BBC: 1 in 10 Jews work with spy agency assassins

Last week, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an interview in which it was stated that between 500,000 and one million Jews around the world are available to facilitate assassinations committed by the Israeli spy agency Mossad. This story has already been covered by a number of blogs (starting with Judeosphere). I had an opportunity to listen to the interview today and found that, although the BBC has claimed that this bizarre conspiracy theory came at the end of the broadcast and so could not be rebutted, the entire interview is a shocking series of absurd assertions concerning information the guest claims to have learned directly from anonymous Mossad agents.



The interviewee, an author named Gordon Thomas, starts by stating that the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh had "all the hallmarks of a Mossad operation". He then attempts to list these hallmarks, but names only one: that al-Mabhouh was killed in a hotel bedroom, and Mossad assassins are "trained in that very tactic". By this standard, any killing in a hotel bedroom could be blamed on the Mossad. The claim that this means the killing had "all the hallmarks" is quite a leap.

The interviewer then comes to Thomas' aid with a question about the fraudulent passports allegedly carried by the assassins, asking whether this was a sign of Mossad involvement. Thomas replies: "Oh, yes indeed!" But then, left again to his own devices, he veers off course. Objecting to the very idea of needing to provide evidence of Mossad involvement, he talks himself into the following maze:

I think it's futile to say, as Mossad does, "prove it!" That's a standard Mossad question (sic). I know from the time I've met with them. "Prove it!" That's what they say all the time!

When someone accused of a killing says "prove it", that is hardly extraordinary. To describe Mossad's asking for evidence as one of their standard devious tactics is sheer idiocy. Thomas seems to argue in favor of just knowing that Mossad is guilty without providing evidence, implying that a request for evidence indicates complicity.

At about the 3:50 mark of the interview, Thomas says the following of Mossad assassins:

Usually, as I said, they would like to carry out their mission killing somebody in the bedroom. That's easy for them because -- what they do -- they have a whole backup system called asayanim (sic) who are local residents -- Jewish, uh, people who will help the Mossad. And there's estimated to be in the world about half a million. Some people say (there's) a million; I tend to say it's about half a million, from what I've learned from the Mossad people.

Thomas argues incoherently that Mossad assassinates people in bedrooms because they have the support of 500,000 Jews to do so. The bigotry and shoddy thinking behind that statement are obvious. Even an interviewer or audience who might be receptive to an anti-Israel message might well ask for some further explanation of this absurd connection between bedroom murders and a global Jewish conspiracy.

Thomas was interviewed on this subject because he has written a book called Gideon's spies: the secret history of the Mossad . Much of that book relied on a single, not entirely reliable, source: Ari Ben Menashe. (Read here. An earlier book Thomas wrote about Robert Maxwell also relied extensively on Ben Menashe. Read here.) In turn, Ben Menashe provided a blurb for the Mossad book, calling it “(o)ne of the few books that have captured the true nature of the Israeli government and the...Israeli power elite.” Not surprising that he would think so considering that much of the book derives from him. Ben Menashe is probably best known for work he did in the employ of Zimbabwe's dictator Robert Mugabe. He was secretly paid by the Mugabe regime, reportedly to entrap Mugabe's political rival Morgan Tsvangirai for treason. He failed in this attempted set-up, although he did testify against Tsvangirai at trial. Ben Menashe was accused by the judge who heard Tsvangirai's case of falsely creating the impression that Tsvangirai attempted to hire Ben Menashe to assassinate Mugabe. (Read here.)

The other Mossad source credited by Thomas is the equally unreliable Victor Ostrovsky, author of purported exposés of the Mossad called By Way of Deception and The Other Side of Deception. (Read here and here.) According to the New York Times, Ostrosky's first book

claim(ed) that Yitzhak Hofi, the head of Mossad, personally participated in the murder of two minor Palestine Liberation Organization representatives in Athens in the mid-1970's. That the chief of Mossad would risk exposure of himself and Israeli intelligence by serving as a hit man strains credulity, as does much else in the book.

Of the second, it's been called by critics more a sex-drenched potboiler than real world exposé.

Were Ben Menashe or Victor Ostrovsky the source for Gordon Thomas' theory about 500,000 - 1,000,000 Jewish spies? Gordon Thomas doesn't say and his interviewer doesn't ask.

