On 9 March, BBC’s Newsnight broadcast an extensive report (access the video here) apparently revealing secret sales of quantities of plutonium by Harold Wilson’s government to Israel in the 1960s, which it is claimed, would have assisted in the production of Israeli nuclear weapons.
The report and its timing draws a perverse parallel with the current British government’s attempts to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weaponry. This, despite the fact that while democratic Israel has maintained a policy of nuclear ambiguity for decades, Iran is an authoritarian theocracy that has threatened to wipe Israel off the map and supports and funds numerous terrorist organisations, including Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.
Not content with drawing false comparisons between Israel and Iran, the BBC report goes on to accuse the British Jewish civil servant Michael Michaels of ‘dual loyalties’, even stressing Michael’s middle name “Israel”, a not uncommon Jewish name. (Michaels was older than the State of Israel at the time and thus could not have been named after it.)
While one can agree or disagree with Israel’s nuclear policy (and Israel actually supports a nuclear-free Mideast once peace and stability have been achieved in the region), Newsnight’s insidious accusations of Jewish disloyalty and false comparisons with Iran raise questions as to the agendas of those behind this broadcast.
For a detailed critique of the Newsnight report, see Melanie Phillips’s thorough analysis.
Comments to BBC Complaints – please let HonestReporting UK know if you receive responses.
BBC & GUARDIAN – LACKING IN CONTEXT
Following our launch last week, as subscriber numbers continued to rise, so did the amount of e-mails alerting us to a story appearing in both the Guardian and on the BBC’s website. Both media outlets took their articles from Ha’aretz, which told of the refusal of Moqassed Hospital in East Jerusalem to release a baby to its Arab mother for two months until she paid her hospital bill – a situation that was subsequently dealt with by the Israeli Justice Ministry.
The Guardian and BBC are extremely fond of distinguishing “Arab East Jerusalem” from the rest of Israel’s capital city – yet, in this case, both failed to acknowledge that the hospital in question was an Arab-run charitable medical facility in the east of the city – quite different to Jerusalem’s hospitals of Hadassah Ein Kerem, Hadassah Mount Scopus and Sha’arei Tzedek to name a few, which treat Jews and Arabs equally according to medical need and not ethnic or religious affiliation.
While we are happy to see the BBC reunify the Israeli capital, one wonders why this occurs only when Israel can be presented in a negative light. After taking HonestReporting UK’s advice, at least one subscriber decided to take this issue up with the BBC, which subsequently corrected the story on the website, adding some relevant context.
Even though the subscriber in question admitted that she was not an expert on the issues at hand, her actions prompted a favourable result – one that we hope will be repeated through similar involvement from other readers of HonestReporting UK.
The Guardian, however, while stating that Moqassed Hospital was located in East Jerusalem, failed to mention that hospital’s background.
Comments to the Guardian: [email protected]
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