BBC has no plans to drop Paulin over reported remarks about Jewish settlers

A BBC spokesman said the appropriateness of all guests on the programme was kept under constant review

A BBC spokesman said the appropriateness of all guests on the programme was kept under constant review. "We will be having him back on the programme," the spokesman said.

The BBC has said it has no plans to drop the Irish poet Tom Paulin as a contributor after he reportedly called for Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories to be shot.

Mr Paulin, who was born in Leeds but brought up in Belfast, has created a furore in Britain with his remarks about Israel in an interview in the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram Weekly.

He was quoted as saying "Brooklyn-born" Jewish settlers "should be shot dead". "I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them."

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The board of deputies of British Jews is to decide today whether to push for a prosecution of Mr Paulin under incitement to hatred legislation. Mr Paulin could not be contacted.

In the interview, Mr Paulin reportedly said: "I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all".

On the Middle East conflict he was quoted as saying the Palestinians need good anti-tank weapons. "They have got to meet force with force. They have to be cunning and forceful. "I can understand how suicide bombers feel. It is an expression of deep injustice and tragedy. I think, though, that it is better to resort to conventional guerilla warfare. I think attacks on civilians in fact boost morale."

He said he resigned from the British Labour Party recently after realising it was "a Zionist government".

Mr Paulin appears regularly on the panel of the BBC2 Late Review arts programme and lectures in English at Hertford College in Oxford. His latest work, The Invasion Handbook, an epic poem about the second World War, was published this year.

Last year Mr Paulin was condemned by the Board of Deputies of British Jews after the Observer newspaper published a poem in which he suggested the Israeli army deliberately shot "little Palestinian boys".

This year he lost his temper on the Late Review when Germaine Greer expressed sympathy for the paratroopers involved in Bloody Sunday. "They were thugs sent in by public schoolboys to kill innocent Irish people. They were rotten, racist bastards," he said.

Paul Cullen

Paul Cullen

Paul Cullen is a former heath editor of The Irish Times.