The BBC Favors Islam & Muslims, according to Sikh Leader

BBC favoritism for Arabs and Muslims goes far back, maybe as far back as its founding in 1927. Likewise, the BBC. either openly or by omission, has long been hostile to Jews. After all, if the BBC omits from its broadcasts during the Shoah the news that organized, systematic mass murder of Jews is going on in Nazi-occupied territory, then that is obvious Judeophobia. For several reasons, but let us consider just two: If people in the BBC's home country, that is the United Kingdom, do not know about the Shoah, then they will not demand that their government do anything about it. The British Jews too may remain in the dark. Of course, it is and was the duty of the BBC to inform British people about what is going on in the world, and during WW2 in particular, to inform them of what is happening in the Nazi-ruled countries. One would think that news about the Shoah would have increased the disgust of British people for the Nazi Germans. But this cannot happen if people do not know about the ongoing Shoah.

On the other hand, during WW2 people in occupied countries often depended on BBC radio broadcasts to inform them. That included many Jews. If the Jews do not know about the ongoing Shoah, then they are not likely to take steps to save themselves or to fight the Wehrmacht and SS or the local armed forces that collaborated with the Germans, such as the SS Handschar Division which was made up of Bosnian Muslims and had been recruited  for the Germans by Haj Amin el-Husseini, the top leader of the Palestinian Arabs at the time. This SS division plus the Skanderbeg SS division, recruited among ethnic Albanian Muslims in Kossovo, were guilty for mass slaughter of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in that order [this applies more to the Handschar, as far as I know].

At the same time, it has been BBC policy to whitewash wrongs done by Muslims, whether Arabs or Pakistanis, etc. This policy caused a minor storm lately when a leader of the Sikh religion in the UK, Lord Indarjit Singh [he is a British peer] quit his long time  participation on a  radio show focused on religion, called Thought for a Day on BBC Radio Four. Here is a summary of highlights of Lord Singh's complaints:

Celebrated interfaith activist Lord Indarjit Singh has sensationally quit BBC Radio 4 after accusing it of behaving like the "thought police". He alleges that the corporation tried to prevent him discussing a historical Sikh religious figure who stood up to Muslim oppression -- in case it caused offence to Muslims, despite a lack of complaints.
The Sikh peer, who has been a contributor on Radio Four's Thought For The Day programme for more than three decades, is also accusing Radio Four bosses of "prejudice and intolerance" and over-sensitivity in relation to its coverage of Islam, after he says he was "blocked" from discussing the forced conversion of Hindus to Islam, under the Mughal emperors in 17^th century India.

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The segment, originally aired on November 28, 2018 -- and in spite of Singh's script containing no criticism of Islam -- is the latest in a long line of suspect BBC decisions enforced by seemingly over-zealous producers. [Gatestone Institute]

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Subsequently, Lord Singh told the London Times:

 Another time "when I wanted to include the words 'the one God of us all' [central to Sikh teachings], I was told I could not mention this 'because it might offend Muslims.'" . . . . 

Of course, overlapping with the BBC's pro-Muslim favoritism is its anti-Israel hostility. See at link:
here.

More on the BBC and the Holocaust

We have already considered the BBC's reluctance to report the ongoing Holocaust in 1942 in the same period of time as the BBC's masters at the British Foreign Office were very concerned to have the Arab states work for Arab unity. That is, it was Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, who pushed the Arabs to set up the Arab League. The Iraqi Nuri al-Sa`id who presented his plan for the Arab League to the British was known as a British loyalist among the Arab politicians.

In the same general period, the BBC was reluctant to report the Holocaust, and only did so very sparingly, see here, here, here, and here. Nor did the British --or other major Allied powers-- help the Jews subject to the Nazi extermination program in any practical or concrete way.

Zigelboym wrote in his letter of 17 December 1942 to his Bund colleague in New York:

The British expert on Poland showed me his expert opinion which he had submitted to Eden [Anthony Eden], in which he explained the killing of all Warsaw Jews as officially proven, the extermination of [the Jews in] all other cities [in Poland] -- as apparently true, but not officially proven. The issue of a declaration by the governments [in exile in London] had budged from its place.

