Tala Halawa, the BBC journalist who was found to have tweeted ‘Hitler was right’, is out at the Corporation. Almost three weeks ago, Steerpike highlighted how media watchdog organisation Honest Reporting and others had uncovered a string of tweets posted on Halawa’s Twitter account from 2014. These included pronouncing that ‘Israel is more Nazi than Hitler’ and ‘Hitler was right’.
Halawa had also declared ‘ur media is controlled by ur zionist government’ and tweeted a graphic of a child being burned on a menorah, the Jewish ritual candelabrum. On Facebook, she shared the same meme that got Naz Shah suspended as a Labour MP in 2016, a graphic proposing the ‘transportation’ of Israel to the United States to end ‘foreign interference’ in the Middle East.
She further proclaimed that ‘Zionists can’t get enough of our blood’ and ‘they’re [sic] are crying the holocaust every single moment but they’re practicing it every single moment as well’.
After the tweets came to light, the BBC launched an investigation into Halawa, who joined the Corporation in 2017 and was employed as a ‘Palestine specialist’ at BBC Monitoring, where she contributed to reporting on the fallout from the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas. Mr S was contacted by several concerned BBC journalists furious at being linked by association to their disgraced colleague.
At first the Corporation seemed keen to stress the tweets pre-dated Halawa’s hiring — though why that would reflect better on it isn’t clear — but Steerpike understands as of Friday that she no longer works for the BBC.
Let’s hope their recruitment background checks are more rigorous in the future…
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