Ever since the atrocities of October 7, the Guardianista enfant terrible Owen Jones has harboured a singular preoccupation with the Jewish state. Fourteen months on, scroll through his X account – with its million followers – and you’ll find it hard to see a mention of anything else.
Of course, Jones has no problem with Jews. Perish the thought! Just their inexplicable affection for their homeland. His is a righteous anger – a crusade, if you will – against those nasty, scheming, ethnic cleansing, apartheid-loving, white supremacist, baby-killing, genocidal (whisper it) Zionists. In fact, in November, Jones even christened his crusade with a name: “BattleLines”. But the Jews? Oh, the Jews are fine. So long as they denounce their own country.
This week, the BattleLines crusade propelled our intrepid reporter straight through the gates of Broadcasting House, where he pillaged and marauded and came up with cast-iron evidence that the BBC is – wait for it – infested with horrible Zionists who are infusing its coverage with pro-Israel bias. At which I, for one, breathed a profound sigh of relief.
Only recently, the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Community Security Trust, the three main voices of Anglo-Jewry, warned that the BBC’s reporting had “led many British Jews to conclude that the BBC has become institutionally hostile to Israel”. But they had nothing to worry about!
Brave Owen Jones has revealed that the corporation is actually the broadcasting equivalent of Theodor Herzl, Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Moshe Dayan rolled into one. Phew! How typical of those cunning Jews to make everyone believe the opposite.
The results of this so-called “investigation” were published on the obscure alternative news website Drop Site News (presumably, the reviled “mainstream media” wouldn’t touch it). In summary – I read all 9,200 words so that you don’t have to – the conclusions were fourfold. First: thirteen BBC journalists think the corporation is far too pro-Israel for their tastes.
Who were these “whistleblowers”? We don’t know, as they were anonymous; but one can’t help but wonder if they might work for BBC Arabic, perhaps, which averaged more than one correction per week between January 2021 and July 2023, including the use of inflammatory anti-Israel terminology and parroting Hamas narratives?
Second, Raffi Berg – the mild-mannered Middle East editor of the BBC website, whom I know to be a journalist of rare standards of integrity, as honest as the day is long (though to be fair, he is Jewish) – is apparently some kind of Zionist puppet-master, putting his thumb on the scales of the corporation’s coverage to take a pro-genocide line at every turn.
Evidence of Berg’s supposed pro-Israel bias includes articles with headlines like “thousands call for Mid-East peace”. That story in particular opened thus: “Thousands of pro-Israel supporters have gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to call for an end to the violence in the Middle East. Organisers said they wanted people in Gaza and Israel to live in peace, but argued that Hamas must accept responsibility for the conflict”. Disturbing, no?
Also cited was Berg’s fine 2020 book about Mossad’s humanitarian rescue of thousands of Ethiopian refugees from Sudan in the Eighties, which apparently relied in part upon a “close relationship” with “a former senior Mossad commander”. Now if you’re writing a book about a famous Mossad operation, it might make sense to rely closely upon people who have worked for, er, Mossad.
No? OK, maybe it’s just me. All together, now: booooo! (If you want to show support for poor old Berg, buy a copy. It’s entitled Red Sea Spies.)
Third, Jones presents the case of the death of a man with Downs syndrome in Gaza, who came from a family of terrorists, as incontrovertible evidence that certain BBC journalists are – metaphorically at least – singing Hava Nagila while shooting Uzis in the air with joy at the suffering of Palestinian civilians. Lastly, our brave crusader offers a data analysis of BBC reporting, which in the eyes of some observers is more than a little half-baked.
I’m not going to go through this “investigation” point by point. It would take quite a lot of time; both Christmas and Chanukah are coming; and I turned 46 just a few days ago. If, for some reason, you are interested in the granular detail, and have the stomach for it, and have a sick bag or hip flask to hand, David Collier, the independent researcher, has published a deep dive on his blog.
But it is worth asking what lies behind this intense drive to criticise Israel, often in the most magnified and – many would argue – wildly inaccurate terms? Why not Syria, or Ethiopia, or Yemen, or Turkey? Or North Korea, or Venezuela, or Sudan?
Jones is neither Jewish nor Palestinian. To my knowledge, he has never set foot in Israel, not even for a holiday in Eilat or to attend Tel Aviv Pride, and he is not known for spending much time in the Arab world. Neither is there any reason to think he is on the payroll of the Iranian regime. What’s with the obsession? What is it about the Jewish state that so agitates him?
Jones would reply, of course, that he simply objects to “genocide”. In fact, he has argued this on X. “Yes, I’m obsessed with fighting a genocide being facilitated by my government,” he posted today. “Guilty! This is not something be ashamed of. It is the people who stayed silent, or who cheered on this abomination, who should be ashamed. They will never scrub the shame away.”
