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The BBC Is Severely Biased Against Israel: Here Are 10 of the Most Egregious Examples

Protesters outside the BBC headquarters in London on March 6, 2025. Photo: Nathan Lilienfeld/Campaign Against Antisemitism

Yet again the BBC has come under increased scrutiny in the fallout over alternative hip-hop duo Bob Vylan‘s incendiary performance at the Glastonbury Festival. Despite chants of “Free, free Palestine” and “Death, death to the IDF,” the UK’s national broadcaster continued airing the live feed and kept the recording on its VOD service for several hours.

That Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, was physically present at Glastonbury on the day has only added to the pressure he is facing. But this controversy is only the latest in a string of embarrassing Israel-related scandals to plague the BBC since Davie’s 2020 appointment.

As the UK culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, recently stated in the House of Commons, “When you have one editorial failure, it’s something that must be gripped. When you have several, it becomes a problem of leadership.”

As many question whether Tim Davie’s head should roll, here’s a reminder (in no particular order) of some of the most egregious examples of Israel-related controversies that have marred the BBC’s image during his tenure:

1. The BBC Refuses to Refer to Hamas as “Terrorists”

Since 2021, the UK has designated the entirety of Hamas as a terrorist organization, widening its 2001 terror designation of the Palestinian group’s “military wing.”

Despite this official designation by the UK, its taxpayer-funded broadcaster refuses to refer to Hamas and its members as “terrorists,” preferring the more neutral and legitimizing term, “militant.”

In an attempt to justify this policy, the BBC’s World Affairs editor John Simpson explained that it doesn’t refer to Hamas as “terrorists” in order to maintain an objective tone and does not tell people “who to support and who to condemn.”

However, as HonestReporting discovered, the BBC has no qualms about using that term when referring to Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or other international terror organizations.

It seems that for the BBC under Tim Davie’s leadership, you’re a “terrorist” if you attack American or British targets but only a “militant” if you target Israelis.

 

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2. Gaza Documentary Pulled for “Serious Flaws”

In February 2025, the BBC was forced to apologize for “serious flaws” in a documentary that it had commissioned on the lives of Gazan children during the Israel-Hamas war.

Titled “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone,” the documentary was pulled from the British broadcaster’s streaming platform after investigative journalist David Collier revealed that the film’s teen narrator was the son of a Hamas minister and that his mother had been paid by the production company.

It was also discovered that there were several instances of mistranslation in a bid to sanitize the interviewee’s language. This included translating the Arabic word for “Jews” as “Israelis” or “Israeli forces” and translating “Jihad” as “battle” or “resistance.”

3. Parroting Hamas on Al-Ahli Hospital Blast

On October 17, 2023, the BBC fell for Hamas propaganda when it uncritically parroted the terror group’s claim that an Israeli airstrike had killed 500 people at Al-Ahli Hospital.

Hours later, it was determined by Israeli and American intelligence that it was a parking lot that had been hit and not the hospital building itself, that far fewer than 500 people had been killed, and that the blast was caused by an errant Islamic Jihad rocket and not an Israeli strike.

While the BBC was not the only mainstream media organization to willingly spread Hamas’ falsehoods without a second thought, the broadcaster’s correspondent Jon Donnison was so certain in the veracity of Hamas’ propaganda, that he took it even one step further, authoritatively declaring for his international audience that it was “hard to see what else this could be really given the size of the explosion other than an Israel airstrike or several airstrikes because when we’ve seen rockets fired out of Gaza, we never see explosions of that scale.”

4. Al-Shifa Hospital: Vilifying Israel, Whitewashing Hamas

Another Gaza hospital and more BBC misreporting.

For years, it was known that Hamas was using the area of Al-Shifa Hospital as a command and control center and was breaking international law by embedding its terrorist forces within the civilian hospital complex.

However, when the IDF finally pushed to rout Hamas from the hospital grounds in November 2023, the BBC chose to misrepresent Israel’s actions and to whitewash Hamas’ criminal activities.

First, when initial reports were emerging that the IDF was operating in Al-Shifa, the BBC anchor read out the libelous claim that the military had announced that it was targeting medical professionals and Arabic speakers. In fact, the IDF had announced that it was bringing medical teams and Arabic speakers into the hospital in order to provide aid to the patients there.

The BBC later apologized for “this error, which fell below our usual editorial standards.”

