BBC News regularly proclaims its supposed editorial principles of fearless, independent, impartial, fair and accurate journalism. In a January 2023 speech to the Whitehall & Industry Group in London, then BBC Chairman Richard Sharp boasted that BBC journalism is the ‘global gold standard’ of credible news reporting.

Two years previously, in 2021, the public broadcaster had proudly published a focused, 10-point plan to ensure the protection of the highest ‘impartiality, whistleblowing and editorial standards’. BBC director general Tim Davie asserted:

‘The BBC’s editorial values of impartiality, accuracy and trust are the foundation of our relationship with audiences in the UK and around the world. Our audiences deserve and expect programmes and content which earn their trust every day and we must meet the highest standards and hold ourselves accountable in everything we do.’

When it comes to the broadcaster’s coverage of Gaza since October 2023, and long before, BBC audiences have seen for themselves the hollowness of such BBC rhetoric.

For example, the BBC’s withdrawal of its own commissioned powerful documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, earlier this year epitomised how much the UK’s national broadcaster bends to the will of the Israel lobby. The BBC dropped the documentary from iPlayer, soon after it was broadcast on BBC Two on 17 February, when it emerged that the film’s narrator, 13-year-old Abdullah al-Yazuri, is the son of Ayman al-Yazuri, a deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza’s government which is administered by Hamas. The film was withdrawn after a campaign by pro-Israel voices, including David Collier, a self-described ‘100 per cent Zionist’ activist, Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, and Danny Cohen, a former director of BBC television, who said that the broadcaster ‘is at risk of becoming a Hamas propaganda mouthpiece.’

Another documentary, Gaza: Medics Under Fire, made by Oscar-nominated, Emmy and Peabody award-winning filmmakers, including Ben de Pear, Karim Shah and Ramita Navai, has been held back by the BBC, even though it had been signed off by BBC lawyers. The film includes the testimony of Palestinian doctors working in Gaza under Israeli bombardment. It has been ready for broadcast since February after months of editorial reviews and fact-checking.

Over 600 prominent figures from the arts and media, including British film director Mike Leigh, Oscar-winning actor Susan Sarandon and Lindsey Hilsum, the international editor of Channel 4 News, have signed an open letter criticising the BBC for withholding the documentary:

‘We stand with the medics of Gaza whose voices are being silenced. Their urgent stories are being buried by bureaucracy and political censorship. This is not editorial caution. It’s political suppression. The BBC has provided no timeline, no transparency. Such decisions reinforce the systemic devaluation of Palestinian lives in our media.’

This, of course, is all part of an endemic pattern of BBC bias towards Israel under the guise of ‘impartiality’; a façade that has now been obliterated. The corporation’s longstanding, blatant protection of Israel, considered an ‘apartheid regime’ by major human rights organisations, has been particularly glaring since Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government ordered genocidal attacks on Gaza in October 2023.

The public has been subject to repetition and amplification of the Israeli narrative above the Palestinian perspective. Moreover, the broadcaster regularly omits ‘Israel’ from headlines about its latest war crimes committed in Gaza and the West Bank. Another remarkable feature of the BBC’s performance has been the dismissive treatment by senior BBC management of serious concerns about bias raised by their own journalists. A very brief summary of the BBC’s biased reporting on Gaza, and criticism by some of their own journalists, can be found in this thread on X. The essential conclusion concerning BBC News coverage of Gaza, wrote one dissident BBC journalist, is that of:

‘a collapse in the application of basic standards and norms of journalism that seems aligned with Israel’s propaganda strategy.’ [Our emphasis]

BBC management have ignored or dismissed ‘a mass of evidence-based critique of coverage’ from members of staff. So much for the BBC’s claimed commitment to taking whistleblowers seriously.

Karishma Patel, a former BBC researcher, newsreader and journalist, wrote earlier this year about her reasons for leaving the BBC. She observed ‘a shocking level of editorial inconsistency’ in how the BBC covers Gaza. Journalists were ‘actively choosing not to follow evidence’ of Israeli war crimes ‘out of fear’.

In a follow-up article last month, she observed that:

‘many [BBC] journalists are afraid to speak their minds – to challenge editorial decisions or speak freely to powerful presenters and executives. This isn’t a newsroom environment conducive to robust journalism – a profession all about the pursuit of truth and accountability.’

She added:

‘It’s important the public understands how far editorial policy can be silently shaped by even the possibility of anger from certain groups, foreign governments, our own government, mega-corporations – any powerful actor – and how crucial it is that more junior journalists who see it can speak up.’

‘A Precious National Asset’

Last week, the BBC’s director general warned of a disinformation ‘trust crisis’ that was putting ‘the social fabric’ of the UK ‘at risk’. Tim Davie pointed the finger at social media platforms such as TikTok and YouTube where, as a Guardian report on Davie’s speech put it, ‘disinformation can go unchecked’. We have previously written (for example, here and here) about how ‘mainstream’ editors and journalists love to point at social media as prime purveyors of disinformation, diverting attention from their own culpability in much larger crimes of state-approved propaganda that fuels wars, the erosion of democracy and climate catastrophe.

Davie said:

‘The future of our cohesive, democratic society feels for the first time in my life at risk.’

He called for ‘strong government backing’ for the BBC as a ‘precious national asset’ to be ‘properly funded and supported’. The fact that the BBC has itself massively contributed to a ‘trust crisis’ in disinformation and propaganda, encapsulated by its complicity in Israel’s genocide, went unmentioned, of course.

The late, great journalist John Pilger put it succinctly in an interview with Afshin Rattansi:

‘The BBC has the most brilliant production values, it produces the most extraordinary natural history and drama series. But the BBC is, and has long been, the most refined propaganda service in the world.’

Daily examples abound of why the public should regard BBC News with deep scepticism. On 12 May, BBC News at Ten reported the release of US-Israeli dual citizen Edan Alexander by Hamas. Senior BBC reporter Lucy Williamson said that Alexander had originally been ‘kidnapped as a soldier’. The terminology is deceptive: civilians are kidnapped; soldiers are captured. Why did BBC editors approve this loaded use of the wrong word, ‘kidnapped’?

Consider another example. Richard Sanders, an experienced journalist and documentary filmmaker, noted via X on 15 May that the BBC had included this line in one of its news bulletins:

‘Israel says a hospital [in Gaza] along with a university and schools … have become terrorist strongholds for Hamas’.

Sanders commented:

‘The BBC knows such statements are untrue. Yet that sentence took up more than a third of its 22 sec 7.30 am news bulletin on Gaza – with no rebuttal.’

He added:

‘8am they go to [BBC] correspondent Yolande Knell for a lengthier report. She repeats exactly the same sentence – again, with no rebuttal.

‘The listener is left with the entirely false impression it’s perfectly possible it’s true.

‘Bad, bad journalism.’

And yet this is standard BBC ‘journalism’: the ‘global gold standard’, remember.

Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, is supposedly an exemplar of this gold standard. But his capitulation to the Israel lobby is repeatedly apparent in his interviews and articles. Media activist Saul Staniforth captured this clip where a BBC presenter said to Bowen:

‘[Netanyahu is] looking for other countries to take in Gazans’.

Bowen responded: ‘Well, that’s called…’

He then paused momentarily and continued: ‘… that will be called, by Palestinians and by a lot of people around the world, ethnic cleansing.’

Bowen presumably stopped himself simply stating the truth: ‘that’s called ethnic cleansing.’ This is what he would have said in any context involving an Official Enemy, such as Russia, rather than the Official Friend, Israel.

Jonathan Cook dissected an even more egregious example of Bowen’s favouring the Israeli perspective when the BBC journalist interviewed Philippe Lazzarini, head of United Nations refugee agency UNRWA. Before airing the interview, Bowen introduced the Lazzarini interview with a contorted cautionary statement:

‘Israel says he is a liar, and that his organisation has been infiltrated by Hamas. But I felt it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons.

‘First off, the British government deals with him, and funds his organisation. Which is the largest dealing with Palestinian refugees. They know a lot of what is going on, so therefore I think it is important to speak to people like him.’

As Cook observed, Bowen would never preface an interview with Netanyahu in a similar way:

‘The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, accusing him of crimes against humanity. But I felt it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons.’

