BBC accused of 'whitewashing' Gaza documentary as references to 'Jews' and 'jihad' removed
26 February 2025, 05:19
A row over a controversial BBC documentary has become even more contentious, after it emerged that references to 'Jews' and praise for 'jihad' had been removed from the film.
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Analysis has found that the words 'Yahud' and 'Yahudy' - meaning 'Jew' and 'Jews' in Arabic - had been substituted for 'Israel' and 'Israeli forces' in subtitles or removed altogether at least five times in the documentary, which is about life in Gaza.
Meanwhile an interviewee praising Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar for "jihad against the Jews" was subtitled instead as "fighting Israeli forces”.
Alex Hearn, of Labour against Anti-Semitism, said the film was symptomatic of “the BBC’s sympathetic coverage of Hamas”
He told the Telegraph: “The BBC have sanitised views expressed about Sinwar, orchestrator of the Hamas massacre, and instead presented a more acceptable version for a Western audience.
“It is this whitewashing that keeps viewers ill-informed about the nature of Hamas, and promotes sympathy for their deadly ideology. This documentary signifies the institutional failure behind the BBC’s reporting of the Israel-Hamas conflict."
The BBC said its editorial standards committee had determined in 2013 that 'Israeli' was an acceptable translation for 'Yahud'.
The film has already been embroiled in controversy - and has been removed from iPlayer as the corporation investigates how it was made.
Demonstrators protested the documentary outside the BBC offices on Tuesday night, saying it was "a betrayal of licence fee payers”.
Earlier this week, a cameraman for the documentary was accused of ‘celebrating’ the October 7 massacre.
Hatem Rawagh is reported to have praised the terror attack on social media.
He tweeted about the 1973 Yom Kippur war - when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel. In the post he said: “Whoever missed Oct 6 in Egypt...Oct 7 is happening in Palestine.”
He went on to post online apparently celebrating the killing of an Israeli soldier.
He captioned a video of a gunman: “You are going back to this video a million times.”
The video was originally posted by Hamas’s al-Qassam brigades. It depicts the point of view of a gunman killing a soldier in Erez, near the Gaza border.
He also shared celebrations at the Omari mosque in Gaza in April 2023 after a car attack in Tel Aviv which killed an Italian tourist and left seven others injured.
He wrote: “A festive atmosphere in Gaza's Omari Mosque at the moment the news about the operation in Tel Aviv arrived.”
The BBC spent £400,000 of licence payers' cash making the film, according to The Sun.
The documentary was made by the BBC's Current Affair TV arm which paid award-winning Hoyo Films to make it.
Former director of BBC television Danny Cohen said: "The BBC needs to account for every penny spent on this documentary - £400,000 is a lot of licence-fee payers money.
"They should be transparently told where their money went and whether any of it reached the hands of Hamas.
"The BBC must also launch a wider investigation into systemic bias against Israel after repeated editorial failures since the October 7 massacres."
The BBC initially kept the documentary online with an added disclaimer before removing it from iPlayer while conducting further ‘due diligence’.
It is co-directed by Jamie Roberts, an Emmy-award-winning filmmaker, and Yousef Hammash, a Bafta-award-winning Palestinian journalist.
It was filmed by two cameramen which Mr Rawagh hired as an “additional camera.”
Mr Rawagh’s tweets were uncovered by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera).
A spokesman for Camera said: “These posts appear to be glorifying the horrific terrorist acts committed on October 7, 2023. Anyone who wrote them has no place working for the BBC. Here is yet more evidence of the editorial failings in the documentary for which the BBC must answer.”
An internal report into the programme will be presented to the BBC board on Thursday.
The corporation is expected to announce a summary of findings either on Thursday or by Friday morning.
According to the Telegraph, the programme was viewed by Jo Carr, the BBC’s head of current affairs, prior to broadcast. She described the documentary as a “story of immense consequence” in a press release issued on Jan 20.
A BBC spokesman said: “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone features important stories we think should be told – those of the experiences of children in Gaza. There have been continuing questions raised about the programme and in the light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company. The programme will not be available on iPlayer while this is taking place.”
