|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
By: Fern Sidman
The BBC’s belated apology on Tuesday has ignited an international storm of outrage, anguish, and moral reckoning after the British public broadcaster introduced its International Holocaust Remembrance Day coverage without once identifying the central victims of the Holocaust as Jews. The omission, reported on Wednesday by Israel National News, was swiftly condemned by historians, Jewish leaders, Holocaust educators, former BBC executives, and senior British officials as not merely a mistake of language, but as a dangerous act of historical distortion.
On Tuesday morning, BBC Breakfast anchor Jon Kay introduced the commemorations with a statement that Holocaust Memorial Day was “for remembering the six million people murdered by the Nazi regime over 80 years ago.” The phrase, striking in its vagueness, omitted the essential and defining historical truth: that the six million murdered were Jews—men, women, and children targeted systematically for extermination solely because of their Jewish identity. As Israel National News reported, this wording was not an isolated slip but part of a broader pattern. The Campaign for Media Standards revealed that multiple BBC presenters across the network appeared to use identical or near-identical language throughout the day, suggesting a centrally prepared script rather than a single individual error.
The reaction was immediate and fierce. Critics described the phrasing as “hurtful, disrespectful and wrong,” language that quickly echoed across political, academic, and communal institutions. For many, the omission crossed a line between negligence and historical falsification. Lord Eric Pickles, former UK special envoy for post-Holocaust issues and current co-chairman of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, described the failure to identify Jewish victims as “an unambiguous example of Holocaust distortion, which is a form of denial.” In remarks quoted by Israel National News, Pickles drew a chilling historical parallel, noting that such obfuscation was common during the Soviet era, when Jewish suffering was deliberately anonymized into vague references to “citizens” or “victims of fascism.” For such language to reappear in a modern Western democracy, he said, was not merely shocking—it was morally indefensible.
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, articulated the emotional and ethical gravity of the moment. “The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jewish men, women and children,” she said. “Any attempt to dilute the Holocaust, strip it of its Jewish specificity or compare it to contemporary events is unacceptable on any day. On Holocaust Memorial Day it is especially hurtful, disrespectful and wrong.” Her words, reported by Israel National News, captured the deeper concern that the BBC’s language did not merely obscure history but actively participated in a broader global trend of narrative dilution, in which Jewish suffering is universalized into abstraction and thereby stripped of meaning.
Former BBC director of television Danny Cohen was even more direct. He described the incident as “a new low point for the national broadcaster,” arguing that it was “surely the bare minimum to expect the BBC to correctly identify that it was six million Jews killed during the Holocaust.” Anything less, he said, was not just inaccurate but dangerous. As Israel National News reported, Cohen warned that such distortions “play into the hands of extremists who have desperately sought to rewrite the historical truth of history’s greatest crime.”
Faced with mounting condemnation, the BBC issued a formal apology Tuesday night. In a statement, the corporation acknowledged that its introductions on BBC Breakfast and BBC Radio’s Today program had been “incorrectly worded,” conceding that they “should have referred to ‘six million Jewish people.’” The BBC promised to issue corrections on its website and emphasized that other parts of its programming that day—including interviews with Holocaust survivors’ relatives, a segment by its religion editor, and a project organized by the Holocaust Educational Trust—had properly referenced Jewish victims.
Yet for many observers, the apology felt insufficient. As Israel National News has consistently documented, this episode does not stand in isolation but forms part of a growing pattern of editorial controversies involving the BBC’s coverage of Jewish issues and Israel. In November 2023, the network issued an apology after falsely claiming that IDF forces were deliberately targeting medical teams near Gaza’s Shifa Hospital—a claim later proven untrue. Earlier, the BBC wrongly implied Israeli responsibility for an explosion at a Gaza hospital that was later confirmed to have been caused by a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket. The corporation eventually acknowledged that it had been “false to speculate,” but only after global damage to Israel’s reputation had already been done.
