The BBC's treatment of Jews is beyond the pale. Scrap the licence fee

For many years, it has been obvious to anybody with a pair of eyes and a television licence that the BBC has a problem with Jews.

Need I rehearse its offences yet again? From broadcasting chants of “death to the IDF” on primetime to commissioning a documentary narrated by a Hamas scion, the evidence is endless.

Please just Google it yourself. I just don’t have the strength any longer.

Yet strength or no strength, here we are once more.

In recent weeks, the broadcaster has agreed to pay more than £400,000 to Lucie Kon, an Oscar-winning Jewish documentary-maker who spent two decades at the corporation.

Colleagues, she said, called Zionists “evil”, told her to “think about what drove Hamas to do what they did”, and questioned whether a Jew could be trusted to oversee a film about the Nova massacre.

“It was like having Jew stamped on my forehead,” she added.

Meanwhile, the Campaign Against Antisemitism has unearthed a biography of Adolf Hitler that, almost unbelievably, neglects to mention the Holocaust.

That’s right! This work of genius was produced by BBC Bitesize, an educational resource aimed at children.

If it wasn’t for six million dead, it would be the punchline to a bad joke.

On Monday, Matt Brittin, the BBC’s newish director-general, emailed staff to say that following “recent media coverage of allegations of antisemitism at the BBC”, the corporation was considering action, including changes in the Charter.

Right.

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The proof of the pudding, shall we say, lies in whether it is poisoned with racism.

I’m hardly holding my plate.

A year and a half ago, the corporation announced a review of its Gaza coverage, and almost nothing has been done.

And when the BBC’s Jewish staff network asked to see Brittin, they were instead sent to his deputy, Rhodri Talfan Davies, who he has already said he sees no evidence of systemic antisemitism at the BBC and has rejected calls for an independent inquiry.

Thanks for that.

Which returns me – despite myself – to the endless list.

(We have no strength but still we go on.) Even before October 7, this is the broadcaster that was censured by Ofcom for falsely accusing Jewish children, who had been subjected to an antisemitic attack while celebrating Chanukah on a bus in London, of shouting “anti-Muslim slurs”.

Do we really thing it is capable of successful self-scrutiny?

It’s all very well tinkering with the next Charter, which won’t take effect until 2028.

But Jewish staff treated like pariahs right now; the public is being pumped full of Israelophobic propaganda right now.

Kicking the problem into the long grass won’t solve it.

We deserve an independent inquiry and the abolition of the licence fee.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism has called for the licence fee to be suspended pending a proper investigation.

To me, however, the fact that it still exists at all is absurd.

It is taken on condition of impartiality, and the BBC gave that up long ago in favour of an unmistakable brand of smug progressivism, with its unmistakable tinge of Jew-hate.

You’re really asking us to fund that?