OPINION: In BBC Arabic’s echo chamber, British Jews are presented as living in a ‘bubble’
Significant attention has been paid to the 'news' element of the channel, but its 'culture' programmes contain their own continuous drip of propaganda, argues David Grom
In recent years, one of the most common ways for BBC Arabic editors to keep their audience inside the echo chamber of Palestinian propaganda has been the service’s cultural programmes. From folk music to wildlife, equestrianism to local cuisine, human interest items emerge as an easy method of introducing hateful or violent perspectives, without the need to balance them with alternative views from the Israeli side.
British license fee payers are growing more impatient with BBC Arabic’s evident failure to challenge this choir of incitement where ’proper’ news is concerned. Culture programmes, on the other hand, are still a realm in which the BBC does not feel as pressured to include the broader context of the conflict to counter contributors who, for example, deny Jewish history or make unfounded speculations about Israelis.
Even news-focused cultural segments can comfortably use the same trick of featuring a partisan commentator as the item’s main voice and this can often go unnoticed – though thankfully, not always, as seen in 2021 when the Corporation publicly apologised after airing a cosy discussion with Ahlam Tamimi, one of the terrorists responsible for the 2001 Sbarro bombing.
At post-October 7 BBC Arabic, it is the theme of art and culture which most frequently serves as a means to that end.
Not long ago, it was revealed how a seemingly innocent item about “national consciousness through the art of storytelling” in fact whitewashed a song in praise of murderers who killed innocent Jews in 1929 Mandatory Palestine.
Furthermore, the BBC film crew, which was present throughout the same storytelling act, edited out parts in which the Palestinian performer in question used antisemitic stereotypes and unambiguously called for violence against “the Zionist enemy”.
Alongside that extreme case, several less pronounced ones have also been featured in BBC Arabic’s “Art for Life” program. Examples include: an artist who labelled the world-renowned Tel Aviv 1930s architecture as a form of anti-Palestinian “imperialism”, a concert uncritically echoing the Palestinian promise to “return” to the present-day Israeli cities of Haifa, Akko and Lod and an artists’ collective praising the decades-long Irish “solidarity” with the Palestinians and their “struggle” – again without addressing the two groups’ joint legacy of targeting civilians as a part of that “struggle”.
Perhaps the most surprising item of this kind was one shown repeatedly for several months on the BBC Arabic television channel, which concerned a past London exhibition presenting “Palestinian voices” by the We Are Not Numbers (WANN) project.
Founded by the dubious Euro Med Human Rights monitor organisation, WANN’s frontman in the UK is Ahmad Alnaouq. As Jewish News and CAMERA have noted in the past, Alnaouq is a proud relative of a Hamas terrorist killed by the IDF and has previously declared that Zionism must “be dismantled”. The BBC’s English language content also has a record of not informing its audience about his affiliations. Of course, the exhibition is oblivious to Israeli victims, focusing solely on Palestinian ones.
This flattering BBC Arabic item about WANN and its exhibition would not have been unique were it not for a single detail: its Jewish curator Taya Amit. A devout token Jew in service of the cause, Amit shared to the camera her belief that the exhibition can educate her Jewish family and friends about what their attitude towards Israel and Zionism is really about, saying that:
“the language of ‘settler colonialism, and ‘apartheid’, and ‘the Zionist project’, these are not words that people in my Jewish community are always around, and it’s important for them to hear how they are, how Zionism and Israel is perceived in the world, and to step outside of a bubble that is pro-Israel.”
In short, the only British Jewish voice contributing to the publicly-funded Arabic broadcasting service – which for years has carefully secluded its audience from perspectives that might threaten the Arab-nationalist view of the conflict – is a voice telling UK Jews it is they who live in their own “bubble.”
Regardless of Amit’s own opinions, to feature her and only her in such manner is a jaw-dropping level of chutzpah, even by BBC Arabic standards. Unfortunately, judging by the other items documented here, it will take a long and profound process to change this outlet in a way which would prevent such instances from reoccurring.
David Grom is a CAMERA Arabic researcher
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