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(JNS)The BBC has been accused of turning itself into a Hamas propaganda platform by airing a documentary about the Gaza Strip on Monday narrated by the son of a Hamas minister.
The hour-long documentary, “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone,” was broadcast on Feb. 17. It followed the conflict through the eyes of three children.
It was narrated by Abdullah, 14, who is listed in the film’s credits as Abdullah al-Yazouri.
Abdullah’s father appears to be Ayman Alyazouri, deputy minister of agriculture in the Hamas-run government. The child’s family ties were not revealed to viewers, The Telegraph reported.
Alyazouri’s social media feature several references to his son Abdullah or “Aboud,” the London-based paper said.
In January 2024, Alyazouri posted a photograph of a young boy who appears to be Abdullah with the words, “Aboud… May God protect him.”
Labour Against Antisemitism filed a formal complaint with the BBC, saying that it had neglected to check the background of the documentary’s participants.
“This documentary appears to have been a failure of due diligence by the BBC, with Hamas propaganda promoted as reliable fact at the taxpayers’ expense,” said Alex Hearn, director of Labour Against Antisemitism.
“Misinformation is the story of the Israel-Hamas conflict, and this is not an isolated case. There has been a failure of news platforms to adequately scrutinize sources and a willingness to regurgitate Hamas disinformation repeatedly,” Hearn continued. “There needs to be an urgent investigation into how this happened once again.”
Investigative journalist David Collier, who was the first to expose the controversial nature of the film, questioned how the filmmakers, and particularly the two local cameramen, could not have known of Abdullah’s family ties.
“The two photographers followed these children around for months. They absolutely knew who he was. Did either of the producers?” Collier asked. “How did the BBC let a son of a Hamas minister walk around looking for sympathy and demonizing Israel for an hour in a BBC documentary?”
A BBC spokesman defended the film, saying it “was produced in line with BBC editorial guidelines and the BBC had full editorial control,” and that “the children’s parents did not have any editorial input.”
Collier told JNS: “It is about time that the BBC understood that the only organization that has editorial control over what we see come out of Gaza is Hamas. This latest failing is perhaps the worst yet. There needs to be an urgent investigation into how the BBC are continually getting all this so badly wrong.”
Danny Cohen, a former BBC executive who has said that there is an “institutional crisis” at the national broadcaster and called for an independent inquiry into its Gaza war coverage, told The Telegraph that the latest revelations confirmed his fears that the broadcaster risks becoming a Hamas shill.
“This appears to be another appalling example of journalistic failure and anti-Israel bias,” he said. “Questions must be asked as to whether the BBC carried out the most basic journalistic checks.”
He added: “License fee payers across the U.K. are being repeatedly conned into paying for Hamas PR. There can be no doubt now that the BBC has a very serious problem with the quality of its journalism and anti-Israel bias.”
Abdullah, the child featured in the documentary, appeared in an earlier BBC report. In November 2023, he can be seen talking about the destruction in Gaza while escorted by Khalil Abu Shamala, a man who was presented to viewers as his father, but who in reality appears to be his uncle.
It seems that Shamala is the former director of Al Dameer, an NGO which leads campaigns in support of Palestinian prisoners.
“Al Dameer is highly active in promoting BDS campaigns, lobbying international bodies, and utilizing highly inflammatory rhetoric,” Jerusalem-based watchdog group NGO-Monitor reports on its website.
Al Dameer has ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization in the United States, European Union, Canada and Israel.
