The BBC Censors its own Report on Tunisia's Jews Saying 'No' to Israel!

Tunisia’s Jews have rejected the Israeli call...

Courtesy: BBC World Radio

(LONDON) - There was a moment in a report from Tunisia by the BBC’s Wyre Davies when I could not stop myself laughing. I was listening to it on the Corporation’s generally excellent World Service radio. (In my view this particular BBC service is generally excellent because unlike all other BBC news and current affairs outlets, radio and tv, it often reflects some of the truth about what is happening in and over Palestine that became Israel).

Davies was in Tunisia to find out how its remaining 2,000 Jews (down from 300,000 once upon a time) were responding to a call from an Israeli government minister for them to move to Israel. The case the minister made was, apparently, that their security and wellbeing were no longer guaranteed in an Arab country with an Islamist government in place of what Davies called a “sectarian dictatorship”. In other words, Tunisia’s Jews were in danger and would be safe in Israel. (My guess is that the greatest concern of the Israeli minister and his colleagues was less the fate of Jews in Tunisia and more the need for Jews from anywhere to go to Israel to help defuse the ticking demographic time-bomb of occupation).

The story as told by Davies for the BBC’s World (radio) Service was honest reporting at its best. Its explicit message was that Tunisia’s Jews have rejected the Israeli call.

One of those interviewed by Davies said to him and a listening world, “No one here is afraid.”

Another said, “Go to Israel?... I’m not crazy!”

That’s what made me laugh.

A subsequent development wiped the smile from my face.

A friend in Italy sent me a web link for the television version of the Davies report from Tunisia. I opened the link to check that it was the same report I’d heard on the World (radio) Service. It started in exactly the same way so I assumed it was, and I tweeted it as “MUST WATCH: Tunisia’s Jews reject (Israel’s) call to leave.”

An hour or so later I made the time to view the complete television version. The Jewish gentleman who said, “Go to Israel...? I’m not crazy!” had been edited out.

On past BBC form there are four possible explanations.

1. Driven by a personal commitment to Zionism and support for its monster child right or wrong, a senior BBC executive ordered the quote to be dropped on his own initiative,

2.  A senior BBC executive received a telephone call from the Israeli Embassy in London, or possibly the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, telling him or her that Israel would not be pleased if the BBC gave more air time to a Tunisian Jew who was saying “No” to Israel in a way that suggested he had some contempt for the Zionist state and thought that many Israelis were crazy.

3. A senior BBC executive anticipated that giving the Jewish gentleman in Tunisia a wider audience would provoke Zionism’s wrath and decided (as BBC executives often do) that it was better for the Corporation to censor itself than provoke that wrath.

4. For reasons of limited space in a television news bulletin, the report for the World (radio) Service had to be edited, shortened.

The censored (or edited) version of the Davies report can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/world-africa-16805329

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East.

Over more than four decades Alan Hart enjoyed intimate access to, and on the human level friendship with, leaders of both sides including Golda Meir, Mother Israel, and Yasser Arafat,Father Palestine. (Others included Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, Nasser, Sadat, King Faisal, King Hussein—the list is long). He also participated at a leadership level in the secret politics of the search for peace in the Middle East (as an intermediary between Arafat and Peres when it was presumed that Peres was headed for leadership).

Alan recently announced the American edition of his epic book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Vol. 1: The False Messiah. This is Alan Hart’s epic three-volume journey through the propaganda lies and the documented truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of what has come to be called the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

He blogs on AlanHart.net, and tweets on twitter.com/alanauthor

See also:

• President Obama’s opportunity to speak truth to power: Part 1
• President Obama’s opportunity to speak truth to power – Rahm Emanuel does it for him – Part 11
• Open Letter to President Obama: Change the Rules of the Game
• An Appeal to the American People

Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. The sub-title of this volume is Conflict Without End? It takes the story from the 1967 war and the creation of Greater Israel to the present and the question: Is Peace Possible?

Will President Obama be allowed to deliver an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians in order to achieve peace for all and, if not, what’s the most likely future for the region and the world?<

• "... immensely readable and a magnificent piece of work ..."
  -- Clare Short, MP and Int'l Development Sec't in Blair Govt

• "... elucidates the dangers involved in the unconditional Western support for Zionism and its oppressive policies against the Palestinians."
  -- Ilan Pappe, Leading Israeli revisionist Historian

• "... principled, ... historical, ... excellent, even heroic, in effort and scope."
  -- Mark Bruzonsky, founder, MiddleEast.org; World Jewish Congress, first Washington Representative

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