Unveiling the contours and contrasts of an ever-changing Middle East landscape Reliable reportage and insightful commentary on the Middle East by seasoned journalists from the region and beyond.
Also available on YouTube @The Israel Brief – Simply click on the red subscribe button to receive alerts when a new report is posted.
What’s happening in Israel today? See from every Monday – Thursday LOTL’s The Israel Brief broadcasts and on our Facebook page and YouTube by seasoned TV & radio broadcaster, Rolene Marks familiar to Chai FM listeners in South Africa and millions of American listeners to the News/Talk/Sports radio station WINA, broadcasting out of Virginia, USA.
After 11 years in Hamas captivity, Lt. Hadar Goldin’s remains brought home
HE SMILE THAT COVERED UP THE SADNESS
Killed and body captured during a ceasefire in 2014, Hadar Goldin was finally brought to his family hometown of Kfar Saba, where he was buried in the embracing company of the residents of the town and watched by citizens across Israel.
ARTICLES
Please note there is a facility to comment beneath each article should you wish to express an opinion on the subject addressed.
(1)
WORLD’S RESPONSE TO BBC “SCANDAL” REFLECTS ANTISEMITISM
From the “world’s most respected voice” to the voicefor the world’s most disrespected, a leaked BBC dossier exposes bias but the spotlight on Trump exposes antisemitism!
By David E. Kaplan
BBC BIAS. How does a one-time defamation of one individual – albeit the US president – compare with the BBC’s deliberate protracted assault on the reputation of the Jewish state in its agenda-driven lopsided coverage of the Israel-Gaza war that has endangered Jewish lives everywhere?
OPEN LETTER TO US GOVERNMENT REGARDING VISIT OF SOUTH AFRICA’S DR. NALEDI PANDOR
By Lawrence Nowosenetz
Lethal Intent. Should this person who called Hamas leaders to show solidarity following its massacre on October 7, 2023, and who persistently calls for Israel to be declared an “apartheid state” be permitted to enter the US? The writer appeals to the US Secretary of State.
Rewriting history through sustained propaganda, the ‘Free Palestine’ movement takes a page from post-Holocaust Lithuanian revisionism and inverts the truth turning the persecuted into the persecutor. By Grant Gochin
Eager to Erase. The propaganda modality of “moral inversion” deployed by Hamas and their supporters emerges not from the Middle East but from the killing fields of Eastern Europe where notable post WWII leaders have indulged in Holocaust revisionism. Exported as a blueprint, it finds eager customers amongst Jewish state’s enemies.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
From the “world’s most respected voice” to the voicefor the world’s most disrespected, a leaked BBC dossier exposes bias but the spotlight on Trump exposes antisemitism!
By David E. Kaplan
Accustomed to covering the news, the BBC suddenly found itself in the invidious position of being the news.
Headline read: “When Journalism Becomes Propaganda – Two Senior BBC Execs Resign in Earthquake of a Scandal”
The “earthquake” and “scandal” – as it is being characterized – appears solely as an offence caused to Donald Trump in the Panorama documentary by the splicing and doctoring of his 6 January 2021 speech thus corrupting the meaning and his message. It was bad; it was injurious; and could be construed as defamation, having harmed the President’s reputation.
However, how does this one-time offence of biased reportage on one individual – albeit the US president – compare with the BBC’s deliberate protracted assault on the reputation of the Jewish state in its agenda-driven lopsided coverage of the Israel-Gaza war?
Death to Israel. By platforming terrorists and serving as a “mouthpiece” for Hamas as revealed in leaked report, the BBC is contributing to the rise in global antisemitism.
Even worse than the BBC’s English service behaviour is its Arabic service that has been unashamedly acting as:
“a mouthpiece for Hamas”
With BBC commentators and correspondents doubling as activists or advocates for causes they were covering, begs multiple questions, notably:
– Where is the professionalism?
– Where is the proud BBC adage of relaying the truth to the public?
– Where is responsibility for the deadly consequences of spreading disinformation?
This cumulative misconduct of the BBC towards Israel and Jews is far more egregious than the offence to Trump, yet the characterizations of “earthquake” and “scandal” pertain only to him.
Why?
Gadi Ezra writes on YNET Global of the reputational damage inflicted on the Jewish state by the BBC since October 7:
“The organization that once stood for “telling the truth in the service of peace” has become a front for warfare. Blatant falsehoods, half-truths and distortions of fact have become routine. Over two years, 215 corrections or apologies have been issued.”
With Israelis traumatized by the horrendous accounts of the treatment of the hostages in captivity in Gaza, how agonizing was it for them to process hearing the BBC’s astounding ‘Jaw-dropping propaganda’ when it reported that:
“…hostages well treated by Hamas.”
Danny Cohen, a former director of BBC Television, had it spot-on when he described a BBC clip as:
“…a puff piece on war criminals who have executed, starved, beaten and sexually assaulted the hostages that Hamas kidnapped on October 7.”
