Two recent reports published by The Times have referred to a report complied by CAMERA Arabic.
“A report by a media monitoring organisation follows the leak of a dossier by the BBC’s external adviser on editorial guidelines who accused the broadcaster of “painting Israel as the aggressor” during the war in Gaza. It names staff who are alleged to have expressed sympathy for Hamas or criticised Israel in social media posts. It has been compiled by the UK branch of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera), a pro-Israel media-monitoring organisation with headquarters in the US.”
That report is available below.
Systemic Anti-Israel Bias among BBC Arabic staff
Foreword:
This report by CAMERA Arabic documents BBC Arabic’s continued provision of a platform to certain journalists covering the war between Israel and Hamas, despite evidence of clear anti-Israel bias on their social media accounts.
Most of those journalists have continued working at the BBC without any apparent sanction having been taken against them even after the broadcaster was made aware of their bias, thereby undermining the principle of BBC impartiality. The many transgressions that have occurred since they were first exposed indicate that the claim that journalists can somehow separate their work from hateful statements they make on social media has very little basis.
1. As the executive producer of “Egypt Mean Time”, Mahmoud Sheleib continued to platform contributors who commented on air about Israeli and Jewish affairs after having made antisemitic statements on other channels, as well as on their own social media accounts.
2. Evidently lacking the basic journalistic skill of distinguishing between combatants and civilians, Sally Nabil nevertheless reported on the topic of alleged civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon, including in English. In one case in August 2025, she covered the “daily suffering” of a Gazan journalist, Wesam Abu Zeid, who – like her – had expressed support for the murder of Israeli civilians in social media.
3. Layla Bashar al-Kloub‘s story concerning “killed journalists” in the Gaza Strip carefully removed all mentions of their Hamas-affiliated workplaces, as can be seen by comparing her story to the Committee for Protection of Journalists report on which it was based.
4. Feras Kilani published two different versions of the same interview with Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk, with the Arabic one catering to its perceived audience by minimising Hamas atrocities. Notably, although Kilani was detained by IDF forces in Syria in early 2025, that did not deter BBC Arabic’s management from sending him to Israel to report from there on the war with Iran.
5. In her capacity as BBC Arabic’s “correspondent for religious affairs”, Sanaa Elkhoury is apparently precluded from covering Israel, the world’s largest Jewish community. A professional correspondent of religion could have prevented many of the errors that BBC Arabic repeatedly publishes concerning Jews and Judaism, such as the notion that observant Jews consider spitting on Christians a holiday ritual or the claim that the ancient Temple in Jerusalem is a Jewish “belief” rather than a proven fact.
6. Presenter Nour Eddine Zorgui regularly engages in spreading misinformation when supposedly challenging interviewees, for example with the claim that the UK never outlawed Hamas or that Hamas only began killing civilians following the 1994 mass shooting in Hebron.
7. While reporting the stories behind Palestinian fatalities in Judea & Samaria, correspondent Eman Eriqat repeatedly omitted details about their past convictions of killing Israeli civilians, as well as their affiliations with UK-proscribed terrorist organisations.
8. A story by Marie-Jose al-Azzi, Soha Ibrahim and Muath al-Khatib whitewashed a group of Palestinian medical staff as “credible eyewitnesses” although they repeatedly posted antisemitic and violent posts on social media.
9. Although the BBC acknowledged that Maysaa Abdul Khalek should be “challenged” with regard to her description of Jewish communities inside Israel’s internationally recognised territory as “imperialist colonies”, she continued to use the same language without interruption.
Such systemic bias, including support for violence against civilians, did not emerge as a result of the current conflict; it existed long before Hamas’ massacre on October 7 but has been amplified by the events.
Below is evidence compiled by CAMERA Arabic concerning the BBC’s failure to address the issues concerning BBC employees and freelancers.
Below is evidence demonstrating bias and the BBC’s failure to act.
BBC Employees:
Eman Eriqat
Listed on LinkedIn as the BBC’s Palestinian Territories Correspondent and described by CAMERA as BBC Arabic’s West Bank correspondent. During the Israel-Hamas conflict of May 2021, she liked one of her father’s tweets expressing support for Hamas.
The BBC enforced no sanctions and she continues to work for the corporation, reporting from Judea & Samaria (omitting details about Palestinian fatalities’ convictions and affiliations) despite evidence of her anti-Israel bias.
Feras Kilani
A Senior Special Correspondent at the BBC, reporting for both its English and Arabic services. Kilani, who was raised in Syria and has received a UK citizenship, still described himself in 2020 as a “Palestinian refugee”, claiming that his family was forced to leave Loubia in 1948 – twenty-eight years before he was born.