During the interview, Lazzarini told Bowen that he was running out of words ‘to describe the misery and the tragedy affecting the people in Gaza. They have been now more than two months without any aid’. The UNRWA chief added:

‘Starvation is spreading, people are exhausted, people are hungry… we can expect that in the coming weeks if no aid is coming in, that people will not die because of the bombardment, but they will die because of the lack of food. This is the weaponisation of humanitarian aid.’

Cook noted:

‘Lazzarini’s remarks on the catastrophe in Gaza should be seen as self-evident. But Bowen and the BBC undermined his message by framing him and his organisation as suspect – and all because Israel, a criminal state starving the people of Gaza, has made an entirely unfounded allegation against the organisation trying to stop its crimes against humanity.’

He continued:

‘This is the same pattern of smears from Israel that has claimed all 36 hospitals in Gaza are Hamas “command and control centres” – again without a shred of evidence – to justify it bombing them all, leaving Gaza’s population without any meaningful health care system as malnutrition and starvation take hold.’ [Our emphasis]

As Cook pointed out, it is quite possible that it was not Bowen’s choice ‘to attach such a disgraceful disclaimer to his interview. We all understand that he is under enormous pressure, both from within the BBC and outside.’ But just imagine the huge moral standing and public impact it would have if Bowen resigned from the BBC, citing the intolerable pressure not to speak the full truth about Israel’s genocide and war crimes.

For those with long memories, recall the exceptional courage and honesty when two senior UN officials, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, resigned in 1998 and 2000, respectively, rather than continue to administer the ‘genocidal’ (their term) UN sanctions against Iraq that had led to the deaths of up to 1.5 million people, including around half a million children under the age of five.

One of the most insidious forms of ‘bad’ BBC ‘journalism’ is propaganda by omission, as we have noted in media alerts over the years (for example, see here and here). On 13 May, the investigative news organisation, DropSite, reported that Israeli troops had shot and killed Mohammed Bardawil, a 12-year-old boy. He was one of only four surviving eyewitnesses of the Israeli military’s execution of 15 paramedics, rescue workers and UN staff in Rafah, Gaza, in March 2025.

DropSite noted:

‘Mohammed had testified that some of the paramedics were shot at point-blank range – “from one meter away.” He was also interviewed by The New York Times for their investigation into the massacre, though his most damning claims were omitted from their final report.’

DropSite added:

‘Mohammed had been scheduled for a second round of testimony with investigators, this time with pediatric psychologists present. Instead, the 12-year-old war crime witness was killed by Israeli forces.’

At the time of writing, it is unclear whether he was specifically targeted in an attack, or caught up in an Israeli raid.

This shocking news has been blanked by the BBC, as far as we can see from searching its website. Indeed, our search of the Nexis newspaper database reveals not a single mention in any UK newspaper.

Imagine if Russia had executed fifteen Red Cross medics, first responders and a UN staff member in Ukraine, burying them in a mass grave along with their vehicles, including an ambulance.

Imagine if Russia had lied about this appalling war crime, as proved by footage recovered from the telephone of one of the executed victims.

Imagine if a 12-year-old Ukrainian witness to this Russian war crime was later shot dead by Russian soldiers. His killing would have been major headline news around the world and serious questions would have been asked.

The Fiction of BBC ‘Transparency’

As mentioned, BBC editors love to proclaim their accountability to the public and transparency of their editorial processes. How, then, would they explain their secrecy in holding private meetings with one of Israel’s former top military officers during Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza?

Declassified UK is a small publicly-funded independent news organisation that runs rings around BBC News, and the rest of the ‘mainstream’ media, on UK foreign policy and the impact of British military and intelligence agencies on human rights and the environment. Declassified UK reported earlier this year that BBC, Guardian and Financial Times editors had secret meetings with Israeli General Aviv Kohavi one month after the Gaza bombardment began.

In attendance were Katherine Viner, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Richard Burgess, director of news content at the BBC, and Roula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times. According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Kohavi’s itinerary also included meetings with Sky News chairman David Rhodes at the Israeli embassy, and then shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, between 7 and 9 November 2023.

Kohavi had only stepped down from running Israel’s military months earlier. According to Declassified UK’s investigation, Kohavi had subsequently been ‘tasked with cultivating support for Israel as it escalated its brutal military offensive in Gaza.’

A journalist who was working for the BBC at the time of the visit told Declassified UK:

‘I don’t recall any internal correspondence about the meeting, which the BBC would ordinarily send out if there was a high-profile visit of this kind. I also find it very difficult to believe that the organisation would hold an equivalent meeting with the Hamas government.’

The journalist, who requested anonymity, added:

‘Not only is Kohavi’s visit unprecedented but it’s also outrageous that one of the most senior editors at the BBC should court company with a foreign military figure in this way, especially one whose country stands accused of serious human rights violations.

‘It further undermines the independence and impartiality that the BBC claims to uphold, and I think it has done irreparable damage to any trust audiences had in the corporation.’

Des Freedman, a professor of media at Goldsmiths, University of London, told Declassified UK he could find no mention of General Kohavi in any BBC, Guardian or FT coverage since 2023, when searching on the Nexis database.

He added:

‘Obviously off the record briefings have a place in journalism. However, meeting secretly with a senior IDF representative in the middle of a genocidal campaign as part of an organised propaganda offensive raises serious questions about integrity and transparency.

‘You would hope that news titles would go out of their way to avoid accusations of bias by rejecting the offer to meet privately and instead to put such meetings on the record. In reality, editors at the Guardian, BBC and FT appear willing to open their doors to Israeli spokespeople – no matter how controversial and offensive – in a way which is denied to Palestinian representatives.’

Conclusion: ‘Palestine Is The Rock’

The function of the major news media, very much including BBC News, is not to fully inform or educate the public about what our governments or other elite forces in society are doing. Their primary role is to maintain structures of state and corporate control that keep the public away from the levers of power.

Jason Hickel, a professor of anthropology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, made these cogent observations recently via X:

‘Palestine is the rock on which the West will break itself.

‘Put yourself in the shoes of people in the global South. For nearly two years they have watched how Western leaders, who love to talk about human rights and the rule of law, are happy to shred all these values in the most spectacular displays of hypocrisy in order to prop up their military proxy-state as it openly conducts genocide and ethnic cleansing against an occupied people, even in the face of *overwhelming* international condemnation.’

He continued:

‘What do you think people in the South are supposed to conclude from this?  What would *you* conclude from this in their position?  Decades of Western propaganda have been shattered, this time in full technicolour. Western governments have made it clear that they do not care about human rights and the rule of law when it comes to people of colour, the global majority.’

In fact, Western governments do not even care about human rights and the rule of law in their own countries, where these conflict with the requirements of power and control by elites. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out over many decades, ‘there is a very elaborate propaganda system’ in capitalist societies:

‘involving everything, from the public relations industry and advertising to the corporate media, which simply marginalizes a large part of the population. They technically are allowed to participate by pushing buttons every few years, but they have essentially no role in formulating policy. They can ratify decisions made by others.’

(Noam Chomsky and James Kelman, Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime: Why Ideas Matter, PM Press, 2021, p. 159)

BBC News is a crucial component of this elaborate propaganda system. No amount of self-serving managerial rhetoric about ‘trust’, ‘transparency’ and ‘impartiality’ can refute that fundamental reality.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

This is the first time I have had to begin an opinion column with both a journalistic disclosure and a legal disclaimer. But hey ho, these are dystopian times we live in.

The disclosure: I was one of 20 people who contributed expert reports for a recent legal submission to the British home secretary, Yvette Cooper, calling on her to end the proscription of Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

You can read my submission – on the significant damage done to journalism by Hamas’ proscription – here.

If, as widely expected, Cooper does not approve the application, prepared by the London-based Riverway Law firm on behalf of Hamas, within the 90-day time limit, her decision will be referred to an appeal tribunal for judicial review.

The disclaimer: Nothing that follows is intended in any way to encourage you to take a more favourable view of Hamas. It is not intended in any way to encourage you to support Hamas. It does not endorse opinions or beliefs that are supportive of Hamas, as set out in the submissions calling for the de-proscription of Hamas.

The danger is this: under Section 12 of Britain’s draconian Terrorism Act of 2000, if anything I write, however inadvertently, encourages you to think more favourably of a proscribed organisation like Hamas, I face up to 14 years in jail.

The purpose of this article is to show how the law and the establishment operate together to stifle legitimate criticism of the Israeli occupation.