A week after the negative directive to the British radio [BBC], an opposite directive came. And it was not a secret one, as my friend gave it to me to read. Its content was about like this: Up till today Hitler has successfully used antisemitism for his purposes. Now, the day has come when we can use his antisemitism against him. Therefore, we must widely spread news of the anti-Jewish massacres in Poland. [Zigelboym Bukh, p 359]

Then, the director of the BBC invited me to a new conference. He spoke with me about which passages in our report (from the underground Bund in Poland), as well as in the Polish government reports, that we should give maximal attention to on the radio. He proposed to me that I give an English speech of six minutes --as the direct representative of those being slaughtered. This was on the 11th of December. I gave the talk on the 13th of December (Sunday) at 10 in the morning. It made, as my English acquaintances told me, a strong impression. Excerpts from it were repeated throughout the day on all broadcasts. [pp 359-360]

Speaking to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Zigelboym said, rejecting proposals for a day of fasting and a week of mourning:

It is your duty to do something that should really shake the world, the English government, and force it to undertake real measures to save the Jews, something that the Warsaw Jews would do if the situation were reversed [i.e., persecution of Jews in the UK]. 50,000 London Jews should make a demonstration, they should block Downing Street; they should shout to Heaven in such a way that it will shake the world and the tranquillity of the politicians, who potentially can do something. It is the last minute. The Jewish people is being slaughtered. [p 360]

I accepted the invitation of the Propaganda Department of the Labour Party to a number of mass meetings of the English working class throughout the country on the theme of the massacres of Jews. I have already made many appearances before English trade unions and local organizations giving lectures. In the first days of January there are two such meetings --one in a London suburb, the second -- in the coal region before coal-miners. At the same time, I have been informed that the Polish Pen Club is making an effort for a special meeting of the English and other Pen Clubs, which are here, at which I am to appear. [Zigelboym Bukh, Letter to the New York Bund delegate of 17 December 1942; pp360-361]

Despite all this activity, all these appearances, Zigelboym wrote on January 1, 1943:

Our actions and protests have no practical value. I shudder when it becomes clear to me that in July, when I here and you there [in New York] made a great noise around the first report of slaughters in eastern Poland, which had taken place in the Spring, and we thought that we were doing our duty and our best to save the Jews from further massacres. . . [yet] at the same time the great massacres in Warsaw. . . [were going on as we protested the previous massacres]. . . We are not capable, I am not capable of doing anything to save even one person, one Jewish child, from a horrendous death. . . [Zigelboym Bukh, Letter to Bund delegate in New York of 1 January 1943; pp361-362]

Later that year, as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was proceeding without Allied help, except from a few Poles like Henryk Iwanski, Zigelboym wrote:

On May 1, I spoke on the radio [BBC] for home [for Poland]. . . [Letter of 3 May 1943; p 363]

That is, the BBC allowed him to speak on a broadcast to Poland in Polish [as far as I know, the BBC did not have Yiddish-language broadcasts, nor did it want them], not to a British audience, whereas only British public opinion could have changed British policy.

Neither the British government nor any other major Allied power did anything concrete to oppose, impede, stop, hinder, or hamper the Holocaust in Poland. Zigelboym was allowed to make appearances on the BBC starting in December 1942, but it appears that all his appearances were only granted to him by the BBC for the sake of appearances. That is, so that the BBC would be seen to be doing its duty to humanity, although nothing concrete or meaningful was being done by the British government, of which the BBC was --and is-- an agency. In 1942-1943, the British government must have felt that Zigelboym had to be placated too, since he was a person of some standing and consequence, as an official of the Polish Government-in-exile and a trade union leader with ties to British trade unions as well. So they made a few gestures towards him, but nothing concrete was done.

