BBC journalist ‘set up Twitter account saying Israel is racist’

The BBC is investigating one of its journalists for an anonymous Twitter account on which he reportedly wrote anti-Israel posts.

Nimesh Thaker, a longtime BBC World News journalist, has been named as the man behind the now-private Not that bothered Twitter account.

Thaker’s account tweeted that Israel is “racist” and a “white supremacist state.” After Jewish BBC host Emma Barnett spoke out about the British rapper Wiley’s incendiary tweets about Jews, Thaker’s account retweeted a message saying that Barnett was using “the same old ‘antisemitism’ excuse whenever people criticise Israel.”

Wiley was banned from Facebook, Twitter and other platforms for his tweets.

“The BBC takes allegations of this nature extremely seriously, and while we cannot comment on individual staff issues, we have robust processes in place to investigate any such matters with urgency,” a BBC spokesperson told the Jewish Chronicle, who broke the story.

The Not that bothered account also boosted posts by Jackie Walker, a former Labour activist who was kicked out of the party over antisemitism allegations.