THE BBC have launched an urgent probe into Hamas-supporting journalists who called attacks on Israel “a morning of hope”.
Six reporters and a freelancer – including a senior broadcast journalist – have been accused of anti-Israel bias.
LinkedinThe BBC have sparked the urgent investigation with Mahmoud Sheleib among those accused[/caption]
BBC NewsBBC Arabic correspondent Sally Nabil is also under the microscope[/caption]
LinkedinSanaa Khouri, the Beirut-based religious affairs correspondent for BBC Arabic[/caption]
The controversy was sparked after several social media posts by BBC News Arabic reporters appeared to endorse comments that likened Hamas, a designated terrorist group, to freedom fighters.
One of the messages alleged to have been liked include a video of bodies and kidnapped people loaded onto a Jeep captioned as a “proud moment”.
The journalists also referred to the Hamas attack on October 7 as a “morning of hope,” reported the Telegraph.
Hamas has been a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK since November 2021, meaning the Government sees it as a terrorist organisation.
A BBC spokesman said: “We are urgently investigating this matter. We take allegations of breaches of our editorial and social media guidelines with the utmost seriousness, and if and when we find breaches we will act, including taking disciplinary action.”
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis investigation accused seven reporters of breaching the guidelines.
These were Mahmoud Sheleib, senior broadcast journalist; Aya Hossam, broadcast journalist; Sally Nabil, correspondent; Salma Khattab, based in Cairo; Sanaa Khouri, the Beirut-based religious affairs correspondent; Nada Abdelsamad, a Beirut-based programmes editor; and Egypt All Sports, a company run by Amr Fekry, a sports correspondent and pundit at BBC Arabic.
Ms Hossam is a freelancer and would no longer work for the corporation, reports the Telegraph.
She retweeted a message which included the phrase “the Zionist must know that he will live as a thief and a usurper”.
Mr Sheleib, a BBC News senior broadcast journalist, tweeted suggesting that young Israelis were effectively combatants.
The Cairo-based journalist also took part in a Twitter conversation in which he joked about a woman whose grandmother was abducted by Hamas receiving an “inheritance”.
The Telegraph also reported that a message which appeared to describe Hamas as “freedom fighters” was liked by Ms Khattab.
Meanwhile, Ms Abdelsamad retweeted a video of Israelis cowering “inside a tin container in fear of the Palestinian resistance warriors”.
It comes as the BBC was slammed by MPs for failing to call Hamas gunmen invading Israel “terrorists”.
Appalled politicians accused the publicly funded broadcaster of a gross distortion of the facts with its coverage.
Hit squads of killers swarmed over the Gaza border into Israel killing civilians as they slept in their beds.
But the BBC referred to the killers as “militants” not “terrorists”.
Nada Abdelsamad, a Beirut-based programmes editor at BBC Arabic, is among the six reporters accused of anti-Israel bias
XISalma Khattab is based in Cairo for BBC News and has been accused of liking messages on social media appearing to describe Hamas as ‘freedom fighters’[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
