ON Monday night, I switched on BBC News at Ten to find out more about a horrific incident I’d seen fleeting headlines on earlier in the day.

It was a report, from the UN, that 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers had been killed “one by one” by Israeli forces and buried in a mass grave in southern Gaza.

The men – some of whom were with the Palestinian Red Crescent – had been trying to help colleagues who had come under fire earlier in the day, and were in clearly marked vehicles. One of them had his hands tied behind his back.

This was clearly a war crime, so surely it would be discussed at length, with experts focusing on the only important question: how long can such atrocities be allowed to go on? Instead, the BBC led with a French court’s decision to ban Marine Le Pen from standing for office for five years after she was found guilty of embezzlement.

Le Pen’s fall from grace was a development worth recording. An icon of the far right, caught funnelling EU funds to her National Rally party, she would now be prohibited from contesting the presidency, a position she might well have won.

But the speed with which it morphed from a story about a bad ‘un getting her comeuppance to a supposed indictment of Western democracy was surprising even by today’s warped standards.

A few days later, the corporation’s Katya Adler was telling us how Le Pen’s conviction had become a rallying point for other far-right leaders, with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán posting Je Suis Marine on X (Ah, I see, Viktor: so you have also had your hand in le till?).

To Donald Trump – whose own misdemeanours proved no bar to office – the court ruling against Le Pen was a “witch-hunt” and “another example of European leftists using lawfare to silence free speech and censor their political opponent”. Freedom of speech is an American value Trump holds dear. It’s a value he espouses on an almost daily basis, even as he tries to deport “pro-Palestinian” activists from American shores.

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© Herald Scotland