that the Bi... err... the data are 'correctly' interpreted.

Uncounted or undead?

This should make the third criterion (malnutrition-related mortality) even more important: deaths are more difficult to manipulate.  After all, dead people have identities, families and eventually graves.

IPC’s daily mortality threshold for famine is 2 deaths per 10,000 people.  According to the IPC, more than 500,000 people live in Famine in the Gaza Governorate.  This means over 100 deaths a day.  Since the IPC classification refers to the period 1 July – 15 August 2025, the deaths add up to over 4,600.

But even the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry only claimed c. 200 deaths in that period (see here and here).

The IPC report admits that “[t]he analysis team could not conclude on mortality evidence”.  Meaning: there wasn’t even “minimally adequate evidence” for that.

Hence, this was referred to ‘assessment by experts’ – who promptly performed a sleight-of-hand: they simply claimed that Hamas was under-counting deaths.

“Different analyses indicate that MoH [Minister of Health] data systematically underestimate overall mortality, highlighting structural limitations in mortality surveillance.”

The Hamas-run Gaza Minister of Health is – let’s recall – the same ‘source’ that the UN and most journalists proclaim as ‘reliable’ in terms of counting Palestinian victims of the ‘Israeli aggression’…  And 200 instead of 4,600 is one hell of an underestimate!

As for the “[d]ifferent analyses” mentioned above, none of them is directly relevant – or even refers to the same time period that the IPC deals with!

Conclusion

IPC’s analysis is not just flawed, but fundamentally dishonest: based on moving the goalposts, on unreliable surveys and on unreasonable ‘assessments’.  It’s a betrayal of IPC’s role, of their principles and of the people they’re supposed to help.  There’s no ‘Famine’ in Gaza – not in the way they themselves defined it.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t hunger.  The fact that more than enough calories get in doesn’t mean they reach all those who need them.  Not just because Hamas steals them; nor because ‘people are desperate’.  But because in Gaza – as elsewhere – the powerful (be they Hamas, criminals or just those with big elbows) take more than their fair share; some will even profit from the plight of their fellow men. 

Whatever the cause, there’s hardship and human suffering in Gaza.  But lying ain’t the way to end it.

Let’s stop fantasizing that civilians can lead quasi-normal lives, while trapped in war zones.  Let’s stop pretending that ‘a permanent ceasefire’ isn’t crowning terrorists as victors.  The only way to defeat Hamas without starving, hurting and killing innocents is allowing the latter to flee Gaza.

For those who wave the flag of 'international law' at every opportunity, here's a provision of the 4th Geneva Convention (Art. 35):

"All protected persons who may desire to leave the territory at the outset of, or during a conflict, shall be entitled to do so, unless their departure is contrary to the national interests of the State."

The UN proclaims that Palestinian civilians in Gaza are "protected persons" and requires Israel ("the State") to treat them as such.  But they oppose allowing the former to escape.

Via its refugee protection agency (UNHCR), the UN also proclaims that a neutral neighbouring state cannot legally close its border to those in danger:

"Denying access to territory and asylum procedure . . . blatantly contradicts international law and . . . provisions of the . . . Convention relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951 and its Additional Protocol of 1967."

Egypt is a signatory to both the Convention and its Additional Protocol.  It has accepted more than one million refugees – mostly from war-torn Sudan and Syria; but not from Gaza.

EU member countries are also signatories.  They have accepted more than 4.3 million refugees from Ukraine; but not from Gaza.

The UK (another signatory) has instituted a special visa category for Ukrainians – 274,000 visas were issued to asylum-seekers from Ukraine; but not from Gaza.

Egypt, EU, UK... these are all countries that preach to Israel about international law and humanitarianism.

If IPC and their UN masters had any integrity, that’s what they’d advocate: for Gazans to be offered (at least temporarily) refuge – both among their Arab brethren and in the West.  Anyone not recognising the Gazans' right, in the midst of a war, to seek asylum in neutral countries is being driven by base hypocrisy and ugly antisemitism, not by noble ‘humanitarian’ concerns!