Last year, scrutiny intensified when the BBC used the son of a senior Hamas official as the narrator for its documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone,” a decision it later admitted contained “serious flaws.” Earlier this month, another apology followed after the BBC aired an episode of The Repair Shop that discussed the Kindertransport rescue operation without mentioning Jews, despite the historical reality that it was specifically a mission to save Jewish children from Nazi persecution. These incidents form a disturbing continuum rather than isolated editorial lapses.
The Holocaust Memorial Day controversy, however, carries a uniquely profound symbolic weight. Memory is not merely historical record; it is moral architecture. The Holocaust was not a generalized atrocity—it was a targeted genocide, designed, organized, and executed for the explicit purpose of annihilating the Jewish people. To remove Jews from the narrative is not an act of inclusion but one of erasure. It transforms genocide into abstraction and victims into statistics.
Historians warn that this form of narrative dilution represents one of the most insidious forms of Holocaust denial: not the crude denial of gas chambers or camps, but the subtle erasure of Jewish specificity. It is a distortion that allows societies to mourn “victims” without confronting antisemitism, to condemn “Nazism” without acknowledging Jew-hatred, and to memorialize tragedy without assuming responsibility for preventing its return.
As Israel National News has observed in its analysis, the controversy reflects a broader civilizational struggle over historical truth in an era of rising antisemitism. Across Europe and North America, antisemitic incidents have surged, while Holocaust literacy among younger generations is declining. In this context, institutional language matters. Public broadcasters do not merely report history; they shape collective memory.
The BBC’s failure, therefore, is not merely one of phrasing but of moral clarity. Holocaust Memorial Day is not a generic commemoration of wartime suffering; it is a solemn recognition of a uniquely targeted genocide. Its purpose is not abstraction, but specificity. Not vagueness, but truth.
The outrage has also reignited debate about the responsibilities of public institutions in preserving historical integrity. Critics argue that apologies, while necessary, are no longer sufficient without structural reform, editorial accountability, and cultural change within news organizations. As the Israel National News report noted, trust is not restored through statements alone but through consistent ethical practice.
For Jewish communities worldwide, the incident reopened deep wounds. The Holocaust is not distant history—it is living memory, carried in families, communities, and collective trauma. To hear the defining truth of that catastrophe linguistically erased on a day dedicated to remembrance was, for many, profoundly painful.
And yet, the backlash itself has revealed something else: resilience. The swift and unified response from Jewish leaders, historians, politicians, and civil society demonstrates that Holocaust distortion will not go unchallenged. Memory, when defended, becomes resistance.
As the world continues to confront rising antisemitism, disinformation, and historical revisionism, the BBC episode stands as a stark reminder that remembrance is not passive. It requires vigilance, courage, and precision. To remember incorrectly is not to remember at all.
As the Israel National News report observed, Holocaust memory is not merely about honoring the dead—it is about protecting the living. And in a world where hatred once again finds new language, new platforms, and new legitimacy, the responsibility to name truth clearly has never been more urgent.
https://thejewishvoice.com/category/opinion/
https://thejewishvoice.com/2022/11/op-ed-are-you-on-the-menu/
11/15/2022
Op-Ed – Are You on the Menu?
The violence escalated to 11 days of serious fighting between Israel and Hamas, in which over 4,000 missiles were launched at Israeli civilian targets.
Op-Ed – Are You on the Menu?
By: Ginette Weiner
Is it possible to fool all of the people, all of the time? Yes, it is. Just mix together generous helpings of these ingredients, with guaranteed results.
Turn so called “Palestinian” Arab oppressors into victims.
Reframe their rejection of Israel as a “cause” for justice, human rights.
Ensure your Big Lies are jaw dropping horrors designed to instill instant disgust, along with knee jerk indignation.
Ignore these Arabs daily genocidal Jew hate speech on Palestinian Media Watch.
Ignore refusals for statehood & peace offers: 1948, 1967, 2000-2001, 2005 and 2008.
Ignore refusals to accept Israel with any boundaries.
