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?
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| 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 20th 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.
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| 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.
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