Apologists for Israel take top posts at BBCnew director-general took up his post at the BBC and, within two weeks, had installed a line-up of hardline Zionists at the top of the world’s largest publicly-funded news organization.
Tony Hall, whose role as director-general commenced on 2 April, is a former BBC director of news and can boast a total of nearly 30 years working at the corporation. As such, he is well-versed in the BBC’s values — he knows what the BBC wants.
Soon after his own appointment, Hall named James Harding as the BBC’s new director of news and current affairs. Until December, Harding was editor of The Times, an avowedly right-wing, pro-Israeli paper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International group.
In 2011, Harding spoke at a media event organized by The Jewish Chronicle, telling his audience: “I am pro-Israel. I believe in the State of Israel. I would have had a real problem if I had been coming to a paper [The Times] with a history of being anti-Israel. And, of course, Rupert Murdoch is pro-Israel.”
Glee
The strongly Zionist Jewish Chronicle reprinted those words with glee as news of Harding’s BBC appointment broke. And it also took the opportunity to remind its readers that, during the Israeli massacre in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009, when more than 1,400 Palestinians were slaughtered, Harding wrote a Times editorial titled, “In defense of Israel” (“Signs of The Times at JCC,” 14 April 2011).
Now bringing his pro-Israel biases into the top ranks of the BBC, Harding will be in charge of its flagship news and current affairs programs including Today, Newsnight, Panorama and Question Time. He will also be responsible for daily news bulletins on the BBC’s main television channels and radio stations.
According to the Guardian, Harding now holds “arguably the most important editorial job in Britain” (“James Harding: ex-Times editor could become the story at the BBC,” 16 April 2013).
The news of his appointment to the £340,000 ($518,000) per year post comes just a fortnight after the former Labour Party minister James Purnell took up his new position at the BBC as director of strategy and digital.
Purnell, who was one of Hall’s first appointments, served for two years while in Parliament as chairman of the Westminster lobby group Labour Friends of Israel. Hugely influential, Labour Friends of Israel has drawn support from senior figures within the party, including the former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Unsurprisingly, Purnell subscribes to the Zionist view, often taken in BBC news reporting, that Israel can do no wrong. Rather than as an aggressive occupier, Purnell portrays Israel as a victim of hostile, terrorist Arab neighbors. In a letter to Prospect magazine in 2004, Purnell wrote of the comparison made by campaigners between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa, saying: “I find it hard to reconcile that image to the reality on the ground. Israel is a democracy, suffering terrorist attacks, surrounded by countries that don’t recognize its existence, the victim of well-funded terrorist organizations that preach anti-Semitic hate” (“Judt on anti-Semitism,” 13 December 2004).
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