How the British broadcaster made the terror group its silent partner in Gaza.
By Adam Lebor
What little we do know about the film’s methodology comes from an article on the BBC website—since removed—by Jamie Roberts, the independent British filmmaker who collaborated on the project with Yousef Hammash, a Gaza-born Palestinian, of London-based Hoyo Films. Roberts wrote that he and Hammash co-directed the film from London, using two local cameramen, who they directed via phone and WhatsApp. Roberts mentioned Israel’s restrictions on international journalists entering Gaza but not Abdullah’s connections to Hamas or Hamas’s censorship. Instead he presented the narratives as freely gathered. (Attempts to contact Hoyo Films were unsuccessful.)
As for the BBC, when controversy erupted it tried to blame Hoyo Films. On February 19, two days after the program premiered, the BBC added contextual detail to the film’s opening: “The narrator of this film is 13-year-old Abdullah. His father has worked as a deputy agriculture minister for the Hamas-run government in Gaza. The production team had full editorial control of filming with Abdullah.” An additional statement on the BBC website noted, “We followed all of our usual compliance procedures in the making of this film, but we had not been informed of this information by the producers when we complied and then broadcast the film.”
This “dog ate my homework” excuse, of course, raised more questions. If the BBC had followed all of its “compliance procedures,” how did senior executives—and films about such sensitive subjects as the war in Gaza get vetted by multiple editors—not know that the key narrator was the son of a Hamas minister?
This “dog ate my homework” excuse, of course, raised more questions. If the BBC had followed all of its “compliance procedures,” how did senior executives—and films about such sensitive subjects as the war in Gaza get vetted by multiple editors—not know that the key narrator was the son of a Hamas minister?
Two days after adding this threadbare “correction,” the network finally decided it could no longer stand behind the documentary and withdrew it from broadcast.
This still-developing scandal might just be the biggest ever for the BBC involving its coverage of the Middle East, and one that could threaten the flow of funds upon which it depends. Badenoch has declared war on the BBC’s license fee, the mandatory annual payment of $214 that everyone in Britain who watches live TV pays. “I cannot see how my party could support the continuation of the current license fee–based system without serious action by the BBC management to prove the organization is committed to true impartiality,” she wrote to the BBC’s Davie.
The network and its apologists have deflected criticism in the past, claiming good-faith errors on the part of its journalists and executives—and bad faith on the part of its critics, inevitably branded, dismissively, as “Zionists” or “the Israel Lobby.” But public opinion in Britain might be changing. The grotesque scenes in Gaza attending the release of infant Israeli hostages’ remains have caused widespread revulsion even among those who do not usually pay attention to Middle East wars.