5. The BBC Spreads 14,000 Babies Libel

In a May 2025 interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today program, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher made the baseless claim that 14,000 Gazan babies would die within the next 48 hours if a flood of aid was not allowed into the blockaded enclave.

To the BBC’s credit, Fletcher’s statement was challenged during his interview, and the broadcaster conducted further investigation, proving that this claim was unfounded and was based on a gross misrepresentation of data about possible malnutrition in the coming year.

However, despite the appearance of journalistic due diligence, HonestReporting uncovered that the BBC was continuing to repeat Fletcher’s statement in various reports without any proper context or clarification.

When it comes to Israel, it seems that Tim Davie’s BBC prefers clickbait misinformation over proper journalism.

6. BBC News Presenter: “The Israeli Forces Are Happy to Kill Children”

Even before the current Israel-Hamas war, the BBC had no qualms about spreading misinformation and libels about Israel and the IDF.

In a July 2023 interview with former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett about an Israeli counter-terror operation in the Palestinian city of Jenin, BBC News presenter Anjana Gadgil questioned if the IDF had set out to kill children since four of those killed in the operation were under the age of 18 (while simultaneously ignoring that they were claimed as members by Palestinian terrorist organizations).

After Bennett ably handled her malicious question, Gadgil doubled down and accused the IDF of being “happy to kill children.”

Rather than asking serious journalistic questions, Gadgil seemed content to use her interview with Bennett as a means of amplifying her own anti-Israel libels.

7. The BBC Misrepresents Hebrew Cry For Help as Anti-Muslim Slur

In November 2022, the UK media regulator Ofcom castigated the BBC for its continued misrepresentation of a Hebrew cry for help as an anti-Muslim slur.

In December 2021, a bus full of Jewish youths celebrating Hanukkah was surrounded by a group of men performing Nazi salutes and spitting at them.

After footage from inside the bus was leaked, the BBC claimed that the phrase “dirty Muslims” could be heard from within the bus. However, it was determined that it was rather a Hebrew speaker saying to “call someone, it’s urgent.”

Even when the BBC’s report was called into dispute, the broadcaster refused to apologize and continued to hold that an anti-Muslim slur could be heard from inside the bus.

In its report, Ofcom observed that the BBC failed to “observe its editorial guidelines” and “made a serious editorial misjudgment.”

8. BBC Panel: Are Jews an Ethnic Minority?

In March 2021, the BBC came under fire for hosting a panel discussion of mainly non-Jews on whether the Jewish people were an ethnic minority.

The panel was a response to a mistaken tweet by the deputy leader of the Scottish Labour Party that her party’s new leader was the “first ethnic minority leader of a political party…anywhere in the UK.” This claim appeared to discount Ed Miliband and Michael Howard, both Jewish former heads of the Labour and Conservative parties, respectively.

Instead of simply reporting on the erroneous tweet, the BBC chose to turn it into a panel discussion on the Jewish people’s status as an ethnic minority and whether they could be considered as such due to their successful integration within the UK.

As HonestReporting noted at the time:

To their credit, none of the panelists belittled the issue or dodged the issue, uniformly criticizing Rayner for her ill-advised tweet. That the panelists could do so, but the BBC couldn’t grasp how to properly frame the conversation, made for a striking juxtaposition.

9. The BBC’s Coddling of Gary Lineker’s Anti-Israel Activity

Another embarrassment that has marred the BBC under Tim Davie’s leadership has been the broadcaster’s coddling of Gary Lineker’s anti-Israel social media activity.

Lineker, the BBC’s highest-paid star, had a long history of posting incendiary items on social media, receiving a light punishment for it, and continuing to enjoy the state-funded spotlight despite his crude antics.

In one notable example from January 2024, Lineker reposted a call by the pro-boycott Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) for Israel to be suspended from the global soccer federation (FIFA). Aside from the call to boycott Israel, the post also referred to the IDF’s fight against Hamas in Gaza as a “genocide.”

Ultimately, Lineker deleted the post following a public outcry and, despite the heinousness of the post, the BBC chose to ignore the episode and claim that it didn’t violate its social media guidelines.

In the end, Lineker left the BBC in May 2025, after reposting a condemnation of Zionism that featured an antisemitic motif.

Turns out that the BBC could only turn its back to Lineker’s social media antics for so long.

10. BBC Chair Met With Palestinian Envoy to Discuss Coverage

Under Tim Davie’s leadership, the Israel-related controversies haven’t only remained at the level of journalists and presenters but have even risen to senior management.

