UK
BBC Arabic guests spread anti-Israel conspiracies and Holocaust comparisons
Egyptian diplomats on BBC Arabic had promoted ‘Greater Israel’ myth and suggested October 7 attack was an ‘armed struggle for liberation’
April 9, 2025 16:25
Egyptian diplomats on BBC Arabic had promoted ‘Greater Israel’ myth and suggested October 7 attack was an ‘armed struggle for liberation’
April 9, 2025 16:25Two contributors who appeared on BBC Arabic had previously spread conspiracy theories about Israel in recent media appearances.
Egyptian diplomats Mostafa Elfeki and Mohamed Higazy, who were both interviewed on BBC Arabic’s Egypt MeanTime in February, had repeatedly spread falsehoods that vilified Israel and compared the Jewish state’s actions to the Holocaust during appearances on other channels, according to materials shown to the JC by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera), a Boston-based NGO.
While the two men did not make these comments on the BBC, the decision to invite them on after making such comments elsewhere raises questions about the BBC’s judgment and apparent willingness to provide a platform to individuals who spread antisemitic hate speech and misinformation, following concerns raised by the Jewish community about its reporting on the Middle East, particularly on its Arabic-language service.
A spokesperson for the BBC said: “BBC News Arabic is committed to hearing from a range of contributors with a variety of views and perspectives from across Egypt and the wider Middle East. Throughout our coverage, our journalists routinely question and challenge the views of contributors on air and will continue to do so.”
In February, the BBC was forced to pull a documentary on Gaza after it emerged that its teenage narrator was the son of a senior Hamas official. In October 2023 it wrongly blamed Israel for a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital before the facts had been established, and it refuses to call Hamas a terrorist group despite it being proscribed by the British government.
The JC has catalogued the recent controversies surrounding the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
In materials seen by the JC, Camera has identified nine “compromised experts weighing in on Israel during the course of 14 months” on the BBC programme, including Elfeki and Higazy.
This is “another indication that the flaws in the BBC's coverage of the Middle East go far deeper than any single news item,” the media monitoring group said, calling on the BBC to address concerns about its contributors on the Arabic service.
Elfeki, a former Egyptian ambassador to Austria, appeared on Egypt MeanTime on February 20.
In a previous appearance in November 2023 on the Egyptian Al Kahera Wal Nas programme, a month after the October 7 attack, Elfeki said Israelis had “skilfully conflated” the “armed struggle for [Palestinian] liberation” with terrorism.
In a separate appearance, he aired a conspiracy theory about the Israeli flag, suggesting that the Jewish State wants to create a “Greater Israel” from the River Nile to the Euphrates River. “The motto 'From the Euphrates to the Nile', this is not [some] stupid motto. This is the [Israeli] flag itself, a river above and a river beneath, and the Star [of David] in between,” he said.
In a 2021 interview on Egypt Live, he accused Israel of obstructing negotiations between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Nile, and claimed Israel had been “extorting the German state for many years under the pretext of reparations that Germany pays the Hebrew state for the crimes of World War Two and the gas ovens.”
Higazy, Egypt’s former ambassador to Germany and another contributor to Egypt MeanTime, appeared on the programme on February 27.
According to the weekly Egyptian publication Al-Youm al-Sabe, Higazy said that the October 7 attack “on Israeli settlements” was the “well-expected result of the Israeli side's provocations and the extremist government which spared no effort to carry out provocative acts and letting settlers attack Palestinians.”
The paper also reported that Higazy said: “The settlers were persisting with their hostilities against the people of Palestine and assaults against Islamic holy places.”
In February, just days before he appeared on the BBC, Higazy appeared on Egyptian public channel TeN TV and said, “What we have seen [in Gaza] is something which exceeds a genocide.” He called the assault on the Palestinian territory “a new Holocaust.”
“They have already been haggling with the world for decades over the Holocaust,” Higazy went on.
He previously said that the Rothschild family, along with other powerful Jewish families in the US, control financial institutions and exert influence on media and politics.
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, in an interview on Egypt’s Channel 2 in 2018, Higazy said: “The role of these families, their tremendous financial capabilities, their control of the financial institutions, and Rothschild's connection to Balfour and his accursed declaration... The Balfour Declaration was, without a doubt, the outcome of pressure by these families.”
Elfeki and Higazy were approached for comment for today’s story.
Commenting on Camera’s investigation, former Tory minister Sir Michael Ellis said: “Hardly a week goes by without the BBC being embroiled by yet more shameful accusations of its problem with Israel, and I'm afraid that [Director-General] Tim Davie’s talk of tough disciplinary processes appears to have not worked.
“The BBC has an awful long way to go to prove to concerned licence fee payers that it can and will address this problem. The BBC is frankly a national embarrassment in the context of its Israel problem.”
Following a meeting between Board of Deputies President Phil Rosenberg and Davie last month, the Board gave the corporation a deadline of Passover to tackle concerns over its reporting on the war and the wellbeing of its Jewish staff.