More on the BBC’s censure of Jeremy Bowen

For general information on this issue see our earlier posting BBC’s Jeremy Bowen breached guidelines on accuracy in Israel reports

On 18 April the Independent carried this letter from Chris Doyle of The Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU):

Jeremy Bowen was correct about Zionism’s “innate instinct to push out the frontier”. [Bowen ‘breached rules on impartiality’, Independent 16 April.] No Israeli government has agreed to demarcate its borders and every single Israeli government has expanded, by annexing territory, kicking out inhabitants and colonising Palestinian land to the extent of having over 500,000 settlers on occupied territory, all illegal under international law. On every occasion Israel has pulled back from territory, it has always been labelled a painful concession, in other words against their Zionist instincts.

One of the great architects of the Zionist project, Chaim Weizmann, stated in 1937 that “we shall expand in the whole country in the course of time . . . . this is only an arrangement for the next 25-30 years.” Moshe Dayan admitted that following the 1967 war, “Israel’s borders, with the exception of that with Lebanon, are ideal”. Netanyahu in his 1996 inauguration speech stated that “we will encourage pioneering settlement in the Land of Israel: in the Negev, Galilee, Judea and Samaria, and the Golan”, a position shared by all Israeli governments since 1967.

Following this ruling, and also its decision to support the refusal to air the emergency appeal for Gaza, it is clear that it is the BBC Trust, not Bowen, which has failed in its public duty, not least to defend our public broadcaster from apologists for war crimes.

Chris Doyle
Director, Council for Arab-British Understanding London EC4