When it comes to Israel, no matter how low the BBC sinks, it always finds grim new depths to plumb. Deborah Turness, head of news at the Corporation, has told a staff meeting that Hamas’s government is “different” from its paramilitary wing.
She made the comments in a meeting called to address the “catastrophic failure” that saw the BBC air the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone without telling viewers that the narrator was the son of a deputy minister in the Gaza government.
A leaked video shows Turness claiming that the father was “a member of the Hamas-run government, which is different to being part of the military wing of Hamas”. She adds that “we need to continually remind people of the difference”. It is another slide into the moral morass for an organisation that has spent the two years since the October 7 terrorist attacks assiduously trashing what little reputation it had left as a fair and impartial reporter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
That reputation will never recover from the Corporation’s decision to continue livestreaming Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury set even as the lead vocalist began leading the crowd in calls for “death, death to the IDF”. The way things are going, Hamas would be well advised to distance itself from the BBC.
Turness is wrong as a matter of fact and as a matter of law. For years, useful idiots in the British foreign policy arena promoted the fiction that Hamas’s politburo was a separate entity to its paramilitary wing: the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. This allowed the organisation to escape comprehensive proscription.
That changed in 2021 when the Government concluded that “the approach of distinguishing between the various parts of Hamas is artificial” and that Hamas is “a complex but single terrorist organisation”. A person who invites support for Hamas in the UK, even if they specify only the “political wing”, commits an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000.
The BBC’s head of news might be expected to know this, but it is not only Turness’s ignorance that is troubling. It is the attempt to downplay the gravity of the editorial failings that put the Gaza documentary on the air and the breach of trust with viewers that it represented. A news organisation that felt sincere remorse over this episode would not be trying to weasel its way out of responsibility.
The BBC is too rotten to the core with error, arrogance and ideology to be truly contrite, especially when its favourite punching bag is involved. The anti-Israel bias is so systemic that it has become an inextricable part of the Corporation’s identity. It could no sooner give up its hostile framing of Israel than it could ditch the opening theme to The Archers. But a BBC that can’t be even-handed on Israel is a BBC that can no longer be trusted.
When it comes to Israel, no matter how low the BBC sinks, it always finds grim new depths to plumb. Deborah Turness, head of news at the Corporation, has told a staff meeting that Hamas’s government is “different” from its paramilitary wing.
She made the comments in a meeting called to address the “catastrophic failure” that saw the BBC air the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone without telling viewers that the narrator was the son of a deputy minister in the Gaza government.
A leaked video shows Turness claiming that the father was “a member of the Hamas-run government, which is different to being part of the military wing of Hamas”. She adds that “we need to continually remind people of the difference”. It is another slide into the moral morass for an organisation that has spent the two years since the October 7 terrorist attacks assiduously trashing what little reputation it had left as a fair and impartial reporter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
That reputation will never recover from the Corporation’s decision to continue livestreaming Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury set even as the lead vocalist began leading the crowd in calls for “death, death to the IDF”. The way things are going, Hamas would be well advised to distance itself from the BBC.
Turness is wrong as a matter of fact and as a matter of law. For years, useful idiots in the British foreign policy arena promoted the fiction that Hamas’s politburo was a separate entity to its paramilitary wing: the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. This allowed the organisation to escape comprehensive proscription.
That changed in 2021 when the Government concluded that “the approach of distinguishing between the various parts of Hamas is artificial” and that Hamas is “a complex but single terrorist organisation”. A person who invites support for Hamas in the UK, even if they specify only the “political wing”, commits an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000.
The BBC’s head of news might be expected to know this, but it is not only Turness’s ignorance that is troubling. It is the attempt to downplay the gravity of the editorial failings that put the Gaza documentary on the air and the breach of trust with viewers that it represented. A news organisation that felt sincere remorse over this episode would not be trying to weasel its way out of responsibility.
The BBC is too rotten to the core with error, arrogance and ideology to be truly contrite, especially when its favourite punching bag is involved. The anti-Israel bias is so systemic that it has become an inextricable part of the Corporation’s identity. It could no sooner give up its hostile framing of Israel than it could ditch the opening theme to The Archers. But a BBC that can’t be even-handed on Israel is a BBC that can no longer be trusted.