Signs reading “I am Charlie” and “I am Jewish” at a store in Paris. (Photo: Serge Attal/Flash90)
BBC interviewer tells Jewish woman she should see “different perspectives,” saying “Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.” BBC apologized after receiving numerous complaints.
Veteran journalist Tim Willcox, reporting for BBC from the massive rally in Paris on Sunday, interviewed a Jewish woman at the event, asking her about the particular threat faced by French Jews.
The rally, in response to terror attacks last week in France that claimed 17 victims, was a demonstration against Islamic terror and in support of freedom of expression.
At some point Willcox interrupts his interviewee, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, to say – just 48 hours after four Jews were murdered by a Muslim terrorist at a kosher supermarket – that “many critics of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.”
When she responds that the issues have nothing to do with one another, Willcox states: “But you understand. Everything is seen from different perspectives.”
Willcox later apologized, stating on his Twitter account: “Really sorry for any offence caused by a poorly phrased question in a live interview in Paris yesterday – it was entirely unintentional.”
BBC issued the following statement: “Tim Willcox has apologized for what he accepts was a poorly phrased question during an in-depth live interview.”
BBC’s Willcox has a history of lacing his reports with seemingly anti-Semitic remarks.
Media Skewers Netanyahu’s ‘Behavior’ at Paris Rally
Numerous media outlets in Israel and abroad attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct at the Paris rally, with Reuters describing his “behavior” as “gauche.”
Yisrael Hayom commented that these commentators “did not like it at all, that the prime minister took his place in the first row of leaders…. In accordance with French protocol, the heads of state were asked to march in the first row. Netanyahu’s taking his place in the center expresses the fact that Israel is a global leader in the anti-terror front.”
Questioning Call for Aliyah
Reuters writes that “only a few French Jews move to Israel each year. Last year 7,000 out of the 550,000-strong community. That number is expected to rise to more than 10,000 in 2015, in part because of last week’s attacks.”
“Helping more of the Jewish Diaspora migrate to Israel remains a central policy of the right-wing government, which faces elections in March,” the article continues, despite the fact that aliyah (immigration to Israel) has been an essential component of Zionism shared across the political spectrum for more than a century.
