The BBC on Feb. 12 patted itself on the back, claiming that its report from the prior week has caused the Israeli Defense Forces to say it will “take action against any soldiers found to have filmed and uploaded footage online of Palestinian detainees stripped, bound and blindfolded.”
The hypocrisy here is beyond comprehensible. British forces in the 1940s committed horrific acts of sexual torture, as well as physical and psychological abuse, against young Jewish boys and girls during the Holocaust when British forces occupied what would become the modern-day State of Israel. What’s more, the British exiled hundreds of young Jews to Africa in an attempt to prevent the Jewish state when it was needed most—that is, just as Jews across Europe and the Middle East were being slaughtered.
It is worth noting that in the 1940s, the BBC consistently portrayed the Zionist struggle to end British rule as a terrorist and criminal movement, and continues to be highly critical of Israeli policy. It also mostly ignored reports of Nazi death camps throughout World War II and has never conducted a proper modern, internal investigation into either of these connected failures.
Two stories that do much to shed light on the true nature of the British Mandate and the crimes committed against young Zionists are the cases of 16-year-old Alexander Rubowitz, who was believed to have been murdered by Maj. Roy Farran, and Yaacov Eliav, who was attacked sexually by Inspector Ralph Cairns while in British police custody.