New gig for BBC Israel correspondent

BBC correspondent Orla Guerin is to leave her Middle East reporting job and is to head off to South Africa.

TotallyJewish reports:

According to a BBC spokesman Guerin was leaving as she has already worked in the region for five years, compared to the usual three or four year stint for a news correspondent.

Deemed "controversial" by some sections of the Jewish community who claim she was anti-Israel, Israel government press office director Danny Seaman said:

“Unfortunately, despite personally liking her, she didn’t always uphold the standards of balanced and unbiased journalism one would expect.”

Meanwhile, speaking to the Jewish Telegraph, Zionist Federation president Eric Moonman added his thoughts on the move.

"Perhaps the BBC have finally come to their senses and taken notice of Jewish groups' pressure on the Corporation regarding this particular reporter."

In answer to your question Eric, no it was nothing to do with you. She spent five years in the region and it was time to move on. That is all there is to it, plain and simple.

No conspiracy theories need to be invented or even implied that it was some sort of zionist/american/pink panda plot to remove Guerin from her Middle East posting.

But if anyone wants to invent a conspiracy theory, then yes, she was removed by order of those crafty zionists with help from the americans and also a pink panda.

Comments

[Lior]

Wow, pink pandas? What do you have to drink to get those - and does it come in bottles or cans? As a matter of fact, our Orla hasn't "just spent five years in the region and it was time to move on." She was sent out there by the BBC purposefully, intentionally and deliberately to peddle their partisan views, and now she is being sent elsewhere to do the same - and if she's a good little girl and tows the party line, when she retires, she'll be given a free annual licence fee for life and a musical alarm clock that wakes her up to the dulcet tones of John Rayner singing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" in Arabic. What a find she must have been. Steeped in the prejudices of her Irish Catholicism that she has barely managed to shrug off in order to join the sneering, under-educated and over-schooled ranks of the European "post-Christian" elite; and imbued with the excellence of that hog-pen of academic impartiality, Trinity College, Dublin, she has strutted the world stage like an anorexic Danny Rich in the most embarrassing display of public self-anlysis as she burns with anger at having to admit to Ireland's continuing neo-colonial status by joining the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation in order to further her mediocre career - deciding that, like the British, Israel is the bullying master and the "Palestinians" the beleaguered under dog. Has no-one told her that more Jews died in the Israeli War of Independence at the end of the British Mandate than did the Irish in their glorious revolution of Catholic Enlightenment? That more Israelis have died since than British at the hands of the IRA? No, our Oral's clipped tones, third-rate grievance journalism and emotional banality have proved her to be just another of the BBC's "useful idiots" in the best traditions of Lenin himself. Her partiality and bias have been so outrageous that the damage she has done to Israel is not irreparable. Her contribution to the left-inspired and growing anti-Semitism in Britain is more of a worry. But neither is as great as the damage she has done to herself. The final insult must be that she did it all on British money. By the way, I wrote a number of times to Michael Grade, Chairman of the BBC, complaining about her. He didn't bother to reply, but I just wonder if he ever got my letters - I am quite sure the secretary who opens his mail did an HND in Palestinian Media Studies at Bilston Tech and used the paper to roll her joints. Now, if I were to write to him care of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, St Johns Wood, do you think they'd give it to him the next time he's a-visiting there? Provided, of course, they don't mind handling the truth on Shabbat...

[Lior]

Lest anyone think that my calling Trinity College, Dublin, a "hog-pen of academic impartiality" a vitriolic inexactitude when it comes to Israel, readers might perhaps like to know that the Emerald Isle's oldest university has just held "Palestinian Awareness Week" in its cloistered halls of learning. (That one could not, frankly, be unaware of "Palestine" given the media's obsession with it at the expense of other, more justified conflicts in the world, remains a mystery to all inquiring minds and a further example of how such over-reporting does not, in fact, facilitate a brockered peace.)

Organized by the Tinity One World Society - whatever that is when it isn't being aware of "Palestine" - the schedule of speakers did not include anyone representing Israel's point of view, even from the Left, leading the Israeli Embassy in Dublin to write to Guerin's alma mater, protesting that the week's events, comprising meetings, films and a protest outside a construction firm that does business with Israel, was “less concerned with raising Palestinian awareness than with anti-Israel activity.” The ugly spectre of an academic boycott was also raised.

If that does not satisfy the qualification I have given to this centre of academic excellence, then it certainly explains Guerin's ingrained racism, her incapacity for balanced reporting and political partiality to the "Palestinian".

Well, she's off to South Africa now, where the only news of late seems to be that a comprehensive medical survey and trial has established that male circumcision offers protection against the acquiring and spread of the HIV virus - presently killing 500 persons a day - by up to 65%. I wonder how our Oral will get her politically correct teeth around that one...

[new balance]

We always have time enough , if we will but use it aright.

[Jordan 23]

Do you love life ? Then do not squander time ; for that's the stuff5 life is made of .

[adult tours to israel]

Israel is known as a holy land that is sacred to all religions. What people do not realize is that beyond the fact that Israel is a holy land - is also a beautiful country full of people suffocating, delicious food and incredible scenery.

[ClubPenguinCheats]

I am quite sure the secretary who opens his mail did an HND in Palestinian Media Studies at Bilston Tech and used the paper to roll her joints.

[supra vaider]

I like ANMJ on FB & just subscribed to the email feed! :)