Scarborough: BBC Should Fire Reporter For Israel Question (VIDEO)

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MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough launched into a tirade on Tuesday against the BBC and “some others” in the media he accused of downplaying anti-Semitism in Europe.

Scarborough suggested that the BBC fire reporter Tim Willcox, who mentioned Israel’s violence toward Palestinians during an interview with a Jewish woman in the aftermath of the Paris attacks on Sunday. Willcox apologized the next day after criticism, calling that particular question “poorly phrased.”

“I cannot believe the BBC is going to allow this man to stay on the BBC,” Scarborough told the “Morning Joe” panel.

Scarborough mistakenly called the interviewee a Holocaust survivor (she was in fact the daughter of survivors) and concluded that “there is anti-Semitism in Europe and there is anti-Semitism in the media.”

Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein said during the segment that the situation “underscores the fundamental reason for the founding of Israel: you have to have a refuge from this.”

“Yeah!” Scarborough said. “There is a reason Israel exists!”

“And this was it,” Stein replied, apparently referring to the Paris attacks.

“For people in Europe that don’t understand why Israel exists, take what happened last week and multiply it 2 million times,” Scarborough said. “The fact that the BBC has someone insensitive and cold to the realities — this did not happen 300 years ago!” Scarborough said.

“This happened 60, 65 years ago, while Europe sat by and did nothing. They let 6 million Jews be exterminated. This is why Israel exists,” he repeated. “And people need to get a hell of a lot more sensitive to it, even if they are left-leaning media members.”

Watch the clip, courtesy of MSNBC:

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