The law is so loosely worded that the British government, supported by a counter-terrorism police seemingly only too eager to please, can potentially arrest anyone praising the work of Gaza’s public hospitals in saving lives because Hamas is in charge of the enclave’s government, or prosecute anyone, including media outlets, giving a platform to Hamas politicians trying to advance a ceasefire.

If all this sounds crazy, given both that stating facts should not be illegal and that I cannot possibly know how anyone might receive and feel about any information regarding Hamas, then you are starting to understand why the application to the home secretary is so urgent and important.

Secret meetings

The UK may have declared Hamas’ armed wing a terrorist organisation a quarter of a century ago, but its political and administrative wings were added to the proscribed list much more recently – in 2021.

Which is why Cooper, the current home secretary, was misleading in the way she dismissively responded to the de-proscription application submitted to her office. She told LBC: “Hamas has long been a terrorist organisation. We maintain our view about the barbaric nature of this organisation.”

It was Priti Patel who, as home secretary, added Hamas in its entirety, including its political and administrative wings, to the proscription list shortly after she was rehabilitated and readmitted to Boris Johnson’s government in 2019.

Two years earlier, she had been forced to resign from her post as international development secretary in disgrace.

Why? Because she was found to have held 12 secret meetings with senior Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, without disclosing those meetings to her colleagues and while she was supposedly on a family holiday.

It later emerged she had also secretly met other Israeli officials in New York and Westminster.

Patel’s political career, to put it politely, has been distinguished by an evident attentiveness to Israeli concerns.

Undoubtedly her decision to proscribe Hamas’ political and administrative wings, treating them as identical to the armed section of the organisation, was high on Israel’s wish list.

It instantly degraded Britain’s political discourse so that it became all but impossible to discuss Hamas’ rule in Gaza or Israel’s blockade of the enclave in a balanced or realistic way. It resulted in a simplistic black-and-white picture of life in the enclave in which everything Hamas was bad – and therefore, by contrast, everything Israeli was good.

That would spectacularly serve Israeli interests two years later, when, following the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023, Israel fed the western media entirely fabricated stories of Hamas “beheading babies” and carrying out “mass rapes”.

For months afterwards, as Israel set about murdering Palestinians in Gaza en masse and levelling their homes, the only question media interviewers directed at anyone criticising Israel’s actions was this: “Do you condemn Hamas?”

Even the ever-swelling death toll figures recorded by Gaza’s health ministry – proven to be so reliable in previous Israeli attacks that international bodies and the Israeli military itself relied on them – were suddenly treated as suspect and inflated. Independent research continues to suggest otherwise.

Western media outlets appended “Hamas-run” to the health ministry, and its casualty figures – almost certainly a massive undercount given Israel’s systematic destruction of the health sector – were now reported only as a “claim”.

In turn, these deceptions were implicitly used to justify Israel’s own, far greater atrocities in killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children, destroying the enclave’s hospitals and supporting infrastructure, while at the same time starving the entire population.

Eighteen months on, “evil Hamas” is still the story, not Israel’s all-too-obvious genocide.

Bullied into silence

Concerns about Hamas being proscribed in its entirety – not just its armed wing – are far from hypothetical, given the expansive wording of the UK’s Terrorism Act since 2019, when it was amended.

In particular, a revision to Section 12 means that anyone who “expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation”, and one that might “encourage support” for that organisation, is liable to arrest by terrorism police, prosecution, and up to 14 years in jail.

For expressing an opinion.

The wording is so vague that, for example, simply criticising Israel for committing greater and more numerous atrocities than Hamas could theoretically have the counter-terrorism police banging on your door.

To avoid prosecution, Riverway Law’s website dedicated to its application to the home secretary carries a legal disclaimer: “By entering this website you acknowledge that none of the contents can be understood as supporting, or expressing support for, proscribed terrorist organisations under the Terrorism Act 2000.”

Several independent British journalists and commentators – those whose careers are not dictated, and protected, by billionaires or the UK state broadcaster – have had their homes raided at dawn by counter-terrorism police or been arrested at the border as they return home.

One political commentator, Tony Greenstein – who also happens to be Jewish and a trained lawyer – is currently being prosecuted under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act. Others are under prolonged investigation. They have the threat of prosecution hanging over their heads like a sword.

The rest of us are meant to take note, feeling the chilling effect. Do we want the police breaking down the door of our homes at dawn? Do we want to be arrested on return from holiday, our partners and children looking on in horror?

The National Union of Journalists has called the police actions against journalists “abuse and mis-use of counter-terror legislation” and warned that they risk “threatening the safety of journalists”, as well as their sources.

Understandably, you may be barely aware of these repressive police tactics, which have been accelerating since Keir Starmer came to power. He, let us recall, personally approved, as opposition leader, Israel’s crime against humanity of blocking food, water and power to Gaza.

The BBC and the rest of the media have failed to meaningfully report these incidents – which are characteristic elsewhere of police states.

Is that because these media outlets are themselves cowed into submission by the Terrorism Act?

Or is it because they are simply mouthpieces of the same British establishment that made it illegal to express support for objectives which are the same as those sought by Hamas’ political, as opposed to military, objectives?

Let us remember – and it’s easy to forget, given how rarely such things are mentioned by the British media – that the same UK state that proscribed Hamas continues to arm Israel directly, helps ship weapons from other countries to Israel, supplies Israel with intelligence from British spy planes over Gaza, and provides Israel with diplomatic cover – all while Israel carries out what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) calls a “plausible genocide”, and while its sister International Criminal Court (ICC) seeks the arrest of Netanyahu for crimes against humanity.

The British government is not a neutral party in the levelling of Gaza, the decimation of its people by bombs, the ethnic cleansing of swaths of the enclave, or the starvation of the population. It is actively assisting Israel in its genocidal campaign.

The UK establishment is also, through its proscription of Hamas and the wording of the Terrorism Act, bullying journalists, academics, politicians, lawyers – in fact, anyone – into silence about the context of its complicity, into an unwillingness to scrutinise its rationalisations for collusion in genocide.

‘No civilians’

There are two main objectives behind Riverway Law’s submission to the home secretary against Hamas’ proscription as a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The first concerns the proscription of the entire organisation by the British government. This is the part of the legal submission that has attracted most attention – and which has been used to vilify the lawyers involved

As barrister Franck Magennis has explained, Riverway’s hands were tied because Patel – now the shadow foreign secretary – added Hamas to the list as a single entity in 2021, making no distinction between its different wings. That meant the lawyers had no choice but to petition for the entire group to be deproscribed.

The government set the terms of the legal debate, not Hamas or its legal representatives.

Hamas’ lawyers accept that its military wing meets the definition of a terrorist organisation under the terms of the UK’s Terrorism Act. They argue this law casts the net so wide that any organisation using violence to achieve political ends is covered, including the Israeli, Ukrainian and British militaries.

The establishment media have tried to smear Riverway and its barristers as Hamas “stooges” and supporters of terrorism – amply illustrating why the case is so necessary.

An openly hostile interviewer for LBC appeared to think he had caught out Magennis in some kind of ethical or professional lapse because he chose to represent Hamas without payment – as he must do under UK law because Hamas is a proscribed organisation.

The implication was that Magennis was so enthusiastically supportive of terrorism that he was willing to take on time-consuming and career-damaging work for free – rather than that he is doing so because there are vitally important legal and ethical principles at stake.

Not least, the proscription of Hamas’ political wing, including its governmental and administrative institutions, treats them as extensions of the armed struggle.

It breathes life into Israel’s patently ridiculous claims that all of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are really “Hamas command and control centres”, that Gaza’s doctors can be killed or arrested and taken to torture camps because they are “Hamas operatives” in disguise, and that Gaza’s paramedics can be executed because their rescue missions supposedly aid Hamas.

And worse, ultimately proscription supports Israeli leaders’ genocidal statements that there are “no civilians in Gaza”, a place where half the population are children.

Bargaining chips

The proscription of Hamas in its entirety ignores the fact that the group has political goals – ones Gaza’s population voted for 19 years ago to liberate themselves from decades of Israel’s brutal and illegal military occupation. Those goals are distinct from Hamas, yet expressing support for the objectives gives rise to the risk of being investigated by the police and prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Gaza’s people – the less than half who were old enough to vote two decades ago – were driven down the path of supporting armed resistance in the pursuit of national liberation for an all-too-obvious reason. Because Israel had refused to make any concessions to Hamas’ political rivals, headed by Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, has been using strictly diplomatic means – which Israel also opposes – to achieve statehood.

