The BBC has provoked outrage after an newsreader said ‘Israeli forces are happy to kill children’ during an interview with the country’s ex-prime minister.
Presenter Anjana Gadgil expressed the statement as a matter of fact while interviewing Naftali Bennett, who led the country from 2021 to 2022.
Since the segment aired, Gadgil appears to have deleted her social media profiles, while the BBC itself has apologised – describing her language as ‘inappropriate’ and ‘not phrased well’.
Gadgil was taking Bennett to task after Israel unleashed a major raid on July 3 on Jenin refugee camp, a Palestinian militant stronghold in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, killing 12 Palestinians in clashes with gunmen.
In the interview, she said: ‘The Israeli military are calling this a “military operation” but we now know that young people are being killed, four of them under 18.
Presenter Anjana Gadgil (left) whose interview with Naftali Bennett (right) who led the country from 2021 to 2022, has been widely criticised
The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism tweeted: ‘We will be writing to BBC News regarding presenter @AnjanaGadgil’s repugnant and inflammatory suggestion, made without evidence, that “Israeli forces are *happy* to kill children”‘
Arsen Ostrovsky labelled Gadgil’s comments ‘flat-out blood libel and incitement’
Haymi Bejar wrote that the presenter was a ‘disgrace to TV journalism’
Campaign group Camera UK posted: ‘Whatever her intent, it’s precisely this kind of language which fuels toxic anti-Semitic tropes accusing Jews of murdering non-Jewish children’
‘Is that really what the military set out to do? To kill people between the ages of 16 and 18?’
Mr Bennett said: ‘Quite to the contrary. Actually, all 11 people dead there are militants. The fact that there are young terrorists who decide to hold arms is their responsibility.’
Who is Anjana Gadgil? the BBC newsreader whose comments about Israel provoked a backlash
Anjana Gadgil, 45, was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, to a father of Indian heritage and a British mother.
She went to Portsmouth High School and then Havant College before studying Mandarin and History at School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
While studying, she participated in a drama-documentary with an all-Chinese cast and crew. She also worked as a model in Shanghai.
Gadgil went on to work at The Guardian and The Times before moving into broadcast journalism in 2002 at Sky Sports News and then the BBC.
She moved back to Hampshire with her young family in 2016 to join South Today where she works as a presenter and reporter, as well as a regular host on BBC News and the broadcaster’s sports output.
He added that many of those responsible for terror attacks that had killed dozens of Israelis over the past year either came from Jenin or had been trained there.
He said: ‘Jenin has become an epicentre of terror. All the Palestinians that were killed were terrorists, in this case.’
Gadgil countered him and said: ‘Terrorists, but children. The Israeli forces are happy to kill children.’
Bennett appeared to take offence at her comment and said: ‘You know, it’s quite remarkable that you would say that because they are are killing us.’
He then challenged her to define a 17-year-old shooting at her own family, which she refused to engage with.
Her comments prompted a furious backlash after the show aired.
The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism tweeted: ‘We will be writing to BBC News regarding presenter @AnjanaGadgil’s repugnant and inflammatory suggestion, made without evidence, that “Israeli forces are *happy* to kill children”.
‘Such a comment is redolent of the medieval blood libel in which Jews were accused of murdering Christians, and its modern incarnation has no place on BBC News.’
Campaign group Camera UK posted: ‘Whatever her intent, it’s precisely this kind of language which fuels toxic anti-Semitic tropes accusing Jews of murdering non-Jewish children.’
The Board of Deputies of British Jews stated: ‘We are appalled by comments made by a BBC presenter during an interview with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
‘The comments made, including the charge that “Israeli forces are happy to kill children” when discussing armed terrorists under the age of 18, is simply disgraceful.
‘This is clear breach of the Corporation’s own Editorial Guidelines, and we will be contacting the Director General personally to protest in the strongest possible terms.’
Elsewhere, pro-Palestinian groups on social media have spoken in support of Gadgil and expressed ‘solidarity’ with the under-fire presenter.
A BBC spokesman said: ‘BBC News has received comments and complaints concerning an interview with Naftali Bennett broadcast on the BBC News channel about recent events in the West Bank and Israel.
‘The complaints raised relate to specific interview questions about the deaths of young people in the Jenin refugee camp. Across the BBC’s platforms – including our news channel – these events have been covered in an impartial and robust way.
‘The United Nations raised the issue of the impact of the operation in Jenin on children and young people. While this was a legitimate subject to examine in the interview, we apologise that the language used in this line of questioning was not phrased well and was inappropriate.’
Smoke billows from houses inside a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on July 3, 2023, after an Israeli strike
A person is transported on a stretcher after a Palestinian was killed during an Israeli military operation, in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank July 3, 2023
Smoke rises during an Israeli military raid of the militant stronghold of Jenin in the occupied West Bank
On Monday, Israel launched what appeared to be a major military operation in the West bank, deploying hundreds of troops into Palestinian territory and conducting drone strikes on what it said were militant strongholds in and around Jenin.
At least 12 Palestinians were killed in the strikes 100 injured, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
‘There is bombing from the air and an invasion from the ground,’ Mahmoud al-Saadi, director of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin, told AFP.
‘Several houses and sites have been bombed… smoke is rising from everywhere.’
The extensive raid, which Israel claims is focused on a military stronghold in Jenin, was launched under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government and has employed armoured vehicles, army bulldozers and drone strikes.
In the city’s refugee camp – an urban community that was home to 18,000 people – multiple streets were ripped up.
The raid left ]broken electricity cables, oil, and pools of water apparently after an Israeli anti-bomb bulldozer passed.
The incursion resembles the wide-scale deployments carried out during the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago, was described as an ‘extensive counterterrorism effort’ by Netanyahu’s office.
A day later, a Palestinian knifeman smashed his car into pedestrians before going on a rampage injuring up to ten people.
Video shows the attacker, identified as Hasin Halila, 23, from a village near the West Bank city of Hebron, ramming his truck into a pavement area in Tel Aviv, sending victims flying, before crawling out of the window and stabbing passers-by.
With injured people still receiving treatment on the street, the 20-year-old assailant was reportedly shot and killed by a civilian.
Islamist militant group Hamas has labelled the attack as ‘heroic’ and called it ‘revenge’ for Israel’s large scale military operation in occupied West Bank.
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