BBC producer of Jerusalem documentary promotes pro-Palestinian propaganda on Twitter

Garthwaite retweeted an article praising Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager who slapped an IDF soldier in a video that went viral, calling her an “icon for Palestinian resistance.”

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

The producer of a forthcoming BBC documentary investigating the activities of Israel’s Elad and City of David organizations in east Jerusalem repeatedly tweeted pro-Palestinian propaganda, according to a report by the Jewish Chronicle.

Rosie Garthwaite, the documentary’s producer, has a history of pro-Palestinian tweets stretching back several years. The tweets raise the likely possibility that she held anti-Israel views while making the documentary, which she promised would be a “fair and accurate account of events.”

In January, Garthwaite retweeted images that contained four maps, showing allegedly shrinking Palestinian territory over the last 100 years. The maps made the rounds on social media after the Trump peace plan was revealed, which proposed some Israeli-Palestinian land swaps.

The maps, however, dramatically over-represented how much territory Israel would gain if the plan came into effect, did not show any of the land the Palestinians would gain, and depicted an original “state of Palestine” over territory that was actually held by the Ottoman Empire.

The Jewish Chronicle reached out to Garthwaite, asking why she had shared the historically inaccurate and inflammatory maps. A BBC spokesperson responded, saying, “Rosie has actually un-retweeted that map you refer to, she realized it was inaccurate.”

Garthwaite tweeted in March 2019, “#Gaza is 1.85 million people living in a space the same size as the small Caribbean island of Grenada.”

“It is the third most densely populated area in the world. You have the sea on one side and 1 exit through an Israeli-controlled border – one golf buggy of people at a time.”

She failed to mention that Gaza shares a border with Egypt and that movement in and out of the Strip is not solely controlled by Israel.

Additionally, Garthwaite retweeted an article praising Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager who slapped an IDF soldier in a video that went viral, calling her an “icon for Palestinian resistance.”

Garthwaite, whose YouTube profile picture shows her wearing a traditional Arabic keffiyeh, recently tweeted that the east Jerusalem documentary will investigate the “settling of Jewish people in occupied land.”

In a letter sent to BBC executives, the vice president of the City of David organization expressed concerns that Gathwaite “has repeatedly presented us with one-sided and inaccurate statements” and that the documentary “intends to vilify Israel, Jewish history and Jewish charities and present a number of false and misleading claims.”

Campaign Against anti-Semitism, a British NGO, told the Jewish Chronicle, “The BBC is a serial offender when it comes to anti-Semitism, and this is reflected in its poor relations with the Jewish community.”

Responding to the report about Garthwaite’s tweets, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Orit Farkash-Hacohen told Israel Hayom, “In a reality in which social media sites have become the Wild West for fake news and hate speech, it’s sad to see members of an important traditional media outlet fan the flames and spearhead such discourse.”

Earlier in September, the Jewish Chronicle revealed that a veteran BBC World News journalist, Nimesh Thaker, was the man behind an anonymous anti-Israel Twitter account.

Tweets from the account claimed that Israel is “racist” and a “white supremacist state.” The account is now private.

“The BBC takes allegations of this nature extremely seriously, and while we cannot comment on individual staff issues, we have robust processes in place to investigate any such matters with urgency,” a BBC spokesperson told the Jewish Chronicle.