As others have already pointed out, the idea that 10% of the Jewish population are assisting Mossad in conducting assassinations should set off anyone's BS alarm, no matter how paranoid about Jews they may be, or how credulously they rely on dodgy sources. The larger the alleged conspiracy, the less likely the conspiracy theory is to be true.

Moreover, Thomas states that there is a connection between bedroom slayings and a massive Jewish support system, but doesn't state what that connection is. What on earth could he be thinking?

Most importantly, what is the BBC doing about this? Do they intend to correct the record, or will they stand by the claim that 1 in 10 Jews are available to assist Mossad assassins? That sort of conspiracy theory is not the sort of thing a reliable news organization should promote.

By the way, if asked by the Mossad, I will not facilitate assassinations. They're just going to have to ask nine other Jews to find someone to help them.

Alan Hart: Israel kidnapped Alan Johnston ... "by default"

Regular readers of this blog may remember my posts about retired journalist and anti-Israel polemicist Alan Hart blaming Israel for the kidnapping of BBC reporter Alan Johnston. (Read here and here and here.) Before it was known whether Johnston was alive or dead, Hart had the gall to state that, if Johnston had been killed, the Israelis were behind it. His "reasoning" for these absurd accusations?

"The Palestinians were the party with absolutely nothing to gain and much to lose from Alan's permanent removal from the scene ... He was, in short, the best and most informed provider of news about the Palestinian side of the story; a story which, in many of its details, is an embarrassment to Israel ... (A)nd if he has been murdered, Alan's death, if it could be blamed on a Palestinian or a pro-Palestinian Arab and/or other Islamist group, would be a huge political setback for the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle and the present leadership of it."

(Original posted April 16, 2007, archived here.)

Hart started with the conclusion that best fit his bias, then determined that the facts simply had to support that conclusion. To Hart, this constituted proof positive. His post understandably elicited a deluge of criticism in the form of posted comments condemning Hart's absurd "logic" and accusing him of anti-Semitism. Hart responded by moderating his blog comments and the criticism ceased.

In fact, as became clear over the ensuing months, Alan Johnston had been kidnapped and held for a huge ransom by an Islamist group styling itself the "Army of God" or "Tawhid and Jihad Brigades" -- an "army" which, it was later discovered, was one of Gaza's crime families , the Doğmuş. (Read here.) It is unclear whether the Islamist jihadi cause was merely a cover for the Doğmuş, or if the distinction between jihadi and criminal is one imposed by outside observers -- a distinction without a difference.

On July 4, 2007, Johnston was released by his Palestinian captors. None of what Hart had written had been true. His allegations were merely a conspiracy woven by a mind consumed with hatred for everything Israeli and blinded to any evil without an Israeli behind it.

Well...everyone makes mistakes. Under the circumstances, one would hope that Hart would apologize, post a correction, or at least let the subject drop. But he hasn't done this. In fact, a few days ago, Hart posted this:

"...re Alan Johnston... We still do not know, and may never know, if his kidnappers were proxies - by design or default - for another party..."

The Delphic pronouncement "proxies by design or default" is a puzzle. Hart seems to be intimating through this ineffable koan that he believes Israel responsible for the kidnapping "by default" even if they were not directly involved. We must meditate upon this then consult the bepompadoured oracle.


It's pretty clear that Hart seems unconcerned when the facts don't live up to his idea of what they should be; he simply invents his own. He's also not worried about seeming a bigot. For the sheer absurdity of it, you gotta love Hart's catch-all permanent defense against charges of anti-Semitism (read here):

"One of my favourite souvenirs from my television reporting days for ITN and then the BBC's Panorama programme is a signed photograph of Prime Minister Golda Meir. The inscription in her own hand is: "To a good friend, Alan Hart. Golda Meir." Question: Do you think that old lady, Mother Israel, was so stupid that she could not have seen through me if I was ... a 'Jew hater'?"

Hart, who may be prone to what psychologists describe as "magical thinking", seems to think that Golda Meir was clairvoyant on these matters. He also seems to think that, by inscribing that photo "good friend", she was granting him some sort of continuous absolution.

