By Steve Winston, Managing Director, National Jewish Assembly
There is a certain sanctimony that only a British institution can manage: a mixture of entitlement, self-regard, and the assumption of intellectual superiority. Nowhere is this more perfectly embodied than in the BBC – and nowhere is its moral collapse more evident than in its coverage of Israel.
In the span of just 48 hours, the BBC broadcast two separate blood libels against the Jewish state, both false, both based on Hamas propaganda, and both treated as “breaking news.” The reports alleged Israeli “massacres” at humanitarian aid sites in Rafah – stories now fully debunked by the very on-the-ground operators the BBC chose to ignore.
And yet, not one retraction. Not one apology. Just quiet edits, a few caveats, and the Orwellian reassurance that “BBC Verify” was on the case – a fact-checking unit that, it turns out, exists largely to retroactively launder the corporation’s own falsehoods.
Let’s not pretend this is an isolated lapse. It is the culmination of a long, well-documented pattern in which the BBC acts as an uncritical amplifier of anti-Israel narratives, often indistinguishable from those produced by Hamas itself.
The most recent incidents followed an entirely predictable script. The BBC ran a story, citing anonymous “residents and medics” and a “local journalist” – no verification, no corroboration, no warning to readers that their sources were operating in a tightly controlled, terror-run enclave. In other words: hearsay from Hamas-controlled territory, treated as gospel.
Even when the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – a U.S.-backed, non-political aid organisation – categorically denied that any such massacre had taken place, the BBC pressed on. When the IDF said it was unaware of any such incident but would investigate, the BBC “updated” the story not with caution but with further insinuation. Later, it emerged that the supposed site of the “massacre” was in a completely different location to the Israeli military’s operations that day – a detail somehow missed by BBC.
This is the same BBC that refuses to describe Hamas as terrorists – not merely as a matter of semantics, but as an institutional policy. It is the same BBC whose Arabic service has platformed open Hamas apologists, aired antisemitic tropes, and soft-pedalled terror attacks as “militant responses.” It is the same BBC that, since October 2023, uncritically ran Hamas’s casualty claims as fact, without once informing viewers that the Gaza Health Ministry is a Hamas-run organ of disinformation.
What the BBC is doing is not journalism. It is laundering. It is taking raw propaganda, washing it in a veneer of BBC polish, and presenting it to the world as unfiltered truth. It does so using public money, under the legal obligation of impartiality.
And the damage is not confined to print. These headlines are not just misleading – they are incendiary. They fuel antisemitic conspiracy theories, reinforce a grotesque double standard against Israel, and contribute directly to encouraging violence against Jews, as we witnessed recently in Colorado, Washington D.C. and London’s Underground.
It is not difficult to imagine how the BBC would behave if the situation were reversed. If Israeli journalists were operating under a government that routinely tortured dissidents, beheaded civilians, and declared its intent to wipe out another country, would their figures be aired without scrutiny? Would the BBC run their casualty claims as fact? Would it avoid using the word “terrorist” for fear of offending? Of course not. But for Hamas, all exceptions apply.
The time has come to stop pretending that the BBC is a neutral observer in this conflict. It is not. It is a participant – a legitimiser of falsehoods, an echo chamber for ideological hostility toward the Jewish state, and a factory of narratives that excuse terror and vilify the only democracy in the region.
The National Jewish Assembly calls for an immediate parliamentary inquiry into the BBC’s reporting on Israel and Gaza. When journalists repeatedly choose propaganda over truth, they forfeit their credibility. When they do so with taxpayer money and a royal charter, they forfeit their legitimacy. Enough of the laundering. Enough of the lies. It’s time the BBC was held to account.
