Ben Bowdler

It’s hard to grasp the BBC’s systematic attempt to launder Israeli propaganda until you see the sheer scale of it. Here's a compilation of them doing it at 2x speed. The latest was on Newsnight on 4 November. When Bernie Sanders called Israel’s government extremist, Victoria Derbyshire answered for it: “And the Israeli government would deny that they are extremists.” As this video shows, BBC presenters repeatedly do this as guests describe Israel’s crimes: “Israel would say.” “Israel would deny.” “They would reject that.” We counted 70 of these denials and justifications in 52 aired interviews. The BBC calls this impartiality. But in not one of those 52 did a presenter raise any of these words from Israel’s own leaders: - “We are fighting human animals.” Yoav Gallant, 9 October 2023 - “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” Isaac Herzog, 12 October 2023 - “They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.” Israel Katz, 13 October 2023 - “Remember what Amalek did to you.” Benjamin Netanyahu, 3 November 2023 - Starving two million people in Gaza until the hostages came back might be “justified and moral”. Bezalel Smotrich, 5 August 2024 On 10 October 2023, Tahani Mustafa told the BBC that Israeli forces were not distinguishing civilians from fighters. The presenter replied: “They would reject that.” Mustafa then had to bring up Gallant’s “human animals” herself. The BBC supplied the denial. The guest had to supply Israel’s own words. That is cherry-picking. The Royal Charter requires the BBC to be impartial, and the public pays for it through the licence fee. In these interviews, it handed its audience Israel’s denials and left out its leaders’ own words, during a genocide streamed live to the world. We have archived the BBC’s coverage for three years, and we are now counting all of it: 50,000 video clips and many more written excerpts. We are calling this first part: "BBC: The Would Say Files". Handing Israel its denials is only one of the ways the BBC launders Israeli propaganda, so we will count every other technique too. Over the next few weeks, we will announce each milestone as we complete the report. These are the first results, with every clip, quote and source: newscord.org/editorials/bbc-…