One example of the rot at the top is a 2022 meeting between BBC chairman Richard Sharp and Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian Authority envoy to the UK,  to “discuss the BBC’s reporting of developments in Palestine.” The meeting was commemorated with a photograph of the two men in front of a map of “Palestine” that encompasses the entire State of Israel.

Aside from this questionable photo, the fact that Sharp chose to confer with a man who whitewashes Palestinian terrorism, defends the PA’s pro-terror policies, and has been accused of denying the Holocaust shows a terrible lack of judgment at best and an explicit anti-Israel bias at worst.

Despite its claim to impartiality and accountability, the BBC’s coverage of Israel, the Middle East, and Jewish life has been plagued by an immense bias against the Jewish state, an uncritical reliance on Palestinian narratives, and a lack of sensitivity to the experiences of the British Jewish community.

Under Tim Davie’s leadership, this flagrant bias has become an embarrassment for the British national broadcaster, miring it in unnecessary scandals and controversies.

Will the latest scandal at Glastonbury be the final straw that ends Davie’s career at the BBC and leads to a rehabilitation of the media behemoth’s journalistic integrity?

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post The BBC Is Severely Biased Against Israel: Here Are 10 of the Most Egregious Examples first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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UN Data: Nearly 90 Percent of Gaza Aid ‘Intercepted’ Before Reaching Intended Recipients

Palestinians collect aid supplies from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled

The vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients, newly released data from the United Nations shows, fueling growing concerns among Israeli officials and international observers about systemic aid diversion by armed groups in the enclave.

According to figures tracking humanitarian assistance for Gaza from May 19 to Aug. 1 of this year, out of the 2,010 UN trucks (carrying 27,434 tons of aid) collected from any of the crossings along Gaza’s perimeter, only 260 trucks (4,111 tons) reached their intended destination. That equates to a staggering 87 percent of all trucks and 85 percent of all tonnage of aid being stolen and not getting into the hands of civilians at the intended destination.

The UN’s own data, posted on the website of the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) as part of the “UN2720 Monitoring & Tracking Dashboard,” reveals that almost all the aid — 1,753 trucks (23,353 tons) — has been “intercepted, either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors” while being transported inside Gaza over the past few months.

No breakdown is provided of how much aid has been seized by armed groups versus civilians.

The data also shows that much of the UN aid offloaded at any of the crossings along Gaza’s perimeter has not been collected to enter the war-torn enclave during this period. Out of 40,012 tons of aid (2,134 trucks) being delivered to the crossings, just 27,434 tons (2010 trucks) have been picked up. It’s unclear what exactly led to this discrepancy, with issues such as poor internal coordination and security concerns potentially delaying aid shipments.

The UN2720 mechanism, created earlier this year, was intended to boost transparency by verifying and tracking aid shipments via QR codes at key checkpoints. The system monitors each pallet from offloading to delivery and flags any discrepancies in a centralized database.

Israel has facilitated the entry of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza, with Israeli officials condemning the UN and other international aid agencies for their alleged failure to distribute supplies, noting much of the humanitarian assistance has been stalled at border crossings or stolen by the ruling Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

On Sunday, Israel announced a halt in military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of Gaza and new aid corridors as Arab and European countries began airdropping supplies into the enclave.

However, the UN and several Western governments have increased pressure on Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, blaming the Jewish state for what they described as a hunger crisis and insufficient amounts of aid reaching civilians.

Israeli officials have said that claims of mass starvation in Gaza are false and being amplified by not only Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, but also international humanitarian organizations and media organizations to manipulate global opinion.

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Dutch Nurse Under Police Investigation for Alleged Threats Against Israeli Patients

Pro-Hamas demonstrators march in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. Photo: Reuters/Romy Arroyo Fernandez

A Muslim nurse in the Netherlands is under police investigation after allegedly threatening to administer lethal injections to Israeli patients — an incident that has sparked public outrage and intensified fears over rising antisemitism and patient safety in Europe’s health-care systems.

The comments were widely circulated by Israeli influencer Max Veifer, who also exposed a recent case in Australia where two nurses were suspended for two years over antisemitic threats and remarks.

In a video shared on social media, Veifer denounced Dutch-Muslim nurse Batisma Chayat Sa’id’s remarks as a serious violation of medical ethics.

“Someone like that should be prosecuted and barred from treating patients. Imagine your grandparents being cared for by someone so hateful,” the Israeli influencer said.

