By pulling Gaza film, BBC shows it cannot stand up to Israel

Back in 2003, the BBC aired a documentary on Israel’s nuclear programme, titled Israel’s Secret Weapon. Israeli leaders hit the roof and banned its officials from appearing on the BBC.

The documentary was spot on. Israel was embarrassed at having its nuclear arsenal exposed when Iraq was being invaded for a non-existent stash of weapons of mass destruction.

I asked a senior BBC official at the time how relations with Israel were panning out. “For a country that wants to influence news coverage, boycotting us is a strange way of doing things,” was the reply, seemingly unruffled by Israeli antics.

The BBC did not cave in, and Israel lifted its boycott.

Twenty-five years later, the BBC has lost any semblance of a spine on Israel. Last week, it pulled a documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone from its online streaming platform. The corporation said it would carry out a “due diligence” exercise before it could be allowed to air again.

The documentary was a nine-month depiction of life in Gaza under siege through the eyes and experiences of Palestinian children. 

The primary objection was that Abdullah, the main child narrator, was the son of Ayman Alyazouri, the deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza’s Hamas-run government. The BBC had amended the programme to acknowledge this, but then further accusations led to it being dropped. 

Cheerleaders for genocide

The pile-on was massive and appeared well orchestrated. The anti-Palestinian mob has targeted the messengers, not the message – a well-honed tactic. 

Nearly all those who castigated this documentary have shown scant regard for Palestinian lives and rights. Many have been cheerleaders for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including the Israeli ambassador, a representative for a state that shut down Al Jazeera’s local broadcasting and has been responsible for the killing of at least 170 journalists and media workers since the Gaza war began on 7 October 2023. 

A more ridiculous propagandist than ambassador Tzipi Hotovely would be hard to find. She claimed that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza when Gaza has been under siege for many years, not just the last 500 days.

One wonders how many had watched the documentary before it was pulled. It was far from being a propaganda vehicle for any party. It was not in the least bit pro-Hamas or anti-Israel, unless you are one of those who think that humanising Palestinian children constitutes a crime. It was barely political at all.

Criticism of Hamas from Palestinians in Gaza was frequent. Within the first minutes, one Palestinian woman exclaimed: “God damn you [Yahya] Sinwar,” referring to the late Hamas leader. A Palestinian man cried: “They killed our children, killed our women, while Sinwar is hiding under the ground.”

Another Palestinian woman remembered how people celebrated on 7 October, but admitted: “If we had known this would happen to us, no one would have celebrated.” One of the child narrators, 11-year-old Zakaria, blamed Hamas: “They caused all this misery.”

The documentary was of award-winning calibre, reflected in the excellent reviews in the Guardian, which gave it five stars, and the Times, which described it as “exceptional”. Even the Telegraph gave it four stars. It should be a crown jewel in the BBC’s documentary ecosystem.

The narrator, 13-year-old Abdullah Alyazouri, is an individual in his own right who articulated his own story. His daily lived experiences and testimony are valid. It should not matter who his father is.

Even then, his father is a technocrat in Gaza – a deputy minister of agriculture, not reflective of the upper-tier leadership of Hamas, both political and military. Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation in Britain.

Government interference

One wonders whether the BBC has reached out to the children at all. They thought their story would be aired; instead, they must now be wondering what they have done wrong, and why they are victims of a vicious pile-on. 

Serious questions must be asked as to why the British government got involved. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy weighed in, stating that she would be discussing the documentary with BBC bosses. 

This jeopardises the BBC’s independence and smacks of government interference in media. Nandy should have left this for BBC management to review. It exposes just how wedded this Labour government is to Israel. Given the government’s complicity in Israeli war crimes, it has a conflict of interest. 

But how will the BBC respond? It should reject any such interference from both the British government and the Israeli ambassador. 

It almost certainly will not, as its coverage over the last 16 months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been woeful. Last November, more than 100 BBC staff, including senior journalists, signed a letter to the corporation’s leadership criticising the coverage, stating: “Basic journalistic tenets have been lacking when it comes to holding Israel to account for its actions.”

If any interviewee mentions Israel’s genocide, BBC presenters spout out the Israeli position, with one asserting: “You know what I am going to have to say. I’m going to say Israel denies that.” 

Double standards

In a statement, the BBC said: “Since the transmission of our documentary on Gaza, the BBC has become aware of the family connections of the film’s narrator, a child called Abdullah.

“We’ve promised our audiences the highest standards of transparency, so it is only right that as a result of this new information, we add some more detail to the film before its retransmission. We apologise for the omission of that detail from the original film.”

The corporation added: “The film remains a powerful child’s eye view of the devastating consequences of the war in Gaza which we believe is an invaluable testament to their experiences, and we must meet our commitment to transparency.”

Compare this BBC spinelessness when dealing with Israel to its response to a controversy over a 2023 documentary titled India: The Modi Question. Indian authorities were incandescent at this examination of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s involvement in anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002 and banned it in India. They even tried to take the BBC to the high court in Delhi. The BBC, unlike with Israel, did not back down.

The BBC is an extraordinary success story, known the world over. This reputation was built on first-class journalism and a commitment to impartiality. Many of its journalists remain first class, but the upper tiers of management have failed on the network’s Gaza coverage, appearing more intent on appeasing anti-Palestinian critics than on defending top-notch journalism.

Would the BBC consider for one moment killing a documentary because a narrator or camera operator was a relative of an Israeli settler, a soldier who might have committed war crimes in Gaza, or a politician guilty of inciting those war crimes – even genocide?

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Sunna Files Website