BBC: One isn’t a jihadist if one just kills Jews

 "I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

 

Let me be clear from the very beginning: the BBC never said ‘One isn’t a jihadist if one just kills Jews’ – though what they did say boils down to it. I wouldn’t normally stoop to this sort of dishonest headline tactics – it’s not my style.  But the BBC is utterly, outrageously dishonest in its reporting on Jews and the Jewish state – so I believe they deserve a taste of their own medicine.

As everybody knows, the BBC stubbornly refused to refer to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hizb’ullah, etc. as ‘terrorists’ – even after 7 October 2023, when they butchered and abducted random civilians in the name of ‘the cause’.  At the time, the Beeb rolled out ‘veteran journalists’ such as John Simpson, who ponderously explained:

“Terrorism is a loaded word . . . It's simply not the BBC's job to tell people . . . who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

We regularly point out that the British and other governments have condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation, but that's their business . . . The key point is that we don't say it in our voice. Our business is to present our audiences with the facts, and let them make up their own minds.”

Except that the BBC did say “terrorist” in their own voice, when referring to the Manchester Arena bomber and his purported accomplices. That’s of course different because… err… they didn’t kill Jews?

The Beeb never referred to the 7 October 2023 massacre (1,195 people killed) as a ‘terror attack’.  But they did so in reference to other, decidedly smaller incidents: for instance the 2016 attack at Brussels International Airport (32 fatalities) and the 2017 London Bridge attack (8 dead).

But why am I bringing all this up – you might ask – almost two years after that shameful BBC decision?  Because relatively recently (20 June 2025), I came across a BBC news item entitled “Jihadists on 200 motorbikes storm Niger army base”.

Why, I wondered, was the BBC referring to Islamist terrorists storming an army base in Africa as “jihadists”, while claiming that a much larger attack on civilian communities in Israel was perpetrated by “militants”?

So I put pen to paper (figuratively, of course: I actually used a laptop) and sent a complaint to the BBC, asking them to explain that discrepancy.

No journalistic dinosaur with a God complex was available to reply to an ignorant pleb like me; but an Assistant Editor at the BBC News Editorial Standards informed me that

“Hamas is not typically classified as a jihadist group, unlike the Islamic State (IS) group which claimed the attack on the army base in Niger.

IS promotes a violent transnational Islamist ideology, whereas Hamas and PIJ are localised groups whose focus is the Israel-Palestinian conflict, in particular the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state in Palestine.

As such, we feel it is clearer to readers to describe Hamas and PIJ as armed groups rather than jihadist, as their fight is against the Israeli state.”

So there you are: the Palestinian Islamic Jihad aren’t jihadists – because they only kill Jews.  So Saith the BBC.

I briefly wondered whether the Assistant Editor blushed when arguing that line?  ‘Briefly’, because I once again got on my laptop, to point out to the BBC that the ‘difference’ between “transnational” and “localised” was cut entirely out of new cloth.

Firstly, because – far from being “localised” – both Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are merely local branches of transnational movements.

In its Covenant, Hamas describes itself as

“one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine . . . a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times”

But hey – what does Hamas know?  Nothing is true unless the BBC Saith it.

Fortunately, the BBC – aiming no doubt to enlighten dumb members of the audience like myself – did saith it.  They published an explanatory article helpfully entitled “What is jihadism?”

That article beats around the bush a lot; but the gist of it is that “jihadism” consists of two elements:

1. An Islamist ideology;
2. Willingness to employ violence in order to promote it.

The BBC did call Hamas “Islamist” (albeit very occasionally) in the past.  As for the use of violence… I figured that post 7 October even the Assistant Editor might find it a bit too embarrassing to argue that point.

But, just to remove any doubt, the BBC explainer also mentioned that jihadists are not all exactly the same: they “share the basic aims of advancing Islam, but their priorities can vary”.  An example of such priority is:

“Establishing sovereignty on a territory perceived as occupied or dominated by non-Muslims. The Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (Soldiers of the Pure) is opposed to Indian control of Kashmir, while the Caucasus Emirate wants an Islamic state throughout the "Muslim lands" in the Russian Federation.”

Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hamas are as similar as two terror outfits can ever be.  Despite BBC’s euphemistic description, the former’s programme goes ‘a bit’ further than just “oppos[ing] Indian control of Kashmir”; they plan to ‘liberate’ all India and ‘reestablish’ Muslim rule over it.  Sounds familiar?

So I got on my laptop again and wrote all this to the BBC.  But when the Assistant Editor came back to me, his answer was an exercise in ‘logical’ contortionism and dishonest obfuscation – causing me to immediately escalate to the highest stage of BBC complaints consideration: the mighty Executive Complaints Unit (ECU).

The Assistant Editor’s response started with the inimitable BBC brand of arrogance:

“We appreciate that it remains your view that Hamas should be called Jihadists.  However we remain of the view that the reasoning outlined in your complaint does not amount to compelling evidence for changing our approach.”

But why not – I hear you crying?  How can an article published by the BBC itself “not amount to compelling evidence” for the BBC?  Well, the respondent pointed out that the BBC explainer I quoted from did not mention Hamas.  It didn’t, of course – and nor did it mention most of the other Islamist terror groups.  The article was entitled “What is jihadism?”; not ‘An Exhaustive List of Jihadist Groups’.

The BBC guy went on to school me in the intricacies of Islamic theology:

“the term itself is rooted in the Quran and often used interchangeably to mean ‘fight’, ‘struggle’, or ‘resistance’, appearing widely in the rhetoric of militant and political movements - including some that are not overtly religious.”

In my letter to the ECU, I once more referred to the Hamas Covenant:

“Art. 7 . . . refers to ‘the struggle of the Palestinians and Moslem Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Moslem Brotherhood in 1968 and after.’ Art. 8: ‘Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes’. Article 13 [states]: ‘There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad,’ and goes on to disparage diplomacy as “all a waste of time and vain endeavors”

Which part of that, I asked, refers to non-violent jihad?  And which part is “not overtly religious”?

Next, the Assistant Editor asserted that there were “a number of fundamental differences in approach” between Hamas and “organisations like so-called Islamic State”.  Which is why, he went on to claim, the latter “not only disdain Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, but have openly labelled them ‘apostates’, declaring them legitimate targets for violence.”

To further school me in the facts of life, the good Editor added links to two articles (one of them by the BBC) explaining the differences between Hamas, Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

But, as I pointed out to the ECU, this was

“Another irrelevant ‘argument’: that Hamas, the PIJ, IS & Al-Qaeda are all jihadists needs not imply that they are identical in every respect. The SNP, Alternative für Deutschland, the Catalonian Nationalist Party, Israel’s Jewish Power & the PLO are all nationalist movements – but that doesn’t mean they’re identical or in agreement.

Neither of the two articles linked [in the Assistant Editor’s response] claims that Hamas & PIJ aren’t jihadist; they merely point out the differences between various jihadist groups. One may find articles pointing out the many differences between sharks and mackerel; sharks may even feed on mackerel – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t all fish!

While the IS disdains Hamas, they’re also at odds with Al-Qaeda – yet the BBC does not use this to claim that the latter aren’t ‘jihadists’. In fact, both sources cited [by the Assistant Editor] refer to ‘rival jihadists’. Like other extremists (especially religious extremists), jihadists are factional: they view deviations from the ‘pure’ ideology not just as erroneous, but heretical.”

The Assistant Editor’s letter concluded:

“We can therefore only reiterate that we feel it is clearer to readers to describe Hamas and PIJ as armed groups rather than jihadist.”

I told ECU that this

“is illogical. There are many types of ‘armed groups’ in the world. The term gives the audience zero information: post-7 October 2023, most of the audience already knows that they’re ‘armed’.

This is like calling Trotskyism and Leninism ‘political ideologies’: true, but not informative. Surely it’d be much more edifying to call them both – despite their differences/rivalry – ‘communist ideologies’?”

I also pointed out that, since the BBC did publish an article explaining the differences between Hamas, IS and Al-Qaeda, there was little risk that the audience might be misled into thinking they were all exactly the same.

