ANTI-SEMITISM ON BBC MESSAGEBOARD

[Teddy Bear]

If you've ever tried to post a comment on a BBC message board which in any way criticizes the BBC you will know what a fruitless time that is for the most part. We would expect that those which are overtly racist would and should be rejected. It seems where it applies to Jews this is not the case.

Honest Reporting highlight this story today.

ANTI-SEMITISM ON BBC MESSAGEBOARD

The BBC appears to have difficulty recognising blatant anti-Semitism when it appears on one of their own messageboards. On a BBC Radio 5 Live messageboard thread discussing the Richard Littlejohn documentary The War On Britain's Jews?, Harry's Place blog spotted the following:

Zionism is a racist ideology where jews are given supremacy over all other races and faiths. This is found in the Talmud. There is a law called Baba Mezia which allows jews to lie as long as its to non-jews. many pro jewish supporters will cringe at this being exposed because they know it exists, yet they keep quiet about it, hey frip, jla and co The Law of Baba Mezia!! Tsk tsk tsk! Its in the Talmud.

Demonisation of Zionism and Israel is only too common on such forums. This posting, however, undeniably attacks Jews and Judaism, drawing upon an outright lie employed by neo-Nazis and Islamic extremists. Despite this obvious anti-Semitism, the BBC, following a number of complaints, removed the post, only to replace it with this:

This posting has been temporarily hidden, because a member of our Moderation Team has referred it to the Hosts for a decision as to whether it contravenes the House rules in some way. We will do everything we can to ensure that a decision is made as quickly as possible.

The House Rules state that the BBC reserves the right to fail messages which:

Are considered likely to disrupt, provoke, attack or offend others
Are racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable

So why does the BBC even need to make a decision on a posting such as this? Shouldn't anti-Semitism be treated in the same way as other forms of racism?

Complaints to the BBC

If you missed Richard Littlejohn's The War On Britain's Jews?, you can view it online in six parts here.

[steevo]

There's an implication in all this the BBC understand its anti-Semitic. Maybe they don't? Racism blinds.

[Teddy Bear]

While it is in the Qu'ran that Muslims can lie in certain circumstances , I cannot find any example in Jewish writings that permits lying.
In fact it seems to be forbidden

The Torah forbids us to "put a stumbling block before the blind." (Leviticus 19:14.) This includes misleading anyone who is blind to what is really happening.

The fact that the BBC moderator might be ignorant of this, and not bothered to research it, before allowing this post, can you believe if somebody had sent in this TRUTH but about Muslims that the comment would have been published?

I think not.

[Teddy Bear]

The plot thickens. Melanie Phillips relates the continuing saga of the twisted and biased BBC moderators on this particular issue. her summation tells it all: "A platform for antisemitic lies and hatred — but no platform for the voices of decency which protest at such disgusting behaviour. Is the BBC now totally out of control?"

July 20, 2007
The protocols of the BBC
Jewish Chronicle, 20 July 2007

Is the BBC suffering from some kind of pathological disorder affecting its judgment about Jews? In the wake of Richard Littlejohn’s Channel Four TV programme about antisemitism (which was turned down by the BBC), the BBC Radio Five Live website displayed an entry posted by ‘Iron Naz’ on its ‘message board’—the jargon for a web page of readers’ contributions to a rolling discussion called a ‘thread’— which read as follows:

‘Zionism is a racist ideology where jews are given supremacy over all other races and faiths. This is found in the Talmud. There is a law called Baba Mezia which allows jews to lie as long as its to non-jews. many pro jewish supporters will cringe at this being exposed because they know it exists, yet they keep quiet about it, hey frip, jla and co The Law of Baba Mezia!! Tsk tsk tsk! Its in the Talmud.’ (sic)

Baba Mezia is not a ‘law’ but a thick Talmudic tractate. It does not allow Jews to lie to non-Jews, although it has been repeatedly and notoriously misrepresented as doing so. This is only one of numerous distortions and malevolent fabrications of the Talmud which circulate on neo-Nazi, white supremacist and other antisemitic websites — and which are now disseminated within the Muslim world where they are widely believed.

