The BBC hates Jews (and still thinks it’s progressive).

A recently leaked report exposes how Britain’s “most trusted” broadcaster let activism, ideology, and antisemitism replace journalism.

photo: Siora Photography/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Nicole Lampert, a journalist and commentator.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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In April 2024, the BBC reported a nasty story from the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Quoting Palestinian sources and a United Nations “human rights chief,” it revealed that mass graves had been discovered at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza.

The Palestinian official said that 283 bodies had been exhumed, and some had their hands tied. The IDF’s denial that they had built these mass graves were brushed aside: The implication was clear, they had committed the darkest of war crimes.

But the BBC, in particular, should not have been quite so quick to jump to conclusions. Only three months earlier, in January 2024, the corporation’s own reporter had revealed that Gazans had been forced to bury their dead in graves at Nasser Hospital because of fighting outside. It didn’t matter; this new “mass graves” story went viral.

This is one of dozens of examples presented in a memo to BBC bosses by its independent advisor, Michael Prescott, about the corporation’s anti-Israel bias. While the way a BBC documentary sliced together a Donald Trump speech to make him appear to endorse violence at the January 6th Capitol Hill riot has garnered most of the headlines about this memo — and, so far, the only apology — the corporation’s many failings on the Israel-Hamas conflict take up eight out of its 21 pages.

Prescott particularly focuses on the problem of BBC Arabic, which is funded by Britons’ license fee and Foreign Office funds, and has an audience of 35 million per week. We pay for this service because we are meant to be giving a more Western account of the world to this audience; what Prescott found is that contributors were frequently antisemitic, any reports that humanised Israelis from the English language service were not published, and no articles critical of Hamas appeared.

One journalist, Samer Elzaenen, whose comments online included that Jews should be burned “as Hitler did,” appeared 244 times between November 2023 and April 2025. Another contributor, Ahmed Alagha, who described Jews as “devils” and described Israelis as “less than human,” appeared 522 times in the same period. Even though the BBC had tried to pretend neither of the men was part of their reporting team, it is clear they were trusted freelancers.

BBC Arabic has long been a sore in the corporation’s armoury; on average, its reporters have had to apologise twice a week for their pieces on the Israel-Hamas conflict. And that doesn’t just affect Arab-speaking nations, but also the BBC in Britain. The Arabic team is based between Egypt and London, and they are frequently called upon as experts — both on-screen and behind the scenes — by their British and other foreign language journalistic colleagues.

When we talk about endemic bias within the BBC against Israel, the way BBC Arabic has been indulged is at the heart of it.

It is, of course, not the only thing at fault. British journalist and historian Mark Urban has written well about a young activist corps of journalists who have come out of university pickled in hatred for Israel and how their elders don’t feel able to stand up to them. Being anti-Israel has become an almost instinctive “progressive” value.

Even when the BBC was forced to take down a documentary because it featured the son of a Hamas political leader, there were internal mumblings — many BBC staffers told me — about the “power of the Zionist lobby.”

Another reason for the BBC’s persistent bias on this issue is that editors found that Jew-hate sells. It always has. Stories about the perfidy of Israel go viral. It is why the Israel-Hamas conflict is one of the first tabs on the BBC’s homepage.

One BBC staffer described to me how “inclusive” journalists patted themselves on the back about this; they know there is a large audience out there, an audience which doesn’t regard the BBC as for them (or in BBC parlance they are an “under-served audience”) who were lapping up every story which started with the premise of “what has Israel done wrong today.”

Michael Prescott, a former advisor to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, wrote in his memo that “Claims against Israel seem to be raced to air or online without adequate checks, evidencing either carelessness or a desire always to believe the worst of Israel.” It’s hard to know who was leading whom. Was there already a hungry audience for “anti-Zionism,” or did the BBC create it? Either way, as Prescott wrote: “The BBC needs to accept it has systemic issues with the coverage.”

While some of these complaints were eventually addressed — thanks to the tireless work of CAMERA, which has exposed scandal after scandal for years, and journalist David Collier, as well as the appointment of a new Head of Editorial Quality in mid-2024 — the BBC’s bias remains evident across its television, radio, and digital platforms.