In 2021, he described the UAE’s message of goodwill to Israel on Israeli Independence Day as “hard”, stating he “still has a piece of land there” because “my grandmother told me and I believe her”. Despite such clear indications of bias, the BBC continued to employ Kilani and allowed him to cover the current conflict, sending him to Israel to report on the war with Iran.
In November 2023 Kilani wrote two versions of a story that presented differing accounts of the October 7 massacre, leading to accusations of “minimising” Hamas atrocities. The BBC imposed no sanctions.
Layla Bashar al-Kloub
A Senior Journalist at BBC News Arabic since 2020. Before joining the BBC, al-Kloub demonstrated clear anti-Israel bias, posting in 2016 “The Zionist entity does not recognise international law or agreement… they are the terrorists not us”. She also referred to murderers of Israeli civilians as “martyrs” as recently as 2019.
Nearly a year into her employment with the BBC, she again took to social media to post a tribute to Muna Hawwa, a Palestinian presenter and Holocaust denier, asking for Allah to grant her strength. The BBC appeared to have taken no action. Al-Kloub took a break from the BBC to pursue a master’s degree before rejoining the corporation to cover the current conflict. One of her stories systematically omits Hamas affiliations from the workplaces of “killed journalists”.
Mahmoud Sheleib
BBC producer of Egypt Mean Time, placed under investigation in October 2023 for seemingly mocking a woman whose grandmother was abducted by Hamas. In a social media post, Sheleib suggested that the woman shared details about her grandmother in order to have her killed by Hamas and to receive an inheritance.
He has also posted the following text on X: “[I see] In front of me on Al Jazeera, their so-called civilians are standing armed alongside the police and shooting because they basically don’t have any civilians among the youth. This is what the ignorant often don’t know. I am in favour of fighting them with love, yes, this is the solution”, followed by a laughing emoji.
No sanctions were enforced and Sheleib remains listed as a producer of Egypt Mean Time, which regularly discusses the conflict and invites problematic guests to talk about Israel related affairs.
Marie-Jose Al Azzi
A BBC staff reporter based in Lebanon since 2019. In 2022, Honest Reporting flagged a 2018 post by Al Azzi, in which she described Israel as a “Terrorist Apartheid State”.
Despite that, the BBC took no action against Al Azzi, allowing her to continue working for the organisation. In 2024, Al Azzi was credited in a BBC report in which hospital medics “described being tortured an abused by Israeli forces”. The report, however, failed to mention that the medics were known antisemites and long-time supporters of Hamas.
Nour Eddine Zorgui
BBC Arabic anchor. According to the Jerusalem Post, Zorgui insinuated that Jewish students in the UK had been instructed by Israel to “pursue a campaign of censorship”. He also spread misinformation about Hamas on numerous occasions, including describing Hamas as a resistance movement and denying reports of rapes during the October 7 attacks.
Sally Nabil
Bilingual Correspondent for BBC Arabic and BBC English from 2009-2012 and again from 2014 until the present. Nabil was placed under investigation in 2023 and again in 2024 after liking over a dozen tweets that described the October 7 Attacks as “a morning of hope” and referred to Israel as an “occupation state”. In December 2023 she also liked a tweet making the unsubstantiated allegation that large numbers of Jews from around the world were buying land in Cyprus with the aim of seizing the territory for Israel.
Despite the investigations, Nabil faced no sanctions and continues to report on the conflict. In August 2025, she made a video item about the ”everyday suffering” of likeminded journalist Wesam Abu Zeid, who – like her – has also expressed support for targeting Israel’s Jewish civilians.
Salma Khattab
Khattab, a Cairo based journalist who joined the BBC in 2022, was placed under investigation along with several other BBC Arabic colleagues for liking a tweet on October 7 that appeared to refer to Hamas as freedom fighters.
Once again, the BBC took no action. Khattab returned to reporting on the conflict just a few months later and continues to do so today.
Sanaa Al-Khoury
Beirut-based religious affairs correspondent for BBC Arabic since 2019. On October 7, Khoury tweeted that “Israel’s prestige is crying in the corner” and liked comments about sweets being handed out in celebration of the attack.
The BBC imposed no sanctions and Khoury has continued to cover the war and also to work as a correspondent for religious affairs at a time when BBC Arabic has made many errors which reflect ignorance about Judaism and Jews.
Soha Ibrahim
A former BBC reporter, Ibrahim liked a series of posts documenting celebrations of the massacre and tweeted about “miracles” on October 7th. She also liked a post in support of Hamas’s former spokesperson Abu Obeida and a video on X of Palestine Action activists slashing an oil painting of Arthur Balfour.
In 2024, Ibrahim was credited in a BBC report in which hospital medics “described being tortured an abused by Israeli forces”. The report, however, failed to mention that the medics were known antisemites and long-time supporters of Hamas.
According to her Linkedin account, she is no longer working for the BBC as of this year.
