The BBC has been accused of pushing “jaw-dropping propaganda” for Hamas by downplaying the brutal treatment of Israeli hostages in a “puff piece” for the terror group’s hostage unit. The Telegraph has the story.
The Telegraph can reveal that BBC Arabic has now been forced to edit a video clip featuring the “shadow unit” of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigade, which it described as “guarding” kidnapped Israeli hostages.
The video featured a scene of female Israeli hostages who were reported to “thank” their captors for the treatment they received.
BBC Arabic is already facing claims it has given a platform to hate and terror. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative Party leader, said it was “fomenting extremism and misleading audiences”.
Her comments came after the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera) published a 33-page report claiming BBC Arabic was providing a “platform to terrorists”. …
In a video published at the end of January, BBC Arabic described the Al-Qassam Brigade as “responsible for securing the hostages” and in the video militants were said to be “guarding the Israeli hostages”. …
The video from January 30th said that Al-Qassam had shown footage of “soldiers as they thank the unit’s personnel for the ‘good treatment’ while in custody”.
The broadcaster later updated the report to remove the section which claimed hostages had received good treatment and added evidence of Hamas abuse of those held after a complaint from Camera. …
Danny Cohen, the former director of BBC Television, described the latest concerns over the organisation’s reporting of the conflict as propaganda for the terror group.
“This is a jaw-dropping piece of propaganda – a puff piece on war criminals who have executed, starved, beaten and sexually assaulted the hostages that Hamas kidnapped on October 7th,” Mr Cohen said.
“The shadow unit are not ‘guards’ tasked with keeping hostages safe, they are monstrous terrorists who have committed unspeakable crimes.”
Worth reading in full.
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Your readers deserve better than this. They should be told that Camera is a pro -Zionist front organisation. Check out their dubious history on Wikepedia.
Check out Wikipedia on any Wikipedia entry you like (good, bad and indifferent). Check out the BBC on any broadcast or webpage you like (ditto), including the self-identifying BBC Verify.
The question is – Does the British Broadcasting Commentariat strive for impartiality, or was it captured decades ago by the usual suspects?
BBC license payers deserve better than this.
Wikipedia? Are you for real?
Wikipedia is as compromised as the BBC on anything remotely political, from bios of politicians to climate change. It’s simply not a reliable source of information on such topics.
So you object to someone telling an alternative story that upsets certain nasty little anti semitic mindsets?
https://camera-uk.org/2025/03/16/bbc-news-coverage-of-terrorism-in-israel-february-2025/
The BBC gas been shamelessly pro hamas ever since the oct 7th atrocity.
Break it up and sell off the parts. The British people need to be spared this vile state broadcaster (and what does it say about the state of the state that that is the sewage it chooses to broadcast?)
Been shamelessly pro Muslim for about 25 years or more. And communist. Close ot down!
Does anyone actually believe this?
You’ll need to be more specific…
You might have seen a very similar sort of picture in 2020, without the weapons (in the UK at least) & the BBC didn’t bat an eyelid either way. To be fair, I don’t read or watch anything on MSM, so I’m not qualified to comment per se, but this seems, on the face of it, an inclination to show one side as evil, twisted, villainous thugs and the other as innocence personified. Surely, by now, we are all, mostly, growing tired of this kind of ‘divide and conquer’ content? I suspect I’m wrong though, anything that paints the ‘wrong think’ side as awful despots and the ‘right think’ side is truly *heroic* and *just* tends to get juices flowing of those who fail to see beyond it. Please don’t get wound up by this comment or write a lengthy smarmy 77th reply, it is highly unlikely I will read it but then again a 77th reply isn’t for the poster, it’s for the audience..innit?
BBC has been a disgrace for a few decades.
‘BBC guilty of State sponsored propaganda.’
I’m shocked. That’s a headline I didn’t see coming.
Under the heading “Israeli agenda prevails”, Tim Llewellyn writes for The Electronic Intifada (https://electronicintifada.net/content/revealed-secret-bbc-report-found-no-evidence-anti-israel-bias/50470):
The Palestinians just could not get it right. When three women prisoners of war were released they looked, to western eyes, including those of the BBC, fit and well fed. But when three male captives were freed, looking “gaunt”, this was evidence of Palestinian cruelty.
No-one asked if Palestinians in Gaza had lost weight. No-one asked how any human might appear after 15 months underground during incessant siege and bombardment.
When four Israeli bodies were returned in coffins, in a solemn ceremony, complaints about the alleged indignity of the occasion framed much of the BBC coverage. There was no reminder of the indignity of the many thousands of Palestinian bodies that remained under the Gaza rubble, or of the shattered remains we had seen almost daily, for 15 months, Gaza’s bereaved carrying in shawls, blankets and plastic bags.
Israel’s propaganda machine sets the agenda. Most recently we have seen the BBC fall hook, line and sinker for the Israeli allegations that three hostages, a mother and her two children, were fatally assaulted by Palestinian fighters, not in Israeli bombing raids, a version of events that was backed by nothing but Israeli say-so.
We have heard and seen far less about the freed Palestinians. The BBC has not told us much about the torture, beatings, humiliations and often deaths of Palestinian prisoners. BBC reporting of the notable case of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, which Israeli forces destroyed a few days after Christmas 2024, did not mention the evidence from the lawyer who visited him that he had been chained, tortured and beaten.
In the meantime, Israel has killed over 150 Palestinians in Gaza since the cease-fire, because Israel has never abided by any cease-fire. After the cease-fire in Lebanon on 27th November, occupying Israeli troops used bulldozers, dynamite and artillery to flatten entire areas in the south which had previously been protected by Hezbollah fighters. Beginning on 21st January, just days after having to pause their devastating war on Gaza, Israeli soldiers forcefully expelled at least 40,000 Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank.
On 25th February, Israel launched a massive aerial assault on Syria’s capital of Damascus, as well as other cities in the south of the country. In the meantime, the West’s HTS mob is doing what it does best, by executing everyone it comes across in numerous villages along the coast.
Just why do so many people in the West unquestioningly support Israel?
Your last sentence: if you have to ask that question you don’t have the intellectual equipment to understand the answer.
I am genuinely interested to learn what makes my down-tickers tick, so to speak. Is there any part of my text you consider to be incorrect? Have you ever been to Israel? Do you know any Israelis? There is no reason to be insulting: we cannot all think the same way – that would anyway be too boring.
Last sentence. Maybe it’s because of brainwashing, perfect illustration of it on this board. Caused by-
AIPAC.
MSM controlled by – guess who.
The RPTB (Rockefellers apartHollywood – you’ve been Spielberged.
Yes, thank you. I am just surprised that many DS readers apparently watch and believe BBC news. I stopped watching or reading mainstream media ages ago because it was clearly so biased. Now I just listen every now and then, primarily to learn in which direction the latest propaganda is taking people. But do DS readers actually believe this stuff?
Britons Broadcasting Communism employ Arabs in BBC Arabic. So they’ll all be Muslim zealots. What do we expect.
Remigration! Now.
“ BBC Arabic described the Al-Qassam Brigade as “responsible for securing the hostages” and in the video militants were said to be “guarding the Israeli hostages”. …”
If only the concentration camp SS personnel had thought of that defence at Nuremberg.
If the BBC is “shamelessly pro-Hamas”, as has previously been commented, would it not be fair to say that there are many on this message board who are shamelessly pro the Israeli Likud government and it’s actions?