The Bent Broadcasting Corporation

As the AUT prepared to vote today on its boycott of Haifa and Bar-Ilan universities in Israel, BBC Radio Four's Today programme was doing its bit to influence the vote in favour of the boycott. At 0724, when AUT delegates would have been preparing to attend the meeting,James Reynolds broadcast an entirely one-sided and loaded item. Reynolds had gone to the College of Judea and Samaria in the West Bank settlement of Ariel. The link between Bar-Ilan and this college is one of the reasons given for the boycott.

Today presenter John Humphrys set the tone by tendentiously introducing the item with a statement that the college was in an 'illegally occupied settlement on Arab land'. Wrong: whatever one thinks about the rightness of these settlements -- and I do not approve of them -- they are not illegal, and nor is the Israeli presence on what most fairly should be described as a legal 'no-man's land', a presence which is sanctioned under international law as a legitimate defensive action against an enemy which has never renounced its annihilatory intentions.

Reynolds -- after the near-obligatory BBC sneer at the settlers' 'well-tended lawns' (code: these damned Israelis actually water their lawns while the Palestinians are dying from dehydration) then presented the college as a hot-bed of Jewish religious and political extremism, with opposition to the Gaza pull-out (so Sharon is a moderate, eh, Mr Reynolds? Er, pass), posters for a talk by Benjamin Netanyahu (no!) and even religious students praying (NO!!!). Then he gave us some soundbites of a lecturer making a reasonable point that no-one was boycotting Palestinian universiites that produced human bombs and some snarling students who said the boycotters could go and jump in the lake, before telling us in tones of mordant triumph that the Israelis were now going to turn the college into a university -- presumably out of spite against the AUT -- and thus cement their illegal rule over the West Bank.

Not a word about the fact that more than 300 students at this college are Arabs, and that the Arab mayors of local towns have enthusiastically welcomed the opportunities it gives their students, as illustrated by this college press release which features the following letter in the Israeli paper Ma'ariv:

' "We are delighted to congratulate the Academic College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel on the occasion of the commencement of registration for the coming academic year 5766 - 2006. The hundreds of students from Arab settlements, who form part of the thousands of students who study at the College in the Faculties of Engineering, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities, and the School of Health are testimony to the College's achievements in advancing higher education, which narrows social-economic gaps and which contributes to bringing harmony between the different sectors of Israeli society.

Kasem Hallil Issa Sami

Odeh Fiak

Mayor of Tira Mayor of Kfar Kassem

Mayor of Jaljulia"

'With the object of advancing academic education in the Arab sector registration has commenced for the pre-academic preparatory programme for graduates of high schools in the Arab settlements, sponsored and financed by the Committee for Planning and Budgeting of the Council for Higher Education. The College of Judea and Samaria an independent college, it has over 300 Arab students from Tira, Jaljulia and Kfar Kassem. The Mayors of Tira and Ariel want to turn it into a full university so that it can expand and also take students from the Terriories. There have already been visiting delegations, the last one -50 students from Bir Zeit University.'

The BBC might as well have had a block vote at today's AUT conference. So much for its supposed objectivity, which once again stands exposed as a charade.