Prescott’s earlier reports were able to stop the BBC repeating the untrue allegation that the International Court of Justice had ruled that there was a “plausible case of genocide” (in fact, the finding was Palestinians have a plausible right to be protected from genocide and that, therefore, South Africa had the right to present the claim). But even now, many BBC stories continue to shoehorn the word “genocide” by referring to a discredited finding from a group of genocide scholars.

And though BBC news boss Deborah Turness might have resigned, for now she has been replaced by Jonathan Munro, who has said, “BBC Arabic delivers against its responsibilities with the vast majority of its reporting and analysis.” I don’t feel like he’s going to be any better.

Israel is just the most popular of the “progressive” “omnicause” subjects, which too many BBC journalists have fallen for; gender is another.

Mark Urban wrote how activist journalists refused to even consider having J. K. Rowling on for an interview, while the Prescott report reveals how stories about gender critical feminists and the fight they were having for female-only spaces were ignored. Instead, there were stories celebrating the trans experience — including a trans wrestler called Gisele Shaw, who is biologically male and felt “liberated” by fighting biological women.

In contrast, there were no stories about people who had been pushed into transitioning and were unhappy about it; stories about detransitioners were ignored, because, according to Prescott, of a small group of activists who held sway on what could be reported in the newsroom on this issue. What he may not have had time to mention was how even children’s shows were pushing a pro-trans agenda.

In both these cases, the BBC hasn’t just done a few erroneous stories, but acted dangerously with real-world consequences. The BBC has contributed hugely to an atmosphere of intense “anti-Zionist” antisemitism in this country. It’s almost daily news stories about the conflict, almost always negative about Israel, have helped create a hostile environment for any Jew who calls themselves a Zionist and even those who don’t.

Prescott first wrote his report in September, but all of this remains live and frightening. Some of the responses have been truly staggering. The antisemitism and the gender issues have been ignored by many; it was telling how few women were invited even to discuss the report on the BBC’s many navel-gazing shows about its failings.

And then a group of mainly white middle-class establishment men have created a conspiracy theory around it. My old editor at The Sun, David Yelland, who has a BBC podcast and whose wife was a PR supremo there, came up with the frankly madcap theory that there had been a Right-wing “coup.” He was invited to discuss this theory on the BBC, of course.

Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has dusted down his conspiracy theory spider web, which has BBC board member Robbie Gibb and the Jewish Chronicle at the centre. There’s always an antisemitic element to every conspiracy. (But if Zionists were really conspiring to take over the BBC, don’t you think it would be less “anti-Zionist”?)

Meanwhile, Tony Blair’s former PR man, Alastair Campbell, who was no stranger to lambasting the BBC when he was in government, raged: “The real weakness of the BBC, as exemplified by recent events, is its failure to stand up to ludicrous claims from the Right that it is hugely biased to the Left. This is the work of Right-wing journalists and owners working hand in glove with Right-wing forces inside the BBC to undermine it.” They are so pickled in their dogma that they can’t even see how biased or ridiculously conspiratorial they really are.

Often, they are the same people who stood up for BBC newsreader Huw Edwards until he pleaded guilty to viewing indecent images of children. Their knee-jerk defence of the BBC, whatever it does, has become a cultural war symbol in itself. And this is siege mentality on steroids from people who really should know better.

None of them have addressed the real systemic problems within the BBC, an organisation Brits have to pay for if they want to watch live television. And these problems exist. For those who value the BBC, and I used to consider myself among them, the key to the BBC’s survival isn’t pretending there are no problems, but to try and make it better. Because it is very sick.

Impartiality is one of the BBC cornerstones. If Britain’s “most trusted news brand” is creating Jew-hatred and ignoring the rights of women because it has gone too far down the road of “progressive” politics (personally, I find nothing progressive in Jew-hatred and women-hating), then it needs to be turned around.

Those who claim to support it should be fighting for its survival, not attacking those who want it to be better.

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