Hamas-friendly BBC’s depravity

How many more men, women, children, and infants must Hamas slaughter so that the BBC would call its members “terrorists”? Apparently, the British broadcaster will remain dispassionate even if Hamas and other terrorist groups murder a million Jews. Such is the depravity of media platforms committed to the dogmas of contemporary liberalism.

A lot of people find this revolting. Around 250 protesters reported protested outside the BBC’s main headquarters in London on Monday over the British broadcaster’s “continued refusal to call Hamas terrorists.” Demonstrators at the event, organized by Jewish groups, chanted “Hamas, terrorists” and “Shame on You” at the broadcaster for making the editorial decision to refer to Hamas as militants, or a militant group, AFP reported. “Many waved Israeli flags and others held posters carrying pictures of Israeli children kidnapped by Hamas.”

UK Defence Minister Grant Shapps said last week that the BBC should follow the “law” and call Hamas a terrorist organization, with the government having proscribed it as such in 2021.

BBC World Affairs editor John Simpson explained the corporation’s position in an article. “Government ministers, newspaper columnists, ordinary people— they’re all asking why the BBC doesn’t say the Hamas gunmen who carried out appalling atrocities in southern Israel are terrorists.

“The answer goes right back to the BBC’s founding principles.

“Terrorism is a loaded word, which people use about an outfit they disapprove of morally. It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn—who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.”

He went on to highlight the BBC’s history: “During World War Two, BBC broadcasters were expressly told not to call the Nazis evil or wicked, even though we could and did call them ‘the enemy’.”

But during World War II, all the details about the Holocaust were not known: the death camps at Auschwitz, Dachau, and other places; the magnitude of the killing of millions of Jews and others; slaughtering of the victims on an industrial scale. Such was the scale and the enormity of the evil of the so-called Final Solution—genocide of Jews—that even most Germans were not made aware about it.

I wonder if the BBC is still reluctant of using words like evil or wicked for Nazis. And how, pray, do they describe pedophiles and psychopaths? As ‘minor-attracted persons’ and ‘psychologically disturbed’?

While Simpson and others indulge in labored semantic somersaults, his colleagues at BBC News Arabic make no such pretensions and fully support Hamas. “Reporters at BBC News Arabic endorsed comments likening Hamas, which is a designated terrorist group, to freedom fighters, as well as describing the October 7 atrocity as a ‘morning of hope’, The Telegraph (London) reported.

One senior correspondent appeared to make fun of the Israeli relatives of a grandmother who was abducted by Hamas, the report said. “Separately, the output on BBC Arabic, which is funded by the licence fee, has provoked a flurry of complaints alleging bias and inaccuracy, such as for referring to towns inside Israel’s internationally recognized territory… as ‘settlements’ and their residents as ‘settlers.”

According to Simpson, the BBC dislikes “taking sides.” To the extent that reporting or commenting a political dispute, an economic matter, a cultural issue, a philosophical or religions question, this is what every news organization should be doing. But you have to take sides when one side is indubitably evil. A serial murderer (when the guilt is proven in a court of law) and a cop cannot be put on the same moral footing. Nor can be an arsonist and a firefighter.

And nor can be Hamas and Israel.