He laid into the BBC Arabic broadcasts that he described as “antisemitic poison and terrorist propaganda to its 38 million viewers,” adding that the offending clip “proves beyond doubt that hatred toward Jews is ingrainedin the BBCand must be uprooted.”
HOW TO SURVIVE THE BBC!
Earlier this year, the BBC aired its own documentary “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone” where it failed to disclose that the 13-year-old narrator was the son of a senior Hamas official. Jews may well ask “How to survive the BBC” because the UK today is a “warzone” for Jews! Identifiable Jews today in the UK are potentially moving targets!
BBC Bias. In the BBC’s“Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone”, it was not disclosed to viewers that the 13-year-old narrator was a son of a senior Hamas official. The documentary was later withdrawn but the damage was done. (Photo: Screenshot)
Weighing in, Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch said the BBC’s Arabic channel was providing a “platform for terrorists.”
Revered as Britain’s ‘cultural emblem’ from the time of its illustrious service during WWII, the BBC is not just another broadcaster – it is globally respected. It is thought of as a symbol of free journalism, the proverbial ‘Gold Standard’ for accuracy and credibility. However, this has not been the case when applied to Israel. Over a period of cumulative inaccuracy, Israel has been the target of a media campaign that has helped fan the flames in Western public discourse. The results in Britain have seen a monumental rise in antisemitism resulting in the murder of Jews as recently occurred at a synagogue in Manchester.
BBC Complicity. Weighing in, Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch said the BBC in Arabic, which is state run and funded by British taxpayers was providing a “platform for terrorists.”
In London, Britain’s Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 774 anti-Jewish incidents in just six months – an unprecedented onslaught. Can the BBC deny that it has not contributed to the toxic atmosphere that has fueled violent antimerism in the UK and around the world and particularly its followers on its Arabic service? Especially troubling has been a rise in violence against Jewish schoolchildren.
Zvika Klein in his editorial in The Jerusalem Post (November 14) writes:
“At least 107 school-related antisemitic incidents were reported in half a year, including 41 cases of students being attacked during their daily commute to or from Jewish schools.
In one incident in north London, a 13-year-old boy wearing a kippah was surrounded by two men in balaclavas who performed Nazi salutes, spat, and snarled “dirty Jew” at him.
They then grabbed him by the collar and beat him, leaving him traumatized.”
What should be the “SCANDAL” in the UK is not so much what was done to Trump but the state of the country when one of its citizens, a Jewish mother in London, can ask:
“Do I send my kids to a Jewish school, where they’ll be safe inside but attacked once they leave? Or do I put them in a regular school and hope they don’t get bullied for being Jewish?”
This is a fine situation for a Jewish parent today in the UK!
“BURN JEWS”
Michael Prescott, the former independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC) leaked his 19-page report not only because of his disgust at the BBC’s bias but his exasperation with the inaction by the broadcaster’s high-ranking executives.
Providing multiple examples, he cites the BBC Arabic service providing a platform to journalists who made antisemitic comments including one man who said Jews should be burned “as Hitler did,” and who appeared as a guest on BBC Arabic 244 times in a year and a half. Another, who said Jews are “devils”, appeared 522 times during the same time period.
This is not defaming one man – albeit the US president – but an entire people – Jews!
Should this not be the making of a “scandal”? If doctoring Donald’s documentary is more the “scandal” than a frequent BBC commentator suggesting “burning” Jews “like Hitler did,” than the UK is in serious trouble!
This is not the UK and the BBC that stood up to Hitler.
Not Okay, UK! With malicious media hype in the UK, is it any surprise that sights like this occur outside a synagogue in Manchester where on Oct. 3, 2025, two Jewish congregants died in an Islamic terror attack. (Photo: Peter Byrne/A)
Prescott’s report also exposed the “critically different treatment” between the main BBC news website and BBC Arabic of the rocket attack on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights in July 2024, which killed nine Druze children. While the English-language BBC reported on Hezbollah’s denial of the strike although it included that the terror group had bombed other sites in the vicinity, BBC Arabic did NOT EVEN MENTION other strikes nor the children’s deaths. The next day, the BBC published claims that Israel faked the attack.
Is it any wonder that an understandably horrified Prescott found it hard not “to conclude anything other than that BBC Arabic’s story treatment was designed to minimize Israeli suffering and paint Israel as the aggressor.”
So yes, the BBC’s top executives eventually did resign — but for unrelated reasons. The BBC Director-General Tim Davie and its news chief Deborah Turness resigned not because of the fiendishly false reporting on Israel under their leadership but because they peeved off the wrong man – Donald Trump.
That the “earthquake” and “scandal” is the result of a defamation of a US president and not the systemic bias within the broadcaster that has endangered Jewish lives everywhere smacks of antisemitism.
The BBC has apologized to Donld Trump. What are its intentions towards Israel and the global Jewish community?
* Feature picture: Masters of Misinformation. The BBC has drawn criticism from the Jewish community over its biased coverage of the war with Hamas causing danger to the lives of Jews in the UK and across the world. (Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images)
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
