Last month we documented the appearance on the BBC News website of two items promoting what the BBC described as a “dramatic documentary” titled “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone” which was aired on BBC Two on February 17th.
BBC GAZA DOCUMENTARY REPEATS PAST MISTRANSLATIONS
As was noted at the time, in light of research conducted by David Collier which, among other things showed that the documentary’s main teenage narrator is the son of a Hamas official, the BBC issued a clarification on February 19th. Two days later, and following additional observations about the documentary, that clarification was updated to include the following:
“Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone features important stories we think should be told – those of the experiences of children in Gaza.
There have been continuing questions raised about the programme and in the light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company. The programme will not be available on iPlayer while this is taking place.”
The two items promoting the documentary (including the video with a mistranslation which, as CAMERA Arabic reported, reappeared several times in the full film) were subsequently removed from the BBC News website.
On February 27th the BBC announced that “a full fact-finding review will be undertaken”. That development was reported on the BBC News website in an article titled “BBC review finds ‘serious flaws’ over Gaza documentary”.
“The BBC has apologised and admitted “serious flaws” in the making of a documentary about children’s lives in Gaza.
The documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, was pulled from iPlayer last week after it emerged its 13-year-old narrator was the son of a Hamas official.
It said it has “no plans to broadcast the programme again in its current form or return it to iPlayer”.”
At the bottom of that article, readers find a link to a BBC report published on February 26th:
“Earlier this week, the BBC was criticised for pulling the programme by more than 500 media figures, including Gary Lineker, Anita Rani and Riz Ahmed.”
That article by entertainment reporter Steven McIntosh – “BBC criticised by 500 media figures for pulling Gaza documentary” – tells readers that:
“Gary Lineker, Anita Rani, Riz Ahmed and Miriam Margolyes are among more than 500 media figures who have criticised the BBC’s decision to pull a documentary about children’s lives in Gaza.
The BBC has said it removed Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone from iPlayer while it carried out “further due diligence” after discovering its 13-year-old narrator was the son of a Hamas official.
The open letter, published by Artists for Palestine UK, criticised what the signatories said was a “racist” and “dehumanising” campaign targeting the documentary.
It called on the BBC to “reject attempts to have the documentary permanently removed or subjected to undue disavowals”. […]
The letter’s other signatories include directors Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, actors Khalid Abdalla and Ruth Negga, musician Nitin Sawhney and Sarah Agha, who presented the BBC documentary series The Holy Land And Us: Our Untold Stories.”
McIntosh did not provide a link to that “open letter” and so readers remain unaware of the fact that in addition to BBC staff and presenters including Gary Lineker and Anita Rani, it was ‘signed’ by thirteen anonymous BBC employees.
Among the additional “media figures” who signed that letter published by ‘Artists for Palestine UK’ are the international desk editor at ‘The New Arab’ (the Qatari media outlet founded by former Balad MK Azmi Bishara who fled Israel in 2007 after having been charged with treason), a journalist and an executive manager at the same outlet, a writer for the Qatari media outlet Al Jazeera who used to work for the anti-Israel NGO ‘Human Rights Watch’, an Al Jazeera video editor who used to work for the BBC, an Al Jazeera producer and a journalist at another Qatar-linked outlet ‘Middle East Eye’.
One name on that list of signatories is however particularly interesting.
As was reported by the ITIC in 2017:
“Zaher Birawi is a Palestinian activist who lives in Britain affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. He has extensive experience in dispatching flotillas from Europe to the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of “breaking the siege” of the Gaza Strip. Currently he is the chairman of the so-called International Committee for Breaking the Siege on Gaza, an umbrella organization established to send flotillas to the Gaza Strip. He is also involved in disseminating anti-Israeli propaganda in Britain and is apparently also involved in anti-Israeli lawfare.”
Readers may recall that in addition to playing a role in convoys and flotillas, Zaher Birawi was also involved in the organisation of the 2012 ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ and in the organisation of the 2018 ‘Great Return March’. Birawi was previously director of the UK-based Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) – an organisation banned in Israel due to its Hamas affiliations. Birawi currently heads the London-based EuroPal Forum.