The proscription of Hamas sweeps out of view the fact that a people under occupation have a right enshrined in international law to use armed struggle against their military oppressors. It makes it perilously dangerous to show support for the armed struggle of Gaza’s Palestinians lest you are accused of breaching Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Proscription sanctions the failure by western politicians and media to distinguish between Hamas actions on 7 October 2023 that accord with international law, such as its attacks on Israeli military bases, and illegitimate actions targeting Israeli civilians.

It reverses reality, treating all those Israelis held in Gaza as hostages who have been kidnapped, even those who are soldiers, while approving of Israel’s kidnapping of Palestinians in Gaza, from medical staff to children.

The latter are supposedly “arrested”. They are referred to by the western media as “prisoners”, even though most have not been charged or put on trial, and the main purpose of their detention seems to be as bargaining chips in an exchange for Israelis captive in Gaza.

And finally, since 2021, Britain’s proscription of Hamas’ political wing has effectively meant the UK has given its backing both to Israel’s refusal to talk to Gaza’s government, and to Israel’s near two-decade-old siege of Gaza that turned it into little more than a concentration camp holding 2.3 million Palestinians, further radicalising the population.

British politicians should understand quite how self-defeating such an approach is. After all, it was only through talking to Sinn Fein, the political wing of the “terrorist” IRA group, that Britain was able to negotiate a peace deal, the Good Friday Agreement, in Northern Ireland in 1998.

Hamas stated in its revised 2017 charter that it is ready to make territorial concessions with Israel – based on the traditional two-state solution.

And it does so again in its application to the home secretary, calling the two-state solution the “national consensus” among Palestinians.

The submission notes that Israel has repeatedly assassinated Hamas leaders, including Ahmed Jabari and Ismail Haniyeh, when they were close to concluding ceasefire agreements, in what looks suspiciously like attempts by Israel to undermine more moderate voices within the organisation.

Through proscription, Britain has handed Israel a permanent licence to refuse to test Hamas’ willingness to compromise.

Attack on lawyers

Robert Jenrick, Britain’s shadow justice secretary, has called for Riverway Law and its barristers to be investigated and struck off for representing Hamas – apparently forgetting the foundational principle in law that everyone, even serial killers, have a right to legal representation if the law is not to become a hollow charade.

The Terrorism Act includes provision for an appeal by proscribed organisations against their inclusion on the list. How are they to go through the legal procedure to appeal their listing apart from through lawyers?

Disgracefully, Starmer’s officials have once again kept their silence as Hamas’ legal representatives in the UK have been turned into targets for establishment abuse. The government is as complicit in the assault at home on basic democratic rights, such as free speech and the rule of law, as it has been complicit abroad in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

How would the Starmer government have reacted had the two British barristers who defended Israel against South Africa’s case against genocide at the ICJ last year been publicly maligned for doing so? Would it have been okay to tar those lawyers with the crimes against humanity committed by their client?

Fahad Ansari, director of Riverway Law, has written to the government, urging it to speak up in defence of this team’s right to challenge Hamas’ proscription, and warning that Jenrick’s “comments are not only reckless and libellous but amount to incitement against our staff members”.

He has reminded the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, of the previous murder of lawyers for taking on cases that challenged the British establishment, including Pat Finucane, who was killed by Ulster loyalists in collusion with the British security services, after he won several human rights cases against the British government.

Hamas’ submission makes the case that Patel provided several false grounds to justify the proscription of Hamas in its entirety.

Hamas disputes Patel’s characterisation of it as a terrorist organisation. It notes that international law allows people illegally occupied and oppressed to resist through military means.

Hamas’ former political bureau chief Mousa Abu Marzouk notes in his witness statement on behalf of Hamas that Hamas’ operation on 7 October 2023 was intended only to strike military targets, and that atrocities carried out by its fighters that day against civilians had not been authorised by the leadership and are not condoned.

It is impossible to know whether that claim is true.

It is also incredibly hard to draw attention to factors which could be said to support Abu Marzouk’s argument without also being alleged to have invited support for Hamas or as expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of Hamas – which would risk being accused of a criminal offence under Section 12.

In addition to the false stories spread by Israel, such as that Hamas “beheaded babies” and carried out “mass rape”, it is known that other, presumably less disciplined, groups broke out of Gaza that day as well as Hamas. Apparently no effort has been made to determine which groups carried out which atrocities.

And then there is the fact that an unknown number of the atrocities blamed on Hamas were actually caused by Israel’s green-lighting of its Hannibal directive, which authorised the Israeli military to kill its own soldiers and citizens to prevent them being seized. That included firing missiles into kibbutz homes and on vehicles heading towards Gaza, leaving only charred remains of the occupants.

The proscription of Hamas makes it legally dangerous to draw attention to the sickening acts of the Israeli government.

Also worth noting is that Hamas makes clear in its submission that, unlike Israel, it is ready to have its actions that day investigated by international bodies and any of its fighters who committed atrocities put on trial.

“We remain, as always, prepared to cooperate with any international investigations and inquiries into the operation, even if ‘Israel’ refuses to do so,” Abu Marzouk writes.

He calls on “the ICC Prosecutor and his team to immediately and urgently come to occupied Palestine to look into the crimes and violations committed there, rather than merely observing the situation remotely or being subject to the Israeli restrictions.”

Public demonised

Abu Marzouk points out that Britain is not a dispassionate observer of Israel’s genocide unfolding in Gaza. As the colonial power in Palestine for much of the first half of the last century, it permitted European Jews to colonise the Palestinian people’s homeland, effectively leaving the latter stateless.

“Unsurprisingly,” Abu Marzouk writes, “the British state continues to side with the genocidal Zionist coloniser, while proscribing organisations like ours that strive to assert Palestinian dignity.”

Which alludes to the second main purpose of Hamas’ application.

The British state has a legal obligation to prevent Israel’s current crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza. And those in a position to shed light on Israel’s atrocities – and thereby add to the pressure on the British government and international bodies to fulfil their legal obligations – have a duty to do so too.

That means lawyers, journalists, human rights groups, academics and researchers should be as free as possible to contribute information and analyses that hold both Israel to account for its continuing crimes and the British state for any collusion in those crimes.

But as noted earlier, what Hamas’ proscription has done is precisely stifle expert discourse about what is happening in Gaza. Those who try to speak up, from independent journalists to lawyers, have found themselves vilified, bullied or threatened with prosecution by the British state.

Increasingly, this crackdown is being extended to the wider public.

Proscription has paved the way for the arrest and jailing of peace activist groups like Palestine Action trying to stop the UK-based arms manufacturer Elbit producing the quadcopters Israel is using to finish off civilians, including children, injured in air strikes on Gaza.

Proscription has paved the way for demonising mass public marches and student campus demonstrations against Israel’s genocide as pro-Hamas and “hate protests”.

Proscription has paved the way for the police to place ever-tighter restrictions on such demonstrations, to arrest the organisers, and to investigate prominent figures like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell who take part in them.

“Rather than allow freedom of speech, police have embarked on a campaign of political intimidation and persecution of journalists, academics, peace activists and students over their perceived support for Hamas,” the application argues.

But while those opposed to genocide find themselves maligned as supporters of terrorism, those actually committing crimes against humanity – whether Israeli leaders or British nationals taking part as soldiers in the genocide in Gaza – are still being welcomed in Britain with open arms.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy met his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Saar, in London last month for a so-called “private meeting”. The British government apparently agreed to Saar’s visit, even though it must have known it would trigger requests from legal groups for his arrest for war crimes.

British officials have also hosted senior Israeli military figures.

Meanwhile, a legal dossier handed to the Metropolitan Police last month against 10 Britons accused of committing war crimes in Gaza, such as killing civilians and aid workers, has made barely any ripples.

Where is the outrage meted out by the media and politicians for Britons who have chosen to travel to Gaza to fight with an army that has killed and maimed many tens of thousands of Palestinian children there?

There is more to say, but saying more risks arrest by the UK’s counter-terrorism police and jail time. Which is why ending Hamas’ proscription needs to happen as soon as possible.

And why the British establishment, from politicians to the media, are so determined to close ranks and foil the application.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

In their legal submission, they say “the proscription has hindered the group’s ability to broker a political solution to the conflict, stifled conversations in securing a long-term political settlement, criminalised ordinary Palestinians residing in Gaza, and undermined the possibility of a peaceful settlement”.

