UK’s Conservative Party threatens BBC over Hamas ties
The UK’s Conservative Party this week threatened to withdraw its legislative support for the BBC after the network’s documentary on Gaza revealed its collusion with Hamas.
The film “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone” paints Hamas and its supporters as victims of Israel, which is portrayed as a genocidal aggressor. It is narrated by a 13-year-old boy who has since been revealed to be the son of senior Hamas member Ayman Alyazouri. The BBC denied its link to Hamas after it was exposed and tried to place the blame on Hoyo Films, a London-based production company, claiming that the work was outsourced to Hoyo Films.
However, the Daily Mail’s review of the BBC’s contract with Hoyo Films suggests the network’s claim is false and that the BBC was in fact heavily involved in the production of the film. One of the agreement’s clauses, for example, expressly says that “[p]ermission will be sought from the parents [or] guardians every time we film with them . . . the producers will act and work as we would in the UK.” Another says: “We will address editorial compliance issues as they arise by having regular updates and phone calls with the commissioning editor.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch issued a letter to BBC Director-General Tim Davie expressing her shock at the network’s “potential collusion with Hamas” and demanding a full investigation into its pro-Hamas coverage.
“It is now clear to me that you should commission a full independent inquiry to consider this and wider allegations of systemic BBC bias against Israel,” wrote Badenoch. “How could any programme from there be commissioned, without comprehensive work by the BBC to ensure that presenters or participants were – as far as possible – not linked to [Hamas’] appalling regime?” she added.
“Would the BBC be this naive if it was commissioning content from North Korea or the Islamic Republic of Iran?”
Badenoch called on Davie to launch an investigation into the BBC’s coverage of the Gaza war, “where Israeli interlocutors are robustly interrogated and Palestinian officials can speak with little challenge.”
"Such an investigation must consider allegations of potential collusion with Hamas, and the possibility of payment to Hamas officials," she wrote.
The BBC rakes in revenue from its British viewers, who are required by law to pay for its radio and television services. Households pay £169.50 ($215) for a license to view BBC programming in color or £57 ($72) for black-and-white programming. In her letter, Badenoch threatened to pull the Conservative Party’s support for the license fee system that fuels the network.
“The Conservative Party has supported the BBC in government, including through the current Charter which will end in 2027,” she said. “I cannot see how my party could support the continuation of the current licence fee-based system without serious action.”
The BBC’s pro-terror bias
The BBC has consistently avoided calling members of Islamic terror groups “terrorists,” instead referring to them as “freedom fighters,” “gunmen,” or “militants” and takes considerable care to favorably depict terror groups that target Israelis. In December, for example, the BBC published a story titled: “Five Gaza journalists killed in Israeli strike targeting armed group.” The “armed group” was Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an organization that has carried out dozens of attacks on Israelis—including several suicide bombings—and is designated a terror organization in the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, and the EU. The “five Gaza journalists” were really PIJ terrorists, a fact the BBC only acknowledged later in the article.
The BBC also uses sleights of hand to depict Gazans—who overwhelmingly support Hamas and even participate in attacks—in a favorable light. When including quotes from Gazans, for example, the network deliberately mistranslates the Arabic word al-yahud, which means “the Jews”, to “the Israelis” in an effort to gloss over Islamic antisemitism.