Hart's magical thinking sometimes takes the form of prophetic narcissism -- a sort of Jerusalem syndrome where he sees himself as Jeremiah speaking truth to power. The following excerpts from a rambling bio were apparently written by Hart about himself in the third person. He features the full length self-promo both on the main page of his blog and attaches it to his postings on other websites (read here and here):

"Alan has long believed that what peacemaking needs above all else is some TRUTH-TELLING, about many things but, especially, the difference between Zionist mythology and real history, and, the difference between Jews and Judaism on the one hand and Zionists and Zionism on the other. (The Zionism of the title and substance of Alan's latest book is, of course, political Zionism or Jewish nationalism as the creating and sustaining force of the Zionist state, not what could be called the spiritual Zionism of Judaism).

"* Alan Hart, author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, is indicting mainstream media complicity in suppression of truth!"

and

"Alan is a fiercely independent thinker. He hates all labels and isms and has never been a member of any political party or group. He prefers to judge issues on their merits. When asked what drives him, he used to say: “I have three children and, when the world falls apart, I want to be able to look them in the eye and say, ‘Don’t blame me. I tried.’” ... Alan ... has to be able to live with himself. He believes that heaven and hell are states of mind."

On the website for his book entitled ZIONISM THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS A Book for Peace, he refers to his own book as:

"the first ever informed and honest debate about who must do what and why if there's to be a peaceful resolution of the Palestine problem."

He also claims (in the video embedded below) that he "could have stopped" the 1967 Six Day War.



If you think his vanity, unreliability and absurd grandiosity would discredit Hart in the eyes of other anti-Israel zealots, forget about it. He fits right in.
Counterpunch publishes Hart's calls for an end to the state of Israel (read here). MPACUK (Muslim Political Action Committee U.K.) promotes his books with online interviews (read here).

Britain's Islam Channel tapped Hart to chair a 2006 anti-Israel conference. A glowing account of his participation is featured on the conspiracy website Rense.com (read here). The Jerusalem Post account is online here. Hart's fellow participants at that conference included Ilan Pappe (to his right in the photo below), and one of the oft-photographed Naturei Karta guys in full charedi regalia.

[As an aside, the Rense website amusingly describes the charedi guy as "Rabbi Ahron Cohen, whose house had been bombarded with 1,000 eggs, presumably by Zionists, (a) few weeks ago". (Please post your punchlines to the comments section of this post.) An explanation for this high cholesterol barrage may be found in the the Jerusalem Post report. It says Cohen "was a member of the delegation that went to Iran to offer support to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in March following his comments that Israel should be wiped off the map."]


There's a danger in my pointing out just how absurd Alan Hart is. You may not take his potential impact seriously. That would be a mistake. Hart's first book, a laudatory biography of Yassir Arafat, is very widely read and cited. Hart also continues to be featured as a speaker at international conferences. In 2007, Hart delivered the keynote address at the Empower India Conference in Banagalore, which was sponsored by the Muslim political organization Popular Front for India . (Read here and here and here.) Not surprisingly, Hart's prescription for empowering India focused on India opposing Israel and resisting America's

"imperial project to have India as their Israel in this part of the world".

In spite of his monomaniacal focus on Israel and Jews, his pomposity and his long-windedness, Hart knows how to communicate his message effectively. He made a career as a television journalist and his skills as a public speaker are well-honed. An audience which is either naive or receptive to his message might well be convinced that what he says is true. That's why it needs to be pointed out that his unfounded accusation that Israel's hidden hand was behind Alan Johnston's kidnapping is not an anomaly. It's entirely consistent with Hart's worldview of fantastic conspiracy theories with Israel at their center.

Plausible sounding conspiracy theories presented by articulate, seemingly reliable figures present a real threat and need to be exposed.

Antisemitism in British Culture

The Jerusalem Center on Public Affairs has published a must-read interview with Robert Solomon Wistrich. Wistrich is a professor of history at Hebrew University, director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism and editor of the journal Antisemitism International.

