According to the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAS), the BBC has consistently avoided using the term ‘terrorist’ when referring to Hamas since October 7, despite the group’s designation as such by its own government.
The BBC has sparked controversy once again with its recent airing of an acclaimed documentary chronicling the devastating October 7 Hamas attack on the Israeli Nova music festival.
In the original “Surviving October 7: We Will Dance Again” aired in America and around the world, the opening title states “The IDF says that 3,000 terrorists breached the 40-mile-long border …”
However, the word “terrorists” does not appear in the BBC version.
Director Yariv Mozer explained the bizarre cut in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. “The version they’ll air won’t describe Hamas as terrorists,” Mozer disclosed.
“It was a price I was willing to pay so that the British public would be able to see these atrocities and decide if this is a terrorist organisation or not.”
Citing long-standing editorial guidelines, the BBC argued that the film shows in “unsparing detail the way in which Hamas set out to slaughter as many people as possible, “and noted that survivors’ own descriptions of Hamas as terrorists remained unaltered in the documentary.
However, the BBC’s “defense” has drawn sharp criticism as it aligns with a disturbing pattern observed in the British broadcaster’s coverage over the past year.
According to the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAS), the BBC has consistently avoided using the term “terrorist” when referring to Hamas since October 7, despite the group’s designation as such by its own government.
“The British public should be able to expect better,” a CAS spokesman noted. “A filmmaker making a film about the massacre of music festival-goers by a proscribed antisemitic genocidal organization is prevented from calling them terrorists? It defies reason.”