With Britain as the base for influential international media such as the BBC, Financial Times, The Economist magazine, and Reuters news agency, British media lies about Israel and America have ramifications far beyond Britain.
For years, British journalists have denied they are biased, even though practically everyone else is aware of their prejudices.
But now, all of a sudden, we have an official admission from many British journalists of their antipathy towards Israel. For the first time, Britain’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) voted to boycott a country, and that country is Israel.
The vote was taken late yesterday afternoon by delegates representing different branches of the NUJ.
Just to show what disregard British (and indeed most European) journalists have for the truth about Israel “The motion called for the end of Israeli aggression in Gaza.” In case they haven’t noticed, Israel withdrew from Gaza in the summer of 2005, and indeed is maintaining a ceasefire even while Palestinian rockets continue to be fired from Gaza on an almost daily basis into Israel, aimed at civilians.
The NUJ motion also spoke of “last year’s war in Lebanon.” Of course there was a war in Israel too, where hundreds of civilians were killed or injured by Hizbullah rockets, but the National Union of Journalists seems not to have noticed.
Indeed the absence of those evil Israelis in Gaza has given free reign for the journalists’ beloved Palestinians to kill and intimidate and kidnap who they want. One of the latest kidnap victims is the BBC’s Alan Johnston, who no longer had the Israeli army there to protect him.
If British journalists really want to boycott Israeli goods, they better give up their desktop and notebook computers and their cell phones, all of which have components developed and manufactured in Israel.