The case of Raffi Berg and BBC: Zionist infiltration of the mainstream media

By David Miller

British journalist Owen Jones recently wrote at length about the background, commitments, and active role that Raffi Berg plays in enforcing the pro-Zionist line at the BBC.

Berg is the Middle East (West Asia) editor at BBC Online, but he appears to have a much greater gatekeeping role in practice.

Jones’ research amply bears out the view that anti-Zionists have been encouraging for some time now, which is that Zionist infiltration of the media and other public institutions is a significant problem and amounts to colonization of public space on behalf of a genocidal foreign entity.

But this is not how Jones sees things, with the result that he markedly pulls his punches.

It is clear from what Jones writes that Berg is a fanatical, genocidal Jewish supremacist. Jones also makes it clear that Berg plays a pivotal enforcement role inside the corporation, such that all stories about the 'Middle East' have to be checked with him. Jones writes:

In addition to what they see as a collective management failure, journalists expressed concerns over bias in the shaping of the Middle East index of the BBC News website. Several allege that Berg “micromanages” this section, ensuring that it fails to uphold impartiality. “Many of us have raised concerns that Raffi has the power to reframe every story, and we are ignored,” one told me… “Almost every correspondent you know has an issue with him,” one said. “He has been named in multiple meetings, but they just ignore it.”... Berg’s influence has a ripple effect, the journalists say. While BBC broadcasters write and produce their own reports, editors and reporters across the organization frequently draw on web articles such as those edited by Berg to flesh out their stories.

Jones also notes the fact that Berg had written a book on the notorious Israeli spy agency Mossad, which is simply a propaganda tract for the agency.

In 2013, Berg became Middle East editor for BBC News Online. It was in this role that he encountered material that would form the basis for his book, “Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort,” an account of the Israeli spy services’ efforts to evacuate Jews from Ethiopia between 1979 and 1983. In the book, Berg describes Mossad in glowing terms, calling the agency “much vaunted.” Berg received extensive cooperation from Mossad for the book, including “over 100 hours of interviews” of “past and present agents and Navy and Air Force personnel.” It was published in 2020. In an interview to promote the book, Berg said he collaborated on the project with “Dani,” a former senior Mossad commander he described as a “legend” who later became “a very close friend.”

Berg, gushingly, tweeted in 2020 about the book being sighted on the bookshelf of Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu.

Jones was unsurprisingly attacked by the genocidal Zionist enforcer Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust for writing about how a 'Jewish editor' is 'secretly manipulating' the BBC's output.

In response, Jones wrote that 'The fact he's Jewish isn't mentioned.' This is correct. But we might ask, why not?

Nor does Jones state that Berg is a Zionist. In fact, the ‘Z word’ is only used twice in the whole piece: once (‘Zionist’) to describe the ‘right wing’ Zionism of Likud-Herut (an organization with whom Berg’s lawyer Mark Lewis is strongly affiliated); and once (‘Zionism’) in a quotation from Mark Lewis emphasizing the importance of “unapologetic Zionism.”

But surely Berg’s Zionism and the fact that he is Jewish — a Jewish supremacist no less — are in fact relevant to this discussion? And surely pretending they are not only undermines the punches that Jones appears to be trying to throw?

How is it that Berg occupies this pivotal location within the BBC? Can we imagine a Catholic, a Hindu, or a Sikh (let's not even mention a Muslim) being in such a pivotal role on coverage of Palestine? Of course not.

Berg has not been granted or put in that position by the BBC because he is a Zionist. It's, subconsciously at least, because he is a Jew that he is deferred to. Of course, if he were an anti-Zionist Jew, he would never get into such a position.

Identity politics runs deep in British public institutions — the idea that a Jewish person (or at least the correct type of Jewish person) is the appropriate arbiter of how to cover the occupation of Palestine is seen as common sense.

It is worth extending this analysis to other conflicts. Would a Hindu be asked to adjudicate in BBC HQ on the reporting of Hindutva crimes or a Protestant on Loyalist death squads in the north of Ireland?

