BBC "Hardtalk" Smears Israel

BBC's Hardtalk bills itself as "the hard-hitting flagship news programme" of the world's largest media institution, its combative format supposedly geared toward asking "the difficult questions" and getting "behind the stories that make the news." It often features world leaders and celebrities and its audience spans the globe.



But a May 8, 2012 Hardtalk ("Are American Jews fed up with Israel?") underscored the extreme bias the BBC can exhibit in handling Jewish matters, both in 1) what it presented as accepted fact about the role of American Jews and foreign policy and 2) who it enlisted -- Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry -- to comment on American Jewish attitudes towards Israel.



To begin, anchor Sarah Montague asserted as fact that American policy is "in thrall to the Jewish lobby" and "the American Jews influence US foreign policy and that explains Washington's increasing support for Israel." Then she invited Finkelstein to expound on American Jews drifting away from Israel.



Although she interjects occasional challenge to Finkelstein's claims of Jewish disaffection and points out he's controversial, Montague also allows distorted and extreme allegations against Israel to pass without comment.



While a discussion of Jewish attachment to Israel may be newsworthy and a reasonable topic for debate (when not introduced as Montague did), the notion that Norman Finkelstein is a fit and credible commentator on American Jewish feeling for Israel is outrageous. His record of fallacious, virulent attacks on the Jewish state and expressions of sympathy for Israel's avowedly genocidal enemies are well known.



Finkelstein has called for solidarity with Hezbollah, mocked Israel as a "lunatic state," "an insane state," and "a Satanic state" bent on war. He labels Jewish leaders involved in Holocaust restitution "gangsters" and "crooks," terms Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel "the resident clown of the Holocaust circus." He calls Israelis "Satanic, narcissistic people" and claims Israel committed a "slaughter, a massacre" in Gaza and "wants war, war and war."



In the Hardtalk segment he says:

Israel is carrying on in a lunatic fashion. I would like to ask you. Name me another country in the world. 2003 Israel was the cheerleaders for the war in Iraq. 2006 it went into war in Lebanon. 2008/2009 it attacked Gaza. Now it talks about attacking Iran. If you read the Israeli papers every day they talk about -- should we attack Gaza? Should we attack Lebanon? Should we attack Syria? Name me another country in the world that falls into that category. It's a lunatic state.



At a time of growing anti‑Jewish sentiment in parts of the world, the BBC's global influence makes its presentation of a bigoted figure such as Finkelstein, with his distorted claims, all the more reprehensible.