BBC whitewashed Gaza antisemitism in documentary with intentional mistranslations

The loaded term “Jihad” became “battle,” while “Jews” turned into “Israeli forces.”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The accusations against the BBC of acting as a shill for Hamas grew stronger Monday when The Telegraph reported that the British broadcaster, in its documentary about the Israel-Hamas war, mistranslated Gazan civilians’ words to tone down their support of violence and hatred of Jews.

The daily found that this occurred in at least five places in “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.”

The film, which interviewed and followed Gazan civilians talking about the war, removed all their references to jihad, which is a term Arabs commonly use to describe a holy war to destroy the Jewish state, and turned “Jews” into “Israelis” or “Israeli forces.”

In the film, a woman whose words were translated as was describing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s last moments as “His face was covered and his weapon was ready, prepared for battle,”

According to a translation provided to The Telegraph by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), a woman who was describing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s last moments said, “His face was covered; he was wearing a vest and ready for Jihad.” However, according to the translation in the film, she said, “His face was covered, and his weapon was ready, prepared for battle.”

One of the children being interviewed also lauded Sinwar for his personal “resistance and jihad against the Jews,” but the BBC changed it to “fighting Israeli forces.”

Another child said, “The Jews came; they destroyed us, Hamas and the Jews,” but it was translated as, “The Israelis destroyed everything, and so did Hamas.”

The Telegraph separately reported that it had found social media comments by the documentary’s cameraman, Hatem Rawagh, that seemed to praise the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of Israel and massacre of 1,200 people.

In one post to X, he showed a Hamas clip of an attack on the Erez border crossing and wrote, “Return to view this clip a million times.”

He also previously celebrated terror attacks against Israel, posting scenes of joy in Gaza when an Italian tourist was killed and seven people wounded in a car-ramming attack in Tel Aviv in 2023.

These reports follow the revelation earlier this month by investigative journalist David Collier that the movie was narrated by the son of Hamas’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture in Gaza, Ayman Alyazouri.

Considering that “two photographers followed” this boy and two others “for months,” Collier noted, “they absolutely knew who he was…. How did the BBC let a son of a Hamas minister walk around looking for sympathy and demonizing Israel for an hour in a BBC documentary?”

This prompted Labour Against Antisemitism head Alex Hearn to file a formal complaint with the BBC, saying, “This documentary appears to have been a failure of due diligence by the BBC, with Hamas propaganda promoted as reliable fact at the taxpayers’ expense.”

The BBC is funded in large part by a universal television tax on British citizens.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch wrote a scathing letter to BBC head Tim Davie, asking in part, “‘Would the BBC be this naive if it was commissioning content from North Korea or the Islamic Republic of Iran?”

She demanded to know whether any Hamas officials received payment from the BBC, considering the family links of the narrator.

Badenoch additionally told Davie that he “should commission a full independent inquiry” to consider this case as well as “repeated and serious allegations of systemic and institutional bias against Israel in the BBC‘s coverage of the war.”

Israel’s supporters and the country’s officials have also accused the BBC of longstanding bias, pointing out, for example, that it never uses the word “terrorists” to describe Hamas or other Palestinians who carry out terror attacks. Indeed, the BBC would not allow an Israeli documentary of Hamas’ massacre at the Nova dance festival to be aired unless any reference to the perpetrators as terrorists was edited out.

Following the fierce criticism, the BBC pulled the documentary from its digital platforms and announced an internal investigation of the production.