BBC Middle East Editor is former CIA employee and Mossad collaborator

And people wonder why BBC Middle East coverage is pro-Israel?

Raffi Berg, BBC Middle East Editor since 2013

Over the the past few weeks, several stories have appeared criticising the BBC’s pro-Israel coverage of the Middle East, although to anyone who has been paying attention since October 2023, this is hardly news.

In December, Professor Ian Pappe, a strong critic of Israel, was thrown off the BBC podcast series, The Conflict. No reason was given.

In November, 100 BBC journalists sent a letter to Director General Tim Davie accusing the broadcaster of pro-Israel bias in its coverage of the Gaza conflict.

Then in late December, Owen Jones published a piece for Drop Site News where he revealed the iron control ME Editor Raffi Berg wields over the BBC’s online news reporting of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 13 former and current staffers said the broadcaster’s coverage consistently devalues Palestinian lives, downplays or ignores Israeli atrocities, and portrays the conflict as a war between equals when it’s an industrial scale slaughter and erasure of an entire people by the occupying power.

If journalists want to pitch a story on Gaza, they’re told they must go through Berg for approval and signoff. One journalist said:

This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel.

For example, the BBC headlined the Amnesty International report accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza as: “Israel rejects ‘fabricated’ claims of genocide.”

https://x.com/Hamza_a96/status/1864650545765499149

Berg refused to post the story for 12 hours and none of the BBC news programmes - News at One, News at Six, News at Ten or Newsnight - covered the report.

The language in BBC stories describing Israel’s crimes is sanitised. A story about an IOF airstrike that wiped out an entire Palestinian family was headlined “Israel Gaza: Father loses 11 family members in one blast.” The forced removals of Palestinians from their homes and refugee camps are described as “evacuations.” And when the IOF is mentioned as the aggressor, the BBC inserts the word “reportedly.”

One journalist stated:

Almost every correspondent you know has an issue with him [Berg]. He has been named in multiple meetings, but [BBC management] just ignore it.

So who is Raffi Berg? Born and raised in England, he moved to Jerusalem to study Jewish and Israeli studies at Hebrew University. From 1997-98 he worked for the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), a CIA front group, described as an “open source intelligence component of the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Science and Technology.”

https://www.linkedin.com/in/raffi-berg-221476194/

Berg told the Jewish Telegraph that he was thrilled to be working for the CIA:

One day, I was taken to one side and told, ‘you may or may not know that we are part of CIA, but don’t go telling people’. I was absolutely thrilled, and was not too much of a surprise because the application process was enormous — it took 10 months. They went through my character and background with a fine tooth comb, asking if I had ever visited communist countries and, if I had, did I form any relationships while I was there.

In addition to US intelligence, Berg is extremely friendly with Mossad. In 2020 he published “Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort,” about Mossad’s operation to smuggle Ethiopian Jews into Israel. He collaborated closely with Mossad commander Dani Limor who secured “over 100 hours of interviews” with members of Israeli intelligence, including the Mossad chief. Berg effusively describes Mossad as “the world’s greatest intelligence service.”

Raffi Berg also contributes to Fathom Journal, the journal of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), a UK-based Israeli lobby group. Other Fathom contributors include:

• Labour MPs Luke Akehurst and Emily Thornberry, former diplomat Sir John Jenkins, former Tory MP Alistair Burt

• Israelis: Natan Sharansky, former PM Naftali Bennett, Benny Begin

• American Zionists: Elliott Abrams, Dennis Ross, Richard Perle, William Kristol

Luke Akehurst, the director of BICOM’s political lobby arm, “We Believe in Israel,” described Zionism as a “beautiful ideology of anti-racism and the national liberation and cultural flourishing of the Jewish people,” who doesn’t understand how “anyone harbours such intense negativity towards such a profoundly decent movement.”

None of this is surprising. The BBC, the UK state’s propaganda arm, slavishly takes and follows orders from its US/Israeli bosses, so Raffi Berg is the perfect man to censor coverage of the Zionist state. The level of Israeli infiltration within the 3 main English political parties - Labour, Conservative and LibDem Friends of Israel - is well documented.

The Israel lobby has even made inroads into the SNP. The Scottish Administration refuses to release the minutes of Angus Robertson’s August 7th meeting with Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UK, Daniela Grudsky, and refuses to take a stand on the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment Movement (BDS) against the Israeli state, although it did oppose the Tory anti-boycott bill in 2023.

One academic described the Scottish administration’s approach to foreign affairs as “underdeveloped,” which he attributes to its lack of state experience. After all, the devolved Holyrood setup was designed to be a mini version of Westminster to keep Scotland under the control of the coloniser.

Until Scotland breaks from its oppressor and restores its sovereignty, it will have no voice to call out or agency to act against the 21st century’s greatest genocide. Until then, Scots who are repulsed by Israel’s barbarity can, at a minimum, do two things: support BDS and refuse to pay the BBC licence fee.