Harriet Sherwood
The Guardian / August 12, 2024
Broadcaster defends Radio 4 presenter’s ‘legitimate’ questions to David Mencer, who claimed she was parroting ‘terrorist organizations’
The BBC has defended Mishal Husain, a presenter on its Radio 4 Today program, after she was accused by an Israeli government spokesperson live on air of “blindly repeating what terrorist organizations … feed you”.
In a tetchy interview on Monday’s program, David Mencer, said Husain warranted the “pro-Palestinian reporter of the year award”.
He added: “You producing reports on this war one-sidedly, without context, ends up with attacks on Jews on the streets of Britain. It ends up with cars going up the Finchley Road saying: ‘Jews, we’re going to rape your daughters.’”
A BBC spokesperson said the corporation rejected his allegations. “As the listener could hear, Mishal Husain was asking legitimate and important questions in a professional, fair and courteous manner.”
The interview began with Husain asking Mencer about an Israeli strike on a school compound in Gaza. The BBC interviewed Dr Khamis Elessi, who said the casualties had included elderly people, women and children. The Israeli army said the school compound was being used as a Hamas command centre.
Mencer rejected Elessi’s account, saying Israel was “extremely skeptical about pseudo medical staff” who had “inflated” casualty figures throughout the war in Gaza. He said 19 Hamas fighters had been “eliminated” in the strike, and that “there were no women and children present”.
He went on to say that Israel was fighting a “very dirty war” in Gaza. It was winning on the military battlefield and “destroying Hamas”, he said, but losing on the media battlefield.
“You as the BBC, you do no credit to ordinary Gazans by just blindly repeating what terrorist organizations, Isis-like organizations, the information which they feed you. It simply doesn’t bear any resemblance to the truth,” he said.
Journalists covering the war in Gaza were not doing their homework, he said. “You do this subject no justice when you repeat their figures.”
When Husain raised claims by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem that Palestinian prisoners had been tortured, Mencer said: “I think you just warrant the pro-Palestinian reporter of the year award, and I congratulate you for that.”
B’Tselem’s claims were a “fringe opinion”, he said. “And you guys parroting it just produces radicalism, which makes Jews in the UK afraid to walk the streets.”
Husain is one of BBC News’s most respected interviewers, widely admired for her tenacity alongside a calm and courteous manner. She has been a presenter on the Today program for 11 years and also presents BBC television news. She has been tipped to replace Huw Edwards as the BBC’s top news presenter.
Mencer is a British media and public relations specialist, who has acted as a spokesperson for the Israeli government since last autumn. He is a former director of Labour Friends of Israel.
In their interview, Husain raised the Israeli government’s ban on international journalists reporting from Gaza, which has been in place since the war began last October.
Mencer said the presence of international journalists would complicate Israel’s efforts to free hostages being held by Hamas and other organizations. “There is no shortage of news coming out of Gaza. For heaven’s sake, it’s the most reported conflict of modern time,” he said.
International news organizations have been frustrated by the ban, which has made it difficult to verify claims made by both sides. At least 113 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in the war so far, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Harriet Sherwood was previously The Guardian’s correspondent in Jerusalem
