A Palestinian journalist who was fired by the BBC for a tweet claiming “Hitler was right” has accused the British public broadcaster of “capitulating” to the “whim of a pro-Israel mob.”
Tala Halawa was dismissed from the BBC last month after a 2014 tweet emerged that read: “Israel is more Nazi than Hitler! Oh, “#HitlerWasRight” #IDF go to hell. #PrayForGaza.”
The Ramallah-based Halawa issued an apology acknowledging her tweet had been “offensive and ignorant” but failed to mention any offense to Jews or antisemitism specifically.
She went on to claim pro-Israel interest groups were attempting to “eliminate Palestinians from public life.” She wrote:
The BBC’s immediate dismissal at the whim of a pro-Israel mob is all the more absurd given the actual reason pro-Israel groups trained their sights on me: I recently published a video report on the corporation about celebrities being criticized, trolled and cancelled for supporting Palestinian self-determination.
But I am not alone. This pro-Israel censorship campaign is industrial in scale and international in its search.
Halawa charged the BBC with racism, saying the criticism of her “seems familiar to me both as a Palestinian and as a woman of color.”
She also asserted the BBC had dismissed her “based on a single offensive and ignorant tweet,” a claim immediately refuted by social media users who posted screen shots of her other antisemitic tweets, including charging Israel with a “continuous Holocaust,” and slamming “stupid Zionists” for not realizing that the “antisemitism melodrama isn’t trending anymore.”
Halawa, who served as a “Palestine Specialist” at the BBC, was dismissed by the broadcaster in June.