They also argue that being branded terrorists infringes fundamental rights and has a disproportionate impact on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and open debate and political expression, which makes sensible journalism and public discourse on Israel’s actions in Palestine impossible.

Hamas’s submission also points out that Britain’s Terrorism Act “covers all groups and organisations around the world that use violence to achieve political objectives, including the Israeli armed forces, the Ukrainian Army and, indeed, the British armed forces”.

And it claims proscription obstructs humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip because any form of assistance can be labelled “terrorism” if it is “seen as supporting a group that has been labelled a terrorist organisation”.

On the other hand, proscribing Hamas was a clever move because it makes it so much easier for Israel’s stooges at Westminster to avoid having to explain that regime’s far worse war crimes and crimes against humanity. We have to thank Priti Patel who, while International Development Secretary, was so taken-in by Zionist claptrap and so adoring of Israel that, in 2017, she reportedly had around a dozen meetings with Israeli politicians and organisations during a family holiday in Israel without telling the Foreign Office, her civil servants or her boss Theresa May, and without government officials present. This was not only a middle finger to the Ministerial Code of Conduct but a gross breach of security.

She was also said to have tried persuading colleagues to send British taxpayers’ money as aid for an Israeli forces project in the Golan Heights…. and she actually visited the Golan. As everyone and his dog knows, the Golan Heights is Syrian territory stolen in 1967 by the Israelis who have illegally occupied it ever since. Touring it with the thieving occupation army was another serious diplomatic blunder.

Patel’s meetings are said to have been arranged by Lord Polak, an official of the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the 1980s who joined the Conservative Friends of Israel in 1989, and served as its director for 26 years until appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for political service and made a life peer. It’s difficult to see what political service Polak performed for anyone other than the Israeli regime.

Patel was forced to resign but later restored to favour and promoted to Home Secretary. She proscribed Hamas’s political wing in 2021 with hardly a murmur of opposition. There seemed no legitimate reason for doing so unless it was part of the UK/US/Israel axis aim to bring about coercive regime change. But would that be legal? Are the Palestinians to be denied self-determination and the right to choose their own government? Well, yes, so it seems.

What’s to fear from Hamas?

No-one in the UK Government has properly explained, probably because no-one has bothered to sit down and shoot the breeze with them. Instead they eagerly welcome Netanyahu and his thugs with red-carpet hugs, handshakes and vows of affection and endless co-operation, and soak up the nonsense they talk.

And has anyone at Westminster bothered to read Hamas’s 2017 Charter? If so, did they notice Sections 16 and 20? They are reasonably in tune with international law while the Israeli government pursues policies that definitely are not.

16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
17. Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.

Under international law the correct way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is (and always has been) by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and theft of Palestinian resources.

JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace), who claim to be the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world, said of the genocide in Gaza: “We’re organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of US Jews into solidarity with Palestinian freedom struggle.” Here’s an extract from their no-nonsense statement on the hostilities in Palestine.

“The Israeli government may have just declared war, but its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence. Reality is shaped by when you start the clock.

For the past year, the most racist, fundamentalist, far-right government in Israeli history has ruthlessly escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, unrelenting siege and daily humiliation. In recent weeks, Israeli forces repeatedly stormed the holiest Muslim sites in Jerusalem.

For 16 years, the Israeli government has suffocated Palestinians in Gaza under a draconian air, sea and land military blockade, imprisoning and starving two million people and denying them medical aid. The Israeli government routinely massacres Palestinians in Gaza; ten-year-olds who live in Gaza have already been traumatized by seven major bombing campaigns in their short lives.

For 75 years, the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation over Palestinians, operating an apartheid regime. Palestinian children are dragged from their beds in pre-dawn raids by Israeli soldiers and held without charge in Israeli military prisons. Palestinians’ homes are torched by mobs of Israeli settlers, or destroyed by the Israeli army. Entire Palestinian villages are forced to flee, abandoning the homes orchards, and land that were in their family for generations.

The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to US complicity in the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation. The US government consistently enables Israeli violence and bears blame for this moment. The unchecked military funding, diplomatic cover, and billions of dollars of private money flowing from the US enables and empowers Israel’s apartheid regime.”

The Zionists’ Dalet Plan, or Plan D

It’s not just America’s complicity and Britain’s 110-years of betrayal that have brought us to this appalling situation. Plan D was the Zionists’ terror blueprint for their brutal takeover of the Palestinian homeland drawn up 77 years ago by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency, and relentless pursued by the Israeli regime to this day.

Plan D was a carefully thought-out, step-by-step plot choreographed ahead of the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood. It correctly assumed that the British authorities would no longer be there.

It’s a sign of the shoddy times we live in that the lawyers involved in the appeal case felt obliged to state that Hamas did not pay them or the experts who provided evidence for their submission, as it is illegal to receive funds from a group designated as a terrorist organisation.

Hopefully their appeal will skewer the Government’s utter hypocrisy and undying support for the real terrorists in the Holy Land. Priti Patel will have to reckon with the consequences of her actions in terms of the huge numbers of innocent lives lost or reduced to unimaginable misery.

I hasten to add that I am no supporter of Hamas. I support truth and justice, simple as that. And of course the Laws of Cricket.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.

The corporation’s longstanding systematic protection of Israel, considered an ‘apartheid regime’ by major human rights organisations, has been particularly glaring since the country launched its genocidal attacks on Gaza in October 2023. We have all seen the repetition and amplification of the Israeli narrative above the Palestinian perspective, omission of ‘Israel’ from headlines about its latest war crimes committed in Gaza, and even the dismissive treatment by senior BBC management of serious concerns about bias raised by their own journalists.

The documentary focused on the experiences of several children trying to survive in Gaza under brutal attack by Israeli forces armed to the hilt with weaponry and intelligence from the US, the UK and other western nations. It transpired that the film’s narrator, 13-year-old Abdullah al-Yazuri, is the son of Ayman al-Yazuri, a deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza’s government which is administered by Hamas.

Mr al-Yazuri previously worked for the United Arab Emirates’ education ministry and studied at British universities, obtaining a PhD in chemistry from the University of Huddersfield. Middle East Eye (MEE), an independently-funded online news organisation covering stories from the Middle East and North Africa, described him as ‘a technocrat with a scientific rather than political background’, pointing out that ministers, bureaucrats and civil servants in Gaza are appointed by Hamas.

Indeed, as MEE explained:

‘Many Palestinians in Gaza have family or other connections to Hamas, which runs the government. This means that anyone working in an official capacity must also work with Hamas.’

A campaign was launched by pro-Israel voices, including Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, and Danny Cohen, a former director of BBC television, to pressure the BBC to drop the documentary from iPlayer, soon after it was broadcast on BBC Two on 17 February.

Despite a countercampaign by over 1,000 media and film professionals objecting to the ‘racist’ and ‘dehumanising’ targeting of the documentary by supporters of Israel, the BBC quickly caved in, apologising for ‘mistakes’ that they deemed ‘significant and damaging’. Notably, however, the BBC did not point to any errors or inaccuracies in the actual editorial content of the programme.

The broadcaster attempted to divert some of the blame onto the independent company, Hoyo Films, who had made the documentary, saying that the BBC had not been told by the filmmakers that Abdullah al-Yazuri’s father was a deputy agriculture minister in the Hamas government.

Hoyo Films told the BBC it paid the boy’s mother ‘a limited sum of money for the narration’ via his sister’s bank account. A BBC spokesperson said:

‘While Hoyo Films have assured us that no payments were made to members of Hamas or its affiliates, either directly, in kind, or as a gift, the BBC is seeking additional assurance around the budget of the programme and will undertake a full audit of expenditure.’

Addressing MPs from the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 3 March, Samir Shah, the BBC’s chairman, said that:

‘This is a really, really bad moment. What has been revealed is a dagger to the heart of the BBC’s claim to be impartial and to be trustworthy, which is why I and the board are determined to ask the questions.’

Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, told the MPs that after ‘failures in transparency’ he simply ‘lost trust’ in the production of the film and personally ordered it to be withdrawn:

‘It was a very difficult decision. What I did – and it was a very tough decision – was to say, at the moment, looking people in the eye, can we trust this film in terms of how it was made, the information we’ve got? And that’s where we made the decision. It’s a simple decision in that regard.’

