The BBC continues to dig itself yet deeper into the pit of ignorance and prejudice into which it fell over the description on From Our Own Correspondent of Palestinian on Palestinian violence as 'Old Testament-style brutality' (see earlier posts below). A couple of readers have now received this apologia from Tarik Kafala, Middle East Editor, BBC News website:

'The piece to which you refer originated from the BBC radio programme “From our own Correspondent” on which correspondents are encouraged to write and broadcast in a more personal and impressionistic style than they do in news reports. This is made clear on the web page where we say/ "Personal reflections by BBC correspondents around the world"/ underneath the programme title. We do not believe there is anything in the content or tenor of the piece that is anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli.

'In our view there is little to support Melanie Phillips’ point that the report suggests that “when Arabs commit violence they become Jews”. We do not agree that “Old Testament-style brutality” is synonymous in any way with “Jewish-style brutality”. It is our understanding that the religious tradition of which the Old Testament is a pillar is common to the three main monotheistic faiths. We do not believe that the writer, Tim Butcher, intended to make the association that Melanie Phillips makes. Nor do we see how the text that we published lends itself to this interpretation.

'We understand “Old Testament-style brutality” to refer to a form of justice or retribution that is harsh and unforgiving, as in the phrase “an eye for an eye”. In this case, perhaps stretching the metaphor a little, Tim Butcher understands it also to mean a form of justice in which the aggrieved party is invited to help carry out the sentence.

'The report also clearly outlines the protection that the Israeli state offers to Palestinians who have co-operated with its security services and the relatively high standard of living they enjoy. The report makes no attempt to skate over who carries out the brutal “justice”, and who is the victim of it. If there is any stated or implicit criticism in the report it is of the Palestinians who execute alleged collaborators after summary trials.'

This reply beggars belief. To suggest that the Old Testament is the religious authority for Islam and Christianity just as it is for Judaism is simply staggering. The authoritative religious texts for these two religions are the Koran and New Testament respectively. The fact that they are also Abrahamic faiths, in that they are variants upon the core narrative of Judaism, does not alter the fact that the Old Testament is the defining religious text of Judaism alone, and that 'Old Testament-style brutality' is a jibe against Jews alone, used grotesquely in this case to describe Arab violence. The reason this wildly inappropriate usage was made is undoubtedly because, in the mind of the author, violence appears to be associated solely with the Jewish holy book. It would be considered preposterous to refer to any violence, for example, as 'Koran-style violence', despite the injunctions in that text to violence against the infidel.

Compounding this distortion, the BBC apologist then erroneously associates the Old Testament with vengeance by bringing up that old chestnut of 'an eye for an eye'. The assumption that this means tit-for-tat retribution is a classic of anti-Jewish prejudice and is based on a literal reading of the English translation of the Hebrew -- which is the opposite of the interpretation that the religion teaches, that the phrase means proportionality and monetary compensation as the response to violent deeds and not the 'harsh and unforgiving retribution' of life for life.

Taking these official responses together with the original remark, the BBC's attitude might be characterised thus: when Arabs attack each other, such violence is described as a characteristic unique to Jewish religious tradition, but when this is exposed as a preposterous and slanderous lie, the Jews are promptly stripped of the uniqueness of their entire religious tradition.

This is what might be called a no-win situation for the Jews. But the real loser here is the BBC, whose ingrained prejudice against the Jewish people appears to deepen by the day.