BBC Head Sparks Outrage by Arguing Hamas Has ‘Legitimate’ Political Role

CEO of BBC was criticized for going against the UK government’s official stance that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and doesn’t recognize a distinction between its political and military segments.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

The head of BBC News, Deborah Turness, is facing criticism for claiming that Hamas has an acceptable political role and is not just a terror group.

The remarks came as Turness was defending the father whose son was featured in a pulled documentary after it was discovered that his father served in Hamas’ Ministry of Agriculture.

The documentary titled “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone” was shelved once the broadcaster realized that the featured narrator, 13-year-old Abdullah Alyazouri, was the son of Ayman Alyazouri, the deputy minister of agriculture in the Hamas-led government.

Although Turness didn’t insist that the decision to pull the documentary was wrong, she defended Alyazouri’s serving in Hamas’ government, indicating that Hamas has a legitimate role to play and is not just a terror group.

The Telegraph shared a video of Turness at a BBC staff meeting during which she said, “It’s really important that we are clear that Abdullah’s father was a deputy agriculture minister, and therefore was a member of the Hamas-run government, which is different to being part of the military wing of Hamas,” she stated.

Turness made the remarks in response to the BBC Arabic service’s inquiry about the handling of the documentary, and she did not defend or question the BBC’s decision to pull the broadcast once they discovered the narrator’s familial ties to Hamas.

However, Turness was criticized for going against the UK government’s official stance that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and doesn’t recognize a distinction between its political and military segments.

The Telegraph quoted Danny Cohen, the former head of BBC Television, as saying Turness’ remarks were “staggering” and symptomatic of the BBC’s biases and blind spots when covering Middle East news stories.

Amid criticism, the BBC spokesman attempted to defend Turness by saying, “Deborah Turness was answering a question about how we described the father of the narrator in our Warzone film. She did not imply that Hamas is not a single terrorist organization.”