The BBC has come under heavy scrutiny as its own reporters have been accused of supporting the Palestinian terror group Hamas in the wake of deadly assaults on Israel.
Britain’s publicly-funded broadcaster said that it has launched an “urgent review” as several reporters for BBC News Arabic — which is funded by the UK public through the television licence fee — appeared to praise murderous Hamas terrorists as freedom fighters.
For instance, according to The Telegraph, BBC Arabic correspondent Sally Nabil liked a post on X (formerly Twitter) that praised “the Palestinian resistance taking an initiative and surprises the Israeli occupier with an operation of quality”. She also liked a comment on a video of a truck loaded with kidnapped civilians that described “A proud scene”.
Another example saw programmes editor at BBC Arabic Nada Abdelsamad repost a video depicting Israelis hiding from Hamas with the caption: “Settlers hiding inside a tin container in fear of the Palestinian resistance warriors”. The post also featured the Qur’an reference hashtag “promise of the hereafter”, which has been associated with the complete destruction of Israel.
Responding to the apparent breaches of the BBC’s impartiality guidelines, a spokesman for the Camera Arabic campaign group which monitors news coverage of Israel said: “These revelations about BBC Arabic employees go hand in hand with the outlet’s ongoing conduct during the war. The BBC has repeatedly whitewashed the practice of targeting Jewish civilians in Israel even before the current escalation.
“They constantly claim that they apply the same editorial standards of accuracy and impartiality to their services in all languages, including those with which BBC management is not familiar and can’t oversee properly, such as Arabic. But these lapses do not occur anywhere near as frequently in their English language content, so that can’t be taken seriously.”
The BBC has said that it will conduct an investigation into the apparent bias of some of its Middle Eastern reporters, saying: “We are urgently investigating this matter. We take allegations of breaches of our editorial and social media guidelines with the utmost seriousness, and if and when we find breaches we will act, including taking disciplinary action.”
The scandal comes after the BBC was already embroiled in controversy for refusing to label Hamas terrorists as terrorists to supposedly maintain “impartiality”. This comes despite the fact that the British government has officially designated the Palestinian organisation as a terror group.
Defending the decision to use terms such as “militants” or “gunmen”, BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson wrote: “It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn – who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.”
The decision has prompted widespread criticism, even from members of the British government. Last week BBC sports reporter Noah Abrahams, who is of Jewish descent, announced his resignation from the broadcaster over its refusal to call Hamas “terrorists”.
The BBC has previously been forced to apologise for ignoring complaints of antisemitic content and anti-Israel bias. It is also not the first time that the broadcaster has faced criticism over its reporters in the Middle East. For example, in 2021, a “Palestinian Specialist” for the broadcaster was revealed to have declared that “Hitler was right” and the state of Isreal was “more Nazi than Hitler”.
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