Notably, Birawi did not name the media outlet at which he is a “TV Producer and Presenter” on that list of signatories. As has been noted here in the past, in addition to his other roles Birawi also works for the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated ‘Al Hiwar’ satellite TV station which operates out of the UK and is supposedly regulated by OFCOM.
BBC audiences would of course have been better able to place that “open letter” into its appropriate context had they been informed that in addition to a football commentator, a rapper and an actress, it had also been signed by employees of a Muslim Brotherhood affiliated satellite TV station and several media outlets funded by the same Qatari state which harbours and sponsors the Hamas terrorist organisation, members of which include the father of the teen narrator of the BBC’s discredited documentary.
On February 28th, the BBC News website published another report mentioning that “open letter”. Titled “Questions still remain for BBC after damaging Gaza documentary” and written by culture and media editor Katie Razzall, the report tells readers that:
“For others who view the BBC as having anti-Palestinian bias, the decision to pull the documentary and apologise will confirm their beliefs. Artists For Palestine, which includes Gary Lineker, Anita Rani, Riz Ahmed and Miriam Margolyes, says the claims about the identity of the child’s father are “misleading” and that to conflate his “civil service role” with terrorism is “factually incorrect”.
The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians has lodged a formal complaint against the BBC for taking down the documentary and “suppressing the testimony of Palestinians”. It says the deputy minister for agriculture’s role involves “food production relating to crops, fishing and livestock”.”
As we see, Razzall uncritically amplified that downplaying of the teenager’s father’s Hamas links, making no effort to clarify to readers that – as noted by Camilla Tominey at the Telegraph – a Hamas deputy minister is indeed associated with terrorism due to the very fact that he belongs to a terrorist organisation.
“Yet the letter, addressed to Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general sought to justify the use of 14-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri as narrator by arguing his father was only part of the Hamas government in “a civil service role concerned with food production”. Dr Ayman Al-Yazouri was in fact Gaza’s deputy minister of agriculture having held other posts in education and planning. He’s been photographed draped in a Hamas flag. In 2023, he praised the Hamas terrorists who murdered four Israelis.
Regardless, the righteous salvo added: “Conflating such governance roles in Gaza with terrorism is both factually incorrect and dehumanising.”
Luvvies, the clue is in the words “Hamas minister”. I’ll translate that, since the BBC seemingly cannot be trusted to do so. This means “working for a terrorist organisation proscribed by the UK”.”
Notably, the claim that Dr Ayman Al-Yazouri is merely some sort of “UK educated technocrat” is also being amplified by the Qatar-linked media outlets represented on that list of signatories to the “open letter” – Al Jazeera, The New Arab and Middle East Eye.
Also notable is the fact that Katie Razzall apparently did not consider it necessary to provide her readers with any information about ‘The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians’ organisation that she quotes and promotes.
The writer of the ICJP’s letter to Tim Davie is Tayab Ali. As has been noted here on previous occasions when the BBC failed to adequately inform its audiences about that organisation which was set up in 2021, past clients represented by Tayab Ali have included Raed Salah, the family of a Hamas leader and the parents of an ISIS fighter. Ali was previously involved in an attempt to have Israel’s former foreign minister Tzipi Livni arrested.
The ICJP’s advisory board includes Sarah Leah Whitson (formerly of ‘Human Rights Watch’ and now at DAWN) and Wadah Khanfar (former director general of Al Jazeera). Other members of the ICJP’s advisory board include the founder of Bindmans LLP, Alan Duncan and Layla Moran MP. The ICJP engages in lawfare against Israel and in April 2022 it submitted a complaint to the ICC concerning a ‘journalist’ who was actually a Hamas operative and a building that housed Al Jazeera’s offices in the Gaza Strip which was used by Hamas for military purposes.
If BBC audiences are to understand this story fully, they clearly need to be informed of the “affiliations, funding and particular viewpoints” – and political agendas – of those objecting to the BBC’s decision to de-platform this documentary pending investigation. Clearly the BBC’s own coverage of that story has not provided its audiences with adequate information on that topic to date.
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