BBC’s Bowen still promoting ICJ disinformation after corrections

h/t GG

Listeners to the December 5^th edition of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme heard a conversation (from 2:38:01 here) between international editor Jeremy Bowen and presenter Nick Robinson which began as follow-up to a report about events in Syria but quickly transformed into obviously pre-coordinated promotion of a much criticised report released hours earlier by Amnesty International, without any information being provided to listeners concerning the relevant issue of that NGO’s anti-Israel record. [emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]

Robinson [2:40:59]: “As you said, there’s a much bigger context to this – that the war in Gaza of course continues – and Israel’s critics, her enemies, have often used a word that she always rejects – her government always rejects – genocide. But there has been new support for that claim this morning.”

Bowen: “Yeah. Big Amnesty International report saying that there is clear evidence of genocide in Gaza. More simply than war crimes. Really, really powerful language used by them, saying that the evidence has piled up, eh…saying that…erm…that…that basically the Israelis are trying to destroy Palestinians as a group, treating them as sub-humans. Quote: ‘the international community’s seismic shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities by delaying calls for a ceasefire and continuing arms transfers will remain a stain on our collective conscience’. I have to say that of course Amnesty aren’t the only people saying this. There’s the process at the International Court of Justice, saying that there’s plausible evidence.”

As the BBC has known since April, the ICJ did not say that there is “plausible evidence” of genocide having been committed in the Gaza Strip:

A BBC INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS MULTIPLE BBC MISREPRESENTATIONS OF ICJ RULING

Following that April interview with the former president of the ICJ, the BBC published a report by its legal correspondent in which he clarified that:

“In January, the ICJ delivered an interim judgement – and one key paragraph from the ruling drew the most attention: “In the Court’s view, the facts and circumstances… are sufficient to conclude that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible.”

This was interpreted by many, including some legal commentators, to mean that the court had concluded that the claim that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza was “plausible”.

This interpretation spread quickly, appearing in UN press releases, statements from campaign groups and many media outlets, including the BBC.

In April, however, Joan Donoghue, the president of the ICJ at the time of that ruling, said in a BBC interview that this was not what the court had ruled.

Rather, she said, the purpose of the ruling was to declare that South Africa had a right to bring its case against Israel and that Palestinians had “plausible rights to protection from genocide” – rights which were at a real risk of irreparable damage.

The judges had stressed they did not need to say for now whether a genocide had occurred but concluded that some of the acts South Africa complained about, if they were proven, could fall under the United Nations’ Convention on Genocide.”

The BBC has already had to correct at least nine items of content promoting false interpretations of the ICJ’s ruling, including two by Jeremy Bowen himself:

BBC UNABLE TO REPLY TO A COMPLAINT ABOUT ITEMS IT ALREADY AMENDED

BBC NEWS CORRECTS YET MORE ICJ RULING DISINFORMATION

CAMERA UK currently has three additional complaints on this issue awaiting responses.

Clearly it is well past time for the BBC to clarify to its staff that the ICJ did not rule that there is ‘plausible evidence’ of genocide in order to finally put an end to the repeated disinformation still being touted to audiences eight months after the issue was clarified.

The ‘Today’ item continues with Bowen telling listeners that:

Bowen: “And among others, there’s a well-known Israeli historian called Amos Goldberg who’s actually the professor of Holocaust history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and he’s said that what’s happened in Gaza does look like genocide. It’s a criminal over-reaction, he’s said over quite a few months and he said genocides don’t have to look like the Nazi Holocaust with death camps and so on. He talks about what happened in Rwanda, what happened in Bosnia and this is one of his quotes: he says in all these cases, the perpetrators of the genocide felt an existential threat, more or less justified, and the genocide came in response. And Israel certainly believes…it denies genocide but it believes that…eh…what it’s done in Gaza is absolutely justified by the threat that Hamas posed to them with those attacks last year.”

Robinson closed the item at that point, going on to quote part of a statement relating to the AI report which had been put out by Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs.

Bowen did not bother to clarify to listeners that Amos Goldberg’s political views, including support for the BDS campaign, were on record long before he wrote the April 2024 article which has since been gleefully promoted by assorted politically motivated activists. Neither did Bowen mention that, coincidentally or not, the day before this programme was aired, the activist group known as ‘Led by Donkeys’ (which has previously had Israel related stunts given BBC coverage) organised agitprop in central London which featured a statement from Goldberg.

Whether or not that is what gave Bowen the idea of promoting Goldberg’s views to BBC audiences is unclear. What is very clear, however, is that BBC audiences are being fed repeated disinformation on the topic of the ICJ’s ruling and that despite the issue having been clarified eight months ago, there are some BBC journalists who are obviously very keen to promote and mainstream the narrative of ‘genocide’, meaning that this is no longer just an issue of breaches of editorial guidelines on accuracy, but also of those concerning impartiality.