Open letter to the Director General of the BBC From: Evgeny Kissin
Dear Sir,
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I first came to live in this country thirteen years ago and became a British subject seven years ago, having grown up in the Soviet Union. I was inspired and proud to belong to the country of Winston Churchill, who famously said "There is no anti-Semitism in England because we do not consider ourselves more stupid than the Jews". Above all, the BBC and especially its World Service had always been a beacon of light, of truth and objectivity to those of us behind the Iron Curtain, in the Evil Empire. Reaching out to far corners of the world, it was the voice of a country which for us was a model of democracy and human rights.
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Since a long time now, I receive verified reports on an almost daily basis of the BBC's slander and bias towards Israel, painfully reminiscent of the old Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda. This culminated with the BBC's Persian Service's blood libel concerning Israel's alleged harvesting of Palestinian organs and blood for future transplant. It beggars belief that the British taxpayer should be funding an organisation which is aligning itself with Iran's despotic leader in its anti-Semitic propaganda.
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Other print media, like the Guardian, which erroneously printed this libel, propagated by Israel's enemies, have since apologized. I am not aware of any such retraction from the BBC.
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Is it not high time for the BBC to return to the values for which it was so much respected before it finds itself in the garbage of history together with Pravda, TASS, Volkischer Beobachter and Der Angruff?
Yours faithfully,
Evgeny Kissin