The BBC’s documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone at first glance seemed to offer a raw and intimate portrayal of life in Gaza amid the ongoing conflict. However, the programme, which aired on BBC Two on Monday, was deeply flawed. The documentary, narrated by a Palestinian child, Abdullah Ayman Eliyazouri, presented a personal account of the suffering endured by Gaza’s residents. But the investigative journalist David Collier has reported that the BBC seems to have omitted something astonishing. Eliyazouri is not just a random child caught in the crossfire, but the son of Ayman Eliyazouri, the Hamas-run Gazan government’s deputy agricultural minister.
Collier’s investigation cross-referenced social media profiles and other publicly available information. The Facebook profile of Ayman Eliyazouri shows him posting about his son Abdullah, who he calls Aboud. This is not just incidental information – it is central to understanding the family’s perspective and the narrative being presented to viewers. The BBC did not disclose this critical context. Instead, it now says that ‘the children’s parents did not have any editorial input’. A laughable claim.
It is not the first time that the BBC’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has come under scrutiny. Over the years, I have personally witnessed and written about the corporation’s bias in its reporting, even having to challenge their coverage myself on air. I appeared on one BBC programme during the pandemic in which the presenter insisted the Oslo Accords required Israel to vaccinate Palestinians, when in fact, as I pointed out, the opposite was true: the Accords gave the Palestinians healthcare autonomy as part of their preparations for statehood. Only a viewer complaint after broadcast forced them to admit I was right.
In my work, I have consulted experts like David Collier and the invaluable team at Camera Arabic, who specialise in monitoring the BBC’s Arabic-language content. Camera’s insights have shown that the BBC’s Arabic output is often sympathetic to Hamas and the Palestinian cause. Yet despite mounting evidence, the BBC has made little effort to confront its biases or make any meaningful changes. If the BBC genuinely wanted to address these issues, it has the resources to do so. It could consult experts like Collier, or even hire them directly, to ensure their coverage is impartial. Instead, the BBC continues to dismiss the work of these experts, and ignore their valuable contributions to uncovering the truth.
This unwillingness to engage with external scrutiny is further underscored by the BBC’s rejection of the Asserson Report, an analysis of the BBC’s bias in its coverage of the 7 October war. On 6 March I will be chairing a discussion in London, hosted by Ben-Gurion University Foundation UK, about the techniques used in the report’s research, with the leading academics behind the study outlining how their team used artificial intelligence to measure sympathies in the BBC’s reporting. They then conduct scientific analysis and comparisons to establish problems in the overall coverage patterns, with worrying results. The AI-driven analysis reveals a troubling discrepancy between the BBC’s English and Arabic-language outputs, with BBC Arabic showing a far stronger bias in favour of Hamas. This internal inconsistency – where one arm of the BBC’s reporting is significantly more sympathetic to one side than the other – reveals a failure in the corporation’s editorial practices.
The BBC has rejected the findings of the report, saying its use of AI is ‘unreliable and unproven’, and claiming that the ‘methods used in the report fail to take account of basic journalistic principles and practice.’ Rather than embracing this innovative tool to improve its coverage, the broadcaster has chosen to dismiss it. The AI used in the report is not some untested theory – it is a proven, effective tool developed by world-leading experts in computational social science, with rigorous scientific methods informing its design and execution. Rather than adopting this objective method to address its editorial flaws, the BBC has signaled its reluctance to make the changes necessary to ensure impartiality.
The BBC’s rejection of the Asserson Report highlights a far deeper problem: not only does the corporation steadfastly refuse to confront its biases or make meaningful efforts to address them, but it also dismisses the very experts and methodologies that could help it improve. Funded by ordinary Britons, the BBC possesses the resources, expertise, and tools to rectify its editorial shortcomings. Its refusal to do so suggests, more than anything, that it simply does not want to.
Responding to Collier’s claims, a BBC spokesperson said:
Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, a documentary showing the conflict through the eyes of three children in Gaza, was produced in line with BBC editorial guidelines and the BBC had full editorial control. The film told the children’s own stories, showing viewers their direct experiences of living through a war, and the children’s parents did not have any editorial input.
As the BBC has previously explained, the film was edited and directed from London, as independent international journalists are not allowed into Gaza. The film gives audiences a rare glimpse of Gaza during the war, as well as an insight into the children’s lives, it hears the voices of other Gazan civilians, several of whom voice anti-Hamas sentiments.
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