86 Percent of British Jews Not Satisfied With BBC Coverage of Israel-Hamas Conflict

A large majority of British Jews think the BBC’s coverage of the conflict in the Gaza Strip is biased against Israel and plays down the actions of Hamas.

The scene at BBC Broadcasting House in London, after red paint was sprayed over the entrance on Oct. 14, 2023. James Manning/PA

Polling by the organisation, Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), suggests 86 percent of Jews in Britain either “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed” when asked if they were satisfied with the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas crisis.

The CAA, quoted in The Times, said there had been several incidents which confirmed a widespread view among British Jews that the BBC was, “a biased broadcaster that fails to live up to its duty of impartiality when it comes to reporting on the Jewish state.”

The CAA said: “The corporation’s failure to call Hamas ‘terrorists,’ its prejudiced misreporting of the hospital blast and Jeremy Bowen’s errors and shameless remorselessness are just a selection of the controversies in which the BBC has been embroiled over the past two months.”

It found 71 percent of those questions “strongly disagreed” that they were satisfied with the BBC and another 15 percent “disagreed” while only 1 percent “agreed.”

The research was published on Nov. 27 and involved interviews with 3,744 people conducted between Nov. 12 and 17.

On Monday, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, called for a “sustainable ceasefire” but added, “Israel obviously has a right to defend itself against what was an appalling terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas, but it must do that in accordance with humanitarian law.”

His comments came after former defence secretary Ben Wallace warned the Israel-Hamas war risked radicalised a whole generation of young Muslims.

Ben Wallace Criticises Israel’s ‘Killing Rage’

Mr. Wallace, writing in The Telegraph, said Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had missed the Hamas attack in the first place and he added: “But if he thinks a killing rage will rectify matters, then he is very wrong. His methods will not solve this problem. In fact, I believe his tactics will fuel the conflict for another 50 years.”

Earlier this year Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer said the BBC was occasionally biased but she declined to go into detail.

In June she told the Culture, Media, and Sport Committee she supported the BBC as an institution but added, “But it does need to understand its duties in relation to partiality.”

The BBC was widely criticised after it refused to use the word “terrorists” to describe the Hamas gunmen who burst out of Gaza and slaughtered 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7 and 8.

The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Marie van der Zyl, has previously told Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, the Jewish community was outraged, “at the refusal of the BBC to describe Hamas’s barbaric actions as terrorism and the damaging, false report of the rocket which killed innocent civilians.”

Trust in the corporation among British Jews was already falling before the Hamas attacks.

In Nov. 2022 Ofcom criticised the BBC’s coverage of an antisemitic attack on Jewish students travelling on a bus in London in Dec. 2021.

Earlier this month another poll by the Jewish Chronicle found 77 percent of Jewish people thought the BBC’s reporting was biased against Israel, with only 11 percent judging it as impartial.

Last month the leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, said she hoped the BBC would, “reflect on what has happened over the last few weeks” after a Conservative MP, Sir Michael Ellis, said, “the anti-Israel bile and bias is there for all to see.”

Ms. Mordaunt told Sir Michael: “The BBC is usually very good at these sorts of things but I think there are questions that I certainly, as a licence fee-payer, would want to be answered in this respect.”

A BBC spokesman told The Times: “The BBC holds itself to high standards of impartial reporting and rejects the suggestion that we are biased against Israel. The conflict is a challenging and polarising story to cover, and we are dedicated to providing impartial reporting for audiences in the UK and across the world.”

“BBC News will continue to listen carefully to all audience feedback,” the spokesman added.