Over the years we have repeatedly documented distortions and inaccuracies in BBC content relating to the 1947 Partition Plan (UNGA resolution 181), including the claim that David Ben Gurion had “opposed the plan” and the bizarre insistence that the never implemented recommendation “has not been rescinded”, which the BBC uses as the basis for its refusal to call Jerusalem Israel’s capital.
WHY DOES THE BBC TRUST’S ESC PRETEND THAT THE 1947 PARTITION PLAN IS A THING?
However, at the end of an October 15th report titled “Israel’s row with UN over Lebanon peacekeepers driven by long distrust”, the BBC’s Wyre Davies managed to come up with an additional distortion of that UNGA resolution: [emphasis added]
“While Israel might owe its very existence to the UN – the body that voted it into being in 1947 – its relationship with the organisation has never been so bad.”
Davies expanded on that claim in the October 17th edition of the BBC World Service “youth news podcast” called ‘What in the World’ when he told listeners (from 09:40 here) that:
Davies: “It was a vote in the United Nations in 1947 that paved the way for the establishment of Israel as a state for the first time. So in some ways you could argue that Israel owes its very existence, in part, to the UN but ever since then, relations have deteriorated really badly. In, you know, in the last 20 or 30 years, they’ve hit an all-time low.”
The UN General Assembly’s vote for the Partition Plan did not of course bring Israel “into being”, not least because it was a non-binding recommendation which was never implemented due to the refusal – including by means of force – of Arab countries to accept it.
As was noted by the US representative to the UN Security Council in March 1948 – in the fourth month of Arab attacks which began after the UNGA’s vote on resolution 181:
“The plan proposed by the General Assembly was an integral plan which would not succeed unless each of its parts could be carried out. There seems to be general agreement that the plan cannot now be implemented by peaceful means. From what has been said in the Security Council and in consultations among the several members of the Security Council, it is clear that the Security Council is not prepared to go ahead with efforts to implement this plan in the existing situation. We had a vote on that subject and only five votes could be secured for that purpose.”
Not only was the Partition Plan never implemented but the UN did little when five Arab armies invaded the newly declared State of Israel two months later in May 1948.
In other words, Wyre Davies’ claim that Israel “owes its very existence” to the UN (rather than to the Israelis who fought its War of Independence) is a gross distortion of history which misleads BBC audiences.