In short, one child’s family connection with an official in the civilian administration of Gaza is supposedly reason enough to remove a vital documentary humanising Palestinians. This is an important film which redressed, to a marginal extent, the overwhelming pro-Israel bias displayed by the BBC over the past 18 months.

Meanwhile, the broadcaster repeatedly and prominently platforms the leaders and spokespeople of a state committing genocide and apartheid. Is it any wonder the public reputation of BBC News has likely nosedived yet further since 7 October, 2023?

As Mark Seddon, director of the Centre for UN Studies at the University of Buckingham and a former speechwriter for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, observed via X:

‘Tim Davie should perhaps get the BBC to do some sampling. He may discover that there is a significant body of public opinion that has [been], and is, losing faith in BBC news gathering which is increasingly parochial & transparently failing when it comes to Israel/Palestine.’

Although Davie insisted on the need for BBC ‘transparency’, he was not at all transparent when asked by Rupa Huq MP to name specific groups or individuals who had demanded the BBC withdraw the film. He declined to do so. One of those is, as mentioned, the Israeli ambassador to the UK who constantly repeats ludicrous propaganda such as ‘our only target is Hamas facilities’, and who has denied that there is any humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Spineless BBC

As Chris Doyle, the director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, noted:

‘By pulling [the] Gaza film, BBC shows it cannot stand up to Israel.’

By contrast, he pointed out that in 2003, the BBC aired a documentary on Israel’s nuclear programme, titled Israel’s Secret Weapon:

‘Israeli leaders hit the roof and banned its officials from appearing on the BBC.

‘The documentary was spot on. Israel was embarrassed at having its nuclear arsenal exposed when Iraq was being invaded for a non-existent stash of weapons of mass destruction.’

Doyle added:

‘The BBC did not cave in, and Israel lifted its boycott.

‘Twenty-five years later, the BBC has lost any semblance of a spine on Israel.’

British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, an emeritus professor of international relations at Oxford, said that the pulling of the film was ‘only the latest example of the public broadcaster’s regular capitulation to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby’. He continued:

‘The BBC has good reporters on Israel-Palestine, but its bosses are hopelessly compromised by their pronounced and persistent bias in favour of Israel.

‘The reason for this bias is not lack of knowledge but cowardice, the fear of antagonising Israel and Israel’s friends in high places in Britain.’

Richard Sanders, an award-winning producer who has made over fifty films in history, news and current affairs, including Al-Jazeera’s ‘October 7’ documentary, said:

‘Had the situation been reversed and an Israeli boy revealed to be the child of a junior minister in Netanyahu’s government the BBC might have felt obliged to issue one of its “corrections and clarifications” but it’s highly unlikely the film would have been withdrawn and the – extremely vulnerable – production team humiliated in such a public manner.’

Sangita Myska, dropped by radio broadcaster LBC in April 2024 after robustly challenging an Israeli spokesman live on air, wrote on X:

‘I was a BBC journalist for years. However well-intentioned the Gaza doco-makers were, they did not meet editorial standards of transparency BUT does that make a material difference to the overall accuracy of the film? Given the weight of supporting evidence: Probably not.’

She added:

‘I’m reliably informed that morale amongst some brilliant, committed, journalists is in free-fall over this.’

Sanders followed up with:

‘As another old hand who has spent more hours in sweaty edit suites with lawyers and commissioning editors than I care to remember I broadly agree with @SangitaMyska’s comments.

‘But I’d stress that a media environment where the victims of genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid are subjected constantly to the most intense scrutiny, while their tormentors and those who support them are all too often allowed a free pass is a distorted and frankly racist one.’

He added:

‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone remains by far the best thing the BBC has produced on Gaza and bore no evidence at all of any Hamas involvement in its editorial content.

‘It is deeply concerning that it is now being used as a stick to beat the BBC which must not allow itself to become even more cowed.’

In October 2024, the BBC had broadcast a documentary called, ‘Surviving October 7^th: We Will Dance Again’. The BBC’s description said:

‘A harrowing glimpse into the brutal assault on partygoers at the Nova Music Festival – one of the sites in Israel attacked by Hamas on 7 October 2023.’

As one user on X pointed out last week:

‘BBC made a documentary “We Will Dance Again”

‘Was there anyone in that documentary that was IDF or related to IDF?

‘Were there any serving soldiers or illegal settlers in the documentary.

‘Were any of their children in it?

‘As a @BBC licence payer, I demand an inquiry.’

Of course, the ‘demand’ for an inquiry was intended ironically and there was no response from the BBC. But the point was clearly made.

The Truth Exists

As mentioned in several of our previous alerts on Israel and Palestine, there is tremendous pressure on journalists working at BBC News to toe the Israeli line. Notably, since 7 October, use of the word ‘genocide’ has essentially been banned. Any time an interviewee mentions the word in a live setting, the BBC presenter intervenes to shut down the discussion. As one anonymous former BBC journalist said:

‘People [at the BBC] were terrified of using the word “genocide” in coverage. They still are. You will very rarely see it in any BBC coverage. And if an interviewee says the word “genocide”, the presenter will almost always panic.’

And whenever Israeli war crimes or breaches of international law are raised by a guest on a BBC television or radio programme, the BBC journalist will promptly add words to the effect that, ‘Israel denies that’ or ‘Israeli disputes that’. Such BBC repetition of one side’s viewpoint is rarely, if ever, seen when reporting or discussing Russia’s actions in Ukraine, for example, or more generally when addressing Moscow’s role in global affairs.

Karishma Patel, a former BBC researcher, newsreader and journalist, wrote recently about her reasons for leaving the BBC. She observed ‘a shocking level of editorial inconsistency’ in how the BBC covers Gaza. Journalists were ‘actively choosing not to follow evidence’ of Israeli war crimes ‘out of fear’.

Media Lens readers may recall the late Professor Greg Philo, head of the Glasgow Media Group, relating how he was once told by senior BBC editors that they ‘wait in fear’ for a phone call from the Israeli embassy in London whenever a news item appears on Israel or Palestine.

Patel continued:

‘Impartiality has failed if its key method is to constantly balance “both sides” of a story as equally true. A news outlet that refuses to come to conclusions becomes a vehicle in informational warfare, where bad faith actors flood social media with unfounded claims, creating a post-truth “fog”. Only robust evidence-based conclusions can cut through this.’

She described her horror at seeing images for the first time of a Palestinian man crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer, adding:

‘To see such overwhelming evidence every day and then hear 50/50 debates on Israel’s conduct – this is what created the biggest rift between my commitment to truth and the role I had to play as a BBC journalist. We have passed the point at which Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity are debatable. There’s more than enough evidence – from Palestinians on the ground, aid organisations; legal bodies – to come to coverage-shaping conclusions around what Israel has done.’

As she rightly noted, ‘truth exists’ based on reasonable, verifiable evidence:

‘In a world where claims are constantly competing, a journalist’s job is back-breaking: it is to investigate and come to conclusions, rather than setting up constant debates – no matter who this angers and no matter how much work it takes.’

A perfect example is the fake ‘debate’ over the reality of human-induced climate change. Until very recently, the BBC created a spurious ‘balance’, where none exists, hosting exchanges between highly-credentialed climate scientists and climate ‘sceptics’ often linked to fossil fuel interests.

Patel observed:

‘In 2018, the BBC issued long overdue editorial guidance to its staff, stating: “Climate change IS happening.” There was a sigh of relief from climate scientists, after years spent warning the organisation its debates were harmful. Coverage would now be rooted in this evidence-based conclusion.’

She summed up:

‘When will the BBC conclude that Israel IS violating international law, and shape its coverage around that truth? As the old saying goes, the journalist’s job isn’t to report that it may or may not be raining. It’s to look outside and tell the public if it is. And let me tell you: there’s a storm.’

The withdrawal of the Gaza documentary has been followed by ‘torrents of online harassment and abuse targeting 13-year-old Abdullah and his family’, according to MEE. Abdullah said:

‘I’ve been working for over nine months on this documentary for it to just get wiped and deleted… it was very sad to me.’

Abdullah told MEE that the whole affair has caused him serious ‘mental pressure’ and made him fear for his safety.

A BBC spokesperson claimed:

‘The BBC takes its duty of care responsibilities very seriously, particularly when working with children, and has frameworks in place to support these obligations.’