We need not even ask about the prospects of the BBC appointing a Palestinian (Muslim, or Christian) to adjudicate coverage of the genocide in Gaza. Extending the analysis says something about the selective implementation of identity politics in the forcefield created by Western official sources and Zionist movement intimidation and bullying of the media.

Recognition that Berg is a genocidal Zionist is crucial to naming the problem and beginning to push back against this kind of Zionist infiltration and subversion of our public institutions.

Of course, Owen Jones appears to want no part of that struggle.

Zionist infiltration at the BBC

There are, of course, many other Zionists (whether Jewish or not) in the BBC, especially in news and current affairs. John Mitchell listed a few very senior employees some years ago:

● James Harding – Director of News & Current Affairs, BBC News (2013–2018) and past editor of the Times, was a hardline Zionist. At a Jewish Chronicle event in 2011, he declared:

“I am pro-Israel. I believe in the state of Israel. I would have had a real problem if I had been coming to a paper with a history of being anti-Israel. And, of course, Rupert Murdoch is pro-Israel.”

● Danny Cohen – Controller of BBC 1, 3, and Director of BBC Television (2007-2015) wrote a letter while still a BBC executive condemning the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement, which campaigns to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza.

● James Purnell – BBC Director of Radio and BBC’s Director of Strategy (2013-2020) was the chairman of Labour Friends of Israel during his parliamentary career.

We can add to that list some further issues with the most senior management at the BBC.

● Richard Sharp, the former Chairman of the BBC, is a hardline Zionist, former Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan banker, director of the International Rescue Committee, an organization set up with the aid of the CIA, and donor to the British intelligence-created and Zionist-funded Quilliam Foundation.

● Robbie Gibb is reportedly not Jewish, but his brother, the minister, reportedly spent time on a Kibbutz in the Zionist entity when he was young. Both brothers were also part of a Western intelligence operation in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Gibb went on to lead the consortium to buy out the failing Jewish Chronicle and became the sole director of the company that runs it. He did take a step back from that after concerted pressure was applied over his continuing role at the BBC on the editorial standards committee.

Also on that committee is the CEO of BBC News, the Director General, and the Chair of the BBC (which was Richard Sharp from February 2021 to June 2023 — it is now Samir Shah) and an ‘independent’ member who is currently Nicholas Serota.

Serota has had a long career in the art world and is also a Zionist and opponent of BDS. The ‘CEO’ of the BBC news division, Deborah Turness, is also cited by the BBC as “standing in the way of change” on the question of coverage of Palestine.

Of the five members, either 2 (or 3 when Sharp was in position) are Zionists, and one has blocked complaints on Zionist bias. Given that Director General, Tim Davie, is a former Conservative candidate who has worked for a CIA-supported front group, it is little surprise that the BBC is completely unwilling to cover the genocide properly.

Structural discrimination against Muslims in the BBC

The context of the dominance of Zionism is not just that there are Jewish Zionists in key positions exercising a gatekeeping function, as well as non-Jewish Zionists who provide cover and support for them (such as Robbie Gibb or James Purnell), but that overall there is in the BBC a notable over-representation of Jews and a notable under-representation of Muslims (in relation to their proportion in the population).

Research conducted by the BBC in 2022 shows the corporation at that time employed some 1% of staff who are Jewish, which is twice their proportion in the population, and 3.1% of staff who are Muslim, which is 48% of their proportion in the population.

The differences are more marked when we turn to the News and Current Affairs division of the BBC where Jews make up 2.2% of all staff and 2.5% of leadership staff (proportionally 4.4 times and five times more than their proportion in the population).

By contrast, Muslims are 3% of all News and Current Affairs staff (which is 46% of their proportion in the population) and at the leadership level, there are simply no Muslims at all.

This is itself a problem of structural discrimination, quite apart from what impact it might have on coverage of the genocide. And that impact is not inconsequential. It’s perfectly clear that the Zionists among the BBC News and Current Affairs staff are an aid, as opposed to a hindrance, to the enforcement of Zionist rationality across the BBC.

