The Jewish Chronicle recently published a report about the BBC’s rejection of a Stage 2 complaint made by CAMERA Arabic.
“Anas al-Sharif was killed in an IDF strike in Gaza City last August while working as a journalist and videographer for Qatar state broadcaster Al Jazeera Arabic. Before the current war, however, he worked for Hamas’s media team in Gaza.
That key detail was treated differently across the BBC’s main English news website and its Arabic-language service.
In English, the BBC stated that al-Sharif had previously worked for Hamas. In Arabic, the corporation instead presented this as an Israeli allegation which had been “strongly denied” by Al Jazeera. […]
But more than 21 hours before the Arabic-language article was published, the English-language BBC website had updated a live page with verified information that al-Sharif had indeed belonged to Hamas.
The headline stated: “BBC understands Sharif worked for a Hamas media team in Gaza before current conflict.””
That live page entry by Jon Donnison (along with additional BBC reporting) was previously discussed here:
BBC JOURNALISTS CONTINUE TO COMPROMISE THEIR OWN PROFESSION
As we documented at the time, nearly ten months earlier the IDF had published documents found in the Gaza Strip showing that al-Sharif and additional Al Jazeera journalists were members of terrorist organisations. While Al Jazeera denied those findings, as noted by journalist Yaakov Lappin:
“…it is important to understand that only members of Hamas’s military wing, the jihadist armed faction that conducted the October 7 massacre, fired tens of thousands of rockets at Israeli cities, and works to destroy Israel in order to build an Islamic caliphate in its place, receive Hamas military ID numbers. Al-Sharif had one of those.”
The ITIC’s December 2025 report on Gaza Strip journalists belonging to terrorist organisations describes al-Sharif (p.42) as follows:
Some of al-Sharif’s social media posts from before and after October 7th 2023 appear in documents from a US District Court (p.38 – 42). Following al-Sharif’s death, an IDF spokesman stated that current intelligence had confirmed that he was an active Hamas member at the time.
Nevertheless, as the Jewish Chronicle notes, in one of its responses to the complaint submitted by CAMERA Arabic:
“The BBC added that “prior professional or political affiliations do not necessarily disqualify an individual from being recognised as a journalist”.”
The BBC’s rejection of that complaint about the differences in reporting by its English and Arabic language services is all the more interesting considering that it parted ways with a member of the BBC Verify team due to his public criticism of its coverage of that story.
“Mohamed Shalaby was an [sic] frequent BBC contract worker for seven years before his most recent assignment ended abruptly last month. Shalaby was embedded at BBC Verify, the flagship fact-checking initiative, […]
On August 10, Shalaby was at work when Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike. The Egyptian filmmaker tells Deadline that he was one of the first BBC News reporters to jump on the story, helping organize an interview with Al Jazeera’s managing editor, Mohamed Moawad. But the day after Al-Sharif’s death, Shalaby was anxious about the veracity of BBC News’ own reporting on the journalist’s background.
Correspondent Jon Donnison reported on a BBC News live blog that Al-Sharif “worked for a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current conflict.” This claim was amplified on other BBC platforms, as well as being carried by other outlets, including CNN, but Shalaby was concerned that the statement was unverified and not transparently sourced. Israel has previously claimed Al-Sharif led a terrorist cell in Hamas, but his death was condemned by the United Nations Human Rights Office, Reporters Without Borders, the Foreign Press Association, and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Shalaby raised questions with his superiors about Donnison’s statement and even made an official editorial complaint, […]
After deciding that he had exhausted internal processes, Shalaby went public, writing on Instagram Stories: “BBC Verify claims in this piece that Anas ‘was working for a Hamas media team’. This line is NOT verified and not sourced and is not aligned with Verify editorial standards.” In other Instagram updates, he re-posted messages that were critical of Western media coverage of Palestinian journalists being killed in Gaza, one of which accused Israel of murder.”
In none of Shalaby’s numerous media interviews did he claim to have tried to verify the documentation publicised by the IDF or to find any other evidence concerning al-Sharif’s connections to Hamas. The fact that Al Jazeera denied those connections and assorted organisations condemned al-Sharif’s death appears to have sufficed.
In an interview with Al Jazeera in October 2025, Shalaby made his underlying position very clear.
Shalaby: “Every day, I was looking at footage coming out of Gaza […] And we were seeing this hard, irrefutable evidence of war crimes, genocide […] We would go to our editors and we’d want to call this for what it is, genocide or a war crime. And we were being shut down or being told “No, we don’t know this yet. How do we know this?” […]
The worst thing that you could be in coverage [of] Gaza is a Palestinian man. This is sort of, you know, the lowest sort of grade of being granted any form of sympathy or nuance or understanding because the first assumption would be, oh, are they Hamas or not?”
During the time that he worked for BBC Verify, Mohammed Shalaby co-produced a filmed report in which audiences were told that the corporation could not verify that a tunnel ran under a hospital in the Gaza Strip. He also produced a filmed BBC Verify report about a strike on a Hamas leader hiding in another hospital and contributed to a BBC Verify report on demolitions which promotes the notion of ‘war crimes’. Shalaby also contributed to reports promoting claims of killings near GHF aid distribution sites.
The fact that a member of the BBC Verify team worked on supposedly factual reports while holding the underlying, but inexpert, assumption that “war crimes” and “genocide” were taking place – and dismissing connections to Hamas as “nuance” – certainly goes a long way towards explaining some of the content produced by that department.
This story also highlights once again BBC journalists’ disinterest in denouncing the exploitation of their profession by terrorists or in drawing a line between legitimate media organisations and those that knowingly employ terror operatives and promote the agendas of terrorist groups.
Related Articles:
THE CONVERSATION MISSING ON SLAIN AL JAZEERA REPORTER ANAS AL-SHARIF
JOURNALISTIC CASUALTY: WHEN HAMAS DOCUMENTS AREN’T SUBSTANTIATION
BBC complaints procedures fail yet again – what can one expect from an anti Jewish public body financed by the UK tax payers and directed by the Arabist in the UK FCDO (Foreign Office) and the PM Starmer government
Another excellent and forensic report. For some reason I found this one particularly sinister and sent it to a couple of people. Why don’t more Jewish and Israel friendly journalists pick up on these awful failures of the BBC and their allies. Camera have done the hard work so it wouldn’t take much. I know that the public has very little idea of how bad it is. It helps to normalise further the hundreds of violent antisemitic attacks happening every week in this country, not counting the online hate of course.