https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/how-the-bbc-sets-a-trap-to-make-sure
There’s a reason why so few truly leftwing politicians are visible in public life. Because the media’s role is to weed them out, discredit them, place them beyond the pale
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[W]atch this short video of the BBC’s Nick Robinson interviewing Green party leader Zack Polanski and demanding that he affirm “Israel’s right to exist”. It is a classic of the genre. Note Robinson’s heavy framing of the question:
What we’re talking about is whether a state created by the United Nations, in the aftermath of pogroms and Holocaust, the worst act of racism in the history of the planet, has a right to exist or not. This is a question you have always dodged.
That’s very much in the “How many times a day do you beat your wife?” tradition of interviewing. In a post on X, Robinson again challenged Polanski: “Why is this a difficult question to answer?”
Both, let us note in passing, are Jewish. But only one is assumed to accrue moral standing in the exchange from their views about Israel.
We could easily turn the question around against Robinson:
Do you think the state of Israel – as a state illegally occupying and oppressing Palestinians for decades and committing the crime of apartheid, as determined by the world’s highest court, and one deemed to be committing genocide according to a consensus of legal and human rights authorities as well as genocide scholars – has a right to exist?
Did apartheid South Africa have a right exist?
The answer to Robinson’s question is very simple. States come and go. They don’t have a right to exist, peoples do. And importantly, according to international law, people enjoy the same, universal rights. Which is exactly why Israel as a state committing the crime of apartheid – as ruled by the International Court of Justice in 2024 – has no right to exist as it is currently constituted.
Polanski responded with the entirely reasonable assertion: “Israelis and Palestinians should have equal rights in a democracy.” Which was the solution accepted by the international community for black and white South Africans, post-apartheid.
And yet Robinson keeps interrupting Polanski, treating his sensible, moral position – one in line with his party’s new official policy that “Zionism is racism”, as determined by its members – as though it is proof of extremism, of antisemitism. As if Polanski is being slippery by refusing to accept what is, in fact, Robinson’s extreme premise.
Robinson is arguing that, even after Israel has been judged to be an apartheid state by the world’s highest court and to be committing genocide according to leading authorities on the subject, it should have an inviolable right to carry on exactly as it is.
Robinson’s implied position is that Palestinians and their supporters should simply shut up and live with the fact that Israel has been slaughtering and maiming hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s people. Nothing to see here, is Robinson’s message.
So who is the real extremist, who the real racist: Zack Polanski or Nick Robinson?
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https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/how-the-bbc-sets-a-trap-to-make-sure
dizzy: One thing that I noticed in this biased and unreasonable interview was the repeated references to the proposer having a friend … The answer to that of course is How on Earth is that relevant? It’s the proposal that was voted on, those who voted had no knowledge or interest in who the proposer had as friends. Do I have any interest in who your friends are Nick? How is that relevant to anything?
Unreasonable interviewers can and should be challenged. Polanski could do some more practice, get a PR minder like other politicians have and maybe avoid interviews or interviewers like this after missing sleep. You’re being totally unreasonable, I’m not willing to being interviewed by someone so biased and unreasonable?