JTA — The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the main body representing the interests of Jews in the UK, has accused the BBC of falsely alleging that victims of a recent antisemitic incident in London had provoked their attackers with an anti-Muslim slur.
The Board’s president, Marie van der Zyl, published an op-ed Thursday in the Jewish Chronicle of London saying the BBC had made a “colossal error” in its coverage of the November 29 incident. The public broadcaster had previously reported that several young men caught on video harassing a Chabad-affiliated bus of Jews publicly celebrating Hanukkah were reacting to an anti-Muslim slur from one of the Jews on the bus; the Board’s own analysis of video from the scene determined that none of the Jews on the bus had said anything Islamophobic.
“The supposed slur, which the BBC insists is there, is nothing but fiction,” van der Zyl wrote in the Jewish Chronicle. “This raises serious questions about deep-seated biases within the BBC towards Israelis, and towards Jews in general.”
The Board has criticized the BBC occasionally in the past over its coverage of Israel, but van der Zyl’s op-ed marked its harshest critique yet of the broadcaster. It followed a December 14 protest outside the BBC headquarters organized by an antisemitism watchdog group, at which attendees held signs reading, “BBC News: Stop Blaming Jews!”
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