BBC presenter claims ‘Israeli forces are happy to kill children’

A BBC presenter has provoked anger after claiming “Israeli forces are happy to kill children” during an interview challenging former prime minister Naftali Bennett over the military operation in Jenin.

Anjana Gadgil was interviewing the former premier on BBC World News when she attempted to counter his claim that Palestinian deaths as a result of the military action were those of “young terrorists”.

Gadgil, who is also a BBC One host, said to Bennett: “Terrorists, but children. The Israeli forces are happy to kill children.”

The Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council and Bennett himself later condemned the BBC presenter’s comments in the interview, which have now been raised with the corporation.

Speaking to Gadgil from a studio in Jerusalem, the former PM had told her: “You know, it’s quite remarkable that you’d say that, because they’re killing us.

“If it was a 17 year-old Palestinian shooting at your family Anjana, what is he?”

The presenter responded:”Under your definition you are calling them ‘terrorists.’

“The UN are calling them children.”

Bennett replied:” No, actually, what would you call a 17 year-old citizen with a rifle shooting at your family and murdering your own family. How would you define that person?”

Gadgil added:”We are not talking about that.  The UN has defined them as children and we know that four people between the ages of 16 and 18 have been killed in this targeted attack. Let’s not forget it’s a targeted attack. The Israeli forces are going in looking for these people.”

“Quite to the contrary,” Bennett replied. “Actually, all 11 people dead there are militants. The fact that there are young terrorists who decide to hold arms is their responsibility.”

On Wednesday the Board said in a statement that had been left “appalled” by the presenter’s comments, made in Tuesday’s interview.

The organisation added: “The comments made, including the charge that ‘Israeli forces are happy to kill children’ when discussing armed terrorists under the age of 18, is simply disgraceful.

“This is a clear breach of the Corporation’s own Editorial Guidelines, and we will be contacting the Director General personally to protest in the strongest possible terms.”

Claudia Mendoza, co-chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, said: “Naftali Bennett was right to expose the false moral equivalence in the frankly outrageous line of questioning. We are pleased this is being raised with the BBC.”

Bennett criticised the interview himself saying it “undermined” the BBC’s impartiality.

Gadgil had began the interview by saying:”The Israeli military are calling this a ‘military operation,’ but we now know that young people are being killed, four of them under eighteen.

“Is that really what the military set out to do? To kill people between the ages of 16 and 18?”

Bennett then said:”It missed something. You know a 17 year-old terrorist can murder civilians. What they’re doing is explicitly and deliberately targeting civilians. What we’re doing is targeting terrorists. That’s exactly the opposite.

“We are doing the right thing, they’re killing civilians. The fact you’re creating this moral equivalent or even worse… I think it’s unacceptable.”

Gadgil then attempted to suggest “language like this” would “stoke tensions even more”.

She said:”What you’re doing in Jenin and the retaliatory attacks in Tel Aviv are not the way forward.”

The ex-PM then suggested if there were a town 50 miles from London which on a daily basis had launched terror attacks that killed people on the streets of the capital forces would be sent there to tackle the problem.

“We don’t have much of a choice,” added Bennett, who said Israel left Jenin in the 1990s, but the “camp” had now “become a terror camp.”

The ex-Israeli prime minister went on to explain that, of many of the terror attacks over the past year, events that have collectively ended several dozens of Israeli civilian lives, the perpetrators have come from, and we trained in, Jenin.

“Jenin has become an epicenter of terror,” he said. “All the Palestinians that were killed were terrorists in this case.”

The BBC host asked “when is this going to end.” Bennett said:”When they accept the Jewish state of Israel, it will end.”

Israel launched the raid on the Jenin refugee camp early on Monday under the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The raid, Israel’s biggest military operation in years in the West Bank, included the use of hundreds of IDF troops as well as drone strikes and the use of army bulldozers that ripped up streets.

Israel intercepted five rockets fired from Gaza overnight on Tuesday.