Why the f*ck were BBC & Guardian editors meeting an Israeli general during a genocide?

Declassified UK has revealed that several mainstream media editors in Britain met with Aviv Kohavi, who had recently stepped down as the top military officer in Israel, a month into the genocide in Gaza. Guardian editor Katherine Viner, BBC director of news content Richard Burgess, and Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf all met with Kohavi despite the atrocities Israeli occupation forces were committing at the time.

BBC and Guardian: meeting with war criminals?

As Declassified noted:

During his tenure, he justified attacks on journalists, saying the soldiers who shot reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank “showed courage” and that he had not one “gram of regret” for flattening the Associated Press (AP) office in Gaza.

Lawyer Elad Man got hold of details about Kohavi’s visit through a Freedom of Information request in Israel. The Israeli government and occupation army had assisted in planning the general’s tour in the UK. Its aim, apparently, was to help ‘cultivate support for Israel’ as it decimated Gaza.

Media professor Des Freedman reacted to Declassified’s revelations by insisting that:

meeting secretly with a senior IDF representative in the middle of a genocidal campaign as part of an organised propaganda offensive raises serious questions about integrity and transparency.

He added over the BBC, Guardian, et al:

editors at the Guardian, BBC and FT appear willing to open their doors to Israeli spokespeople – no matter how controversial and offensive – in a way which is denied to Palestinian representatives.

Journalists themselves are calling out the mainstream media bias

The BBC is facing a backlash currently for controversially taking down a documentary about the devastation in Gaza. And that is on top of already ample proof of its overall pro-Israel bias.

A former BBC journalist told Declassified that the meeting with Kohavi was “outrageous” due to Israel’s war crimes, insisting it was:

difficult to believe that the organisation would hold an equivalent meeting with the Hamas government

They said the meeting:

perhaps explains why there has been so much bias and distortion in the corporation’s coverage of Gaza.

And they added that:

It further undermines the independence and impartiality that the BBC claims to uphold, and I think it has done irreparable damage to any trust audiences had in the corporation

A BBC spokesperson, however, insisted that “We hold similar briefings with figures from both sides of the conflict and all stories”.

The Guardian also has a long record of helping to cover for Israel, in part by assisting a cynical smear campaign against its high-profile critics. And Declassified recently reported on an “exhaustive spreadsheet” that Guardian staff have put together of the paper’s coverage during the Gaza genocide, which has been:

amplifying unchallenged Israeli propaganda… or treating clearly false statements by Israeli spokespeople as credible

One Guardian journalist told Declassified:

It’s no secret that the coverage of the international and foreign desk of the Guardian follows the line of the British establishment

Featured image via the Canary