Israel spokesperson accuses BBC’s Mishal Husain of pro-Palestinian bias
Broadcaster
defends Radio 4 presenter’s ‘legitimate’ questions to David Mencer, who
claimed she was parroting ‘terrorist organisations’
The BBC has defended Mishal Husain,
a presenter on its Radio 4 Today programme, after she was accused by an
Israeli government spokesperson live on air of “blindly repeating what
terrorist organisations … feed you”.
In a
tetchy interview on Monday’s programme, David Mencer, said Husain
warranted the “pro-Palestinian reporter of the year award”.
He
added: “You producing reports on this war one-sidedly, without context,
ends up with attacks on Jews on the streets of Britain. It ends up with
cars going up the Finchley Road saying: ‘Jews, we’re going to rape your
daughters.’”
A BBC
spokesperson said the corporation rejected his allegations. “As the
listener could hear, Mishal Husain was asking legitimate and important
questions in a professional, fair and courteous manner.”
The interview began with Husain asking Mencer about an Israeli strike on a school compound
in Gaza. The BBC interviewed Dr Khamis Elessi, who said the casualties
had included elderly people, women and children. The Israeli army said
the school compound was being used as a Hamas command centre.
Mencer rejected Elessi’s account, saying Israel
was “extremely sceptical about pseudo medical staff” who had “inflated”
casualty figures throughout the war in Gaza. He said 19 Hamas fighters
had been “eliminated” in the strike, and that “there were no women and
children present”.
He went on to say that Israel was fighting a “very dirty war” in Gaza. It was winning on the military battlefield and “destroying Hamas”, he said, but losing on the media battlefield.
“You
as the BBC, you do no credit to ordinary Gazans by just blindly
repeating what terrorist organisations, Isis-like organisations, the
information which they feed you. It simply doesn’t bear any resemblance
to the truth,” he said.
Journalists covering
the war in Gaza were not doing their homework, he said. “You do this
subject no justice when you repeat their figures.”
When
Husain raised claims by the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem
that Palestinian prisoners had been tortured, Mencer said: “I think you
just warrant the pro-Palestinian reporter of the year award, and I
congratulate you for that.”
B’Tselem’s claims
were a “fringe opinion”, he said. “And you guys parroting it just
produces radicalism, which makes Jews in the UK afraid to walk the
streets.”
Husain
is one of BBC News’s most respected interviewers, widely admired for
her tenacity alongside a calm and courteous manner. She has been a
presenter on the Today programme for 11 years and also presents BBC
television news. She has been tipped to replace Huw Edwards as the BBC’s
top news presenter.
Mencer is a British media
and public relations specialist, who has acted as a spokesperson for
the Israeli government since last autumn. He is a former director of
Labour Friends of Israel.
In their interview,
Husain raised the Israeli government’s ban on international journalists
reporting from Gaza, which has been in place since the war began last
October.
Mencer said the presence of
international journalists would complicate Israel’s efforts to free
hostages being held by Hamas and other organisations. “There is no
shortage of news coming out of Gaza. For heaven’s sake, it’s the most
reported conflict of modern time,” he said.
International
news organisations have been frustrated by the ban, which has made it
difficult to verify claims made by both sides. At least 113 Palestinian
journalists and media workers have been killed in the war so far, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.