From now on, Israeli officials will refuse BBC interviews, impose visa restrictions, and be decidedly unhelpful to the BBC at road blocks and Israel's International Airport, the Sunday Times reported.
This decision was taken after the BBC broadcast a documentary about the extent of Israel's undeclared nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in violation of international conventions.
"The BBC will discover that bureaucracy can be applied with goodwill or without it. And after the way that they have repeatedly tried to delegitimize the State of Israel, we, as hosts, have none left for them," Daniel Seaman, director of the government press office, told The Times.
He said that Israel has come to believe that the overall BBC attitude towards Israel is "verging on the anti-Semitic". "We decided that we had to draw a red line rather than just complain about a consistent attitude in which successive BBC programs attempt to place us in the same context as totalitarian, axis-of-evil countries such as Iraq and Iran," Seaman continued.
"The attitude of the BBC is more than a pure journalistic matter," he explained to The Times. "It is dangerous to the existence of the State of Israel because it demonizes the Israelis and gives our terrorist enemies reasons to attack us."
In response to the sanctions, BBC head of news Richard Sambrook was quoted as saying that while it was regretted that the Israelis felt they needed to take this action, "We stand behind the veracity of the film."
(Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
