{"id":6246,"date":"2025-05-14T11:03:35","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T09:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6246"},"modified":"2025-05-15T20:44:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T18:44:14","slug":"jeremy-bowen-interview-gaza-shameful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2025-05-14\/jeremy-bowen-interview-gaza-shameful\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeremy Bowen&#8217;s interview with Gaza aid chief was shameful \u2013 and he knows it"},"content":{"rendered":"<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6249\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/skynews-jeremy-bowen-bowel-cancer_6230105.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"520\" height=\"361\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/skynews-jeremy-bowen-bowel-cancer_6230105.jpg 520w, https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/skynews-jeremy-bowen-bowel-cancer_6230105-300x208.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px\" \/>\n<p class=\"subtitle\"><em><strong>There was no excuse for the BBC to follow Israel in treating the head of UNRWA as though he is aligned with terrorism. This kind of craven journalism just makes Israel&#8217;s job of genocide easier<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>There was yet more shameful reporting by BBC News at Ten last night, with international editor Jeremy Bowen the chief culprit this time.<\/p>\n<p>He prefaced an interview with Philippe Lazzarini, head of United Nations refugee agency UNRWA, with an utterly unwarranted disclaimer \u2013 as though he was talking to a terrorist, not a leading human rights advocate who has been desperately trying to keep the last aid life-lines open to the people of Gaza as they are being actively starved to death by Israel.<\/p>\n<p>The only time I can remember Bowen prefacing an interview in such apologetic terms was when he <a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/home\/post\/p-149785798\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">interviewed<\/a> Hamas&#8217; deputy political chief, Khalil al-Hayya, last October.<\/p>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6247\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Screenshot-2025-05-14-at-09.56.10.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"520\" height=\"466\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Screenshot-2025-05-14-at-09.56.10.png 520w, https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Screenshot-2025-05-14-at-09.56.10-300x269.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px\" \/>\n<p>That was shameful too. But at least on that occasion, Bowen had an excuse: under <a href=\"https:\/\/jonathancook.substack.com\/p\/why-i-wrote-an-expert-report-against\" rel=\"\">Britain&#8217;s draconian Terrorism Act<\/a>, saying or doing anything that might be viewed as favouring Hamas can land you with a 14-year prison sentence for supporting terrorism.<\/p>\n<p>But why on earth would Bowen imply that Lazzarini&#8217;s remarks \u2013 on the intense suffering of Gaza&#8217;s population in the third month of a complete Israeli aid blockade \u2013 need to be treated with caution, in the same manner as those of a Hamas leader?<\/p>\n<p>For one reason only. Because Israel, quite preposterously and for completely self-serving reasons, claims UNRWA is a front for Hamas. Since January, Israel has outlawed the organisation from operating in the Palestinian territories it continues to illegally occupy. As ever, the BBC is terrified of upsetting the Israelis.<\/p>\n<p>Israel has long wanted UNRWA out of the picture because it is the last significant organisation to <a href=\"https:\/\/jonathancook.substack.com\/p\/in-waging-war-on-the-un-refugee-agency?utm_source=publication-search\" rel=\"\">uphold the rights of Palestinian refugees<\/a> enshrined in international law. It is, therefore, a major obstacle to Israel ethnically cleansing Palestinians from what is left of their homeland.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-media-max-width=\"560\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">I missed this on Tuesday. On the News At Ten Jeremy Bowen gives a preamble before a clip of his interview with UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini is played<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Israel says he is a liar.. but I thought it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Shameful from Bowen. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/RpmZ8sYqJV\">pic.twitter.com\/RpmZ8sYqJV<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SaulStaniforth\/status\/1922886809429725681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 15, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Before airing the interview with Lazzarini, Bowen cautioned: \u201cIsrael says he is a liar, and that his organisation has been infiltrated by Hamas. But I felt it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst off, the British government deals with him, and funds his organisation. Which is the largest dealing with Palestinian refugees. They know a lot of what is going on, so therefore I think it is important to speak to people like him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bowen would never consider prefacing an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu in a similar manner, even though the following would actually be truthful and far more deserved:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, accusing him of crimes against humanity. But I felt it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst off, the British government deals with him, and sends weapons to his military to carry out the crimes he is accused of. As its leader, he obviously knows a lot about what Israel is up to, so therefore I think it is important to speak to someone like him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Can you imagine the BBC ever introducing Netanyahu in that way? Of course, you can\u2019t \u2013 even though, in journalistic, ethical and legal terms, it would be fully warranted.<\/p>\n<p>But in the case the Lazzarini, there are absolutely no grounds for such a prologue \u2013 except to promote an Israeli pro-genocide agenda. Bowen\u2019s remarks suggest he needs to explain why, in the midst of an Israeli-engineered famine in Gaza, the BBC would choose to speak to one of the most knowledgeable public figures about that starvation.<\/p>\n<p>Bowen\u2019s resort to an explanation instantly paints Lazzarini as problematic and controversial. It aligns with, and reinforces, Israel\u2019s entirely bogus conflation of UNRWA and Hamas.