Richard Sanders pointed out that ‘more than 200 journalists have been killed by the Israelis in Gaza’. He said that it was dangerous that:

‘the team that made this [film] are effectively being smeared as Hamas accomplices. And at the heart of the story we have a vulnerable child.’

In an interview with the Sunday National newspaper in Scotland, Patel said:

‘He [Tim Davie] was talking about distrusting the entire film on the basis of this connection that the child narrator has.

‘One of the things that occurred to me is the fact that the BBC over the past 15 or 16 months has on two different occasions willingly chosen to embed with the Israeli military and to be openly subject to its censor. That was Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza quite early on and there was a Lebanese town as well, where a BBC correspondent followed the Israeli military into the town.

‘There is a lot of concern around potential influence over this documentary but there was very little public concern over our public broadcaster embedding with the Israeli military.’

In a message he addressed to the BBC, Abdullah said:

‘I did not agree to the risk of me being targeted in any way before the documentary was broadcasted on the BBC. So [if] anything happens to me, the BBC is responsible for it.’

Artists for Palestine UK, who organised the letter mentioned earlier with over 1,000 signatories demanding reinstatement of the film, warned that:

‘Tim Davie and Samir Shah are throwing Palestinian children under the bus.

‘BBC bosses must explain how they plan to safeguard the children who participated in the film. Their lives are in danger as Israel cuts off aid and threatens to collapse the ceasefire in Gaza. How will Britain’s public broadcaster ensure it isn’t putting a target on innocent kids’ backs?’

Abdullah finished by telling MEE that he is grateful to ‘all of those in the United Kingdom who had supported me, supported the documentary and had protested for the documentary to be put back on the BBC. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart, and continue your efforts that hopefully can and will return the movie back up on BBC. I hope that Gaza sees light again, that children of Gaza have a bright future again and everybody… sees a better future and a better tomorrow.’

He concluded by saying: ‘My wish is to study journalism [in] the United Kingdom.’

If Abdullah achieves his dream, it seems unlikely he will pursue a career in journalism with the BBC.

DC

Note. At the time of writing, ‘Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone’, can be viewed here on Rumble.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

Has any nation squandered its diplomatic capital, plundered its own political system, attacked its partners and supplicated itself before its far weaker enemies as rapidly and brazenly as Donald Trump’s America?

The fiery Oval Office meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday saw the American leader try to publicly humiliate the democratically elected leader of a nation that had been invaded by a rapacious and imperialistic aggressor.

And this was all because Zelensky refused to sign an act of capitulation, criticised Putin (who has tried to have Zelensky killed on numerous occasions), and failed to bend the knee to Trump, the country’s self-described king.

• READ MORE: Other US under Donald Trump reports

The tense Oval Office meeting.    Video: CNN

The Oval Office meeting became heated in a way that has rarely been seen between world leaders.

What is worse is Trump has now been around so long that his oafish behaviour has become normalised. Together with his attack dog, Vice-President JD Vance, Trump has thrown the Overton window — the spectrum of subjects politically acceptable to the public — wide open.

Previously sensible Republicans are now either cowed or co-opted. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is gutting America’s public service and installing toadies in place of professionals, while his social media company, X, is platforming ads from actual neo-Nazis.

The FBI is run by Kash Patel, who hawked bogus COVID vaccine reversal therapies and wrote children’s books featuring Trump as a monarch. The agency is already busily investigating Trump’s enemies.

The Department of Health and Human Services is helmed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine denier, just as Americans have begun dying from measles for the first time in a decade. And America’s health and medical research has been channelled into ideologically “approved” topics.

At the Pentagon, in a breathtaking act of self-sabotage, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered US Cyber Command to halt all operations targeting Russia.

And cuts to USAID funding are destroying US soft power, creating a vacuum that will gleefully be filled by China. Other Western aid donors are likely to follow suit so they can spend more on their militaries in response to US unilateralism.

What is Trump’s strategy?
Trump’s wrecking ball is already having seismic global effects, mere weeks after he took office.

The US vote against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia for starting the war against Ukraine placed it in previously unthinkable company — on the side of Russia, Belarus and North Korea. Even China abstained from the vote.

States that voted against the resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

Russia
US
Israel Belarus
North Korea
Nicaragua pic.twitter.com/P8csvisMVG

— Gregory Brew (@gbrew24) February 24, 2025

In the United Kingdom, a YouGov poll of more than 5000 respondents found that 48 percent of Britons thought it was more important to support Ukraine than maintain good relations with the US. Only 20 percent favoured supporting America over Ukraine.

And Trump’s bizarre suggestion that China, Russia and the US halve their respective defence budgets is certain to be interpreted as a sign of weakness rather than strength.

The oft-used explanation for his behaviour is that it echoes the isolationism of one of his ideological idols, former US President Andrew Jackson. Trump’s aim seems to be ring-fencing American businesses with high tariffs, while attempting to split Russia away from its relationship with China.

These arguments are both economically illiterate and geopolitically witless. Even a cursory understanding of tariffs reveals that they drive inflation because they are paid by importers who then pass the costs on to consumers. Over time, they are little more than sugar pills that turn economies diabetic, increasingly reliant on state protections from unending trade wars.

And the “reverse Kissinger” strategy — a reference to the US role in exacerbating the Sino-Soviet split during the Cold War — is wishful thinking to the extreme.

Putin would have to be utterly incompetent to countenance a move away from Beijing. He has invested significant time and effort to improve this relationship, believing China will be the dominant power of the 21st century.

Putin would be even more foolish to embrace the US as a full-blown partner. That would turn Russia’s depopulated southern border with China, stretching over 4300 kilometres, into the potential front line of a new Cold War.

What does this mean for America’s allies?
While Trump’s moves have undoubtedly strengthened the US’ traditional adversaries, they have also weakened and alarmed its friends.

Put simply, no American ally — either in Europe or Asia — can now have confidence Washington will honour its security commitments. This was brought starkly home to NATO members at the Munich Security Conference in February, where US representatives informed a stunned audience that America may no longer view itself as the main guarantor of European security.

Vice-President Vance’s controversial speech to European leaders. Video: DW

The swiftness of US disengagement means European countries must not only muster the will and means to arm themselves quickly, but also take the lead in collectively providing for Ukraine’s security.

Whether they can do so remains unclear. Europe’s history of inaction does not bode well.

US allies also face choices in Asia. Japan and South Korea will now be seriously considering all options – potentially even nuclear weapons – to deter an emboldened China.

There are worries in Australia, as well. Can it pretend nothing has changed and hope the situation will then normalise after the next US presidential election?

The future of AUKUS, the deal to purchase (and then co-design) US nuclear-powered submarines, is particularly uncertain.

Does it make strategic sense to pursue full integration with the US military when the White House could just treat Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul and Canberra with the same indifference it has displayed towards its friends in Europe?

Ultimately, the chaos Trump 2.0 has unleashed in such a short amount of time is both unprecedented and bewildering. In seeking to put “America First”, Trump is perversely hastening its decline. He is leaving America isolated and untrusted by its closest friends.

And, in doing so, the world’s most powerful nation has also made the world a more dangerous, uncertain and ultimately an uglier place to be.

Dr Matthew Sussex, is associate professor (adj), Griffith Asia Institute; and research fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

President Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who has promoted right-wing conspiracy theories, is “one of Donald Trump’s most disturbing picks” who seems poised to use the office to go after journalists and other Trump critics, says Chip Gibbons of the civil liberties organization Defending Rights & Dissent.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We speak with journalist Mehdi Hasan, founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, about the incoming U.S. administration and President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for key roles, including lawyer Kash Patel to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump reportedly considered Patel for FBI deputy director during his first term but dropped the idea after pushback from within his own administration. Hasan describes Patel as a “toady” whose threats against political opponents and journalists should be disqualifying, but that he aligns with Trump’s goals of further politicizing the FBI. “He wants to use it as an instrument of vengeance.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

US politics, to that end, remain a matter of enormous importance to the UK.  Interfering in US elections is a habit that dies hardest of all.  In 1940, with the relentless march of Nazi Germany’s war machine across Europe, British intelligence officers based in New York and Washington had one primary objective: to aid the election of politicians favouring US intervention on the side of Britain.  As Steven Usdin noted in 2017, they also had two other attached goals: “defeat those who advocated neutrality, and silence or destroy the reputations of American isolationists they deemed a menace to British security.”

