Does the BBC think British soldiers are Nazis ?

John Pienaar on BBC Radio Five was interviewing Baghdad Blogger Salam Pax this morning. Pax described how when the Allies were bombing, he and his friends would hide in the basement with drinks and sweets.

"Just like Anne Frank, then", said Pienaar.

UPDATE 14/09/03

Natalie Solent at Biased-BBC writes

"To be fair, if Pienaar really has read Anne Frank, he might have intended a more subtle and accurate comparison. I haven't a copy to hand, but in her diary Anne Frank several times expresses her support and admiration for the Allied bomber crews - even though she was at risk of being bombed herself. So Pienaar might have meant to equate the citizens of Baghdad hiding in cellars from American planes dropping bombs, all the while praying for the bombers to be victorious so that the tyrant Saddam will be overthrown, to the citizens of Amsterdam hiding in cellars (or attics in Anne Frank's case) from American planes dropping bombs, all the while praying for the bombers to be victorious so that the tyrant Hitler will be overthrown. "

She may be right - although I find the comparison somewhat inappropriate. Anne Frank, unlike Salam Pax, had nowhere to go (26/7/43) when the Allies bombed Amsterdam.

But if this is what Pienaar meant, it must be the first recorded instance on the BBC of a commentator comparing Saddam to Hitler, the citizens of Baghdad to the Jews of Europe, and the armed forces of Bush and Blair to those of Roosevelt and Churchill.

I know little of John Pienaar's politics. He wrote on "urban crime, domestic violence, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll" at the South London Press, before moving to the Independent then the BBC. Does that give us a clue ? With his name, fearsome moustache and barn-door build, he looks like a Guardian reader's caricature of an Afrikaaner farmer - but he doesn't seem to have the attitudes of one. When he was reporting in August 2002 from the UN conference on racism and colonialism (you remember - the one which turned into an anti-Semitic hate fest, the one where Ghaddafi and Mugabe were given standing ovations), Esther Rantzen on R5 rang him to ask the question 'Poverty - Do we owe the Third World ?'.

John's reply showed all the neutrality traditionally associated with the BBC.

‘Well, as a neutral I can only say yes’