At the request of the Jerusalem Center, bloggers can only repost the introductory bullet points, not the interview itself. Please take the time to click the link to their website (here) and read the interview in its entirety. Its well worth the click.

from the Jerusalem Center on Public Affairs: Robert Solomon Wistrich >>> "Antisemitism Embedded in British Culture"

• Antisemitism has been present in Great Britain for almost a thousand years of recorded history. In the twelfth century, Catholic medieval Britain was a persecutory society, particularly when it came to Jews. It pioneered the blood libel and the church was a leader in instituting cruel legislation and discriminatory conduct toward Jews.
• English literature and culture are drenched in antisemitic stereotypes. Major British authors throughout the centuries transmitted culturally embedded antisemitism to future generations. Although they did not do so deliberately, it was absorbed and has had a long-term, major impact on British society.
• In the new century the United Kingdom is a European leader in several areas of antisemitism. It holds a pioneering position in promoting academic boycotts of Israel. The same is true for trade-union efforts at economic boycotts. There is also no other Western society where jihadi radicalism has proved as violent and dangerous as in the UK.
• In the UK the anti-Zionist narrative probably has greater legitimacy than in any other Western society. Antisemitism of the "anti-Zionist" variety has achieved such resonance, particularly in elite opinion, that various British media are leaders in this field. Successive British governments neither share nor have encouraged such attitudes-least of all Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They have shown concern over antisemitism and the boycott movement and tried to counteract them. However, Trotskyites who infiltrated the Labour Party and the trade unions in the 1980s have been an important factor in spreading poisonous attitudes. The BBC has also played a role in stimulating pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli attitudes over the years.

(hat tip: Solomonia.com)

Taliban murder BBC reporter in Afghanistan

from BBC NEWS: BBC Afghan reporter is shot dead

An Afghan journalist working for the BBC in the country's southern Helmand province has been found shot dead.

Abdul Samad Rohani had been abducted on Saturday and his body was found on Sunday afternoon in Lashkar Gah.

The BBC paid tribute to Rohani, saying his "courage and dedication have been a key part of the BBC's reporting from Afghanistan in recent years".

Rohani worked with the BBC Kabul bureau and was the Pashto service reporter for the BBC World Service in Helmand.

The province has seen some of the worst recent violence of the Taleban-led insurgency.

Second death

A BBC statement said Rohani's "bravery - and that of his colleagues - have allowed us to tell a key story for audiences in the UK, in Afghanistan and around the world".

It added: "His death is a terrible loss - our thoughts are with his friends and family. We are working closely with his family to support them at this difficult time."

There have been a number of attacks on journalists in Afghanistan this year and the Kabul-based South Asia Media Commission says five Afghan journalists were killed in 2007.

BBC Bias: not so subtle

Thanks to honestreporting.com for this piece. Here's an excerpt:

BBC Reporting During the First Six Months of 2007 - Summary of Findings:

• Headline selection for stories in relation to violent incidents is inconsistent. 15% of stories about Palestinian violence named the aggressors while 60% of articles about Israeli operations accused Israel directly.

• Greater attention is paid to Palestinian voices and opinions than Israeli ones. 19 out of 23 articles and picture series capturing the "man on the street" perspective were from the Palestinian viewpoint.

read the rest here:
6 Month Analysis of the BBC: The Subtle Bias

Racist Lies on BBC Noticeboard

This kind of false Talmudic quote is a mainstay of the anti-Semitic internet age. I've seen the stuff quoted frequently. I once saw it in a letter to the editor of the Aspen Colorado Times. I called it to their attention and, lo and behold, they deleted the letter from their website and offered an apology. It would be nice if the BBC could muster the ethical strength of the local paper in Aspen, Colorado.

from Harry's Place:

BBC Radio 5 Live message board moderators have refused to remove a posting from the 5 Live website, which states that

“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.”

When I brought the mailing to the attention of the moderator, “The BBC Communities Team” emailed back, stating

“we have decided that it does not contravene the House Rules and are going to leave it on site”.

Apparently, at least three others have also complained to the BBC.

The message was posted by “Iron Naz”. A brief Google search on this name suggests that he is unlikely to be a (bottom of the class) Jewish theological student.

Only “Iron Naz” himself knows how he came to hear of the supposed Law of Baba Mezia. The bastardisation of Talmud quotes, however, is normally rooted within “The Talmud Unmasked”, a classic core antisemitic text written at the end of the 19th Century by a Jew hating Russian Catholic Priest, Rev. Father Justin Praniatis, who gave evidence at the infamous Beilis blood libel trial in Kiev, 1913.

