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Orla Guerin Covers the Holocaust Commemoration in Israel (Part 1)

Jan 26, 2020 10:00 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Orla Guerin has for 20 years been a BBC correspondent in the Middle East, covering Israel and the Palestinians. She’s acquired quite a reputation, over those years, for her palpable dislike of Israel and her deep sympathy for the Palestinians. But before getting to her latest outrage, let’s remind ourselves of what has been left out of the BBC’s coverage — not just by Guerin, but also by others — of that Arab-Israeli conflict.

Here are some of the things you won’t have learned about from the BBC in its thousands of reports about Israel and the Palestinians:

You won’t find out what the Mandate for Palestine states about Jewish settlement on the land, nor what territories were to be included, according to that Mandate, in a future Jewish state. You won’t find out that 77% of the territory originally to have been included in the Mandate – all the land east of the Jordan River — instead became the Emirate of Transjordan. You will not learn what Lord Caradon, the author of U.N. Resolution 242, insisted was its correct meaning, recognizing Israel’s right, in accordance with that resolution, to have “secure” – i.e., defensible – borders – through territorial adjustments.

You will not ever have heard the words “dhimmi” and “jizyah” used or explained on the BBC. You will have no notion, from the BBC, which in this case mainly means their correspondent Orla Guerin, of the dozens of antisemitic passages in the Qur’an. You will never have been informed, by the BBC, that the Qur’an describes Muslims as the “best of peoples” and non-Muslims as the “most vile of created beings.” You won’t learn, from the BBC, that the Qur’an instructs Muslims not to take Jews or Christians as friends, “for they are friends only with each other.” You won’t learn from anyone at the BBC that there are more than one hundred Qur’anic verses that command Muslims to engage in violent Jihad, to fight, to kill, to smite at the necks of, to strike terror in the hearts of, Infidels. You won’t learn from anyone at the BBC that Muhammad in a famous hadith said that “war is deceit.” You won’t find out that he claimed in another well-known hadith that “I have been made victorious through terror.” You won’t discover from the BBC that Muhammad consummated his marriage to little Aisha when she was nine years old, and he was fifty-four. You won’t learn from the BBC about Muhammad’s evident pleasure when he learned of the murders, by his loyal followers, of three people – Asma bint Marwan, Ka’b bin al-Ashraf, and Abu ‘Afak – who had mocked or criticized him. You won’t discover, despite that disturbing history, that Muhammad is regarded by Muslims as the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil) and the Model of Conduct (uswa hasana).

But what you will learn, from the likes of BBC Middle East correspondent Orla Guerin, is how the Israelis take every occasion to oppress the “Palestinian people.” The existence of this “Palestinian people” is simply assumed by Orla Guerin, even though there is plenty of evidence that the Palestinians are a “people” invented for purely political reasons. Zuheir Mohsen, the Palestinian leader of the terrorist group As-Saiqa, famously said that “the Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons.”

The “Palestinian people” do not differ in language, religion, clothing, cuisine, customs, folk and fairy tales, from Jordanians or Egyptians or other Muslim Arabs in their immediate neighborhood. But Orla Guerin has never discussed this, just as she will never touch the contents of the Qur’an. Such things are better left passed over, Orla Guerin knows, in silence. The contents of the Qur’an would only confuse, and might even alarm, the BBC audience that needs to be kept in the dark about so many things having to do with Islam, including the Jihad against Israel. Orla Guerin stays well away from this subject; she has covered Muslims for more than twenty years, and never cited the Jihad verses in the Qur’an or addressed the unseemly character of Muhammad.

On January 22, I heard a BBC reporter from Bush House, London, in a voice not quite as plummy as those in decades past, briefly mention the Holocaust commemoration events that were then taking place in Israel. Then, quickly turning to another news item – no need to spend more than a minute or two on six million dead Jews — he said “and now about another people who have also suffered persecution,” and segued into a story about the Rohingyas. So the suffering of the Jews under the Nazis, with six million people tortured, gassed, shot, electrocuted on fences, buried alive in pits, burned alive in crematoria, subject to ghoulish medical experiments is casually described by the BBC news presenter as “persecution.” And what happened to the Rohingyas in Myanmar is thus likened to what happened to Jews in Europe, though only 24,000 Rohingyas have died, while 740,000 are alive in Bangladesh, and several hundred thousand others are still living, unharmed, in Myanmar. There were killings – even war crimes – but not a “genocide” as that word is generally understood, which would apply only if all or most of the Rohingya had been rounded up rather than allowed to leave Myanmar and murdered, as happened to the Jews during the Holocaust.