Nada Abdelsamad
A Beirut-based programmes editor at BBC Arabic who retweeted a video on October 7 of Israelis hiding from terrorists. The video was captioned: “settlers hiding inside a tin container in fear of the Palestinian resistance warriors”. Abdelsamad resigned in November 2023 after refusing to cooperate with an internal investigation.
Abbas Srour
A BBC Arabic journalist, he has publicly expressed his amusement in relation to an antisemitic joke on X. The BBC imposed no sanctions on him.
Amr Fekry
A website founded by Amr Fekry – at the time a sports correspondent and pundit at BBC Arabic – posted warm wishes to “Palestinian brethren in their war against the occupying entity” the day after the atrocities.
Freelance Journalists:
Ahmad Alagha
A freelance journalist to whom BBC Arabic has given airtime to report from within Gaza, Alagha has previously posted antisemitic content on his social media account. He wrote that Israelis “are not human beings” and that the Jews are “devils”. After the Telegraph published CAMERA Arabic’s findings about him for the second time, ties between Alagha and the BBC were cut.
Ahmad Qannan
A Gaza-based journalist who has reported from the ground for BBC Arabic expressed his hope that a wounded Israeli civilian would succumb to his wounds from a terror attack. Since being exposed, he has not appeared on the BBC.
Dina Abi Saab
A former France24 correspondent who resigned from the corporation after refusing to to sign its code of ethics. She has previously celebrated rocket attacks on Israel’s civilian population and cheering them on with a “resistance” hashtag in social media posts. More recently, she has publicly expressed her support for South Africa’s genocide claim against Israel in the ICJ. She was interviewed on the BBC this summer from Geneva.
Mayssa Abdul Khalek
A Lebanon-based freelance journalist used by the BBC as a commentator who has referred to Israel as an “imperialist colony” (with the BBC failing to challenge her on that, despite having stated that it would) and described Israeli cities as “occupied Palestinian territories”.
It later emerged that the BBC continued to use Khalek as a commentator despite her having previously called for “death to Israel” and defended a journalist who called for Jews to be barbecued.
Muath Al Khatib
A freelance photojournalist based in Jerusalem who was employed by the BBC despite posting a complaint on Facebook about the number of Jews he encountered in Thailand. This led former MP Andrew Percy to accuse the BBC of being institutionally Israel-phobic, arguing that it consistently employs reporters who appear to be openly hostile to Israel.
In 2024, Al Khatib was credited in a BBC report in which hospital medics “described being tortured an abused by Israeli forces.” The report, however, failed to mention that the medics were known antisemites and long-time supporters of Hamas.
Samer Elzaenen
A freelance journalist who has appeared on BBC Arabic more than a dozen times since the conflict began and who previously called for Jews to burned “as Hitler did, but this time we won’t have a single one of you left”. A BBC spokesman clarified that he was a freelancer rather than a BBC employee and that the corporation had been unaware of his social media activity.
Despite the Telegraph’s reporting, BBC Arabic decided to re-employ Elzaenen just a few months later, describing him as “an expert commentator on the conflict in Gaza”. When contacted again on that matter, the BBC admitted that “Although he is not a BBC journalist, and quoting him does not mean we endorse his views, we should not have used him in this way”, thereby admitting that he is unfit not only as a reporter but also as an eyewitness.
Osman Ahmed
A former producer who worked on the World Service’s Newsday and the BBC’s breakfast radio show for listeners in Africa and Asia, as well as for BBC Arabic. On his Instagram account, Ahmed has called for Israel “to be dismantled” and shared a post suggesting that Jewish people “are not meant to have a land”. Other posts on his account include one implying that Jews were to blame for the destruction of Gaza and a video with a sweating emoji showing airline passengers fleeing towards a shelter during an Iranian missile strike with the caption “Chaos at Ben Gurion Airport as Israelis scramble to flee ‘the promised land’”. When the BBC was contacted, it replied that “Ahmed is no longer engaged by the BBC”.
Wesam Afifa
Described by the BBC as a “journalistic writer” and “political analyst”, Afifa was regularly interviewed about the conflict in Gaza. However, until September of last year, Afifa was in fact editor in chief of Hamas-controlled Al-Aqsa TV (since 2017) and of Hamas associated “Al-Risalah” website (since 2006). Since the exposure of his past positions, he has not been seen on BBC programmes.
Aya Hossam
A former “broadcast journalist at BBC Arabic”, she liked a post on X saying: “Every member of the Zionist entity served in the army at some point in his life, whether men or women, and they all had victims of explicit violations… This term “civilians” applies to the animals and pets that live there and they are not seriously at fault”.
She also retweeted a message which included the phrase “the Zionist must know that he will live as a thief and a usurper”. Following the exposure of her posts, the BBC said that it would no longer use her services.