A few days later on the Harry’s Place website, ‘Mark’ revealed that when he complained that the Iron Naz post was antisemitic, the BBC replied: ‘We have decided that it does not contravene the House Rules and are going to leave it on site.’ I myself posted a comment on my own website at that point which took the BBC to task.

Readers then started posting up comments on the Five Live ‘thread’ referring to the coverage on my website, Harry’s Place and Little Green Footballs, another site that was running the story. But the BBC then removed all those comments under the standard rubric that they were being temporarily hidden while the moderator considered whether they had broken the house rules.

A reader who noticed what was happening then complained on the thread that these comments about a growing debate over the Iron Naz post had been removed. To his astonishment, that post too was removed ostensibly to see whether it had also ‘broken the house rules’.

A subsequent post by him providing a link to my website vanished a mere ten minutes after it appeared. But while all such reference to any criticism of the BBC was being thus removed, the hateful untruth about Jewish deceit of gentiles remained on display day after day.

Moreover, the BBC allowed Iron Naz to add to the thread: ‘I only follow what the respected scholars of Islam say. The Baba Mezia law specifically states you can lie to non-jews and non-jews, of gentiles, are inferior in all ways to jews… Chosen people to these guys means anyone who isnt chosen can be killed and/or treated worse then animals.’ (sic)

Suddenly, after more than five days his original post disappeared —presumably so that the moderator could at last consider whether it had broken the rules. But then, two days later, it was back. The BBC actually reposted it on its site —apparently deciding that yes, it was indeed acceptable to say that the Talmud tells all Jews to lie.

And to cap it all, this time it blocked all further comments from being posted on that thread — which, yet more mysteriously, it now chose to semi-hide by deleting its original title, The War on the Jews, and substituting the less than helpful heading ‘Hidden’. But it was still there, and with some extra effort could still be seen.

At the time of writing this column, therefore, the situation is that the BBC has deliberately republished an antisemitic libel — but censored all criticism of itself, blocked any further opportunity to post up fresh protests, and semi-concealed the whole discussion. By the time you read this, the situation may have changed again. On Monday evening, one of the posts referring to me mysteriously re-appeared — possibly because the BBC had been alerted that the press was sniffing around.

I have now received a personal email from Iron Naz himself. He raved on about how the ‘racism’ in the Talmud explained Israeli ill-treatment of the Palestinians. The cries of antisemitism, he boasted, were ‘like water off a duck’s back’ because the BBC’s moderators simply ignored the ‘zionist cyber warriors’ flooding its message boards with complaints whenever Israel or Zionism were criticised. The BBC, he gloated, regularly gave him a platform.

A platform for antisemitic lies and hatred — but no platform for the voices of decency which protest at such disgusting behaviour. Is the BBC now totally out of control?

[steevo]

Just wanted to post this from a blogger in Australia:

That Daily Mail is a relatively tame attack on the BBC. The BBC is just like Joe Wilson - a stranger to the truth. So it has been fun to see dozens of headlines worldwide like these this week :

Business Week : BBC suspends some senior editorial staff

Reuters : Members of Parliament summon BBC deputy chief over fake competitions

Independent :.......Scotland Yard revealed the BBC may face a criminal prosecution....

Telegraph : The guilty BBC programmes

Telegraph : Do you still trust the BBC ?

Scotsman : BBC in fresh deception row

Financial Times : BBC staff to have ethics training

Mirror : LieTV from the BBC

Herald : BBC a "hornets' nest of deception"

Guardian : The Beeb's list of shame

etc etc etc


Meanwhile in Australia we had :

The Australian :BBC exposed as serial fakers

Sydney Morning Herald : deceit plunges BBC into darkest days

and further BAD HEADLINES all round the world.

Just Google "BBC" and click "News" above the line - you will find literally hundreds of adverse stories this week about loss of trust in the BBC.