But the BBC would have none of it.

ECU’s response came signed by… a former Assistant Editor, who had gradually risen through the ranks.  He wrote:

“Having read carefully through the correspondence to date I am not sure there is much to be gained from continuing a relatively academic argument over which definition most closely fits Hamas as an organisation. There will always be debates over how to characterise Hamas – just as there were over IS. The question for a broadcaster like the BBC is less whether there can be a definitive answer to such a question, and more what is the best means to convey the similarities and differences between the different groups in a way that allows audiences to understand their motives, ideologies and background.”

You got that, plebs?  Calling Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad “armed groups” rather than “jihadist groups” is more likely to allow “audiences to understand their motives, ideologies and background”!

So Saith the BBC.  Or, in ECU’s charming language

“This letter represents the final word of the BBC and general complaints of this kind do not usually fall within Ofcom’s remit. But you can contact them if you wish.”

No, it’s not just extreme, disgusting arrogance that permeates that letter – but also intellectual dishonesty and ill-faith.

And it’s far from being a one-off case.  When it comes to Jews, the BBC applies a different ‘logic’, a unique reading of its own Editorial Guidelines and a distinct way of doing things.

The son of a Hamas minister was employed to narrate a BBC documentary on the war in Gaza. 'We didn't know!' claimed the BBC brass, after the boys identity was discovered by a pro-Israel researcher equipped with... a laptop.

When it comes to Jews, the BBC ‘hears anti-Muslim slurs’ that nobody else does.  When it comes to Jews, the BBC pays Hamas families to push Hamas propaganda (as if they wouldn’t do it for free; and as if BBC’s own journalists don’t promote it enough!)  When it comes to Jews, the BBC sees only the most evil of intentions – and smuggle in the ruminations of its ‘International Editor’ as facts.

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen: "I've been accused of anti-Semitism [sic!] more times than I have hot dinners..." One of those many times was when Bowen accused Israeli PM Netanyahu of "play[ing] the holocaust card" by acknowledging survivor Elie Wiesel in the audience.

When it comes to Jews – and only when it comes to Jews – the BBC behaves like Völkischer Beobachter, subjecting its audience to a constant stream of antisemitic ‘news’.

Sure, the BBC will say that they ‘cover the war in Gaza’.  But – leaving aside the biased content – which other war did they cover in the same relentless, obsessive way?  The war in Ukraine (one million casualties and counting, seven million refugees)?  How about the war in Syria (500,000 killed, 12 million displaced)?

The BBC has quoted ad nauseam the Hamas ‘report’ of people who died “as a result of malnutrition” in Gaza (circa 200 since 7 October 2023); but when is the last time you read or heard on the BBC about Sudan’s Zamzam refugee camp, where 1 child died every 2 hours?

The BBC is, of course, not the only media outlet that actively promotes antisemitism; it’s just that the others don’t do it on my dime.  In the UK, anyone watching a live broadcast has to pay the ‘licence fee’.  This applies to watching any live channel, through any means (aerial, satellite dish, internet…) and on any device (TV set, computer, smartphone…)  The licence fee is used to fund the BBC but not any other media outlet (so, if you watch live on the internet a TV channel from Zambia or a YouTube broadcast from Burma – you must pay a licence fee to the BBC!)  Not paying it constitutes a criminal offence; it will result in a hefty fine – if not a prison term; and it goes on your criminal record potentially preventing you, for instance, from being employed as a teacher, a social worker, etc.

But even if you don’t watch any live broadcasts, being a UK income taxpayer means that some of your money goes to fund this ‘national treasure’.  You may never use the service – but you’ve got to pay for it.

Not that paying gives one any influence over what the BBC says, does, over whom they employ and promote, etc.  You may believe that BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen is a talentless piece of dead wood who should at best be working for The Whispering Hedge Weekly (circulation: 15 and growing); but you are still required to fund part of his c. £260,000 per annum salary!

BBC's 'Diplomatic' Correspondent, posted on X on 8 October 2023.

