Bad morning

The Today programme trailed this interview with Mira Bar Hillel and Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner as “What  British Jews think of what is happening in Gaza” or “What Israeli Jews think of what Israel is doing”.

This interview hardly needs any further comment. 

However if there’s anyone reading this who doesn’t know who Mira B-H is, let’s just say she’s not a representative of  “British Jews” in any way shape or form. By promoting her untypical opinions the media is clearly exploiting a disturbed individual as provocateur for their own cynical ratings campaign. That’s the Guardian feeding the BBC in this case.

Sarah Montague’s introduction was by no means impartial too. It contained the boiler-plate  misinformation about shortages of “food and medicine” being due to Israel’s blockade over many years, but that’s almost par for the course.

The innuendo in Ms B-H’s allegation that the Jewish community would ex-communicate, bully, and be generally horrid to dissenting voices was plain weird. Are Jews now the new Muslims? Is that what she’s trying to imply? 

The deaths of Israeli soldiers, she says, don’t count as tragedies. Why? Because they’re soldiers. 

Of course they’re bloody soldiers. Israelis, from 19 years of age have to serve their country while they’re hardly more than children. Why ? Because fanatical antisemitic religious Muslims want to exterminate them and theirs.  

So the BBC can report the views of people like M B-H till they’re blue in the face, but don’t let them promote them as the views of “British Jews”.