This dialogue followed on from my posting on Facebook and X of an article published by the Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) regarding BBC bias in the reporting of Israel’s actions in Palestine, and my comment on it which stated that the report confirmed what many of us were already thinking. My Zionist interlocutor speaks first:
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/as-israel-pounds-gaza-bbc-journalists-accuse-broadcaster-of-bias/?fbclid=IwAR11gPLnCJfuceW8D1oX_tO3h5szCkEzWQuS3h9UB_u2yMwEVodEFgedDd8

• This is nonsense: the BBC’s coverage has been superb and even-handed: especially from Jeremy Bowen If you think not, please provide examples, and not just vague, unsourced anomymous accusations, eh?
• If you think that this article is mistaken in its analysis of what has passed for reporting and comment on the BBC, then you would need to deny the examples it provides you with. As for Jeremy Bowen, he is trying to be fair, I know, because he has known longer than most what has really been going on in the occupied territories: but maybe you should be asking why so much of what he knows happened in the many years before the Hamas attack has been missing from his reports. Maybe because he too has been warned? And just because the sources in this article are anonymous doesn’t mean they’re lying: it means that they are being intimidated, just as they themselves explain. Since Corbyn, the lies about whom the BBC consistently repeated but never questioned, the BBC has treated Israel and Palestine differently, and that has been plain to many from the start. I remember the reporting of Operation Protective Edge: what was missing there was any interrogation of Israel’s motives. What a difference it might have made if the BBC had accepted its responsibilities then!
  [a comment appeared here in response which has gone missing somehow; but which referred to anybody who disagreed with my opponent in this argument was a loon and and an antisemite]
• You have just called me a ‘loon; and an ‘antisemite’. I am insulted by being called a ‘loon’, but I am especially offended ar being called an ‘antisemite’ as I am one of the many proud Jews who oppose Israel as a matter of humanitarian principle. Too may of us have observed how the BBC has behaved over the years in relation to Israel, and it has been deeply angering. Just because you yourself can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. And that’s my last comment to you since I don’t debate with people who believe personal abuse can stand in place of rational argument.
• Be insulted if you like, Richard: the charge stands. Jewish people can promote antisemitism (eg Gilad Atzmon, Tony Greenstein, the late Tony Cliff). I note you have provided no evidence whatsoever of alleged BBC “bias”. Over to you, pal.
  [I was too angry not to rise to this bait; and given what follows I feel fully justified]
• 1. The sheer stupidity of supposing that there are Jews who wilfully promote anti-semitism is beyond comment. The only Jews I know who have been routinely accused of antisemitism are those who have had the temerity to dare speak up against Israel’s unspeakable behaviour in Palestine. 2. You simply ignore the article which prompted this thread. So try this one: https://www.theguardian.com/…/may/03/israel.broadcasting. 3. If you are yourself a Zionist, which is what it sounds like, then say so. Then we both know where we stand. It sounds as if you are, since your point, and the insulting and condescending way your make it, has a very familiar ring to it. 4.The only news channel available to us here in England which makes any serious effort to depict the full horror of what is happening in Gaza is Al Jazeera. It is doing what the BBC ought to be doing, giving a realistic representation of what Gazans are currently experiencing, which is appalling beyond belief. This is the cruellest of cruel wars, and the way it is being fought simply cannot be justified on any military or moral grounds. And it is NOT antisemitic to say so, because Zionism is a political philosophy which many Jews have rejected from the time it was conceived, mindful of the possibility of what the logical consequences might be if it was implemented. Now, last thing: withdraw your accusation of antisemitism: it is not true, indeed it is libellous. I am proud of my heritage, even though I stand against my mother’s family who helped found Israel. Being Jewish does not require me to be loyal to a country other than the one in which I was born and raised.
• “the sheer stupidity of supposing that there are Jews who wilfully promote anti-semitism is beyond comment”: yeah? explain Tony Greenstein, Gilad Atzmon and the Late Tong Cliff, then, Richard. Ten we’ll come on to the rest of the nonsense in your post. Oh , and your closing remark “Being Jewish does not require me to be loyal to a country other than the one in which I was born and raised” is in line with all those antisemites who accuse Zionist Jews of being disloyal to thier country: do you really want to line up with those antisemites, Richard?
• That’s enough. You throw a few names at me while discounting the growing number of Jews around the world who are turning against Israel as much as anything because its actions competely contradict their understanding of what it is to be Jewish.
  And I, along with every other Jew who accept themselves as having no loyalty to the state of Israel because it is not where they were born and raised, am sick and tired of being accused of therefore being disloyal to the Jewish people. That is a logical nonsense. I am English, as are many other Jews; as there are Jews loyal to the USA, to Canada, to France, to where-ever else Jews have lived for generations.
  And I note you do not care to mention those Israelis, loyal to Israel, yet who nevertheless speak up – or try to in the face of increasing censorship – against Israel’s actions: and that includes many of those who have family being held by Hamas.
  It is an increasing act of desperation by you Zionists to accuse anybody and everybody who has the smallest criticism of the Israeli State’s actions as being intinsically haters of all things Jewish, which is what ‘antisemitism’ is. It is desperate, it is sick, and as a tactic it is failing.
  https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/…/oh-for…/…
  That is my last word to you. Keep spouting your poison if you wish; but you have had my response, and your unwarranted and unfounded denigrations will not change it.