But all people of sound mind know that there is no genocide in Gaza. Nobody sensible takes these claims seriously, not even Keir Starmer. Not even, might I add, David Lammy.
The tunnel vision is inexplicable. It seems pretty hard to produce decent journalism when you’re in such a frame of mind. I think of the time, for instance, when Jones watched traumatic GoPro footage of the Hamas atrocities, took notes, and used them to create a video of his own claiming that there was “no conclusive evidence of rape”, in spite of the multiple eyewitnesses and the morgue worker (interviewed recently by Allison Pearson) who described treating female bodies that had been so brutally assaulted that their pelvises had been shattered.
I know, I know. Woodward and Bernstein eat your hearts out. But in that twilight kingdom of which Jones is ruler, his million followers on X view him as the prophet of Fleet Street. And however disturbing this sorry state of affairs, this is not just about Jones and his acolytes. This is about the BBC; what its misreporting of the conflict means for its global audience; and what its Jewish employees have to face every day.
Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle on condition of anonymity, one BBC staffer said: “Every week it gets a little harder being a Jew at the BBC. Harder to sit in the office and listen to colleagues discussing their very personal views about the war in Gaza and attacks by Hezbollah on Israel. It is harder listening, watching and reading the loaded output about events in the Middle East and colleagues’ partial and often offensive social media posts. Harder to go home at night and speak to friends and family who hold me responsible for the BBC contributing to the rise in antisemitism in the UK.”
As a case in point, Jones’s latest offering, which singles out a Jewish member of staff as a locus of power behind the BBC’s output on Israel, relies on moles within the broadcaster who apparently fed him titbits of pernicious information designed to frame the Jewish journalist.
From one point of view, this was not just a hit-job by a discredited digital doofus. Jones was simply a contract killer for various BBC staff who harboured a hatred of their Jewish editor. Doesn’t this apparent vendetta rather confirm the fears of the hundreds of Jewish journalists who have tried to raise the alarm about the culture at the broadcaster but been dismissed?
A final thought. In standing up against the bullying, doing his best to uphold BBC impartiality in the face of pro-Hamas onslaughts from within, and taking a massive hit for the team at the hands of Owen Jones, isn’t Raffi Berg a bit of a Chanukah hero?
Ever since the atrocities of October 7, the Guardianista enfant terrible Owen Jones has harboured a singular preoccupation with the Jewish state. Fourteen months on, scroll through his X account – with its million followers – and you’ll find it hard to see a mention of anything else.
Of course, Jones has no problem with Jews. Perish the thought! Just their inexplicable affection for their homeland. His is a righteous anger – a crusade, if you will – against those nasty, scheming, ethnic cleansing, apartheid-loving, white supremacist, baby-killing, genocidal (whisper it) Zionists. In fact, in November, Jones even christened his crusade with a name: “BattleLines”. But the Jews? Oh, the Jews are fine. So long as they denounce their own country.
This week, the BattleLines crusade propelled our intrepid reporter straight through the gates of Broadcasting House, where he pillaged and marauded and came up with cast-iron evidence that the BBC is – wait for it – infested with horrible Zionists who are infusing its coverage with pro-Israel bias. At which I, for one, breathed a profound sigh of relief.
Only recently, the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Community Security Trust, the three main voices of Anglo-Jewry, warned that the BBC’s reporting had “led many British Jews to conclude that the BBC has become institutionally hostile to Israel”. But they had nothing to worry about!
Brave Owen Jones has revealed that the corporation is actually the broadcasting equivalent of Theodor Herzl, Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Moshe Dayan rolled into one. Phew! How typical of those cunning Jews to make everyone believe the opposite.
The results of this so-called “investigation” were published on the obscure alternative news website Drop Site News (presumably, the reviled “mainstream media” wouldn’t touch it). In summary – I read all 9,200 words so that you don’t have to – the conclusions were fourfold. First: thirteen BBC journalists think the corporation is far too pro-Israel for their tastes.
Who were these “whistleblowers”? We don’t know, as they were anonymous; but one can’t help but wonder if they might work for BBC Arabic, perhaps, which averaged more than one correction per week between January 2021 and July 2023, including the use of inflammatory anti-Israel terminology and parroting Hamas narratives?
Second, Raffi Berg – the mild-mannered Middle East editor of the BBC website, whom I know to be a journalist of rare standards of integrity, as honest as the day is long (though to be fair, he is Jewish) – is apparently some kind of Zionist puppet-master, putting his thumb on the scales of the corporation’s coverage to take a pro-genocide line at every turn.
