In late December we documented the appearance on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page of an uncredited filmed report featuring a minor from the Gaza Strip who had previously appeared on the same BBC platform in May 2021.
2021 CONTRIBUTOR REAPPEARS IN BBC NEWS ‘GIRL IN THE RUBBLE’ REPORT
That item featuring Nadin – or Nadeen – Abdullatif appeared on the ‘Middle East’ page between December 29th and December 31st 2023 and then later reappeared in the ‘Watch/Listen’ section of the same webpage on January 11th 2024, where it remains at the time of writing.
As noted here previously, in January 2022 Abdullatif appeared at a conference titled ‘Gaza Siege: An Ongoing Crime’. During her speech she claimed to be a member of one of that conference’s organising bodies – the ‘16th October media group’. On its website, that propaganda group lists Wafa Aludaini as “team manager”. Aludaini has a record of connections to Hamas-linked organisations.
We also observed that:
“Since the beginning of the current conflict, Nadin Abdullatif has appeared in content produced by a variety of outlets including CNN, Middle East Eye, the Times, ITV, Al Jazeera and Democracy Now!. She is clearly not just a random thirteen-year-old “Palestinian girl” in the Gaza Strip as presented by the BBC but a child being exploited by adults for the purpose of dissemination of a terrorist organisation’s propaganda.
The question of who, once again, put the BBC in touch with Nadin Abdullatif and who produced these two similarly themed ‘young girl in the rubble’ reports two-and-a-half years apart is now all the more relevant given the issues raised by the BBC’s repeat collaboration with the exploitation of a minor.”
Nevertheless, on January 11th the BBC News website published yet another uncredited report featuring Abdullatif under the title ‘‘This is my home’ – a 13-year-old vlogger’s life in Gaza’.
The synopsis to that report reads as follows:
“Even before the current war, children in the Gaza Strip had lived through multiple rounds of fighting between Palestinian armed groups and Israel.
In 2021, the BBC featured a girl called Nadin Abdullatif in a report.
Now 13, she has become a popular vlogger on Instagram and has been describing what has happened to her and other children during the war.
Nadin’s older brother, Ahmed, was killed in an Israeli air strike just as she and her family were forced to flee their home in the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City. They have since been displaced to Rafah.
In Gaza, more than 23,350 people – mostly women and children – have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, since the war began in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October attacks on southern Israel.
In those attacks some 1,300 people were killed – mainly civilians – and about 240 others were taken hostage.”
As in the previous reports featuring Abdullatif, no effort is made to provide any context to her monotone statements and claims. For example, BBC audiences are not informed that, as reported by CNN on October 10th 2023, she and her family did not evacuate the Rimal neighbourhood – the site of Hamas terrorist infrastructure – when advised to do so.
Once again it is all too obvious that the BBC’s repeat showcasing of Nadin Abdullatif is not intended to inform audiences but solely to elicit emotional reactions. And yet again, BBC audiences find no transparency regarding the pertinent question of who initiated this item and who produced it.