But worse was to come on the BBC that day. There was a brief, almost cursory, report from Yad Vashem by Orla Guerin; her appalling comment on Israelis, during the very moment when Holocaust commemoration ceremonies were being held in Jerusalem with 40 world leaders, is discussed below. Some people hold Guerin in high regard – the same people who think Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone, and George Galloway are all fine fellows. She was the winner of a Television Journalist of the Year Award in 2018, which says something, none of it good, about that year’s judges. She is famous for her palpable want of sympathy for Israel and its people; some people, such as Natan Sharansky, believe her distaste for Israelis is pathological, and amounts to antisemitism. Time and again her coverage of Israel and the Palestinians has been held up for examination for obvious bias– so many stories, so much trenchant criticism – but that has not prevented the BBC from keeping her on for two decades as their correspondent covering Israel and its enemies. 2

Here is the latest example of Orla Guerin’s coverage of Israel:

Outrage erupted on Thursday after a BBC report on the Holocaust commemoration events currently underway in Israel used the opportunity to slam the Jewish state.

The Thursday [January 22] ceremony in Jerusalem marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was attended by dozens of world leaders, including Britain’s Prince Charles, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron and US Vice President Mike Pence.

The segment in question ended with a narration by Orla Guerin, a veteran international correspondent for the BBC, who has long been accused of bias against Israel.

Over images of the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem, in which photographs and names of victims of the Nazi genocide are displayed, Guerin said, “In Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names, images of the dead. Young soldiers troop in to share the binding tragedy of the Jewish people.”

“The State of Israel is now a regional power,” she added. “For decades it has occupied Palestinian territories. But some here will always see their nation through the prism of persecution and survival.”

Reaction to Guerin’s statement was immediate and angry. Gideon Falter, chief executive of the UK-based Campaign Against Antisemitism, said, “The BBC is supposed to inform the British public, not feed them propaganda. Few could imagine perverting what is supposed to be an educational piece about the Holocaust to instead fuel the very antisemitism that such education is supposed to prevent, but that is what the BBC has done.”

“It was utterly appalling to watch Orla Guerin hijack a segment dedicated to remembering six million murdered Jews, and instead use it as a vehicle to desecrate the memory of the Holocaust with her hatred of the Jewish state,” he continued.

Referring to the British television regulator Ofcom, Falter declared, “Ms. Guerin and the BBC editors who allowed this to be aired must be made to face the consequences of this sick act, which is why we are now making an official complaint and will take the matter to Ofcom if necessary.”

Amanda Bowman — vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews — also condemned the BBC report, saying, “Orla Guerin’s attempt to link the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the horrors of the Holocaust was crass and offensive.”

Noting longstanding criticism of Guerin’s reporting on Israel, Bowman stated, “Her lack of partiality on the Israel-Palestine conflict has long been a matter of concern and it is questionable why the BBC would even use her for this sensitive assignment. As we approach Holocaust Memorial Day, the Jewish community is within its rights to expect an apology.”

Voices on Twitter also condemned Guerin’s statement. Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote, “This @bbcnews commentary on Yad Vashem by Orla Guerin linking the Holocaust to the Israel’s West Bank occupation is truly foul — managing to be both shamefully amoral + historically inaccurate, utterly cynical and complacently self-righteous all [at] the same time.”

Gerald Steinberg, head of the monitoring group NGO Watch said, “@OrlaGuerin clearly violated journalistic ethics — she has a long history of #antiSemitism and Israel derangement going back at least 20 years.”

The organization Students Supporting Israel (SSI) asserted, “This @BBCNews report exposes the inherent problem and hate towards Jews & Israel in the British #Media.”

Guerin’s distaste for Israel and biased reporting have been a focus of concern and derision for decades. In 2015, The Independent quoted former BBC Chairman Lord Grade criticizing one of her reports for “equivalence between Israeli victims of terrorism and Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli security forces in the act of carrying out terror attacks.”

“This directly misleads viewers,” he said.

The Guardian reported in 2004 that Natan Sharansky, then Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs, had called a Guerin report on a Palestinian child soldier “cynical manipulation of a Palestinian youngster for propaganda purposes.”

“It showed, he said, “a deep-seated bias against Israel.”

Sharansky said the report applied “such a gross double standard to the Jewish state” that “it is difficult to see Ms. Guerin’s report as anything but antisemitic.”

Orla Guerin has a long record of denigrating Israel, and Israelis; her “Israel derangement…goes back at least 20 years.” But her comment on January 21, linking the Holocaust to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, as part of the BBC’s coverage of the Holocaust commemoration in Israel, was unusually foul. We’ll look at her remark tomorrow.