Ignore Arab Israeli citizens full civil, legal and religious rights, in stark contrast to any of their Arab neighbors.
Single out only the Jewish State of Israel for obsessive false blame.
Ignore true atrocities in Syria; Hamas using millions to build tunnels of terror vs. communities of peace and prosperity; The Islamic Republic of Iran’s brutal executions; Somalia’s 98% female genital mutilation.
Count on the average citizen, students, intersectional perpetual victims, western mainstream media to take the path of least resistance, fail to do any research or homework on facts.
Stir ingredients. Be relentless. Then sit back and savor the results. You will know your cake is done when Jews in America need to hide any signs of being a Jew when they leave their homes, when being labeled a white, colonialist oppressor, an apartheid subhuman is the new norm. Your decades of hard work is not without its rewards.
You graduated from just peddling lies to assaulting Jews, with impunity, on our streets, en route to synagogues, in restaurants, at rallies. And don’t forget to count this astonishing windfall—the totality of the collective failure of American Jewish organizations to get even basic facts about Israel to themselves, the public at large, to mainstream media, on campuses or to our elected leaders. If you are a Jew, a Zionist, an Israel supporter, you are already on the menu for ostracization and elimination.
“The Boston area “Mapping Project” is put together by the Boycott, intersectional, anti-Israel mob. The map includes Jewish and Israeli institutions, such as the Synagogue Council of Mass., Harvard Center for Jewish Studies, two Jewish newspapers, and more. It is tapping into millennia-old anti-Semitic tropes about nefarious Jewish wealth, control, conspiracy…Mapping Project’s “underlying messages are clear: Jews are responsible for the ills of our community and if you maintain your relationship with Jewish organizations, you will share that responsibility.”https://thejewishvoice.com/2022/06/invitation-to-violence-anti-israel-groups-map-puts-target-on-boston-jews/
Imagine if someone put out a target map of Blacks or Hispanics or Muslims. Mainstream media would be up in arms but when it’s Jewish institutions…we hear the usual deafening silence.
“One revelation made obvious with the publication of this map is that the enemies of Zionism and Israel, who usually mask their anti-Semitism by contending that criticism of the Jewish state is never anti-Semitic, now apparently feel comfortable enough to engage in public, blatant attacks on Jews, Judaism, and Jewish communal and civil rights organizations as part of their contention that it is Jews, not just the Jewish state, who are guiding and maintaining this oppression.” https://thejewishvoice.com/2022/06/the-odious-mapping-project/
Common knowledge, bears repeating: Before and since Israel became a legal nation, they were repeatedly attacked by Arabs who eventually realized their only hope of eliminating Israel was to begin waging their biased war of words. They are winning. Several authors recently wrote about Nazi and Russian propaganda techniques which were adopted by the “Palestinian” Arabs, most notably Arafat and Abbas, who learned their goose step lessons well. Ziva Dahl’s, “Russia Perfected Disinformation Decades Ago — Against Israel” is a definitive milestone, a must read.
Melanie Phillips, “For the Jews, History Repeats Itself in Ukraine”, says it as well:
“Now where have we heard this before, where the victims of an attempt to erase them from the map are themselves accused falsely of genocide?…This is precisely what the “Palestinians” have done to Israel. For decades, they have promoted the big lie that they are the indigenous people of the land, that the Jews were the colonizers who deprived them of their rights and that the Israelis continue to oppress and practice “genocide” against them. Every part of that is not only untrue but it is the “Palestinians” who seek aggressive conquest and the Israelis who are victims of their terror.
