The BBC has been accused of spreading “Hamas propaganda” after it was claimed that a supposedly average teenager featured in a recent documentary on the conflict in Gaza is the son of a top Hamas official.
According to pro-Israel investigative journalist David Collier, 14-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri, one of those featured in the BBC’s Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone documentary, is a member of “Hamas Royalty”.
Collier claimed that Al-Yazouri, rather than being a typical resident of the Gaza Strip, is the son of Hamas agricultural minister Dr Ayman Al-Yazouri, who is himself said to be a relative of Ibrahim Al-Yazouri, one of the founding members of the Islamist terror group that has controlled Gaza since 2007.
“The child of Hamas royalty was given an hour on a BBC channel to walk around looking for sympathy and demonising Israel,” Collier wrote.
He noted that the BBC camera crew apparently followed Al-Yazouri for months, and therefore, there “is no way on earth they did not know who this family was,” adding that the “current hierarchy at the BBC has turned a once respected state broadcaster into a propaganda outlet for a radical Islamic terror group.”
Collier went on to question whether the BBC had paid money to the Al-Yazouri family to produce the documentary, saying that he was “asking for the police…. and the millions of Brits who fund you.”
Meanwhile, the investigation also revealed that one of the co-directors of the documentary, Yousef D. Hammash, is a Palestinian who lived in Gaza until June of 2024, suggesting that he may not have been an impartial arbiter of the information relayed to viewers.
Furthermore, in a promotional article for the documentary, Jamie Roberts, who co-directed the film with Hammash from London, failed to mention that his co-director was a Palestinian from Gaza.
The report from Collier also noted that Hammash’s X account is filled with pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel content. “He is a Palestinian activist with a camera. How on earth did the BBC give this man the reins to produce a documentary?” Collier questioned.
Additionally, the report raised questions about the cameramen employed by the BBC as their men on the ground for the documentary. According to posts shared by Collier, one of the cameramen posted a salute on the day of the October 7th terror attacks on Israel, with the caption “the flood”. He also reportedly shared “resistance” videos featuring terrorists and rocket attacks on Israel.
The film’s subjects were also called into question, as apparently all four Gazans profiled by the BBC were previously featured by other legacy media outlets. “It seems as if there are so few stories in Gaza, the BBC had to borrow targets from other channels,” Coller remarked.
In response to the report, Labour Against Antisemitism co-director Alex Hearn said that his organisation had filed a complaint against the BBC.
“This documentary appears to have been a failure of due diligence by the BBC, with Hamas propaganda promoted as reliable fact at the taxpayers’ expense,” he said per The Times. “There needs to be an urgent investigation into how this happened once again.”
Former director of BBC Television, Danny Cohen, added: “The BBC appears to have given an hour of prime-time coverage to the son of a senior member of the Hamas terrorist group. Questions must be asked as to whether the BBC carried out the most basic journalistic checks.”
