An item on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme this morning, along with a back-up article in this week’s Spectator, provides a snapshot of Britain’s moral sickness. Presenter Ed Stourton was trailing a programme he has made, to be broadcast next month, on last summer’s Lebanon war. In the article, he repeats two misleading canards about that war:

The conflict began on 12 July last year, when Hezbollah launched a cross-border raid and captured two Israeli soldiers, and by the time the fighting ended almost exactly a month later some 1,200 people had been killed — the overwhelming majority of them civilians.

The Hezbollah attack that started the conflict did not simply consist of the kidnapping of the two soldiers, but also a barrage of rocket fire at Israel’s northern towns. It was a significant act of war. Let us not forget also the thousands of Hezbollah rockets trained upon Israel from Lebanon’s border, and the regular shellings of northern Israel and cross-border raids from Lebanon that Hezbollah had mounted for more than a decade. As for those who were killed in Lebanon in last summer’s war, it is not known how many of them were civilians, since Hezbollah soldiers disguised themselves as civilians; according to the Israelis, 500-600 of these fatalities were actually Hezbollah fighters.

What was notable was that, despite all this, Stourton assumed that Israel’s attempt to defend itself against that aggression was illegitimate — and that no reasonable person could disagree. He asked the former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, why the Americans and the British had not supported the international calls for an immediate cease-fire.

ES: You know the criticism that was made of the American position at that time, which was essentially that you were simply letting the Israelis have their head to achieve their aims, and that’s why you wouldn’t call for a ceasefire. Was there any truth in that?

JB: What was wrong with that?

ES: So that was the American position?

JB: Well, they had been attacked. They were responding…. The fact was that Israel was subject to a military threat from Hezbollah on a continuing basis, Hezbollah had committed an act of aggression, and Israel was acting in its own self-defence — and if reacting in its own self-defence meant defeating the enemy, that was perfectly legitimate under international law and, frankly, under good politics.

ES: Your former UN colleague the Syrian ambassador said to us that America was deliberately frustrating diplomatic attempts during those last two weeks of July precisely so Israel could have its head. From what you have just said, that’s a fair analysis of what was happening.

JB: I was damn proud of what we did.

Bolton was reacting to this line of questioning just as any normal person with a sense of justice would react. Faced with the proposition that a country had finally attempted to defend itself against an enemy which had constantly waged war against it, and that it did so by trying to destroy that enemy, he asked: ‘What was wrong with that?’ And of course, to a normal person there’s not only nothing wrong with it but it is the right and moral thing to do, to protect one’s country against further attack by attempting to destroy the enemy.

But in the twisted world of BBC values, it appears, Israel has no right to defend itself. Because when Stourton says the US and UK refused to call for a ceasefire, that’s not quite correct. They actually called upon Hezbollah from the start to stop its aggression. What Stourton — and the UK media and Labour party — found so unacceptable was that Bush and Blair didn’t insist that Israel should stop defending itself. In other words, that they did not insist that Israel surrender. And surrender, what’s more, to an army of Iran which has declared not only its intention to wipe Israel off the map but also to destroy the west and conquer the Arab world too.

Which is why Stourton goes on to report — in apparent amazement — that the Arab world was secretly hoping that Israel would indeed crush Hezbollah. Because the Arab world has every interest in Iran being defeated —as does the west, as do Bush and Blair and as do all sane and sentient people. That’s why it was in everyone’s interests for Israel to be allowed to defend itself by destroying its Iranian enemy before that enemy destroyed it. That’s why the US and the Arab world were so put out when Israel failed to destroy it.

But astoundingly, the BBC and the British left and a considerable proportion of the rest of Britain thinks the real problem was not Iranian aggression but that Israel might actually have defeated the army of Iran. They find it simply unconscionable that Israel was not required to surrender. According to Stourton, it is apparently a scandal that the US supported Israel in its self-defence; indeed, he represents this as some kind of sinister conspiracy that he has now unearthed through his amazing journalistic acumen. Democratic allies supporting each other in the great fight against fascism! What an outrage!

This view is not some aberration. Throughout the Lebanon war, the BBC turned itself effectively into a mouthpiece for Hezbollah propaganda. More generally, its venomous hostility and the extreme prejudice and distortion of its coverage in which America and Israel are turned into the well-springs of aggression and evil in the world while American and Israeli victimisation are airbrushed out of the script, have turned the BBC into the principal propaganda weapon of the global jihad.

For example, today the BBC’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen parroted the false claim that the movement of Iraqi refugees is ‘the largest movement of people in the Middle East since the displacement of Arabs from Israel in 1948.’ But as CAMERA records, this claim — made in January by U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres — is totally untrue. First the number of Arabs who left Israel has routinely been exaggerated, with the figure claimed to be 800,000 to one million whereas most reputable authorities put it much lower at 472,000 to 650,000. Second, and more important for the purpose of the comparison that has been made, approximately 820,000 Jewish refugees were forced to flee persecution in their ancestral homes in Arab countries, of whom 586,000 settled in Israel. Furthermore, there has been a huge Christian exodus from the Middle East, with some 2 million Christians estimated to have fled Islamic persecution in the last 20 years.

