The BBC deliberately mistranslated words like ‘Jihad’ and replaced ‘Jews’ with ‘Israel’ to conceal the antisemitism.
The documentary’s cameraman was a supporter of Hamas.
£400,000 of licence payers’ money paid for the documentary.
The BBC’s decision to air a Hamas propaganda documentary has once again proven that Britain’s national broadcaster has a systematic problem of bias against Israel.
The latest information emerging from the row over last week’s documentary is frankly staggering. Initially, it was reported that the 14-year-old boy named Abdullah, who narrated Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, was in fact the son of an Hamas official. Now, it transpires that the cameraman who filmed the documentary supports Hamas, having celebrated the October 7th attacks on social media. He has also openly praised other terrorist attacks against Israel.
Furthermore, the BBC spent £400,000 of licence payers’ money to make the film, and the BBC is investigating whether any money was paid to Hamas. The documentary was made by the BBC’s Current Affair TV arm which paid Hoyo Films to make it.
Is the BBC really this naïve, or is there a more sinister issue at the BBC? For years, the BBC has weakened its credibility by trying to convince viewers of an equivalence between Israel and their enemies. They have deliberately tried to make Hamas more palatable by humanising them rather than calling them out as terrorists and have watered down their hate towards Jews.
At the same time, the BBC has been overly critical of Israel’s responses, citing Israel’s enemies as sources for statistics and storytelling, and misrepresenting Israel’s intensions. The BBC’s lack of moral compass in its reporting has consequently sown doubt and deception on behalf of Israel’s enemies.
Since October 7th it has become increasingly apparent that there are those within the BBC who are blatantly anti-Israel and have turned the BBC into a Hamas propaganda machine and a platform for Islamist apologists.
For example, why did the BBC mistranslate Arabic used in interviews in the documentary? The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera) has revealed that the BBC removed references to “jihad” and changed interviewees’ criticism of “Jews” to that of “Israelis”.
Let’s be clear, Hamas’s stated aim is to kill Jews. Hamas refuse to even say the word ‘Israel’ because they don’t recognise it. They use terms like ‘Zionist regime’, at other times they use the word ‘Jews’ because their number one goal is to wipe out Jews.
So why does mistranslating ‘Jews’ matter? The BBC changed ‘Jews’ to ‘Israel’ because they bizarrely want to portray Hamas’s motives as merely political and as part of a war against a state army and not against the Jewish people. The same logic applies to the use of the word ‘jihad’ – it doesn’t quite fit the BBC’s narrative that wants you to think Hamas is fighting for Palestinian rights. This is exactly the same tactic used by Hamas-sympathisers at the pro-Palestinian demos to cover-up their antisemitic hatred. They say ‘Israel’, but they really mean Jews.
By ignoring this Jew-hatred, the BBC downplays the deeply embedded antisemitic motives of Hamas. They are white-washing Hamas’s evil. They are effectively making the nation look the other way. And with the rise of antisemitism in the UK and worldwide, we look away at our peril.
By diminishing the evil of Hamas, the BBC – a once revered and trustworthy institution – has failed the Jewish community in Britain by allowing the public to be fed Hamas’s antisemitic propaganda.
This is not why Britons pay their licence fee to the BBC. The British public has a right to know where their well-earned money goes to, and £400,000 of licence-payers money to create Hamas propaganda is unacceptable. The BBC has said that Abdullah’s family were paid by the production company, Hoyo Films, and that they will be carrying out a full audit to check whether any money was paid directly to Hamas. The BBC also claims that the production knowingly misled them about the child links to Hamas, but that they should have undertaken their own due diligence checks.
The corporation said that independent production company was asked in writing “a number of times” during the making of the documentary about any potential connections the narrator might have with Hamas.
“Since transmission, they have acknowledged that they knew that the boy’s father was a deputy agriculture minister in the Hamas government; they have also acknowledged that they never told the BBC this fact,” said the press release.
“It was then the BBC’s own failing that we did not uncover that fact and the documentary was aired.”
The production company also revealed that they paid the boy’s mother “a limited sum of money” for the narration.
Tim Davie, the director-general, has ordered a full fact-finding review to be undertaken, led by Peter Johnston, director of editorial complaints and reviews.
The BBC said that disciplinary action could follow. The review will look at issues including “the use of language, translation and continuity”
Despite the BBC giving assurances that they will investigate, there needs to be a full independent investigation.
But due diligence is only part of the problem. There seems to be an infiltration of left-wing Islamist apologists within the BBC that have no problem whatsoever with the documentary. More than 500 celebrities, including the BBC’s highest paid employee Gary Lineker, have signed a letter criticising the BBC for dropping the Gaza documentary and calling for it to be reinstated. The former England footballer turned Match of the Day presenter, has often courted controversy with his anti-Israel comments, but his latest defence of this Hamas propaganda reveals that the BBC has a serious problem within. It is worth remembering that support for Hamas is a criminal offence in the United Kingdom.
Danny Cohen, the BBC’s former head of television, said: “This is not an occasion when the BBC should be marking its own homework. It is time for the BBC to acknowledge that it has a systemic problem of bias against Israel of which this is the tip of the iceberg.
“The unwillingness of the BBC to address these problems transparently over the last 16 months – and before – is what has led to the debacle of this Gaza documentary…
“The BBC must allow a full independent inquiry to investigate the processes that led to this documentary being produced, and the pervasive anti-Israel bias that allowed it to pass through the system unobstructed.”
