Tim Willcox, a BBC reporter, sparked anger during his coverage of a rally yesterday in Paris when he told the daughter of a Holocaust survivor that “Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well,” Daily Mail reported.
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 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.
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.”