The National Jewish Assembly (NJA) hosted a major online event last night that laid bare the extent of the BBC’s systemic failures in reporting on Israel, drawing nearly 200 attendees for a searing and timely discussion featuring MK Sharren Haskel, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister, and investigative journalist David Collier.
The event centered on the recent scandal surrounding the now-pulled BBC documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. Collier was the first to uncover that the central narrator of the film was not merely a civilian child, but the son of a Hamas deputy minister. His exposure triggered a firestorm that culminated in the BBC quietly removing the documentary – but not before taxpayer funds were funneled to the production, raising serious questions about potential material support to a proscribed terrorist organisation.
In a hard-hitting presentation, MK Haskel accused the BBC of peddling Hamas propaganda and actively distorting facts. “When you make 80 so-called ‘mistakes,’ it’s not a coincidence – it’s a pattern, it’s a system,” she said. “We’re talking about an outlet that relies on terrorist propaganda and sells it to the world as truth. This is a war not only on Israel, but on our shared values.”
She added: “This isn’t just about damage to Israel’s reputation. If British taxpayers’ money funded a film that paid Hamas operatives or their families, that’s a criminal offence under UK law. The BBC must be investigated.”
David Collier warned that the media war is as dangerous as anything on the battlefield. “We are at war, and we need to wake everyone else up,” he said. “You can’t expect the BBC – which has been infiltrated by radical Islamists and leftists – to check their own homework. If they don’t see anything wrong with platforming Hamas-linked voices, how many more will they hire before they resemble Al Jazeera?”
The NJA reiterated its call for an Ofcom-led investigation and demanded accountability from public institutions that enable and legitimise extremist narratives.