Much of this is also covered in Thomas E. Mahl’s 1998 study Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44, which was initially scoffed at for giving much credence to Britain’s role in creating the office of Coordinator of Information, an entity that became the forerunner of the Office of Strategic Services, itself the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mahl was, it was revealed in 1999, on to something.  In a dull yet revealing study written at the end of World War II documenting the activities of the British Security Coordination office, an outfit established by Canadian spymaster Sir William S. Stephenson with the approval of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, activities of interference are described on a scale to make any modern Russian operative sigh with longing envy.  Those roped into the endeavour were a rather colourful lot: the classicist Gilbert Highet, future novelist of dark children’s novels extraordinaire Roald Dahl, and editor of the trade journal Western Hemisphere Weekly Bulletin, Tom Hill.

During Stephenson’s tenure, the office used subversion, sabotage, disinformation and blackmail with relish to influence political outcomes and malign the America Firsters.  (How marvellous contemporary.)  It cultivated relations with such figures as the 1940 Republican nominee for president, Wendell Willkie.  It also offered gobbets of slanted information to media outlets, often produced verbatim, by suborned pro-interventionist hacks.  In October 1941, BSC provided FDR a map purporting to detail a plan by Nazi Germany to seize South America, a document the president gratefully waved at a news conference. (The study claims its authenticity, though doubts remain.)

The Democrats are currently receiving the moral and physical aid of volunteers from the British Labour Party, who are throwing in hours and tears for a Kamala Harris victory in various battleground states.  Their presence was revealed in a now deleted social media post from Labour’s head of operations, Sofia Patel, noting that somewhere in the order of 100 current and former party staff were heading to the US prior to polling day to campaign in North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

On the other side of the political aisle, Nigel Farage, now Reform UK leader and member for Clacton-on-Sea, has spent much time openly campaigning for Donald Trump.  Hardly surprising that he should complain about UK Labour doing what he has been doing habitually since 2016.  Walking political disaster and former Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss, historically the shortest occupant in that office, also put in an appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention to offer what limited support she could.

Trump’s campaign team has taken umbrage at the efforts of Labour Party staffers, enough to file a complaint with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC).  This is not small beer: any opportunity to allege an unfavourable distortion in votes will be pounced upon.  In an October 21 letter to the FEC’s acting general counsel, Lisa J. Stevenson, Trump’s attorney sought “an immediate investigation into blatant foreign interference in the 2024 Presidential Election”. This took “the form of apparent illegal foreign national contributions made by the Labour Party of the United Kingdom and accepted by Harris for President, the principal campaign committee of Vice President Kamala Harris.”

The claim makes mention of another effort in the 2016 elections, when the Australian Labor Party furnished the Bernie 2016 campaign representing Senator Bernie Sanders with “delegates to be placed with the campaign”.  The ALP covered flights and provided participants with a daily stipend.  The FEC subsequently found this to be a provision of campaign services to the Sanders campaign, and determined that it, and the ALP, had violated the foreign national prohibitions.  Each received civil penalties of $14,500.

Patel’s announcement, the claim goes on to argue, seems to emulate the overly enthusiastic ALP model.  As head of operations, “her LinkedIn posts indicate that she is speaking as a representative of the party.”  Her posts supported “a reasonable inference that the Labour Party will finance at least travel and facilitate room and board.”

As regulations stand, FEC rules permit the participation of foreign nationals in campaign activities as long as they remain uncompensated volunteers.  If one accepts the narrow reading of the laws according to the US District Court for the District of Columbia in Bluman v FEC, contributions must be of a non-financial nature.  British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has stated that party staff have travelled to the US to campaign for Harris “in their own spare time”, staying with other volunteers in the process.  By no means is it clear that this did not involve a financial contribution.

Previous public efforts to sway election results in the US by British well-wishers hoping to test the waters have not ended well.  In 2004, the Guardian newspaper launched Operation Clark County, a smug and foolish effort to dissuade undecided voters in the swing state of Ohio from voting for the Republican incumbent, George W. Bush.  The response was one of unmitigated, volcanic fury.  A letter from Wading River, NY captured the mood: “I don’t give a rat’s ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life.  If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit.”  The letter is coarsening in its finality. “Oh yeah – and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals.”  Starmer, beware.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

A user named Jagmohan Bairwa made the same claim while tweeting the video. (Archived link)

Another user named Manu Tripathi also made the same claim while sharing the video. (Archived link)

A user named Tanmoy also tweeted the video with the same claim. (Archived link)

This video is also viral on Facebook with the same claim. 

Fact Check

We performed a reverse image search using frames taken from the viral video and found the source video uploaded on January 14, 2020 by a YouTube channel in Pakistan. It is titled, “Doctor Zafar Iqbal with a girl, leak video”.

Based on this information, we performed another search using Urdu keywords. This led us to a report published on Pakistani news website ‘Daily Pakistan‘ on February 2, 2020. It stated that a video of Pakistani doctor Zafar Iqbal dancing with a woman had gone viral on social media. The incident also found coverage on Pakistani news portal ‘Humsab’ on February 3, 2020.

The same video was being circulated as footage of Jalore MP Devji Patel last year as well. In a post dated June 27, 2022, the Jalore Police informed that two accused who made the video viral by making objectionable comments on social media against Patel had been arrested.

पुलिस थाना चितलवाना द्वारा सांसद के विरूद्व #आपत्तिजनक_टिप्पणी सोशल मीडिया पर #वायरल करने वाले 2 आरोपियों को किया #गिरफ्तार…@PoliceRajasthan @DIPRRajasthan @Igp_Jodhpur @DmJalore @hva_ips pic.twitter.com/zTf9ZqDrsf

— Jalore Police (@JalorePolice) June 27, 2022

To sum it up, social media users shared a video of a Pakistani doctor dancing with a woman falsely identifying him as Jalore BJP MP Devji Patel.

The post Pak doctor’s video falsely viral as BJP MP Devji Patel dancing with woman appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

Twitter handle हम लोग We The People shared this image with a similar claim in Hindi. The tweet has got over 7,000 views at the moment.

स्वतंत्र भारत मे पहली इफ्तार पार्टी 1947 में जवाहर लाल नेहरू ने दी थी जिसमें उनका मंत्रीमंडल नजर आ रहा है

लेकिन सरदार पटेल ने इसका विरोध किया था कियह गलत परंपरा शुरू करना देश के लिए खतरनाक है जबकि कुछ ही महीने पहले हमने होली, दिवाली पर किसी पार्टी का आयोजन नही किया था। pic.twitter.com/7Y6cuno6jm

— हम लोग We The People (@ajaychauhan41) March 31, 2023

Another Twitter handle, by the name Indian Muslim History, shared the same image with the same claim. The tweet has got 3,000 liked and 500 retweets.

A small iftar party thrown by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad for some of his acquaintances.

Pic courtesy Pervez Muzaffar pic.twitter.com/HFyWxIfv85

— India Muslim History (@syedurahman) May 3, 2021

The image was also shared on Twitter and Facebook multiple times, screenshots of which can be seen below.

Fact Check

By reverse-searching the image on Google, Alt News came across the same image on stock photo website Alamy. The image is posted with a caption in Marathi that translated to “Marathi: Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad and other ministers attending a dinner invitation given by Vallabhbhai Patel to the Cabinet in celebration of Chakraborty Rajagopalchari becoming India’s first Governor General. June 1948”

Furthermore, we also came across a document file that contained some rare photographs clicked by Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first woman photojournalist. This contained a top shot of the same occasion. The caption of the photograph reads, ”Nehru’s Cabinet seen at lunch hosted by Sardar Patel after C. Rajagopalachari became Governer-General, 1948. Seated here are: Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, Baldeve Singh, Maulana Azad, Jawaharlal Nehru, C. Rajagopalachari, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Raj Kumari
Amrit Kaur, John Matthai, Jagjivan Ram, Mr Gadgil, Mr Neogi, Dr Ambedkar, Shyama
Prasad Mookherji, Gopalaswamy Iyengar and Jayaramdas Daulatram.”

Therefore, the image making rounds on social media claiming to be of an Iftar dinner hosted by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad is actually an image from 1948 and of a lunch hosted by Sardar Patel after C. Rajagopalachari became the Governor General of India. This lunch was attended by members of the Cabinet under Jawaharlal Nehru.

Vansh Shah is an intern at Alt News.

The post Photo of lunch hosted by Sardar Patel falsely viral as Maulana Azad’s Iftar party appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Vansh Shah.