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Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised. The BBC has a deep bench of Israel-haters. There have been such anti-Israel and antisemitic luminaries as Jeremy Bowen, Robert Fisk, Barbara Plett (who wept as she reported on the death of “that frail old man” Yasser Arafat), Orla Guerin, Lyse Doucet, Yolande Knell, and finally, the latest entry in the anti-Israel sweepstakes at the BBC, Anjana Gadgil. More on her despicable, and therefore prize-winning performance, can be found here: “BBC Apologizes After Reporter Says ‘Israeli Forces Are Happy to Kill Children,’” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, July 5, 2023:
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has apologized after its news anchor Anjana Gadgil said “Israeli forces are happy to kill children” while commenting on the air about the Israel Defense Forces’ latest security operations in the West Bank city of Jenin.
Gadgil had directed her comments to former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, whom she was interviewing.
“The United Nations raised the issue of the impact of the operation in Jenin on children and young people,” BBC said on Wednesday in a statement. “While this was a legitimate subject to examine in the interview, we apologise that the language used in this line of questioning was not phrased well and was inappropriate.”
Was the language Gadgil used merely “not phrased well” and “inappropriate”? Wasn’t it far worse, a blood libel about Jews, like the medieval tales about Jews hungry for the blood of non-Jewish children, to be used in making Passover matzos?
The statement followed a quick investigation prompted by numerous formal complaints, one of which was filed by Israeli legal nonprofit International Legal Forum (ILF). “You know, it’s quite remarkable that you would say that, because they’re killing us,” Bennett responded to her statement. “Now if there is a 17-year-old Palestinian that is shooting at your family, Anjana? What is he?”
Does Gadgil not know that the IDF makes colossal efforts not to harm civilians, including children? Has she never heard about the warnings the IDF provides to civilians about targets it is about to hit, and which they must therefore leave? The IDF uses emails, telephone calls, leafletting, and the “knock on the roof” technique, to warn civilians to leave – even though those warnings also often allow terrorist targets to escape as well.
Does Anjana Gadgil not know that Israeli pilots will abort a mission if they detect civilians, and especially children, on the ground near the targets?
Does she not know that because of such warnings, and the calling off of airstrikes, British Colonel Richard Kemp has called the IDF “the most moral army in the world”?
Gadgil responded by insisting that the United Nations classifies 17-year-olds as children and refused to say what she would call a person of similar age who attempted to kill her family, adding, “We’re not talking about that.”…
Bennett’s comment was both pointed and apt. But Gadgil doesn’t want to admit that yes, even she, the supreme moral arbiter, would not call a 17-year-old threatening to kill her family a “child” who should, therefore, not be targeted.
When Gadgil referred to “four children” being killed, she was wrong in ways little and big. There were only three Palestinians killed who were under the age of 18 in Jenin: two were 17, and one was 16. These were big, strapping combatants, not twelve-year-olds, well-versed in handling weapons, from Molotov cocktails to rifles. And how, in any case, could the IDF in the midst of the smoke of battle, with bullets whizzing, be expected to calmly and accurately gauge from a distance the ages of those firing at it? Could any of us, under the most serene of conditions, be able to distinguish a 17-year-old from an 18-year-old at 50 yards?
Last November, UK media watchdog Ofcom, determined that the broadcaster had failed to be “duly accurate or duly impartial” in its reporting on 2021 antisemitic attack on a bus carrying Jewish teenagers who were celebrating Hanukkah in London. After the incident, it reported that some of the victims had uttered anti-Muslim slurs, a claim that was roundly rejected by the Jewish community and debunked when the Board of Deputies of British Jews released two independent forensic reports concluding that no such slurs can be heard in footage of the incident. BBC, however, stood by its original reporting, eliciting outrage.
Though the Jewish group released an audio of the entire incident, conclusive evidence that demonstrated that no Jews on the bus had uttered anti-Muslim slurs, the BBC continued to ignore that irrefutable audio and “stood by its original reporting.” Being the BBC means, apparently, you can report anything you like, and only when the offense is rank, as in the case of Anjana Gadgil’s delirious charge, will the BBC, always half-heartedly, apologize.
Now the higher-ups at the BBC have apologized for Gadgil’s remark, but not exactly in exemplary fashion. The statement the BBC released is this: “While this was a legitimate subject to examine in the interview, we apologise that the language used in this line of questioning was not phrased well and was inappropriate.” This statement leaves one disconcerted. Does the BBC think that the possibility that the IDF is “happy” to “kill children” is a “legitimate subject” to raise? When has the BBC ever asked such a question of anyone it has interviewed? Was the interviewer’s language merely “Inappropriate” or was it, in fact, blood-libelous?
And why did Anjana Gadgil herself not apologize? Does the BBC not think that her refusal to do so deserves some kind of sanction? Why, one wants to know, after such a performance, is she still in the BBC’s employ? Bad as the BBC is on the subject of Israel, even it has limits to its malevolence, and she has crossed them. Let her go off to Al Jazeera. They’ll be waiting with open arms.
Bird of Paradise says
Someone need to set the record straight for Ding-Bat here
Kasandra says
Wouldn’t matter. I’m sure she’s a Leftist and, thus, lives by narratives, not facts. As the Left has become completely infected by post-modernist theory, its adherents don’t believe that objective fact even exists. To them, everything is just a “narrative” and this is hers.
From The Other Side of Town says
I think you will find she knows already.
J.J. Sefton says
You can almost see her fighting to end her statement with “. . . and use their blood to make matzoh.”
Sickening yet all too common these days.
Algorithmic Analyst says
That’s one of the standard narratives of the left. And illustrates the disconnect between narratives going around in political discourse, and the reality on the ground.
Algorithmic Analyst says
Teenagers with weapons are the most dangerous of street criminals. They shouldn’t be considered children.
Children generally haven’t reached the age of puberty.
Kasandra says
If you are brandishing or using a weapon you aren’t a child. You’re a threat.
Steve says
The worst thing is that I have no doubt that the raging antisemites at BBC (like their counterparts at NPR, PBS, CBS, MSNBC, CNN and of course, TIME magazine and The New York Times) imagine their baleful attitudes toward Jews and Israel are “progressive”, “enlightened” and “woke”. They’re actually expressing what is aptly called “the oldest hatred”. “Anti-Zionism” is merely the form antisemitism takes in the 21st century, and anyone less stupid than Joe Biden or Alexandria Ocasio Cortez knows that.
Guy Jones says
The media’s feckless dhimmitude goes beyond indefensible stupidity, myopia, naivete, dishonesty and bias. This is overt collaboration with and rationalization/whitewashing of evil, to wit, Muslim supremacists/terrorists/totalitarians. It’s as off-putting and as despicable as a journalist in the 1930’s or 1940’s attempting to defend German National Socialists.
Taylor says
BBC Reporter Claims ‘Israelis are Happy to Kill Children’
The BBC is happy to grope them.
Steve says
Or to promote their mutilation and castration via “gender affirming healthcare”.
alternaar says
“Happy to kill children? describes the palestinians to a tee when they hand out candies in the street after a successful terror attack.
RS says
She needs to check out the Palestinian leaders, and Hamas and their record of attacks on Israelis, families, and using human shields to protect their fighters.
BLSinSC says
I thought they had a LAW about HATE speech or even HATE “thoughts” in England!!
RS says
The PA Prime Minister Muhammed Shtayyeh rejects Israel’s demands in return for measures preventing its immediate collapse. The PA should put an end to moves against Israel in the International arena, as well, and stop paying terrorists and their families to attack Jews. Whose is in the wrong here! Who creates chaos! Its quite obvious!