The incident was sparked when an Israeli-Dutch woman living in the Netherlands commented on a social media post by far-right politician Geert Wilders, who cautioned about what he called the country’s looming radical Islamization by 2050.

A social media account belonging to the Muslim nurse also commented on the post, claiming it would happen by 2027, to which the Israeli woman responded, “Your dream is our nightmare. But people wake up from nightmares. Our Netherlands, our Israel.”

“Nothing belongs to you! My grandparents built the Netherlands. I was born and raised here, and I will do everything in my power to help this country get rid of the Zionist cancer,” the nurse further replied.

“You know what I’m doing with Zionists — giving an extra injection as a nurse specialist. Letting them go to heaven!” Sa’id continued.

When the Israeli woman threatened to report her, Sa’id replied: “Haha, try your best! I don’t have a boss — I’m the boss! All Zionists can die, inside healthcare and beyond, and I’m happy to help with that!”

Shortly after her posts gained widespread attention, Sa’id deleted all her social media accounts, insisting that her identity had been stolen and that she was not responsible for such comments.

On Wednesday, local police detained Sa’id for questioning, but she denied the allegations, asserting that someone had impersonated her online.

“It seems someone is pretending to be me, posting false and defamatory statements,” the nurse said. “I want to make it clear — I hold no hatred toward Jews or any people, race, religion, or identity.”

Even after announcing plans to file an identity theft complaint, she faces skepticism from authorities, who have assigned a digital forensics expert to scrutinize her online accounts.

Last year, an account under her name also posted threatening messages aimed at Jewish people, including “Your time will come — don’t spare anyone,” and another in which she described the burial of Israelis in Gaza as “a dream come true.”

Earlier this year, two Australian nurses — Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — gained international attention after they were seen in an online video posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements during a night-shift conversation with Veifer.

The widely circulated footage, which sparked international outrage and condemnation, showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.

Following the incident, New South Wales authorities in Australia suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide.

They were also charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, they face up to 22 years in prison.

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French Authorities Halt Gaza Evacuations After Palestinian Student Expelled Over Viral Antisemitic Posts

Anti-Israel demonstration supporting the BDS movement, Paris France, June 8, 2024. Photo: Claire Serie / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

French authorities have halted evacuations from Gaza after a Palestinian student was expelled from the prestigious Sciences Po Lille and placed under investigation, following the viral circulation of hundreds of antisemitic posts praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and calling for the murder of Jews.

The incident drew widespread condemnation and public outrage, prompting French ministers to demand answers and call for an investigation into how the Gazan student was allowed into the country in the first place.

On Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced that all further evacuations from Gaza would be suspended pending the completion of the investigation into the student’s background.

After receiving a scholarship, 25-year-old Nour Atalla, a Palestinian from Gaza, arrived in the country in early July to begin her master’s degree in law and communications this fall at the Institute of Political Science in Lille, northern France.

Barrot confirmed that discussions are ongoing about the student’s possible return to Gaza, making clear that she must leave the country pending the investigation’s outcome.

“She has no place at Sciences Po, nor in France,” the top French diplomat said.

On Thursday, local authorities reported that a criminal investigation is underway into Atalla, with the public prosecutor in Lille confirming the case was opened for “apology of terrorism, apology of crimes against humanity using an online public communication service.”

Barrot admitted lapses in the screening process that allowed her entry and has mandated a comprehensive review of everyone evacuated from Gaza to France.

“The security checks, carried out by the French services and Israeli authorities, did not detect the antisemitic content,” the French diplomat said.

Atalla is one of 292 Gazans admitted to the country following a court ruling that opened the door for Gazans to seek refugee status based on their nationality.

She was offered a place at Sciences Po Lille University based on “academic excellence” and following a recommendation by the French consulate in Jerusalem.

On Wednesday, the university announced it had revoked Atalla’s enrollment after hundreds of her past antisemitic and violent social media posts went viral, sparking widespread condemnation from political leaders and members of the local Jewish community.

In several of these posts, she glorified Hitler, praised Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, called for the execution of Israeli hostages and the killing of Jews, and expressed support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

In one post, Atalla shared a video of Hitler giving a speech about Jews, writing, “Kill their young and their old. Show them no mercy … And kill them everywhere.”

In another post shared on Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, she wrote, “We must do everything we can to match the bloodshed — as much as possible.”

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