On 26 February I complained to the BBC about a news item on BBC 24, repeated every hour, on the ‘success’ of Israel’s vaccination programme, which had omitted the fact that over 4.5 million Palestinians had not been vaccinated.

This is an addition to the 20% gap (1 February) between overall take up (43%) of the vaccine in Israel and take-up amongst Israel’s Palestinian citizens (23%). As Aymen Odeh, leader of the Joint List complained there was a “complete absence of a campaign to encourage vaccination among Arab citizens in the Arabic language’’ unlike that in the Jewish population.' (Forward 16.2.21)

At the end of February Israel announced that it will provide vaccinations for Palestinians who work in Israel or in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The obvious reason for this being to protect Jews not Palestinians.

Israel has also restricted access to the vaccine for foreign workers and asylum seekers.

In response to my complaint the BBC on 27 February gave 4 examples of where BBC correspondents have ‘reflected calls from human rights groups for Israel to take responsibility for Palestinians’ or challenged Israeli government or Zionist spokespersons. The BBC went on to say that ‘We consider that we have reflected all sides of this news story across our output.’

Israel’s racist discrimination in its vaccine rollout is not ‘one side’ of an ‘ongoing story’. It is a fact which the BBC has omitted in the vast majority of its news output.

As Section 4 of its Impartiality Guidelines states the BBC is not required to maintain absolute neutrality ‘on every issue or detachment from fundamental democratic principles.’ The principle of non-discrimination between different people on the grounds of ethnicity is a fundamental democratic principle.

Would it have been appropriate for the BBC to be neutral about Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews and the holocaust? Unfortunately all the evidence is that the BBC did indeed ignore the Nazi’s treatment of the Jews, up to and including the holocaust.

We demand that the BBC adhere to Section 3 of its Editorial Guidelines-Accuracy which state that:

‘The BBC must not knowingly and materially mislead its audiences. We should not distort known facts, present invented material as fact or otherwise undermine our audiences’ trust in our content.’

We demand that EVERY TIME that there is coverage of the ‘success’ of Israel’s vaccine roll-out that it should also include the exclusion of the vast majority of Palestinians. Otherwise it will be misleading its audience and be in breach of its own guidelines.

For further information see Amira Hass’s Israel's Vaccine Apartheid Ha'aretz 1.3.21.

Tony Greenstein