Presenter and reporter for BBC News and BBC World News Tim Willcox. PHOTO: @BBCTIMWILLCOX
The BBC journalist has since faced several calls to resign after he made the statement during the rally which was commemorating the 17 victims who perished in last week’s terror attacks – including four Jewish people who were killed in a siege in Kosher supermarket.
Willcox made the statement during a live broadcast in response to a woman, identified as Chava – who has been living in France for 20 years but is originally from Israel, expressing her fears regarding Jews being persecuted. She had said “the situation is going back to the days of the 1930s in Europe.”
To this, the BBC reporter said responded with: “Many critics though of Israel's policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.”
The woman then shook her head and said “We can’t do an amalgam”. After which Willcox said, “You understand everything is seen from different perspectives.”
Willcox took to social media platform Twitter to apologise for his statement, saying he had not meant to cause offence.
https://twitter.com/BBCTimWillcox/status/554599189674754048
A BBC spokesperson said: 'Tim Willcox has apologised for what he accepts was a poorly phrased question during an in-depth live interview with two friends, one Jewish and of Israeli birth, the other of Algerian Muslim heritage, where they discussed a wide range of issues affecting both the Muslim and Jewish communities in France. He had no intention of causing offence.'
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Since WWII there has been a steady reduction of the right to free speech in most of the western countries. Possibly America with its First Amendment is the only exception. Almost all the others have introduced selective legislation which pretends to protect all, but in reality is designed to protect one particular group of people. Much double speech goes around espousing what is good and what is bad, but at the end of the day it is OK to criticize almost all racial groups, Islam in particular, and the criticism emanates from heads of state downwards, fully supported by a compliant media. The genie is out of the bottle as far as neutrality is concerned, and I see very few examples of neutrality at any level. In fact, just the reverse in the western world unless it suits the arguments of a specific group.
@Khan: his job as a reporter is not the same as Most jobs Unless he is reporting for an organization with particular view they are espousing, such as FOX News in the states, he/she is supposed to be neutral. Anti-semitism is not neutral.
I am sorry Bruce that you are confused in life between what is wrong or right. Freedom of speech is simply that, freedom of speech and you should not lose your job. To somehow think that losing your job for speaking your mind is okay is absurd. It is people like you that apply the double standards in life and abuse other people's freedom because you get to choose what is "freedom of speech" and what isn't and what and can't be done to a person who exercise their "freedom of speech".
Btw- Arabs are Semits as well. Just letting you know.
Conflating anything Israel does with crimes against non-Israeli Jews is anti-Semitism. Should all Christians be targets for what the Russians are doing in Chechnya? Of course not and to even suggest such a thing is absurd. As for freedom of speech, no one is suggesting that Willcox lose his life or liberty. But racists should be fired.
Here is an outstanding example of "selective" freedom of speech. But I still stand by freedom of speech. Violent response and killings to contain this freedom should never be encouraged nor tolerated.
Israel acknowledges itself to be a state of one particular religious group. Anyone committed to democracy will readily admit that equal citizenship cannot exist under such conditions. More than 20 Israeli laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews. The Law of Return, for example, grants automatic citizenship to Jews from anywhere in the world. Yet Palestinian refugees are denied the right to return to the country they were forced to leave in 1948. The Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty — Israel's "Bill of Rights" — defines the state as "Jewish" rather than a state for all its citizens. Thus Israel is more for Jews living in Los Angeles or Paris than it is for native Palestinians. #WakeUpWorld
What a brave man. He will probably lose his job now.
You know what,these kind of incidents are blessings because they show the line between us and them its time to understand that in the smoke screen of war against terror clashes between ideologies have started.
What's good for the goose...must also be good for the gander.....otherwise its HYPOCRISY in spades.
There goes 'freedom of speech' down the gutter. How many more examples do we need on west's hypocrisy?
Drawing & making fun of Religious Leader is Freedom of Expression, while someone that a Palestinian suffers because of a Jew is offensive.. IRONIC i must say :)