In early May 2025 we asked “When will the BBC start reporting accurately and impartially on UNRWA?”, noting that:
“…for well over a year the BBC – including its BBC Verify department – has refrained from conducting any meaningful independent investigation into the topic of the participation of UNRWA employees in the October 7th massacre or the wider issue of UNRWA connections to proscribed terrorist organisations, opting instead to blandly amplify that UN agency’s denials and claims. […]
Clearly it is past time for the BBC to change its longstanding editorial policy of uncritical amplification of UN and UNRWA statements and to begin providing its audiences with accurate and impartial coverage of stories concerning issues relating to that UN agency.”
Later in the year we noted that:
“Six months on, that observation still stands.
Readers of a report published on the BBC News website on October 22nd, which is currently headlined “UN’s top court says Israel obliged to allow UN aid into Gaza”, likewise found no independent BBC reporting on the issue that is central to the case that is its subject matter: UNRWA’s lack of neutrality.”
Visitors to the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page on January 20th 2026 found filmed and written reports credited to John Sudworth:
“BBC visits UN compound Israel is demolishing in East Jerusalem”
“Israeli authorities demolish UN compound in occupied East Jerusalem”
The synopsis to the filmed report reads as follows:
“Israeli demolition teams have begun to tear down the headquarters of the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency, known as Unrwa, in occupied East Jerusalem.
Israel says it owns the land on which the compound stands and has accused Unrwa of being infiltrated by Hamas.
Unrwa says its premises are protected under international conventions and, while it admits that nine Unrwa staff may have been involved in the 7 October Hamas-led attacks, it says Israel hasn’t proven anything more extensive than that.” [emphasis added]
One of the more disappointing features of BBC coverage of Israel-related stories is its predictability. It therefore comes as no surprise to find that Sudworth has nothing whatsoever to tell his viewers and readers about the Jordanian invasion and occupation of parts of Jerusalem, even as he uses the partial term “occupied East Jerusalem” in the synopsis to his filmed report and in the headline and text of his written article.
In the filmed report itself, Sudworth tells BBC audiences that: [emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]
Sudworth: “…it [Israeli MFA] has repeated that accusation that UNRWA staff were involved in the October the 7th attacks, calling UNRWA a greenhouse for terrorism. […] and while it’s [UN] said that nine of its staff may have been involved in October the 7th, it denies that it has been more widely infiltrated by Hamas and said that Israel has not provided any evidence.”
In Sudworth’s written report, readers are told that: [emphasis added]
“Israel says it owns the land on which the compound stands and accuses Unrwa – the organisation that provides aid, education and healthcare to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza – of being infiltrated by Hamas.
The agency has denied the allegations and says its premises are protected under international conventions. […]
But Israel says that those protections have been made null and void because of its allegation that Unrwa staff were involved in the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks.
A statement from Israel’s foreign ministry confirming that the demolition was taking place called the organisation a “greenhouse for terrorism”.
The UN admits that nine Unrwa staff may have been involved on 7 October but it says Israel has not provided any evidence for its claim that the agency’s been more widely infiltrated by Hamas.”
In fact, the Israeli government had already published declassified documents in April 2025 showing that:
“So far, out of 12,521 UNWRA employees who worked in the Gaza Strip between 2023-2024, 1,462 (12%) were identified as members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) or other Palestinian terrorist factions. Of these, 1,157 (79%) are employed in education and teaching in Gaza, 79 (5%) work in medical services, 63 are employed in engineering and construction, and dozens more include administrators, social workers, security officers and other professionals.”
The same document notes that:
“Some of the information below, including CEM [captured enemy material] documents, was presented to the inquiries appointed by the UN Secretary General regarding UNRWA (the Colonna Review Group and the investigation by the UN’s Office for Internal Oversight Services – OIOS). However, both declined to assess the information or reach any findings regarding UNRWA staff’s involvement with terrorist groups in Gaza, claiming that the issue was outside the scope of the mandates given to them by the UN Secretary General.”
Israel has also published information concerning some of the UNRWA staff that Sudworth tells BBC audiences “may have” taken part in the October 7th invasion, massacre and kidnappings. One of them is UNRWA social worker Faisal Ali Mussalem Al-Naami.
As readers may recall, when the body of that hostage – Yonatan Samerano – was recovered by the IDF, the BBC had nothing to tell its audiences about his kidnapper’s UNRWA connection.
OMISSION AND INACCURACY IN BBC REPORT ON RECOVERY OF HOSTAGES’ BODIES
The question that clearly arises is why the BBC has failed to publish any independent investigation into the issue of UNRWA workers’ participation in the October 7th attacks as well as the broader topic of UNRWA’s links to terrorist organisations. The failure to do so means that over two years later, the BBC is still uncritically quoting and promoting statements from the UN that actively hinder audience understanding.
In his written report Sudworth also tells readers that:
“Israel’s action comes in the wake of a controversial law passed last year which banned Unrwa from operating in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem. […]
The law, passed in January 2025, severing all state contact with the refugee agency, had already been making itself felt.”
In fact the Knesset passed two laws relating to UNRWA in October 2024 which came into effect on January 30th 2025.
Sudworth later reports that: [emphasis added]
“The UN says more than 300 Unrwa staff have been killed in Israeli strikes and the organisation also faces an acute funding crisis, prompted in part by the Israeli allegations of complicity. Hundreds of staff have been laid off in recent weeks.”
He however ‘forgets’ to inform the BBC’s worldwide audiences that the “hundreds of staff…laid off” by UNRWA are – as reported by the Times of Israel – in fact not currently located in the Gaza Strip and no longer working there.
“The UN’s beleaguered agency for Palestinian refugees said that a “dire” financial crisis had forced it to remove hundreds of Gazan staff members who had left the territory from its payroll.
“On Tuesday, 571 local UNRWA staff, outside Gaza, were informed that they were being separated from the agency with immediate effect,” a spokesperson told AFP in an email last week. […]
All of the staff affected by last week’s announcement had originally worked in the Gaza Strip, but had managed to leave early in the war sparked by the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023. […]
Hamas on Wednesday slammed the decision as “unjust and a violation of the fundamental rights of these employees.””
The BBC’s editorial policy of relating to anything and everything that the UN says as though written in stone has compromised its reporting for years. In this report, Sudworth uncritically quotes both the UN Secretary General and the head of UNRWA but refrains from mentioning Philippe Lazzarini’s post October 7th meetings with terrorist organisations.
These two reports by John Sudworth clearly demonstrate that even in light of the additional evidence of UNRWA cooperation with terrorist organisations that has accumulated over the past two years, BBC journalists are apparently still not embarrassed by the corporation’s policy of uncritical amplification of that organisation’s talking points and its failure to investigate UNRWA’s terror links.
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Sudworth thinks that he can lie through his teeth because that is what his superiors want from him, including the BBC Muslim chairman Dr Samir Shah.
Any journalist worth his salt would check his facts and act impartially but following the BBC tradition this sadly does not apply to Israel but it did apply when he was in China!