Evidence of Berg’s supposed pro-Israel bias includes articles with headlines like “thousands call for Mid-East peace”. That story in particular opened thus: “Thousands of pro-Israel supporters have gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to call for an end to the violence in the Middle East. Organisers said they wanted people in Gaza and Israel to live in peace, but argued that Hamas must accept responsibility for the conflict”. Disturbing, no?
Also cited was Berg’s fine 2020 book about Mossad’s humanitarian rescue of thousands of Ethiopian refugees from Sudan in the Eighties, which apparently relied in part upon a “close relationship” with “a former senior Mossad commander”. Now if you’re writing a book about a famous Mossad operation, it might make sense to rely closely upon people who have worked for, er, Mossad.
No? OK, maybe it’s just me. All together, now: booooo! (If you want to show support for poor old Berg, buy a copy. It’s entitled Red Sea Spies.)
Third, Jones presents the case of the death of a man with Downs syndrome in Gaza, who came from a family of terrorists, as incontrovertible evidence that certain BBC journalists are – metaphorically at least – singing Hava Nagila while shooting Uzis in the air with joy at the suffering of Palestinian civilians. Lastly, our brave crusader offers a data analysis of BBC reporting, which in the eyes of some observers is more than a little half-baked.
I’m not going to go through this “investigation” point by point. It would take quite a lot of time; both Christmas and Chanukah are coming; and I turned 46 just a few days ago. If, for some reason, you are interested in the granular detail, and have the stomach for it, and have a sick bag or hip flask to hand, David Collier, the independent researcher, has published a deep dive on his blog.
But it is worth asking what lies behind this intense drive to criticise Israel, often in the most magnified and – many would argue – wildly inaccurate terms? Why not Syria, or Ethiopia, or Yemen, or Turkey? Or North Korea, or Venezuela, or Sudan?
Jones is neither Jewish nor Palestinian. To my knowledge, he has never set foot in Israel, not even for a holiday in Eilat or to attend Tel Aviv Pride, and he is not known for spending much time in the Arab world. Neither is there any reason to think he is on the payroll of the Iranian regime. What’s with the obsession? What is it about the Jewish state that so agitates him?
Jones would reply, of course, that he simply objects to “genocide”. In fact, he has argued this on X. “Yes, I’m obsessed with fighting a genocide being facilitated by my government,” he posted today. “Guilty! This is not something be ashamed of. It is the people who stayed silent, or who cheered on this abomination, who should be ashamed. They will never scrub the shame away.”
But all people of sound mind know that there is no genocide in Gaza. Nobody sensible takes these claims seriously, not even Keir Starmer. Not even, might I add, David Lammy.
The tunnel vision is inexplicable. It seems pretty hard to produce decent journalism when you’re in such a frame of mind. I think of the time, for instance, when Jones watched traumatic GoPro footage of the Hamas atrocities, took notes, and used them to create a video of his own claiming that there was “no conclusive evidence of rape”, in spite of the multiple eyewitnesses and the morgue worker (interviewed recently by Allison Pearson) who described treating female bodies that had been so brutally assaulted that their pelvises had been shattered.
I know, I know. Woodward and Bernstein eat your hearts out. But in that twilight kingdom of which Jones is ruler, his million followers on X view him as the prophet of Fleet Street. And however disturbing this sorry state of affairs, this is not just about Jones and his acolytes. This is about the BBC; what its misreporting of the conflict means for its global audience; and what its Jewish employees have to face every day.
Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle on condition of anonymity, one BBC staffer said: “Every week it gets a little harder being a Jew at the BBC. Harder to sit in the office and listen to colleagues discussing their very personal views about the war in Gaza and attacks by Hezbollah on Israel. It is harder listening, watching and reading the loaded output about events in the Middle East and colleagues’ partial and often offensive social media posts. Harder to go home at night and speak to friends and family who hold me responsible for the BBC contributing to the rise in antisemitism in the UK.”
As a case in point, Jones’s latest offering, which singles out a Jewish member of staff as a locus of power behind the BBC’s output on Israel, relies on moles within the broadcaster who apparently fed him titbits of pernicious information designed to frame the Jewish journalist.
From one point of view, this was not just a hit-job by a discredited digital doofus. Jones was simply a contract killer for various BBC staff who harboured a hatred of their Jewish editor. Doesn’t this apparent vendetta rather confirm the fears of the hundreds of Jewish journalists who have tried to raise the alarm about the culture at the broadcaster but been dismissed?
A final thought. In standing up against the bullying, doing his best to uphold BBC impartiality in the face of pro-Hamas onslaughts from within, and taking a massive hit for the team at the hands of Owen Jones, isn’t Raffi Berg a bit of a Chanukah hero?