The BBC’s only raison d'être is being a ‘public’ news outlet.  This means that, in return for receiving public funds (while its ‘commercial’ competitors have to work hard to scrape a living), the BBC is supposed to work in the public interest, according to strict rules ensuring accuracy and impartiality – not to mention integrity.

Except it doesn’t.  It’s all a disgusting sham.

Let’s start with the hierarchy: the BBC is led by a Board whose Chair is – in practice – appointed by the sitting Prime Minister.  The other Board members are appointed either by His Majesty’s Government or by the BBC itself.

In turn, the Board appoints the Director-General, who appoints the Directors/Executive Officers.  The Director of News & Current Affairs then appoints the Editors.

So much for ‘checks and balances’.  There is nothing in that recruitment process that truly guarantees BBC’s independence – let alone impartiality and diversity of opinion!

As for ‘public interest’: before 2017, the BBC was ‘regulated’ by the BBC Trust, which was supposed to represent the licence payers.  But in 2017, a new Royal Charter dismantled the Trust, replacing it with the Board and giving the Government more power over the BBC.  As for the licence payers, they are now represented by… nobody in particular.

At the time, the change was spun as an improvement in BBC accountability, as the complaints process was referred to Ofcom – the industry regulator (before 2017, the BBC was outside Ofcom’s jurisdiction).

But that was no improvement – it’s just another lie.  Here’s why:

• Ofcom considers complaints only once the BBC Complaints process has been exhausted (i.e., once ECU has issued a final response rejecting the complaint). But the BBC process is long, tiresome and demoralising.  Complainants either give up or avoid it altogether.  In 2023-2024, no less than 2,709 BBC-related complaints were submitted to Ofcom.  But only 153 (less than 6%) had completed BBC’s own complaints process – the others were generally dismissed by Ofcom with no consideration.
• Ofcom considers complaints according with its own Broadcasting Code, as opposed to BBC’s Editorial Guidelines. The Broadcasting Code is applicable equally to all broadcasters, meaning that – despite being funded by the public – the BBC is not held to higher standards.  Since 2017, Ofcom received no less than 7,133 complaints about BBC bias; only 29 (0.4%) were upheld.
• Ofcom’s jurisdiction extends only to BBC audio-visual content. It does not encompass articles and news items published on BBC websites, mobile apps and social media.  These remain under the exclusive jurisdiction of the BBC, which is left to ‘regulate itself’.  Of course, increasingly people read news on websites and apps, rather than watching live TV or listening to the radio.
• Ofcom is woefully underfunded and understaffed. While its budget and headcount have increased gradually, its workload has grown massively.  The number of BBC-related complaints has grown 20-fold since 2017; those specifically about BBC bias have tripled in the past 3 years.  But the BBC is far from being Ofcom’s main headache: in 2023, the UK Parliament adopted the Online Safety Act, which brought a huge expansion of Ofcom’s role.  In addition to its already broad role (further expanded in 2017) Ofcom is now UK’s online safety regulator – covering search engines, social media, user-to-user services, online risks, disinformation and misinformation, algorithmic transparency, as well as assuming responsibility for promoting ‘digital literacy’ among the 69 million-strong British populace.

 

I mentioned the BBC Editorial Complaints.  These are written by… the BBC, of course.  There is usually a consultation, but the BBC does not have to hold one; nor does it have to take on board anything that the consultation brings up.

Such a consultation took place in 2024-2025.  But you’d be forgiven for not having heard about it: despite considerable efforts, I could not find anything on the BBC News website announcing this ‘public’ event.  So – in practice – the BBC also gets to decide who is consulted…

The Guidelines are a long and prolix document – the latest version runs to 448 pages.  One can read there whatever one wishes to read – and the BBC does!  For instance, Paragraph 2.4.7 says

“Opinion should be clearly distinguished from fact.”

Not a BBC original contribution, but a fundamental principle of ethical journalism.

But just a little further on, another Paragraph (2.4.12) states:

“Presenters, reporters, correspondents and on-air editors . . . may provide professional judgements, rooted in evidence and professional experience…”

In practice, I found many instances where BBC “[p]resenters, reporters, correspondents and on-air editors” failed to “clearly distinguish [opinion] from fact.”