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Filed Under: Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, Israel, journalistic bias, United Kingdom Tagged With: bbc, Orla Guerin


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Comments

  1. K John Rosier. says

    Jan 26, 2020 at 11:08 am

    I don’t watch BBC TV News, gave up a long time ago. It dosen’t matter how many historical documents you put before this woman she is pathologically incapable of changing her position. She has a view and an agenda not compatible with honest journalism. Nor is she the only journalist who is deliberately ignorant of historical matters. She is one of many.

    It takes strength and humility to rethink after 20 years of bias and lying to the public about the real issues in that part of the world. Her arrogance and bias will remain regardless.

    The BBC ought either sack her or send her off to on other assignments away from the Middle East. J

    • Savvy Kafir says

      Jan 26, 2020 at 5:15 pm

      Her bosses at the BBC no doubt cherish her. She’s a poster girl for BBC values. Those people have no business calling themselves journalists.

      • James Lincoln says

        Jan 26, 2020 at 5:47 pm

        Savvy Kafir,

        You are correct.

        To think that at one time, the BBC one of the gold standards of news coverage.

        Now it’s just a propaganda arm of leftist / Marxist / globalist / muslim apologists.

    • John says

      Jan 27, 2020 at 3:35 am

      Where are the complaints to the BBC bosses? A couple of thousand emails complaining about the antisemitic attitude of Orla Guerin will “encourage” the bosses to reduce her exposure. Just complaining here among the converted will not get anything done.

    • Charles Lutz says

      Jan 30, 2020 at 7:11 pm

      To K.John Rosier: You also are outraged by the media “lying to the public”. But is it not strange that not once have they mentioned that it was the Soviet Red Army that liberated the victims of Nazi Auschwitz ? For shame, liars by omission !!

  2. eduardo odraude says

    Jan 26, 2020 at 11:41 am

    If the “Palestinians” laid down their arms, there would be peace, coexistence, and integration. If the Jews laid down their arms, there would be another holocaust. If one really keeps that point in mind in everything else one contemplates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one has the main key to interpreting most of what is going on there.

    To spell it out: the Palestinian culture is an authoritarian/totalitarian one based in many subtle ways on Islam’s core texts (Qur’an, Hadith, Sira). Even when Islamic law, Sharia, is not formally in force, a sharia ethos enforced at various points by the jihadist leaders of the Palestinians makes it impossible to coexist with others, especially Jews, because of how the Qur’an and Hadith speak of them.

    Islam’s totalitarian culture is monstrously conceited and thus incapable of coming to a real (not just temporary tactical) compromise with the Israelis. The core Islamic texts inculcate a great deal of Jew hatred, which only intensifies the inflexibility of Islam’s authoritarian ethos. Other major religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity) are not remotely as authoritarian as Islam. If you think all religions are more or less the same, then you are rather like the racists who think all members of the disdained race look alike. In short, you are merely ignorant and lack significant experience of what you are talking about.

    Multiculturalism is a wonderful thing, but multiculturalists must recognize that Islam should not be welcomed into the multiculturalist melting pot. Muslims, except if they are a small enough proportion of a population, will not “melt” in with the rest. Or if “melting pot” was never really an accurate description of US assimilation of cultures, then let’s say that Muslim populations will not be a net enrichment of the “salad” of cultures coexisting harmoniously in the US. On the contrary, if the Muslim population gets above a certain size, their leadership, by stealth, and their jihadis by violence and countless death threats, continually menaces and seeks to silence all criticism of Islam. That tactic becomes the means by which authoritarian Islam is infiltrated into US government, business, culture, and law. Many Muslims are innocent of, or relatively unaware of, Islam’s core teachings, but Muslim leadership, apart from a tiny minority of scattered individuals, is not unaware and supports Islam’s totalitarian goals.

    In short, it’s a tragic situation with a lot of innocents caught up in a massive, dangerous, global totalitarian movement that spreads and deepens its roots globally by stealth and by pervasive death threats and actual violence that warp and suppress media and free speech in ways that are usually not visible. Under cover of that suppression of criticism, Islam creeps into open societies and gradually takes control of their institutions.

    • James Lincoln says

      Jan 26, 2020 at 5:42 pm

      eduardo odraude,

      An excellent post, my compliments.

      Muslims DO NOT want to integrate into the culture of the host country. They want to concentrate their numbers in politically strategic geographical regions – in order to get elected into office.

      And muslims ALWAYS vote for other muslims.

      • gordon miller (@dagmiller) says

        Jan 27, 2020 at 7:42 am

        All this is very sad, with no end in sight. These Muslims are shielded by their (false) religion, with no end in sight in this world of political correctness.