The BBC’s continuing abuse of journalism, objectivity and truth provoked the Conservative MP Michael Gove to protest in the Times:

I can hardly believe that the BBC invited the Syrian Ambassador on to Newsnight on Monday as a detached observer to discuss Iraq’s prospects. But then, when was the last time that the BBC gave viewers a chance to learn more about Baathist Syria’s subversion of democracy in Iraq, or Lebanon, through its strategic alliance with Iran and support for terrorist groups? I could also hardly believe that the BBC broadcast a special report that morning maintaining that the biggest threat to Israel was internal corruption. It’s a big issue, certainly, but how big a problem is corruption in Israel compared with, say, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia or Iran? And when was the last time you had the opportunity to hear about the problems with their internal political cultures on the BBC?

Talking of threats, I was astounded that on the Ten O’Clock News on Monday Jeremy Bowen ended a package on Iraq’s security situation by explaining that the Iraq War was the engine of extremism in Saudi Arabia, and that the next big problem in the region was US intentions towards Iran. Again, when was the last time that the BBC properly explained how the Saudis have been funding extremism for decades, or pointed out that the real danger is not the West taking action to restrain Iran but Iran’s Holocaust-denying, terrorism-sponsoring President getting his hands on nuclear missiles?

One final question: the Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman recently argued that ‘there is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism’. When will he be invited on to the Today programme to develop that point?

Michael Gove, it now appears, was very much in the mind of Geoffrey Wheatcroft who, in a deeply troubling and offensive piece in the Guardian, identified what for him is the unacceptable phenomenon of ‘Anglo-neoconservatives’ — younger MPs who are

fanatical adherents of the creed with its three prongs: ardent support for the Iraq war, for the US and for Israel.

One such MP is Douglas Carswell who horrified Wheatcroft by insisting that

‘it is in our national interest to support Israel’. He would never wish to say anything critical of Israel, ‘because I believe they are a front-line ally in a war against people who wish to destroy our democratic way of life. Others may take a nuanced view. I don’t.’

Most decent people would see nothing at all exceptional in Carswell’s sentiments. He speaks, after all, nothing but the demonstrable truth in seeing Israel as ‘a front-line ally in a war against people who wish to destroy our democratic way of life’. But Wheatcroft thinks this is ‘absurd’ and even ‘terrifying’. He yearns, apparently, for the dear departed days of Enoch Powell and Alan Clark (who happened to be rather a fan of Hitler) when the Tory party was composed of anti-Zionists and antisemites who supported the Arabs and who felt uneasy at dinner parties where where ‘Hebrews were in an actual majority’. Now those were real Tories and real patriots!

But apparently the party has now fallen under the spell of the Conservative Friends of Israel — the extent of whose nefarious power in subverting the Tory party to fanatical support of Israel and America was clearly on display last year when William Hague condemned Israel’s actions in the Lebanon as ‘disproportionate’, and when David Cameron chose the anniversary of 9/11 to condemn America for British anti-Americanism and to distance the party from US foreign policy. Clearly, though, for Wheatcroft, a little thing like the facts can’t be allowed to get in way of a steaming prejudice. Indeed, he then proceeds to accuse the hapless Carswell of believing

that the British army in Basra and Helmand is fighting on behalf of Israel.

But Carswell said no such thing. It is only those who see the Jews as behind all the world’s problems who believe that the war in Iraq was fought for the benefit of Israel — ignoring yet another fact, that Israel said all along that in its view the real danger was not Iraq but Iran.

Wheatcroft’s final charge, that British foreign policy is based on the interest of ‘another country’ —by which he presumably meant Israel — is simply contemptible. Once again, it is astonishing that this kind of sub-Protocols of the Elders of Zion racial libel about the Jews being a sinister conspiracy to subvert the foreign policy of Britain against the national interest is published in a mainstream British newspaper. One reader comments on the Guardian site about Wheatcroft’s article:

This article is like a crash course in the use of antisemitic language and themes in what is ostensibly a piece of political analysis.Note how the article describes the people in question as ‘zealous’ - a word with specific Jewish origins. Note how they have ‘infiltrated’ the Tories - ie they are alien, not indigenous to the Tory party (or perhaps even to Britain, the implication goes). Note how Cameron is ‘encircled’ - ie threatened by these sinister predators, not able to exercise his own judgement.

Note how only one of the three ‘prongs’ relates to Israel, while the other two relate to America - but it is Conservative Friends of Israel that is singled out as the motor of this process, rather than any trans-Atlantic connections. And how easily this mention of Israel leads some commenters to talk immediately about Jews.Wheatcroft gives himself away when he cites Enoch Powell and Alan Clark so favourably for their anti-Americanism. Powell - the Tories’ most famous racist. And Clark, whose admiration for Hitler shines out from his diaries.Well done, Guardian, you have done it again - another platform provided for antisemitism.

And indeed, it sprang forth immediately on the Guardian’s website in numerous other comments from readers; like this one:

Jews in the UK are not normal people, they are Anglo-Jewish, and their loyalty to the UK is in question. No matter how many generations or centuries they have been in England, they are still outsiders.

There are many decent people still in the UK. But a tide is now running strongly here of irrationality and deep prejudice which is truly terrifying. There is a profound sickness in Britain, and the BBC and the Guardian are at its very core.