A crowd gathered outside the BBC headquarters on Tuesday night to brand the “biased” broadcaster as “spokespeople for terrorists.”
This action was organised by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), which accused the corporation of “giving credibility” to the claims of Hamas—something which is “a betrayal of licence-fee payers.”
Most recently, the BBC aired a documentary on life in Gaza which wrongly translated references to “the Jews”—changing them on at least five occasions to “Israel” or “Israeli forces”—and omitted praise of “jihad.” Speaking at the protest, journalist David Collier suggested that this “raw Hamas propaganda” was later taken down not because the programme was a distortion but because the BBC was “caught and this time had … no excuses to hide behind.”
David Collier @mishtal is now addressing the crowd.
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) February 25, 2025
“Last Monday night, the BBC aired a Hamas propaganda documentary. Four days later they took it down.
“But let us be clear about one key point:
“They did not take it down because it was raw Hamas propaganda.
“They did not… pic.twitter.com/42eawgOnDh
British papers are now pushing the BBC to reveal whether any taxpayer money was given to Hamas during the making of this documentary.
This is not the first time the broadcaster has landed itself in controversies over its Israel coverage.
The BBC refused to label Hamas terrorists as “terrorists” after the October 7th terror attack. It even later described the legacy of the ‘Butcher of Tehran’—the former Hamas-backing leader of Iran who died in May last year—as “mixed,” in part because of his depiction as “the president of the unprivileged and poor.”
When a survey last month suggested that only one-third of British Jews believe they have a long-term future in the UK, the CAA told europeanconservative.com: “There must be an independent investigation into bias at our national broadcaster [the BBC], which clearly has a blindspot when it comes to antisemitism.”
A spokesman for the group yesterday complained that “the BBC has no shame and Britain has had enough.”
For over 16 months, we have watched our national broadcaster provide ever more sympathetic coverage to a proscribed terrorist organisation, hiding behind claims of impartiality. There is nothing impartial about giving credibility to the claims of terrorists.
The CAA also criticised the BBC for “carefully” excluding the antisemitic portrayal of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a blood-soaked vampire in its coverage of the horrific handing over of the youngest Israeli hostage—kidnapped when he was just nine months old—last week.
We have approached the BBC for comment on the protesters’ claims.
