Radio 4 Understand Israel and Palestine review BBC

The current horrors in Israel and Gaza are so terrible, and the images so sickening, that the easiest, most comfortable thing to do is to look away. But can I suggest - if you really can't bear to look - turning on the radio, instead? Because, over the past week, radio and podcasts have been providing some amazingly nimble, bitesize explanations and updates on Israel and the Palestinians that have turned out to be, I think, a uniquely effective way to understand such a sprawling, incredibly complex and rapidly moving disaster.

For example, Lyse Doucet's[1] The Conflict (BBC Sounds), a new podcast series in which the BBC's chief international correspondent is on the ground in Israel and Gaza to explain what's happening, why, and how. She and her team do this in 20-minute episodes combining field reporting and interviews, recorded and uploaded online with agility and immediacy, usually in the small hours following a hard day in the field. Doucet is joined by co-presenters across the world including Jeremy Bowen and Paddy O'Connell, and she sometimes sounds shaken and urgent amid the distant booming of Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile defence system, and sometimes sounds cautious and measured, speaking calmly in the eerie quiet of morning birdsong.

In episode six, Doucet, based in Ashkelon in southern Israel, discussed some specific features of the Gaza border and the history of underground tunnels controlled by Hamas while sirens began to sound, and Doucet and her team ran for the nearest bomb shelter. She continued recording alongside her co-presenter for that episode, O'Connell in London, until she was able to return above ground on receiving the all-clear. It's fiercely immediate war reporting.

The Conflict offers timely news updates with clear editorial shape, and is a considered attempt to make sense of what can seem like chaos. And, crucially, the series foregrounds expertise: Doucet has been reporting from the Middle East, as well as from many wars across the world, for decades. Her reporting feels properly informed as well as immersive, immediate, detailed and evocative.

The BBC has been the subject of intense scrutiny over the last week for its handling of the conflict so far, including for opting not to name Hamas as terrorists[2], citing impartiality.

Meanwhile, the Palestine Action group has soaked the entryways of BBC buildings with blood-red paint, accusing the BBC of "biased and inaccurate reporting" and "manufacturing consent for the occupation's genocide of Palestinians". This week, there were reports that the BBC has received around 800 complaints that it is biased against Israel, and almost exactly the same number complaining that it's biased against Palestinians. This is the kind of two-sided response that may probably make the BBC breathe a sigh of relief that it's getting this whole impartiality thing just about right.

But what does it mean for the experience of us listeners on an individual level? Personally, I find it helpful to listen to specific reporters who have proven knowledge and experience rather than try to absorb the entire output of a whole organisation. So I'm listening to Doucet, and also to Katya Adler[3], whose new daily explainer series Understand Israel and the Palestinians (Radio 4) has just been parachuted into the schedules at the last minute this week.

Like Doucet, Adler has a depth of experience here. Adler's first child was born in the region when she was the BBC's Middle East correspondent more than 10 years ago. She has, since then, developed her journalistic gift for explaining complex international politics on other stages - she was the BBC's go-to reporter for explaining the EU's Brexit negotiations as they were ongoing - but here, Adler returns to explore the social and political structure of the region she knows so well.

Any broadcaster with a depth of expertise in the history and politics of the Middle East faces the challenge of finding a way to report on the latest developments to listeners who will come to their programmes with their own range of knowledge and experience. Listeners may have firmly taken a side already, or may feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the situation. It takes skill to speak to all of these people with the same clarity and care, and without being patronising.

Doucet and Adler are masterful at this. Whatever the successes and failures of the BBC as a whole, these individual reporters are shining under pressure. And there's a broadcaster away from the BBC who is doing an excellent job, too, and he's not even a broadcaster by training.

Former Tory cabinet minister Rory Stewart[4], who presents The Rest is Politics (Goalhanger Podcasts) with Alastair Campbell, gave one of the most succinct and accessible, even-handed explanations of the history of the conflict that I've ever heard. He doesn't shy away from calling Hamas terrorists, either. Episode 178: Israel at War is the episode you want for the explainer, but there have also been further episodes on the theme, featuring more in-depth discussion emerging through interviews with both the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, and Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK.

In a time of dehumanisation, violence and fear, listening to clear and insightful programmes like these feels like a way to hold onto a little more humanity, and a little more hope.

References

1. ^ Lyse Doucet's (www.telegraph.co.uk)
2. ^ not to name Hamas as terrorists (www.telegraph.co.uk)
3. ^ Katya Adler (www.telegraph.co.uk)
4. ^ Rory Stewart (www.telegraph.co.uk)