UNRWA’s Philippe Lazzarini interviewed on BBC – a devastating indictment of Israel’s war crimes
JVL Introduction
When the BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen sat down with the commissioner-general of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, for an interview, he knew he was stepping into a minefield. Bowen has been subjected to repeated attack by pro-Israel propagandists over many years, alleging sympathy with the Palestinians. This from 2021 is just one of the more recent examples.
Bowen’s write-up of his Lazzarini interview, which we reproduce below with its short embedded video clip, is an unequivocal indictment of Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The killing of journalists, the blockading of essential aid, the deliberate displacement of “massive numbers of Palestinian civilians on top of waves of artillery, air strikes and death”, the unwarranted attacks in UNRWA as if it were a front for terrorism, the craven complicity of Western governments – all are exposed and denounced.
Shamefully, as Jonathan Cook outlines on his Substack, the Bowen interview as packaged for broadcast on the News at Ten on May 13 (sadly no longer available to view on iPlayer) undermined Lazzarini and UNRWA by foregrounding Israel’s accusations against them.
In the view of this editor, Cook goes too far in holding Bowen responsible for this, but he makes a vital point when he says:
Israel has long wanted UNRWA out of the picture because it is the last significant organisation to uphold the rights of Palestinian refugees enshrined in international law. It is, therefore, a major obstacle to Israel ethnically cleansing Palestinians from what is left of their homeland.
NWI
This article was originally published by BBC News website on Tue 13 May 2025. Read the original here.
Israel denying food to Gaza is 'weapon of war', UN Palestinian refugee agency head tells BBC
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Bowen’s interview of Lazzarini can be watched on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNkVbcoKMxA
I don’t understand why NWI believes that Jonathan Cook ‘goes too far’ in holding Bowen responsible for his framing of the interview.
Bowen’s framing of the interview is indeed disgusting as can be seen even from the short introductory clip on Cook’s substack. Moreover Cook quite fairly makes clear that he understands that Bowen would not have been allowed to broadcast the interview had he not agreed to frame it in a manner probably prescribed by BBC management. However IF INDEED Bowen framed the interview as he did as a result of improper coercion, then the only honourable course for Bowen would have been for him to publicly denounce that coercion immediately after the interview was broadcast.
Bowen is quite senior enough – he is 65 years old – to have been able to withstand the fallout from such a confrontation. However I suspect the truth is just that he is a successful corporate journalist of mediocre intellect who finds himself profoundly shaken by the glaring contradiction between what he has been trained to believe and the awful vision unfolding before his eyes; but to slightly adapt Chomsky’s famous remark to Andrew Marr, if Bowen weren’t capable of persuading himself of the propriety of what he says he wouldn’t be sitting where he is. Nevertheless we are all responsible for our actions.