Glastonbury errors prove the BBC should not be funded by the licence fee

We all have a breaking point. Mine was Glastonbury, when Bobby Vylan, frontman of the London punk duo Bob Vylan, curtailed his cries of “free, free Palestine” to ask his audience: “Ay, but have you heard this one, though?” Whereupon, he began to lead them in a chant of: “Death, death to the IDF.”

From the West Holts Stage, with a Palestinian flag pinned to the backdrop, Vylan added: “Hell, yeah! From the river to the sea, Palestine must be, will be, inshallah, it will be free.” For good measure, he reflected on his act’s career progression: “So look, we have done it all, from working in bars to working for fucking Zionists.” I always wondered what the Nuremberg rally would sound like in multicultural London English. 

Amid all the incitement, the BBC seemed to forget it was streaming this set live on iPlayer, and while a content warning was eventually shown on-screen, the corporation did not consider it prudent to pull the feed of the man calling for death to Israeli soldiers. Then again, if the BBC cut short every grossly offensive anti-Israel broadcast, it would be left with The Shipping Forecast and repeats of Keeping Up Appearances.

Even in the context of the BBC’s all-consuming fixation with Israeli wickedness, the Glastonbury stream was egregious. It chose to platform a festival where pronouncements of fashionable leftism are commonplace, chose to livestream a stage adorned with a Palestinian flag, and chose to continue streaming even as Bob Vylan’s performance descended into a hate parade. The editorial decision-making was intolerable, inexcusable, and unforgivable.

For me, it marks a a rubicon that cannot be uncrossed. I have never been a BBC sentimentalist, but I have always believed in its place as a cornerstone British institution, speaking ourselves back to us at home and speaking for us overseas. I have defended it from political attacks. I have assured pro-Israel groups that, yes, its news and current affairs coverage was biased towards the Palestinian side, but this reflected the prevalence of left-liberal attitudes among journalists and not any organised animus. I wouldn’t make those arguments today. I regret that I ever did. At some point, you are no longer searching for context but foraging for excuses.

No more. The BBC is not a well-meaning behemoth that stumbles into controversies through misfortune or because of the unwieldy vastness of its operation. If the corporation were merely inept or unlucky, it would surely demonise a great many countries. But it is invariably one country, because the BBC is not a victim of circumstance, caught in the middle of conflicts military and cultural, it is an ideological apparatus. Not an observer of the world but the articulator of a worldview, one in which Israel is a malefactor of unique depravity.

In the BBC worldview, Israel was obviously to blame for the explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, with no need to wait for evidence, and an Israeli tank massacred Gazans at an aid distribution centre, even though the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation called this “false”. When the IDF announced that it had “included medical teams and Arabic speakers” in an anti-Hamas operation at Al Shifa Hospital, the BBC reported instead that the Israeli military was “targeting medical teams as well as Arabic speakers” at the hospital.

It is the same worldview that causes the corporation to translate an Arabic-speaking interviewee’s praise for “jihad against the Jews” as backing for “fighting and resisting against Israeli forces”. To tell listeners of the Today programme that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was considered by “analysts” to be “moderate and pragmatic”. To puff Mustafa Barghouti, who called October 7 “a glorious day for the Palestinian resistance and people”, as a “respected Palestinian analyst and politician in the occupied West Bank”.

Barghouti was no blip. The corporation has repeatedly platformed a Palestinian doctor who had declared “the Jews are traitors”, hailed Gazans who “killed the Jews”, and described a synagogue shooter as a “hero”. The same medic wrote on social media: “A thousand jihad fighters shall be born with every martyr, and our land shall vomit your bodies out, you shall scattered in the land as you used to be and as Allah has written for you [sic].” I believe under BBC editorial guidelines, that translates as an impassioned call for bilateral negotiations on a two-state solution.

It aired a documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, without initially telling viewers the narrator was the son of a deputy minister in the Hamas government. It invited an Israeli rabbi on BBC News to talk about Chanukah and instead interrogated him about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and its proportionality. A producer asked the Israeli embassy to help the World Service secure an interview with an Israeli military figure, emphasising that: “We want someone who is going to be critical of Netanyahu and the ground offensive.” These are not isolated incidents. They indicate a pattern of systemic animosity at a taxpayer-funded broadcaster. The crisis in BBC credibility has worsened since October 7 but it did not begin there. Ideology and activism have been permitted to fester over many years and for that the corporation’s leadership is to blame.

Critics rail against international editor Jeremy Bowen for anti-Israel bias, but this anger strikes me as misplaced. It would be better directed at the organisation that allowed him to remain Middle East editor after his live commentary on Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2015 address to the US Congress. When Netanyahu acknowledged the presence of Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Bowen tweeted: “Once again Netanyahu plays the Holocaust card.” A BBC correspondent who accused Barack Obama of “playing the slavery card” would have been updating their LinkedIn profile before the day was out. BBC bosses were seemingly content to have Bowen continue as their man in Jerusalem.

The BBC’s problem has strayed beyond left-liberal groupthink into institutional hostility, but it has little to fear from those most likely to notice. British Jews are a small minority, don’t cause trouble, and their sensitivities are not catered to as attentively as those of other, more insistent demographics. Witness the almost 19 months it took to issue an apology for its Arabic-language channel telling viewers: “Some observant Jews consider spitting on Christians a holiday ritual.”

Perhaps the BBC can still be saved but I am past the point of caring. I no longer want to consume its content, wondering when its next anti-Israel spasm will come. I no longer want to watch or listen to news bulletins trying to figure out where the falsehood is or what facts have been omitted.

I want a national broadcaster I can respect and journalism I can trust. The BBC no longer fulfils either. No one should be compelled to pay for any of this. If the BBC must exist, it should fund its editorial intifada through advertising, subscriptions or philanthropy.

Death, death to the licence fee.