The BBC’s war against Israel exposed
'It has been revealed that money was paid by the BBC, and by extension British taxpayers, directly to the coffers of the Hamas'
The BBC has been notoriously anti-Israel for years. Many of us have stood in front of the TV yelling with frustration at the dissemination of misinformation and blatant lies broadcast 24/7 to millions around the world.
Last week, this bias was exposed for all to see when the BBC were forced to rapidly withdraw their documentary Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone. It emerged that the 13-year-old narrator was the son of a Hamas official, and that funds were paid to his family, senior members of Hamas, for his involvement in the documentary.
The BBCs website describes the documentary as: “Shed[ing] new light inside Gaza’s humanitarian ‘safe zone’ showing everyday life with ongoing airstrikes and efforts to keep people alive.” Shockingly, there is no discussion of cause and effect, no mention is made of the fact that the situation in Gaza is a direct result of the Hamas terror onslaught of October 7, or that there was a ceasefire in place prior to October 7.
Disgracefully, the atrocities of October 7 are not mentioned in the body of the documentary, leaving an impartial and uninformed observer to conclude innocent Gazans were randomly and savagely attacked by vicious IDF forces for no apparent reason.
Besides the usual anti-Israel, one-sided and distorted narrative of the documentary, an additional problem is that it has been revealed that money was paid by the BBC, and by extension British taxpayers, directly to the coffers of the Hamas, a proscribed terror organisation.
Despite the BBC’s belated apologies over “serious flaws” in the documentary, it has also exposed the corporation’s deep seated institutional bias against Israel, which includes never using the word “terrorist” when it comes to Hamas. Which begs the question, why won’t the BBC use the “T” word to describe the barbarians who shoot thousands of unguided missiles at Israeli civilian population centres, behead babies, rape women and girls, murder, kidnap, and torture civilians from children to elderly Holocaust survivors, put Israeli children and adults in cages, brutalise and parade murdered Jews in their streets, and destroy communities in the Jewish homeland, while recording it all on social media?
According to an inane article on the BBC ‘s website titled “Why the BBC does not call Hamas gunmen terrorists.”: “It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn”, says the BBC’s World Affairs editor John Simpson.
The King of England, the Prime Minister of the UK, the President of America, and other world leaders can call the barbaric evil unleashed on innocent Israeli citizens “terror,” but not the holy BBC, unless… the victims are not Jewish and the attack isn’t in Israel.
When four British citizens were killed by a radical Islamic terrorist in London on March 23, 2017, the headlines, and indeed the entire article, mentioned “terror” and “terrorist” multiple times. “London attack: Four dead in Westminster terror attack” screamed the headline. The article went on to declare:
The terrorist chose to strike at the heart of our capital city where people of all nationalities, religions and cultures come together to celebrate the values of liberty, democracy and freedom of speech.
So, the BBC claim is simply untrue, as clearly the BBC do use the words “terror” and “terrorist” when the terror attack occurs outside of Israel and the victims are not Israeli or Jews. Why doesn’t the BBC realise that all terror, wherever it happens, from London, to New York, to Sydney, to Cairo, to Israeli towns and kibbutzim stems from the same source: incitement by fanatical militant Islamists to murder and terrorise “non-believers” with the stated aim of establishing a pan-Muslim caliphate.
The child/narrator, Abdullah, says in the documentary, which I have watched in its entirety: “My greatest hope is that Gaza goes back to what it was before.” What do you think he means by that? That Gaza should go back to a terrorist ruled enclave, based on Shariah law, where its residents are incited from birth to hate Jews by the warped terrorist entity that runs the enclave? Simultaneously, the same Hamas should continue to embezzle and steal billions of dollars of international aid money and building a subterranean terror metropolis preparing for the next round of attempted genocide of the Jewish State? Is that what he means?
Samir Shah, chairman of the BBC, described, with a straight face, questions over the Gaza documentary as a “dagger to the heart” of the BBC’s reputation as “impartial and trustworthy”. The chairman added: “We will get to the bottom of it and take the appropriate action.” In other words, “We at the BBC are so sorry for getting caught.” Do not hold your breath.
In the documentary one sees markets and stores full of food, fruit, vegetables, meat and all types of produce. One sees the residents of the enclave enjoying Israeli supplied electricity and water, in addition to well-dressed children with nice haircuts. Not exactly starvation or genocide. No mention, besides a brief sentence for one second at the beginning, is made of how the war started, the brutal massacre of Israeli citizens by the Hamas death cult, which they proudly documented themselves, or the hostages being held in the most inhumane conditions, some in Gazan homes. What you fail to see are fighting aged men, who are conspicuously absent from any scenes in the documentary, as no doubt the producers would not want to draw attention to the fact that they are active members of Hamas and wholeheartedly support Hamas ideology.
As viewers have come to expect in BBC content, there are many unsubstantiated and false claims made during the documentary, such as:
- “The occupation forces are committing massacres” says one “nurse”
- “School buildings get bombed…even in the safe zone”
- “The scale of attacks on paramedics has been enormous”
- “That’s the 10th time they’ve targeted the hospital.”
There are also obvious attempts to sanitise Gazans’ antisemitism by deliberately mistranslating Arabic. Every time “Yehud” (Jew) or “Al Yahud” (the Jews) are mentioned by the people on the ground, the translation is always “Israeli” or “Israelis.” For example, “the Israelis destroyed everything.” What he actually says is: “the Jews destroyed everything”, clearly an antisemitic statement.
The film concludes with the grossly overestimated and unsubstantiated Hamas provided death toll: “57,136 people are missing or dead in Gaza since the war began. 17,841 are children.”
While the death of any civilian during a war is tragic, in the case of the IDF’s military strategy in Gaza, such deaths are inevitable since Hamas facilities and leaders hide behind civilians and under schools and hospitals. Hamas fighters block civilians from evacuating, and then Hamas’ “Ministry of Health” inflates the casualty figures. Whilst innocent civilians have inadvertently been killed in Israel’s defensive war, what these unsubstantiated and unchallenged numbers are, in fact, just fanciful propaganda statistics, lazily and deliberately repeated by the mainstream press. One also needs to factor in the following:
- Natural causes: The CIA statistics state that 15-16 Gazans die of natural causes per day, which means that approximately 8,832 deaths would have occurred for natural causes during the war. Does anyone doubt that Hamas added their numbers to the casualties of the war and blamed Israel?
- Terrorist casualties: At least half of the casualties are Hamas terrorists. This includes those child fighters (which is illegal according to international law) over fifteen who are recruited to the terrorist army. There numbers are all included in the “statistics.”
- Hamas falsifies casualty numbers: They routinely inflate casualty figures and then add them to its list of casualties. One example is the case of the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City on October 17, 2023. The Hamas Health Ministry claimed almost immediately that there were 471 casualties from Israeli attacks. Many media sources and celebrities rushed to condemn the “massacre” (that never happened). The reality was thirteen died in the explosion caused by an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad missile that fell in the parking lot. One can be assured that those phantom “casualties” were added to the statistics.
All of this is irrelevant to the “impartial” BBC documentary makers who quote the numbers as if they are being supplied by a legitimate and reliable source. This is simply because they have, and have had for years, a perversely anti-Israel narrative. Maybe, next time the BBC (and the Hamas terrorist death cult) should consider the following if they really want to know How to Survive a War Zone: Avoid initiating conflict with your neighbour and then playing the victim when they retaliate.
When will the BBC make a documentary, based on the bodycam footage of the Hamas terrorists titled How to survive a Hamas massacre? It would be difficult indeed to make, as so many did not survive.
Dr Tuvia Book is an Israeli historian and author.
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