The gatekeeper

The scandal at the BBC on which Jones reported, is a scandal of Zionist infiltration and gatekeeping. And it’s a scandal that appears to exist in varying ways throughout the media landscape. As the journalist Rivkah Brown has put it:

"I have seen this trend in almost every mainstream media outlet I’ve worked at or reported on: One hardline Zionist who either has decision-making power or aggressively lobbies decision-makers, often with threats of antisemitism. Fearful of scandal, editors cave."

Brown was reacting to the case of Sky News, which was one of the few media outlets to properly report the violence of Israeli fans in Amsterdam in 2024. Sky then promptly reversed itself. The role of Sandy Rashty as News Editor at Sky was then noted. Rashty is a committed Zionist and writes for the Jewish Chronicle.

It may, as Brown says, take only one advantageously placed Zionist to act as a gatekeeper, but in many news organizations, there are many such placeholders at all levels of the organization, as we have seen with the BBC.

But are these gatekeepers an incidental feature of accidentally employing genocidal Zionists in the newsroom, or is there a wider strategy of infiltration by the Zionist movement?

The strategy of infiltration — The Jerusalem Program

The reality is that the Zionist movement has been involved in a massive push to infiltrate public life in the UK at least since the 1950s, when the movement determined, having reached its objectives in creating a state in 1948, that it would not dissolve itself.

Instead, it adopted the so-called Jerusalem Program, which remains its aim to this day and was most recently revised in 2004. The “foundations” of Zionism, it states, include: the “bond” of the Jewish people to “Eretz Yisrael” which should be settled “as an expression of practical Zionism.”

Every Zionist organization that signs up to the WZO thus supports settler colonialism in “Eretz Israel” (a term usually meaning land far beyond the current occupation, spreading into Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt); to support a “Jewish” state and “defend” the “right of Jews… as a nation” — meaning structural privileges for Jews — a clearly racist proposition.

Individuals are no longer able (since 1960) to join the WZO directly and must join one of its member organisations. But membership in any Zionist organisation also requires certain “Duties of the individual Zionist”, adopted in 1978. These enjoin Zionists:

“To implement Aliyah [the Zionist term for settler colonialism] to Israel”; and “bring [children] up towards Aliyah”; to “be an active member of the [Zionist Federation]”; “contribute to … Zionist Funds”; and “strengthen Zionist influence within the community.”

In other words, individual Zionists are required to affirm the racist settler colonial ideology and to practically support it. What’s more, they are required to help popularise it in the community.

How this works today can be seen in the approach of the United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA), the largest Zionist “charity” group in the UK. UJIA is an anodyne-sounding “charity” which is actually the UK branch of one of the Zionist regime’s four “national institutions,” all based in the same building in King George Street in occupied Jerusalem/Al-Quds.

A 1997 Institute for Jewish Policy Research report, “The Attachment of British Jews to ‘Israel’”, raised an alarm:

“If current trends prevail, attachment to Zionism and the Jewish state could become the concern of only a minority with a mostly Traditional or Orthodox religious outlook.”

As a result, the UJIA refers to their approach as building a ‘lifelong connection’ to "Israel."

Ruth Wisse: the Army of words

This strategy was memorably enunciated by Harvard professor Ruth Wisse, an open supporter of genocide. The clip on YouTube is just over two minutes long and it’s worth watching in full. For our purposes, the following excerpt is germane:

"American Jews, what do you have to worry about? Your job is to make us [Israel] look good and here's how you do it: Every one of us has to serve three years in the Army … and then for the rest of our lives you have got to serve 2 or three years in the army of words you've got to learn to fight the political battle which is even more important at this point than the military battle… We'll fight the military battle we're not asking you necessarily to come and be lone soldiers although some of you can you've got to learn how to fight back on the campuses how to make the arguments now … Don't let the war of words ever be fought about Israel's nature, let it be fought about why you can't accept Israel? Why you have to single out this tiny people? … Push them, teach them how to defend by attacking... You've got to make demands on them. They've got to serve for three years in the army of words."

Enrolling all Jews in the ‘army of words’ is the aim of the Zionist movement. They don’t get everyone. But it seems plain they get more than enough to be effective in very many circumstances.

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