Israeli president blasts BBC’s Israel-Hamas equivalence

Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday criticized the BBC for what he said was its false equivalence between the treatment of convicted Hamas terrorists by Israel and innocent Israeli hostages abducted into Gaza.

During an interview with the British broadcaster, Herzog called on it to end this narrative, emphasizing that Israel is a democracy beholden to the rule of law whereas Hamas engages in barbaric terrorist acts.

“I absolutely reject that, and I think that this equality that the BBC is always trying to make is outrageous and preposterous, absolutely not true. We are a democracy. We abide by the rule of law. All prisoners in Israel get whatever is necessary as prisoners under the law, under the supervision of the court,” Herzog told the BBC‘s “Sunday Morning News” with Laura Kuenssberg.

He recounted testimonies of hostages who had been kept in underground tunnels for months, deprived of adequate food and medical care and suffering severe physical and emotional trauma. “They were kept in tunnels throughout that period. They had no contact with the outside world. They hardly ate. They became totally emaciated,” said Herzog.

“There’s always this notion by the BBC, which is really outrageous in my mind, and I call upon all of you to stop that attitude and understand that this attack on October 7 [2023] was an attack on the entire free world, and what we are doing when we are catching terrorists who carried out these atrocities, we are simply preventing them from taking on further attacks against humanity,” Herzog added.

Herzog also commented on U.S. President Donald Trump’s remarks in recent days about the need to relocate Gaza’s residents to rebuild the Strip.

Trump “basically came forward and said something which I read as follows: Going back to the same routine of getting to a ceasefire—an arrangement and Hamas attacks you, and then we go to war, and then terrible things happen—cannot go on. We have to look for new ideas.”

JNS