Even by the standards of the BBC’s venomous bias against Israel, today’s exchange between BBC Radio Today programme anchor Anna Foster and Israeli spokesman Alex Gandler was jaw-dropping.

Gandler tried to present an accurate timeline and context to show that Israel had attacked both Lebanon and Iran in response to their attacks on Israel. He didn’t get very far. Constantly interrupting him, with a voice made tremulous with indignation at Israel’s apparent perfidy, Foster insisted that the Lebanon ceasefire wasn’t really a ceasefire at all because Israel had continued to attack Hezbollah. Indeed, she charged, in attacking Beirut “it looks like Israel doesn’t want a ceasefire”. To Foster, it seems, demonic Israel just wants to kill people for its own opaque but nefarious purposes.

She ignored the fact that Hezbollah had broken that ceasefire with a volley of missiles into Israel just three hours after it was agreed; that it has been killing IDF soldiers in Lebanon almost every day since then; and that Israel’s strike on the Hezbollah stronghold in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut was in response to another volley of missiles at two towns in northern Israel.