Over the years, BBC content has included quotes from, interviews with and profiles of the Hamas co-founder and leader Mahmoud al Zahar (also Mahmoud Zahar), some of which remain available online to this day.
In January 2006, the BBC News website published a profile which describes al Zahar as “one of Hamas’ ideological leaders”. In 2008 al Zahar took part in the Qatar Foundation sponsored ‘Doha Debates’ which were at the time televised by BBC World News. In February 2010 al Zahar was the guest interviewee in an edition of the BBC TV and radio programme ‘Hardtalk’.
Later the same year the ITIC reported on an antisemitic book (still available on Amazon) written by al Zahar and published in Algeria in 2008.
“Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar gave an anti-Semitic speech shown on November 5 [2010 – Ed.] on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV. In his speech, Al-Zahar reiterated the thesis (which was also the subject of his book) that Jews have “no future between nations”. Al-Zahar covered the long history of acts of murder and persecution against Jews and their expulsion from European countries. He claimed that the calamities that befell the Jews stemmed from their various characteristics (murder, theft, betrayal, etc.), presenting it as proof that the elimination of the State of Israel and the expulsion of the Jews from the entire territory of Palestine is a historic necessity dictated by reality.”
BBC journalists reporting from the Gaza Strip nevertheless continued to quote al Zahar in their reporting: for example Jon Donnison in 2012 and Yolande Knell in 2017. In January 2018 – over three years after he had made two more antisemitic speeches – al Zahar was once again platformed by ‘Hardtalk’, with a podcast version and a clip still remaining online.
HAMAS ‘HARDTALK’ INTERVIEW REBUTS BBC MESSAGING, PERPETUATES INACCURACIES – PART ONE
HAMAS ‘HARDTALK’ INTERVIEW REBUTS BBC MESSAGING, PERPETUATES INACCURACIES – PART TWO
In January 2025 the BBC News website included al Zahar in a report titled “Hamas: What has happened to its most prominent leaders?”. The BBC’s profile makes no mention of al Zahar’s antisemitic ideology or the 2022 media interview in which he stated that “planet earth will come under [a system] with no Zionism, no treacherous Christianity”.
As recently reported by the ITIC, al Zahar had published another book in 2020.
“The book Hatred of the Jews – A Historical Legacy, which al-Zahar published in 2020 and copies of which were found by IDF forces during the war in the Gaza Strip, summarizes the core elements of his antisemitic doctrine. He described the Jews as a base, greedy, immoral, cruel, corrupt and treacherous, using blood libels and conspiracies based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Al-Zahar also justified the Holocaust, while claiming that close ties existed between Nazi Germany and the “Zionists,” stemming from their “identical interests.”
The ITIC notes that the book “was published in the Gaza Strip by the Palestinian ministry of culture as part of the national program for Palestinian libraries.”
The ITIC’s report also describes an additional document found during ground operations in the Gaza Strip.
“A Hamas propaganda handbook seized during ground operations in Gaza has laid bare the terror organization’s calculated strategy: present a sanitized image to Western audiences while maintaining core antisemitic ideology in Arabic-language materials distributed internally. […]
The document is a training booklet titled “Guide for the Palestinian Spokesman in the World” from 2022, which instructs the terror organization’s spokesmen to avoid using antisemitic expressions so these will not harm persuasion attempts in Western countries. The document was presented as part of research by Dr. Uri Roost from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.”
A BBC profile of Hamas from 2021 tells readers that: [emphasis added]
“Hamas’s charter defines historic Palestine – including present-day Israel – as Islamic land and it rules out any permanent peace with the Jewish state.
The document also repeatedly makes attacks on Jews as a people, drawing charges that the movement is anti-Semitic.
In 2017, Hamas produced a new policy document that softened some of its stated positions and used more measured language.
There was no recognition of Israel, but it did formally accept the creation of an interim Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem – what are known as pre-1967 lines.
The document also stresses that Hamas’s struggle is not with Jews but with “occupying Zionist aggressors”. Israel said the group was “attempting to fool the world”.”
A BBC backgrounder currently dated 14 October 2025 and titled “What is Hamas and why is it fighting with Israel in Gaza?” has nothing at all to tell the corporation’s audiences about the Hamas charter (which the BBC knows full well was not replaced by the 2017 policy document) or Hamas’ underlying antisemitic ideology.
Earlier this month CAMERA Arabic finally secured a correction to a BBC Arabic report from 2021 which failed to adequately explain Hamas’ antisemitism. As reported by the Telegraph:
“The original version of the BBC Arabic article acknowledged that Hamas was seeking the destruction of the state of Israel, but failed to make explicit the anti-Semitic philosophy at the root of this aim – suggesting only that some critics accused it of Jew hate. […]
…BBC Arabic has now added to the text an additional explanation, stating: “The 1988 [Hamas] charter equates between Judaism as a religion and the Zionist movement, emphasising that the heart of the conflict is religious, with the Jews as a whole.
“[It is] relying on Hadiths attributed to Prophet Muhammad and a renowned forged document which goes back to the 19th century called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which has long been used to spread anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. The Charter also calls for jihad and rejects any political settlement.””
The fact that it took four years for the BBC to finally amend that particular report speaks volumes in itself but clearly the BBC’s English language services need to similarly ensure that they provide explanations of the antisemitic ideology embraced by Hamas and its representatives to whom the corporation regularly provides a platform. The chronic failure to provide that context deprives BBC audiences of information essential for full understanding of the conflict that is the topic of daily BBC cross-platform coverage.
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