This big lie about Israel was created in the 1960s when the “Palestinian” terrorist leader Yasser Arafat made common cause with the Soviet Union to rewrite history, demonize the Jewish state and subvert the west by twisting its collective mind and destroying its moral compass. This was laid out by General Ion Pacepa, the former head of Romania’s foreign intelligence service, who played a significant role in Soviet bloc operations directed against Israel and the US and who defected to the west in 1978. According to Pacepa, the chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, told him, “We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States.” This mind-bending has resulted in Israel’s demonization in the West.” https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/03/04/for-the-jews-history-repeats-itself-in-ukraine/
“Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared his support for Putin’s stance on Ukraine during a phone call between the two men on Monday. Abbas has a close personal relationship with Russia that mirrors the historically warm ties between Moscow and the PLO. In the early 1980s, Abbas studied in the Soviet Union, where he was awarded a doctorate for a dissertation falsely alleging that the Zionist movement was just as culpable as the Nazi regime for the Holocaust during World War II.”
Still wonder if you are on the menu?
“How AP Teaches Its Journalists to Whitewash the Bloody Truth About Hamas.”
(https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/05/15/how-ap-teaches-its-journalists-to-whitewash-the-bloody-truth-about-hamas/)
“The Associated Press’ guidance for journalists on how to reference Hamas is based on a grossly inaccurate description of the organization’s mission, vision, and bloody track record.
As a result, AP journalists are being taught to whitewash the actions of a terror group that seeks to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.”
Since 2015, in print, I have relentlessly warned about this storm coming at us, asking for calls to action. I am still waiting. I am waiting for American Jewish “leaders” to put their differences aside, collaborate with Israel, (and worldwide Jewry), and fund our own giant Public Relations Agency to get basic, accurate truths out about Israel and refute the Big Lies.
I am still waiting for American Jews to unite, proactively demand Our Jewish Civil Rights, demand, not beg, the IHRA be accepted by all who walk this earth. I have been waiting for our community to be as relentlessly aggressive as our haters are. I am waiting for full page ads, nationwide billboards, exposing the genocidal, eliminate Israel, Arab Jew hate speech, in their words, not yours, not mine, for mainstream media, for all to hear and read, documented by Palestinian Media Watch. In whose world is exposing Jew hate speech bigoted? Tell that to the German Jews of the 1930’s while Hitler drummed it up.
https://palwatch.org/:
“Murder of Israeli athletes in Munich is a “heroic operation” according to Abbas’ Fatah.
“Palestinian children recite poems on official PA TV stating that “our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail,” Jews are “the most evil among creations, barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs.”
“For International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Palestinian Authority, in a program on official PA TV, the host taught viewers that the Holocaust was the price the Jews paid for their evil behavior – their “conspiracies and wickedness.”
I hear only the usual reactive vs. proactive, defensive, apologetic, bent over posturing from American Jewish “leaders”, almost always only in response to the latest attack on us. And this, only some 80 years after Jewish children were thrown alive into the crematoriums, as the Allies descended upon the death camps.
If our collective wisdom is failing us, if our collective chutzpah is gone, and it is, perhaps it’s time to take some advice from an unlikely source, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, “In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given,” the crown prince said according to a wire sent by the Israeli consulate in New York…It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-crown-prince-told-palestinians-to-shut-up-and-stop-complaining-2018-4
I watch American Jews retreating to their respective bubbles. They shrug with resignation at the latest instance of Jew and Israel biased hate, almost accepting of it as part of the new norm, hoping it will go away. It is not going away. It is worse daily. If we can’t even unite and become loudly proactive when there is a literal target on our backs, then it is time to build bulletproof bubbles for your children. They will need them.
Fern Sidman focusing only on the BBC within the massive institutional antisemite war on the Jews is pathetic.
The “genocide” blood libel is exactly what the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN, South Africa, the New York Times (including Democrat Nazi Thomas Friedman), BBC, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Against Genocide, CAIR, “International Association of Genocide Scholars” (112 of whom are the subject of this story), and two Nazi leftist Israeli organizations: B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), in addition to Zoran Mamdani (supported by one-third of New York’s “Jews”), and Democrat scum like Scott Wiener and Bernie Sanders, and numerous other antisemite “progressives” are publicly spewing.
Obviously, there is not and will be no “moral reckoning”, particularly when US “Jewish voices” routinely betray all Jews.
It is laughable to refer to “international outrage”, when the reality is international war on Israel and the Jewish people.