Today, Arab collaboration in the Holocaust --most strikingly throughHaj Amin el-Husseini, the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem-- is forgotten. Meanwhile, the UK government fawns over the self-avowed genocidist Ahmadinejad, an Iranian Islamic supremacist. He declares his desire to destroy Israel, the Jews who survived the Holocaust. The UK is not alone today. Most European Union states are eager to fawn and grovel over the IslamoNazis. As an example, the UK and the rest of the EU know that mass murder is being perpetrated by Arabs/Muslims in Sudan, yet nothing is done to stop it. Nor would any serious person expect the UN to do anything. Mass murder perpetrated by the Islamic/Arab nationalist regimes in the Sudan has been going on since Sudan became independent on 1 January 1956. Nothing concrete was ever done to stop it. Mass murder has been and is the order of the day. And the university teachers' union in Britain calls for a boycott of Israel [announced 9 May]. So the Nazis run the academy. Just as Hitler had his professors, so too Abu Mazen and Ahmadinejad and Bashar Assad and Bin Laden have their professors, eager to grovel and foam at the mouth on cue like Pavlov's dog, dogs who can be siccked onto the nation of Israel, giving vent to their ignorant hatred [What else would one expect from professors?]. Further pro-Nazi influence in the British universities is provided by one Chris Patten, formerly an EU foreign policy official, now one of the top guns at Cambridge or Oxford, the jewels in the crown of British scholarship. But no action is taken by the British academics on behalf of the those suffering in Sudan. Not even a call for a boycott.

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Coming soon: massacre of Assyrians in Iraq, pogrom against Jews in Bagdad [with British collaboration], etc.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Zigelboym's Comrades, Allied Disinterest

Bibliog added 8-8-2010

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is one the most remarkable events of the Holocaust. The downtrodden, oppressed Jews of the Ghetto rose up with weapons against their enemies. Yet the Allies were not interested in helping the Ghetto warriors, despite excuses made to Shmul Zigelboym in London before the Uprising that the reason that the Allies were not helping the Jews being sent to the death camps was because the Jews were not fighting. So when the Jews did fight [in fact, Jewish partisans fought and ghetto revolts took place not only in Warsaw], the major Allies still did not help the Jews. Can someone explain this failure or reluctance to act?

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began in its full force on April 19, 1943 [Hebrew calendar: 14 Nisan תש'ג-5703], on the eve of Pesah [Passover], although there had been some minor skirmishing in January. So Pesah this year is an appropriate time to commemorate the Uprising. Zigelboym's comrades still in Poland took part in the fighting. This experience is described from inside by Bernard Goldstein [Zigelboym's comrade in the Jewish Socialist League, the Bund] in his book, Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto [also called The Stars Bear Witness]. One of the obstacles to starting a Jewish uprising was the quarrels between Communists, Bundists and Zionist-socialists, as well as Revisionist-Zionists [Jabotinsky's followers]. The Communists were loyal first of all to the Workers' Paradise, the USSR, of course. They claimed to be more universalist than the Zionist-socialists, or even the Bundists, whom Lenin once mocked as Zionists who were afraid of sea voyage, since the Bundists promoted Jewish culture in Yiddish, secular culture of course. The Communists may have all too easily forgotten that the Soviet Union had made the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, which enabled the war to get started. The USSR had invaded Poland and grabbed parts of its territory. At that time, the USSR was not so very fussy about ideological purity. In fact, in the fall of 1939, the Soviet government newspaper, Izvestya, wrote that Nazi ideology "is a matter of taste." As long as the pact between the Nazis and Communists lasted, the Communists in the Ghetto did not want to join resistance actions. Then the Germans attacked the USSR in June 1941, breaking the Nazi-Soviet Pact. As should have been expected. Finally, the Communists were ready to resist. In fact, the Communists in many countries engaged in peace propaganda in favor of the Nazis until June 1941, not least in Britain and France where Communist deputies in the parliaments tried to prevent resistance to the Nazis by their governments [In France, Petain's Vichy state was set up in 1940 with the participation of Communists, socialists, Trotskyists].