Praniatis argued that the Talmud advocated ritual murder, but was shown by Jewish and Christian scholars to be a charlatan with no knowledge of the Talmud. The all Christian jury found Beilis innocent. The influence, however, of Rev. Praniatis’ work has of course spread well beyond the confines of Imperial Russia.

Today, the core text, “The Talmud Unmasked” is distributed by neo-Nazi booksellers via the internet. It gained a brief surge of publicity in the UK in the early 1990s as part of a series of mass antisemitic mailshots by a coterie of veteran Jew haters led by the notorious Dowager Lady Jane Birdwood. She was eventually convicted in 1994 of distributing “threatening, abusive and insulting material” on account of an antisemitic compendium, “The Longest Hatred”, the contents of which included the Talmud material.

Attacks on the Talmud are also an increasingly routine component of Arab and Islamist antisemitism, anti-Zionism and Israel hatred. Until now, however, the BBC was not known to have joined this particular part of the club.

It is bad enough that it is up to readers to police what the BBC publish on their own websites, but it is far sadder that this public body should actively refuse to remove the filth, and give no explanation for their actions - or perhaps its just that “The BBC Communities Team” agree with the essential element of the posting:

“Zionism is a racist ideology where jews are given supremacy over all other races and faiths.”

The alternate universe of Alan Hart

Remember Alan Hart, the anti-Israel conspiracy nut who claimed that Israel had Alan Johnston killed in order to silence him? I posted about that here and here. Well...in a futile attempt to rationalize his previous paranoid musings, he still claims that Israel might be responsible. What a horse's ass!

from the alternate universe called Alan Hart's blog:

In my expression of fear as posted to this blog, I said I believed it was wrong to jump to conclusions about who, really, had taken Alan (and might have killed him) and why. I went on to speculate that if one took motive in account, there was a case, repeat a case, for saying that Israel was one of the parties with a motive. That suggestion provoked a barrage of organised Zionist hate mail. Some of which I published.

Question: Does what we know today enable us to be any more certain about who, really, was responsible for Alan's abduction? I say NO!

On the face of it, I seem to be wrong. Alan was abducted by a Mafia-like, Palestinian extended family or clan. For what purpose? Apparently to have Alan as a bargaining chip in a power struggle with Fatah and Hamas.

That is one possible explanation. But in the Middle East nothing, absolutely nothing, is ever what it seems to be. (I think it was Lebanon's last murdered president who once said, 'Believe nothing of what you read and only half of what you see.' He was speaking about events in his own country, but what he said holds good, generally speaking, for the region. My own rule of thumb for interpreting Zionist statements is to assume they mean the opposite of what is stated).

In my assessment, any attempt to establish the truth about who, really, was responsible for Alan Johnston's abduction must recognise a fact of life – that Palestinian and other Arab groups such as the one that kidnapped the BBC's man are easily penetrated by outside agencies ranging from Israel's secret services to Al Qaeda.

It is by no means impossible that Alan Johnston's kidnappers were acting, knowingly or not, for an outside agency. If so, which one? And for what purpose, actually?

Hamas was paid millions for Johnston's release

from MEMRI blog:

"Palestinian Sources: Johnston Released In Deal Between Hamas, Jaysh Al-Islam

Sources close to Jaysh Al-Islam [Army of Islam] have revealed that the organization received $5 million and a million Kalashnikov rifle bullets in a deal for the release of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston.

According to Palestinian sources, Jaysh Al-Islam commander Mumtaz Daghmoush received a guarantee from Hamas that he would not stand trial for crimes he was suspected of carrying out, and that Hamas would release Jaysh Al-Islam's spokesman, whom it was holding.

Further, Hamas and Jaysh Al-Islam agreed not to reveal which operations they had carried out jointly.

Dismissed Palestinian prime minister Isma'il Haniya denied that there had been a deal or preconditions in the matter of Johnston's release."

Alan Hart's Lie: If Alan Johnston is dead, Israel was responsible.

As we collectively watch the agony of Alan Johnston, kidnapped and held for ransom by a gang of fascist thugs calling themselves the "Army of Islam", forced to wear explosives and relay death threats against himself, let's take a moment to look back at who Alan Hart, a lunatic anti-Israel ex-journalist, blamed.