    • gravenimage says

      Jan 26, 2020 at 9:16 pm

      Spot on, Eduardo.

  3. FYI says

    Jan 26, 2020 at 11:44 am

    Any time I ever watch BBC I simply mute the sound and just look at the pictures.

    {Try it:the news report consists of two aspects,one Audio and one Video.
    With BBC there is no point listening to their particular impartial nonsense is there?..YOU get to control
    what you want to know via the mute button..certain presenters or reporters can have that effect..I do the same for ads:mute the sound}

    It is so obvious BBC has a particular bias:I don’t want to listen to their spiel.

    Orla guerin is proof of that bias:what an appaling thing to use such a solemn occasion to promote her hatred of Israel.

  4. Tony Naim says

    Jan 26, 2020 at 1:06 pm

    Orla Guerin May be deliberate in neglecting the practice of dhimmitude in Islam out of her own personal deliberate political agenda.
    What is incomprehensible is the complete disregard
    Of that same practice by scholars and authorities Who understand clearly well the inherent danger of Radical Islam, but fail to target dhimmitude
    As a sociopolitical/ legal translation of discriminatory Koranic text.
    No one could outlaw the Koran. However, it is perfectly possible to outlaw and abolish one of its
    Ramifications that poses a clear and present danger
    On non-Muslims across the globe.
    It is only logical to target Dhimmitude law
    As a legal and sociopolitical tool of discriminatory
    Explanation of Koranic text ( as one cannot change the text itself).
    Dhimmitude is synonymous to apartheid. If one could be abolished, why not the other.
    Only then Islam may become sterile and benign enough to be part of western culture?

  5. Jayell says

    Jan 26, 2020 at 2:23 pm

    This latest little debacle that the BBC has perpetrated has given rise to quite a strong reaction against both the BBC and Guerin. In particular, it had a pretty bad press on LBC, where both the BBC and Guerin were as near as damn it torn to shreds, and there were calls for Guerin’s sacking. The BBC is increasingly in trouble, and it knows it, with talk of ending the licence fee now doing the rounds in the media; and it seems highly likely that non-payment of this heinous tax will be decriminalised within the next year or two, at which point the BBC’s income will start to plummet. Yet this vile organisation just carries on in its usual offensive fashion, effectively stoking up its own funeral pyre under the apparent delusion that it is somehow untouchable and exists by some sort of Divine Right. What a shame that it appears to have forgotten that those in high circles who have held this kind of belief in their own unassailable omnipotence have in less civilised times sometimes ended up with their heads separated from the rest of their bodies.

  6. Cicer9 says

    Jan 26, 2020 at 3:07 pm

    Why are we surprised that noted Anti Semite journalist s still employed by the BBC after twenty years ?

    L
    If we can ascertain who the senior managers and editors are ;: what is their background :: their pedigree and their belief system we can then understand why this journalist is so well protected.and even promoted.

    • Carpediadem says

      Jan 26, 2020 at 11:02 pm

      The BBC has been antisemitic for decades and merely reflect ancient and current Foreign Office policy towards Jews and Israel.
      Nonetheless Guerin should be sacked and both she and the BBC booted from Israel.
      None of them deserve to be allowed in.

      @Jayell Thanks for alerting to the LBC response, shall check it out.

  7. gravenimage says

    Jan 26, 2020 at 9:05 pm

    Orla Guerin Covers the Holocaust Commemoration in Israel (Part 1)
    ……………….

    Just despicable. But from the BBC, hardly surprising.

  8. John P says

    Jan 26, 2020 at 10:35 pm

    Guerin is Irish and worked at Irish state TV station RTE before moving up to the big leagues at BBC. RTE is also relentlessly anti-Israel. And anti-American.

    • gravenimage says

      Jan 26, 2020 at 10:47 pm

      Grimly true, John.

    • terry sullivan says

      Jan 27, 2020 at 8:28 am

      and anti-Bitish

  9. pragmatist says

    Jan 27, 2020 at 8:17 am

    I first came across Orla Guerin when following the BBC’s coverage of the 2014 Gaza conflict. The anti-Israel bias, including downright lying at times, displayed by Guerin and Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s ME Editor, was astonishing in it’s blatancy. My extreme distrust of, and contempt for, the BBC dates from that period.

  10. Anne Smith says

    Jan 27, 2020 at 1:00 pm

    Aside from all her bias, Orla Geurin is simply one of the most miserable and unattractive people presenting anything on TV. Her nasal whine and sour expression would make anyone switch off.

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