Invariably, those assessing my complaints claimed that they were expressing not “opinions,” but “professional judgements,” which they “may” do.

I responded by pointing out that, by definition (see here, here, here), “judgements” are opinions, albeit considered ones.  And that the paragraph that permitted such opinions to be expressed did not remove the obligation to distinguish them from fact.

But, of course, it did not help.  The BBC responded as follows:

“You say ‘Judgements are opinions’. We would say that judgements are sound conclusions which are rooted in evidence.”

That’s it: the BBC writes its own rules; it interprets rules as it wishes; it assesses complaints against itself as it pleases; and it changes the meaning of the English language at its own convenience.  The national anthem should really be called ‘God save the BBC’!

Did I say “assesses complaints against itself”?  The BBC’s 3-stage Editorial Complaints process isn’t fit for purpose.  It’s another sham.

The BBC is obliged (by the Royal Charter and the Framework Agreement) to publish “a framework for handling and resolving complaints”.  That’s another document (52 additional pages I had to read).  Only instead of dealing with how the BBC should perform the “handling and resolving [of] complaints,” the “framework” is primarily concerned with what the complainants need to do: complain in a certain way and not another; within a certain time period; include all the required details etc. etc.  What the Editorial Complaints Procedure does not say is how the BBC should investigate those complaints.  Besides a few woolly formulations (e.g. “we aim to…”), there is no requirement for the complaints personnel to be independent; no obligation of fairness and impartiality; no commitment to investigate beyond ‘giving consideration’.

The BBC only commits to respond within a certain time period, ‘unless it requires longer’ (one of my complaints required more than 18 months to be… rejected by the ECU).  At any point, it can decide to amalgamate hundreds of complaints together and provide one boilerplate response to everybody; it can decide not to investigate a complaint for a variety of reasons; it can even ban complainants if – in the opinion of the BBC, of course! – they complain too much, raise trivial, irrelevant or groundless points, are unduly persistent (“pressing the point”), or God-forbid use “abusive language”.  The banned complainants still have to pay the licence fee, of course!

As we have seen, complaint adjudicators are colleagues of those complained about, who use the first person plural (”we”) to defend the BBC from criticism and accountability.  The Framework promises “an initial response” at Stage 1a and “a response from or on behalf of a BBC manager or a member of the editorial team” at Stage 1b.  This would suggest to a reasonable person that the 1b adjudicator should be higher up the hierarchy, compared to 1a.  But the BBC claims that there is no such obligation, and in practice the same person might respond at 1a and 1b; or one may receive an anonymous response; or a response from someone who isn’t “a BBC manager or a member of the editorial team” and does not state “on behalf of” whom they respond...

Stage 2 (and last) is the pompously named Executive Complaints Unit (ECU).  Naïve persons might take ‘unit’ to mean a group of people discussing, debating and making collective decisions.  But that’s just more deceit: in practice ‘ECU’ is just one person scratching their head, deciding and responding.

At each stage, the BBC is supposedly required “to give an explanation for any decision about a complaint“.  But that’s often ignored, with some responses particularly curt and dismissive.

Finally, even on the exceedingly rare occasions when a complaint is upheld (usually because it’s so blindingly obvious, that the adjudicators can’t possibly wriggle out of it), the BBC isn’t required to do anything beyond applying a minimal correction to the offending news item (which by then may be many months old, forever buried in some godforsaken corner of the BBC News website!)

As a ‘public’ media outlet, the BBC is supposed to hold up the flag of ethical, quality journalism, resisting the temptations of both ‘commercial’ sensationalism and political activism.  It does exactly the opposite: it competes with Al-Jazeera in providing shamelessly skewed, biased content.

The BBC has turned malignant.  And, as usual with such things – Jews are the canary in the coal mine.  These days, the BBC is one of the main promoters of antisemitic prejudice.  It is only a matter of time before its insidious but incessant propaganda – which is already responsible for additional suffering in the Middle East – will cause bloodshed in this country.  UK Government – be warned, or be damned!