BBC slams prominent journalist for anti-Israel bias

The BBC said Andrew Marr breached editorial guidelines by comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children to the Assad regime’s chemical attack on civilians.

By: World Israel News Staff

The BBC announced that one of its senior journalists was breaching the news agency’s ethical and editorial directives when he unfairly accused Israel of causing the deaths of Palestinian children, the London Daily Mail reported Sunday.

Journalist Andrew Marr said that “lots of Palestinian kids” had been killed by Israel in the same context as talk about the Assad regime’s massacre of innocent civilians.

The BBC’s decision to sanction Marr was described as extraordinary by the Daily Mail.

On April 8, Marr compared the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons targeting of Syrian women and children by saying: “And the Middle East is aflame again. I mean there’s lots of Palestinian kids being killed further south as well by Israeli forces.”

Marr was referring to rioting by Palestinians in Gaza and Israel’s attempts to control the violence.

Jonathan Sacerdoti, a British journalist and social activist, wrote: “When talking about a story on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, Andrew Marr for some reason decided to talk about Israel (which was unrelated anyway). He stated there’s a lot of Palestinian kids being killed further south by Israeli forces.

“This is completely incorrect and is made up. This was irrelevant to the conversation on Syria… and also actually completely false.”

BBC attempted at first to say that Marr’s statement was correct since the IDF had in fact killed “younger people.”