The BBC must call Hamas “terrorists”, Lord Cameron has urged, after the Palestinian group claimed a British-Israeli hostage had died.
The Foreign Secretary said the BBC should “ask itself again” about how it labelled Hamas following the Oct 7 attack on Israel in which more than 1,100 people died.
Lord Cameron was speaking after Hamas released a video showing British-Israeli hostage Nadav Popplewell, who the group claimed had died in Gaza after being wounded in an Israeli air strike a month ago.
The Foreign Secretary told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme that it was “callous” of Hamas to release the video, and thus “play with the family’s emotions in that way”.
But he noted: “Maybe it’s a moment actually for the BBC to ask itself again, shall we describe these people as terrorists? They are terrorists.”
Mr Popplewell, 51, was captured with his mother from her home in Kibbutz Nirim when Hamas launched their deadly attacks in Israel.
The group released undated footage on Saturday of Mr Popplewell with a black eye confirming his name.Yet, just hours later, they released a second video in which they said he died of wounds sustained in an Israeli missile strike in Gaza.
‘Terrible, dreadful, inhuman people’
Lord Cameron said the Foreign Office was currently “trying to work out what has happened” to Mr Popplewell as he declined to give an update on Hamas’s claims.
He said: “Like everyone else, I watched the video on Twitter, X, last night, put out by Hamas of Nadav answering a question as to who he was. And I watched that video and you just think, what callous people they are to do that, to play with the family’s emotions in that way.”
“I met Nadav’s family, his sister, and I know the heartbreak they’ve been going through for over 200 days, and when you see what Hamas are prepared to do, you just realise the terrible, dreadful, inhuman people, frankly, that we are dealing with.”
The Government defines Hamas as a “single terrorist organisation” but the BBC has continually referred to it as a “militant” group, describing the invasion as a “militant” attack.
A succession of Tory politicians up to the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have urged the BBC to change its stance but Lord Cameron has, to date, not entered the argument.
At the start of the conflict, Mr Sunak said: “This is not a time for equivocation, we should call it out for what it is.”
The BBC has defended its stance, saying: “We don’t take sides. We don’t use loaded words like ‘evil’ or ’cowardly’. We don’t talk about ‘terrorists’.
“It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn – who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.”