On what planet is the BBC pro-Israel?

A psychiatrist sits in front of a man, assessing his mental health. The man admits to seeing demons coming out of a toaster and pixies speaking to him from his wife’s moisturiser bottles. So far, nothing conclusive. Then the man states, ‘I think the BBC is pro-Israel’. The psychiatrist immediately prescribes a high dose of chlorpromazine and recommends sectioning.

How else are we supposed to account for the over 400 media figures, including 111 BBC journalists, who last week wrote and signed a letter expressing that very sentiment? Was it temporary mass insanity? A gas leak in W1A? Spiked lattes at the Starbucks next to Broadcasting House?

Funnily enough, the 92 per cent of British Jews who rate the corporation’s coverage of Israel as unfavourable would most likely agree with the letter’s conclusion: that the BBC needs to re-embrace the ‘values of impartiality, honesty and reporting without fear or favour’. Hear, hear.

Some might say the letter is proof that the Beeb is doing a good job. After all, if both sides feel antagonised by the BBC’s coverage, then is this not proof of its lack of bias?

For this very reason, I suspect that BBC management was only too happy to receive this letter from pro-Palestine activists. Last year, Danny Cohen, its former head of television, published a damning report examining the first 11 months of BBC News’ output since 7 October 2023. It listed over 60 pages of mistakes in the BBC’s reporting, and concluded that it is ‘institutionally hostile to Israel’. But now the BBC gets to point to this new letter as evidence that it is balanced after all.

Of course, the letter is spectacularly misleading. ‘In some instances’, it reads, ‘staff have been accused of having an agenda because they have posted news articles critical of the Israeli government on their social media’. Which is a strange way of saying that multiple BBC employees have been caught expressing unbridled anti-Semitism. Staff at BBC Arabic, a foreign-language service broadcast in the Arab world, even appear to have celebrated Hamas’s atrocities on 7 October.

The letter takes particular issue with Robbie Gibb, a former director of communications for Theresa May’s government, who is now on the BBC board and the BBC’s editorial-standards committee. ‘Gibb remains in an influential post with little transparency regarding his decisions despite his ideological leanings being well known’, it complains. It also notes that Gibb has – shock horror! – ‘close ties to the Jewish Chronicle’.

Oh no, not a BBC board member with close ties to the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper! The letter alleges that Gibb’s connection to the Jewish community creates a ‘conflict of interest’, which means that licence-fee payers can no longer overlook his supposed ‘ideological allegiances’.

What ideological allegiances are these? I don’t know the man’s politics but I assume this is supposed to mean he’s a Zionist and, as such, supports the right of Jews to national sovereignty in their indigenous homeland. So what? In any case, the idea that he holds dastardly sway over the board’s 13 other members in determining editorial policy is absurd. As is the contention that his mere presence alone must be enough for the BBC to be ‘crippled by the fear of being perceived as critical of the Israeli government’.

Have any of the letter’s signatories ever actually watched a BBC interview with Israeli government officials? They could hardly be more combative. If Gibb really is pushing Israel’s agenda on the BBC, then frankly he’s doing a terrible job.

What’s really troubling about this letter is the fact that the 111 BBC journalists who signed it really believe that the BBC is pro-Israel. This means they really believe that when, after 7 October, the BBC refused to refer to Hamas as a terrorist group, despite it being proscribed as such in the UK, it’s because the BBC is pro-Israel.

That when the BBC falsely reported that Israel had destroyed 80 per cent of al-Ahli hospital, killing over 1,000 people, when in fact Palestinian Islamic Jihad had misfired a missile that hit a car park, it’s because the BBC is pro-Israel.

That when BBC News referred to Israeli hostages held by Hamas as ‘prisoners’, while calling Palestinian prisoners ‘hostages’, it’s because the BBC is pro-Israel.

That when BBC Two commissioned and broadcast a documentary in which one of the narrators is the son of a Hamas official, and which featured multiple mistranslations, such as ‘jihad against the Jews’ changed to ‘fighting Israeli forces’, it’s because the BBC is pro-Israel.

That when the BBC broadcast the modern blood libel and outright lie that 14,000 babies were about to starve in Gaza over the next 48 hours, it was because the BBC is pro-Israel.

That when the BBC uncritically reported Hamas propaganda that Gazans had been shelled by Israeli forces while queuing for humanitarian aid, to the point that even the White House called it out, it was because the BBC is pro-Israel.

That when the BBC livestreamed Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury set, featuring thousands of people chanting to ‘Death, death to the IDF’, it was because the BBC is pro-Israel.

All of this raises the question: what kind of approach could the BBC take that would make the letter’s signatories happy? Perhaps it could get its highest paid star to share a post likening Zionists to rats?

What this letter really reveals is not that BBC News is pro-Israel. No, it’s far more disturbing than that. It shows that the BBC is employing 111 journalists, who are so partisan that they can’t see the truth right in front of them – let alone be trusted to report it.

Josh Howie is a stand-up comedian and host of Free Speech Nation on GB News. Follow him on X: @joshxhowie.