The BBC’s new antisemitism training course says people who “have no intention to offend Jewish people” should not “criticise Zionists”.
The training, rolled out to BBC staff last week and seen by Middle East Eye, says: “Antisemites frequently use the word ‘Zionist’ (or worse, ‘Zio’), when they are in fact referring to Jews, whether in Israel or elsewhere.
“Those claiming to be ‘anti-Zionist, not antisemitic’, should do so in the knowledge that many Jewish people consider themselves to be Zionists.”
The training adds: “If these individuals mean only to criticise the policies of the government of Israel, and have no intention to offend Jewish people, they should criticise ‘the Israeli government’, and not ‘Zionists’.”
The course was made by the BBC Academy in conjunction with the Jewish Staff Network, the Antisemitism Policy Trust and the Community Security Trust (CST).
The CST, which monitors antisemitic hate crimes and works with the government and police, has previously claimed that pro-Palestine marches in London were “disrupting the peace and the basic rights of Jews” and called for them to end.
The BBC training also incorporates the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which the British government has adopted but which legal experts have warned could lead to a “curtailment of debate”.
The definition says that claiming that the existence of the state of Israel is a “racist endeavour” is an illustration of potential antisemitism.
Its critics say it conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism, or with criticism of policies that led to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in modern-day Israel.
‘Against any form of discrimination’
Asked for comment, the BBC directed MEE to comments previously made by outgoing director general Tim Davie.
In an email to BBC staff on 4 December, Davie said that the “BBC is for everyone, and we are clear that everyone working here should feel they belong. As an organisation we stand united against any form of discrimination, prejudice, or intolerance”.
“In response to this, the BBC Academy has spent the last few months developing new anti-discrimination training. We’re starting with e-learning modules on antisemitism and Islamophobia, which we expect staff across the BBC to complete,” he added.
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Davie said that the “module on antisemitism is available from today, while the Islamophobia module is just being finalised, to launch in February”.
Davie resigned last month amid a row over the broadcaster’s editing of a speech by US President Donald Trump on 6 January 2021 for the BBC’s Panorama show.
The public broadcaster has also been embroiled in several scandals over its coverage of Israel and Gaza.
MEE reported last month that the BBC’s online Middle East editor Raffi Berg said in 2020 that it was “wonderful” to be in a “circle of trust” with current and former Mossad agents while writing a book on the Israeli intelligence agency, and that the Mossad’s “fantastic operations” make him “tremendously proud”.
A study published in June by the Muslim Council of Britain-linked Centre for Media Monitoring (CFMM) claimed the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza is “systematically biased against Palestinians”, according to an analysis of over 35,000 pieces of content.
The study found that the BBC gives Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage than Palestinian ones, uses emotive terms four times as much for Israeli victims and applies “massacre” 18 times more to Israeli casualties than Palestinian ones.
The BBC pulled a documentary on children in Gaza, Gaza: How To Survive a Warzone, in February after it emerged that the boy who narrated the film, Abdullah al-Yazuri, was the son of a deputy minister in Gaza’s government.
This followed an intense campaign by pro-Israel groups and the Israeli embassy in London.
The BBC then came under fire in June for dropping a second film on Gaza, this one on doctors, after delaying its broadcast for months.
Officials at the broadcaster said that “broadcasting this material risked creating a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards that the public rightly expect of the BBC”.
The film was aired instead by Channel 4 and other news organisations.
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