An investigation must be opened into the possibility that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) colluded with Hamas officials to produce a documentary about Gaza, the leader of the UK Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, wrote in a Sunday letter to Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general.
Badenoch’s letter, which followed investigative journalist David Collier’s expose last Tuesday on Hamas’s connections to a BBC production, called for an independent inquiry to examine the commission and development of the documentary called Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone.
Collier said that the BBC had given £400,000 to produce the documentary, which follows four young Palestinians living in a humanitarian zone in Gaza.
According to the BBC website, the documentary covered “everyday life with ongoing airstrikes and efforts to keep people alive in [the area’s] only functioning permanent hospital.”
Still, Collier reported that the show’s narrator, 13-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri, was son of a senior Hamas official. The father of another child featured in the film was a Hamas police officer. Collier also claimed that the camerapeople had praised terrorist attacks in Israel.
Conservative Party MP Suella Braverman questioned on X/Twitter on Monday how the state broadcaster had failed to perform checks that resulted in publishing a “propaganda film for a terrorist organization that wants to wipe Jewish people from the earth.”
Per Badenoch, the BBC had been defensive about the documentary, assuring that it adhered to usual compliance procedures when producing the item and kept the program available on its website. At the time of writing, the documentary was delisted from the BBC’s iPlayer.
Protests against BBC
The Campaign Against Antisemitism organization was set to hold a protest on Tuesday outside the BBC London Broadcasting House to demand answers on whether license fees had been used to pay Hamas or those affiliated with the proscribed terrorist organization.
Braverman called for an abolition of television licenses paid by UK citizens, arguing that the fee “and weak accountability means they can get away with anything.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews president Phil Rosenberg said on social media on Monday that he was concerned about the approach that the BBC held toward Hamas, adding his voice to the growing chorus calling for an independent inquiry into the culture and personnel of the broadcaster.
Badenoch also said on Sunday that an inquiry into the BBC would have to explore the “repeated and serious allegations of systemic and institutional bias against Israel in the BBC’s coverage of the war.”
This allegedly included a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas, bias at BBC Arabic, and interviews in which there were robust interrogations of Israeli representatives whereas Palestinian officials were met with no challenge.