If Alan Johnston is dead, who, really, was responsible? (April 16, 2007)

At a public meeting in London on Wednesday 11 April, I was asked for my thoughts (as a former ITN and BBC Panorama correspondent) about Alan Johnston's "disappearance" in Gaza. I said that I feared he could be dead, and that if he was, he might well have been shot in the head within minutes of being taken more than a month ago.

If Alan is dead, the truth about who killed him might be in accordance with the claim of the Tawhid al Jihad Brigades group that it was responsible; but it also might not be (repeat might not be).

The group which claimed responsibility in a fax to news agencies on 17 April is an Al Qaeda franchise (driven by events in Iraq), and was unknown in the Palestinian territories; and what can be said for certain is that the Palestinians were the party with absolutely nothing to gain and much to lose from Alan's permanent removal from the scene. And they had much to lose on two counts.

On Count One, Alan was not only the BBC's man, he was the only permanent foreign correspondent in Gaza. He was, in short, the best and most informed provider of news about the Palestinian side of the story; a story which, in many of its details, is an embarrassment to Israel and those governments, most notably the Bush and Blair regimes, which support Israel's efforts to break the will of the Palestinians to continue their struggle for an acceptable minimum of justice.

On Count Two, and if he has been murdered, Alan's death, if it could be blamed on a Palestinian or a pro-Palestinian Arab and/or other Islamist group, would be a huge political setback for the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle and the present leadership of it. (The Al Qaeda franchise would not give a damn about harming the Palestinian cause).

There is a case for saying (repeat a case) that the party with most to gain from Alan Johnston's permanent disappearance was Israel. It would not be the first time that Israeli agents had dressed as Arabs to make a hit.

If Alan Johnston is dead, it's my hope that the BBC at executive management level will rise above its fear of offending Zionism too much and allow its reporters (Frank Gardner and Jeremy Bowen are second to none) to make a full, thorough and honest investigation.

PA President Abbas: "Alan Johnston is still alive"

ITV News - Alan Johnston 'still alive'
Thu Apr 19 2007

The Palestinian President has said that kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston is still alive.

President Mahmoud Abbas revealed intelligence services have confirmed that the reporter was alive, raising hopes for the release of Mr Johnston.

"Yes, I believe he is still alive," President Abbas said in Stockholm. "Our intelligence services have confirmed to me that he's alive."

President Abbas said he knew which group was holding Johnston, but refused to give details.

The 44-year-old correspondent has been missing for more than a month after he was abducted by masked gunmen as he left his office building in Gaza city.

Suggestions that Mr Johnston is alive come after a previously unknown Palestinian group, The Brigades of Tawheed and Jihad, sent a statement to news organisations at the weekend claiming it had killed the Scot.

Sliming Wolfowitz

Re: Why Wolfowitz did nothing wrong. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

I am not an apologist for Paul Wolfowitz. His failures with respect to the Iraq War are among the most serious in the history of the U.S. State Department. They should be discussed and analyzed. However, he should be held accountable for THOSE failures, not scapegoated for invented, exaggerated scandals.

The coverage of this story on the BBC World Service radio news was so inflated as to be comical. Yesterday's edition played this story as the major event on planet Earth (whereas it was only that important on planet BBC). It was their top story, and, listening for an hour on the National Public Radio station here in New York, I caught half an hour of reportage on the subject. By reportage, of course, I mean BBC reporters asking the opinions of people who agree with them. You see, that's what makes it news and not opinion.

My understanding is that he was raised in upstate New York, not Warsaw. However, BBC as a rule has pronounced Wolfowitz' name with an ersatz Polish or Yiddish accent, something like "Wolfervitz". They have portrayed him as a sort of foreign agent influencing U.S. policy for foreign, nefarious interests. In other words, he has become the target of BBC anti-Semitism.

BBC, which is currently in an expensive legal battle to suppress an independant study of bias in its reporting on Israel, would do better to be less blunt. If they want to influence public opinion, they need to be seen as objective. If they want to be seen as reporting without bigotry, they need to stop pronouncing Jewish names with odd, faux authentic accents. If they want to be a news agency, they need to stop reporting opinion as fact, and stop demonizing public figures they oppose. They should be frank about Wolfowitz' record (and those of Bush and Blair), and they should be frank about their own.