This is London

The Middle East's war of words

Last week The Independent’s Robert Fisk accused the BBC of buckling to Israeli pressure to drop the use of ‘assassination’ when referring to Israel’s policy of knocking off alleged ‘terrorists’. Not true, blustered John Simpson, auntie’s world affairs editor in The Sunday Telegraph. The corporation, he insisted, had simply reaffirmed its house rules that only prominent political figures could be assassinated -though he didn’t offer an alternative term for the killing of ordinary folk. He bitterly resented Fisk’s allegation that the Beeb had been got at.