BBC’s Simpson mainstreams trope used by anti-Israel campaigners

On September 30th the BBC News website published two items by World Affairs Editor John Simpson. One of them was a filmed report titled “Has the world order changed?” which was broadcast on the BBC 1 programme “The Editors” and also appeared on the website’s Middle East page.

Simpson filmed

On the same date, a written version of that report – titled “September 2013: The month America’s ‘moral mission’ ended” – was also published on the BBC News website. 

Simpson written

In that article Simpson writes: [emphasis added]

“Have we, perhaps, just witnessed a moment like that in 1975, when the Americans evacuated Saigon and their power in South East Asia was brought to a close?

That may be going too far. As the international protector of Israel, the US will still have a major part to play in the central dispute in the region, even though the Israeli tail usually seems to wag the American dog.”

Simpson 3

As has already been pointed out, there is something very revealing in the fact that Simpson – and presumably his editors – are still pushing the line that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the “central dispute in the region” after nearly three years of turmoil in the Middle East.

No less notable is the fact that the country Simpson describes as “the international protector of Israel” has – along with its British allies – recently opted for a policy on Syria which halts the decline of the Assad/Iran/Hizballah conglomerate in that country – and legitimizes it – as well as taking the pressure off an overstretched Hizballah in Lebanon. 

But what of Simpson’s totally unnecessary use of the ‘tail and dog’ phrase?  That of course has undertones of classic “Jewish lobby” antisemitism. Taking a look at who else uses that idiom we find it, for example, on websites such as the Iranian regime’s ‘Press TV’ by antisemitic conspiracy theorist Mark Glenn of the ‘Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement’. 

We also find the same phrase used on the Far-Left website ‘Solidarity‘, by anti-Israel campaigners Kathleen and Bill Christison, on the anti-Israel blog ‘Mondoweiss‘ and on Russia’s government radio station ‘The Voice of Russia’.

Is that really the sort of ideological company the ‘impartial’ BBC thinks its World Affairs Editor should be keeping?

Related articles:

Antisemitic Dogs and Denying Antisemitism

BBC’s Simpson misleads on potential US targets in Syria

A BBC template response to complaints

 

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