<\/p>\n<p>Even were Israel\u2019s claims about UNRWA true of local staff in Gaza \u2013 and Israel has supplied precisely no evidence they are, as Lazzarini makes clear in a longer edit of the interview that aired on the BBC\u2019s Six O\u2019Clock News \u2013 that would in no way implicate Lazzarini. His remarks in the interview, on the catastrophic suffering of Gaza, are echoed by all aid agencies.<\/p>\n<p>Bowen\u2019s apologetic tone not only served to undercut the power of what Lazzarini was saying, but bolstered Israel\u2019s ridiculous smears of UNRWA. That will have delighted Israel, and given it a little bit more leeway to carry on the starvation of Gaza, even as the first establishment voices tentatively start calling time on the genocide \u2013 19 months too late.<\/p>\n<p>Notice this from Bowen too. He asks Lazzarini: \u2018When people look back on what\u2019s been happening in the future, will they see, actually, a big international failure?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lazzarini responds: \u201cI think in the coming years we will realise how wrong we have been, how on the wrong side of history we have been. We have, under our watch, let a massive atrocity unfold.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bowen jumps in: \u201cWould you include the 7th of October in that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lazzarini answers: \u201cI would definitely include the 7th of October.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But the set-up from Bowen is entirely unfair. He asks Lazzarini a question about \u201cinternational failure\u201d in relation to Gaza, and Lazzarini responds about the failure by the West to do anything to stop an atrocity \u2013 more properly a genocide \u2013 unfold over the past 19 months.<\/p>\n<p>The events of 7 October 2023 are irrelevant to that discussion. There has been no \u201cinternational failure\u201d to support Israel. The West has armed it to the hilt and prioritised the suffering caused to Israelis by Hamas\u2019 one-day attack over the incomparably greater suffering caused to Palestinians by 19 months of Israel\u2019s slaughter and starvation.<\/p>\n<p>Bowen\u2019s interjected question about 7 October is a nonsense. It is levered in simply to cast further doubt on Lazzarini\u2019s good faith in the hope of placating Israel, or at least providing the BBC with a defence when Israel goes on the offensive against Bowen for speaking to UNRWA.<\/p>\n<p>The atrocities carried out on October 7 occurred in the context of decades of brutal and illegal Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories, of settlement expansion and apartheid rule, and of a 16-year siege of Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>The international community was certainly on the \u201cwrong side of history\u201d, but not in the sense Bowen intends or Lazzarini infers from Bowen\u2019s question. The West failed because it did precisely nothing to stop Israel\u2019s brutalisation of the Palestinian people over those many decades \u2013 in fact, the West assisted Israel \u2013 and thereby guaranteed that Palestinians in Gaza would seek to break out of their concentration camp sooner or later.<\/p>\n<p>Lazzarini\u2019s remarks on the catastrophe in Gaza should be seen as self-evident. But Bowen and the BBC undermined his message by framing him and his organisation as suspect \u2013 and all because Israel, a criminal state starving the people of Gaza, has made an entirely unfounded allegation against the organisation trying to stop its crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n<p>This is the same pattern of smears from Israel that has claimed all 36 hospitals in Gaza are Hamas &#8220;command and control centres&#8221; \u2013 again without a shred of evidence \u2013 to justify it bombing them all, leaving Gaza&#8217;s population without any meaningful health care system as malnutrition and starvation take hold.<\/p>\n<p>Israel struck another hospital yesterday, the European Hospital in Khan Younis, as medics there were waiting to evacuate sick and injured children. The attack killed at least 28 people and injured many more, including a BBC freelance journalist who was conducting an interview there as the missiles hit.<\/p>\n<p>Notably, BBC News at Ten blanked out its journalist\u2019s face, adding: \u201cFor his safety, we are not revealing his name.\u201d The BBC did not explain who the journalist needed protecting from, or why.<\/p>\n<p>That is because the BBC rarely mentions that Israel has assassinated more than 200 Palestinian journalists in Gaza, as well as banning all foreign correspondents from entering the enclave, in its attempts to limit news coverage and smear what does come out as Hamas propaganda. Israel understands it is easier to commit genocide in the dark.<\/p>\n<p>You might assume a major news organisation like the BBC would wish to be seen showing at least some solidarity with those being murdered for doing journalism \u2013 some of them while working to provide the BBC with news. You would be wrong.<\/p>\n<p>We shouldn&#8217;t pretend that it was Bowen\u2019s choice to attach such a disgraceful disclaimer to his interview. We all understand that he is under enormous pressure, both from within the BBC and outside.<\/p>\n<p>BBC executives have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dropsitenews.com\/p\/bbc-civil-war-gaza-israel-biased-coverage\" rel=\"\">appointed and protected<\/a> Raffi Berg, a man who publicly counts a former senior figure in Israel\u2019s spy agency Mossad as a friend, to oversee the corporation\u2019s Middle East coverage.<\/p>\n<p>And as the late Greg Philo reported in his 2011 book <em>More Bad News from Israel<\/em>, a BBC News editor told him at that time: \u201cWe wait in fear for the telephone call from the Israelis&#8221;. Things are far, far worse 14 years on.<\/p>\n<p>Excuses won\u2019t wash any longer. We are 19 months into a genocide. Helping Israel to launder its crimes is to become complicit in them. No journalist should be allowing themselves to be pressured into this kind of moral and professional failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was no excuse for the BBC to follow Israel in treating the head of UNRWA as though he is aligned with terrorism. This kind of craven journalism just makes Israel&#8217;s job of genocide easier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6249,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-6246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-media-criticism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6246"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6253,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6246\/revisions\/6253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}