So within the so-called "left," divisions, partly based on ideological rigidity leading to immobility, were rife. Moreover, the "left" as a whole loathed the more nationalistic Zionists, mainly followers of Jabotinsky who had frankly said all along that military force was necessary in human affairs, and of course for defense. Yet the nationalist Zionists, connected with the Betar youth group and the Revisionist Zionist movement, had close ties with certain Polish military men. In fact, the Polish government in the 1930s had reached agreement with Jabotinsky on teaching military skills to his followers. So there were at least two Jewish armed political-ideological underground groups in the Ghetto [there were also members of the pre-war Jewish underworld/gangsters who had weapons]. The nationalists, organized in the Ghetto as the Jewish Military Organization, got weapons from a certain friendly Polish military man named Major Henryk Iwanski. They were better armed than the "left," and in fact probably did more damage to the German Nazi forces. The "left" was organized as the Jewish Fighting Organization, led by Mordekhai Anilevitsh [Anielewicz]. The JFO, although probably doing less damage to the Germans than the JMO, has gotten the lion's share of favorable publicity. One book serving as a partial corrective to this neglect of the JMO is by David Wdowinski, And We Are Not Saved (New York: Philsophical Library 1963; repr. 1985).

Today, of course, what is called the "left" is frequently Nazi-like [that is, favors mass murder of Jews]. It is mainly a manipulated body of public opinion, fed with Nazi-like ideas by skilled practitioners of psychological warfare. Further, funding of "leftist" anti-Israel activities often comes from wealthy, pro-Arab sources. The fact that today's Left usually supports Arab nationalists who practice mass murder, whereas during the Holocaust [and the 2nd World War] the Arab nationalists overwhelmingly supported the Nazis, demonstrates the Nazi leanings of most of today's "left."

Here are some books that may be helpful for further study. Most are relatively little known compared to other books on the subject:
Reuben Ainsztein, The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt (New York: Holocaust Library 1979)
. . . . . .Part of a much larger work on Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust
Moshe Arens, Flags over the Ghetto (2009?; Hebrew edition published first; English ed. should be out by now)
Moshe Arens, "The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising -- A Reappraisal" Yad vaShem Studies, 33.
Lester Eckman & Chaim Lazar, The Jewish Resistance (New York: Shengold 1977)
Philip Friedman, ed., Martyrs and Fighters (New York: Praeger 1954)
. . . . . .An anthology of personal, eyewitness accounts of Jewish resistance
Feliks Gross & Basil Vlavianos, Struggle for Tomorrow: Modern Political Ideologies of the Jewish People (New York: Arts 1954)
. . . . . .Separate chapters --written by adherents-- describe the ideologies of various Jewish political factions, including the Bund
Jan Karski, The Story of a Secret State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1944)
. . . . .Author was a courier for the Polish underground. Met Pres. Franklin Roosevelt and witnessed his coldness toward rescuing Jews.
Chaim Lazar, Muranowska 7: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Tel Aviv: Massada 1966)
The Massacre of European Jewry (Kibbutz Merchavia, Israel: World Hashomer Hatzair 1963)
Arthur D Morse, While Six Million Died (New York: Random House 1967, 1968)
. . . . .An easily read popular account of the failure to stop the massacres
Lucien Steinberg, Not as a Lamb (Farnsborough, Hants.: Saxon House, 1974) translated from
______. La Revolte des Justes (Paris: Fayard, 1970)
David Wdowinski, And We Are Not Saved (New York: Philosophical Library 1963)
Laurence Weinbaum, A Marriage of Convenience: The New Zionist Organization and the Polish Government, 1936-1939 (New York: Columbia University Press 1993).
Yad vaShem, Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust:Proceedings of the Conference on Manifestations of Jewish Resistance, Jerusalem April 7-11, 1968 (Jerusalem: Yad vaShem 1971)
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Coming: More on the BBC, Zigelboym, the UK govt today and Israel, the UK govt supports "Peace Now"