Just hours after it aired, the scale of the BBC’s errors in its Gaza documentary was undeniable, writes David Collier

20 February 2025, 13:19

It was about 3am on Tuesday morning when I began to realise the enormity of the BBC’s errors in the BBC2 Documentary on Gaza that had aired just six hours earlier.

I had been up ever since trying to follow the path that was to lead from a boy originally misnamed and placed alongside a father who was not even his by channel 4 in late 2023 – all the way to him being the son of a minister in the Hamas Government.

That boy – who we now know was the son of the Deputy Agricultural Minister Ayman Alyazuri in the Gazan Hamas government – was the star and the narrator of the BBC documentary.

Despite originally stating that it had full editorial control, the BBC now claim it did not even know about that family connection – laying the blame at the door of an independent production company. This is simply an unacceptable position, and the problem at the BBC goes way beyond this single child, or the documentary in question.

The documentary exposes a complete failure by the BBC to understand the problems of reporting from Gaza – which by extension led to underestimating the risks involved in handing any editorial control over to a third party.

It is also clear that the BBC did not even bother to do basic background checks of the children in the progam – because had they done so, then publicly available social media posts would have let them know there were numerous red flags.

All this means that the BBC did not do any of the due diligence demanded by its own editorial guidelines – and this is without even beginning to address the safeguarding concerns surrounding the children that appeared in the hour long show.

In short – driven by its own naivety and arrogance – the BBC believed that it could manipulate Hamas in Gaza – and produce an hour long documentary free of Hamas interference. This in a stronghold that has been firmly under the control of the proscribed terror group for almost 20 years.

The BBC thought it could outplay Hamas on Hamas turf.

Stupidity does not even begin to cover it. As it has now become clear that a second child is not exactly as he is portrayed in the BBC’s piece (he has appeared happily with weapons and in Hamas colours), it is difficult to see how the BBC has any choice but to pull the plug completely on what appears to be a Hamas assisted production.

The simple truth is this: Hamas has full editorial control over everything that comes out of Gaza – and it is about time that the BBC – and indeed the rest of UK media, began to recognise it.

David Collier is an award winning investigative journalist.

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