A journalist featured on BBC Arabic repeatedly incited violence against Jews, including calling for them to be burned “as Hitler did”, and praised more than 30 attacks on Israeli civilians over the past decade.
Samer Elzaenen, 33, has appeared on BBC Arabic more than a dozen times since the October 7 Hamas let attacks on southern Israel. According to a report in the Telegraph on Saturday, Elzaenen called the Hamas terrorists who stormed Israel that day "resistance fighters”.
An investigation by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera) into Elzaenen’s social media revealed that the freelance journalist repeatedly featured by the corporation has posted extremist slogans including “#WeAreAllHamas You Son of a Jewess”. In July 2022, a post on his Facebook read: “When things go awry for us, shoot the Jews, it fixes everything,” the Telegraph reported.
He made a similar statement in May 2011, when he allegedly wrote on Facebook, “My message to the Zionist Jews: We are going to take our land back, we love death for Allah’s sake the same way you love life. We shall burn you as Hitler did, but this time we won’t have a single one of you left.”
The Telegraph reported another post made over two years about a car ramming in Jerusalem that killed two boys aged eight and six and a 20-year-old man, which said that the victims "will soon go to hell”.
Despite these posts, BBC Arabic has continued to air Elzaenen’s reports, including live dispatches last month from Gaza and coverage from inside the Nuseirat refugee camp in June 2024, following an Israel Defence Force operation to rescue four hostages held by Hamas.
The report also quoted a separate BBC Arabic reporter, freelance contributor Ahmed Qannan, who appeared to express hope that wounded Israelis would be killed.
In response to a terror attack in January 2023 at a Jerusalem synagogue, Qannan suggested an "ambition” that the Israelis would die. According to the Telegraph, writing on Facebook in response to a friend who stated, “We want to see some throats cut”, Qannan replied: “Don’t give up on your ambition”.
He also allegedly described a Palestinian who killed four civilians and a police officer in a series of shootings in Bnei Brak in March 2022, as a “hero”.
BBC sources said neither Qannan nor Elzaenen were members of staff at the corporation, and had been used by the channel as “eye-witnesses” because journalists are not allowed into Gaza.
Political violence and counter extremist export, Lord Walney, has called for swift action over the report. Walney said the BBC should “immediately set out how it is gripping this fiasco” or face investigation from government ministers and the television regulator, Ofcom.
Walney, formerly the government's independent adviser on political violence and disruption, said: “If a foreign news channel promoted a reporter linked to grotesque, antisemitic pro-Hamas views, there would be calls to remove its license.
He added, “It would be bitterly ironic if BBC executives thought the funeral of the Pope would bury bad news so it could avoid acting.”
Lord Mann, the government’s independent advisor on antisemitism, accused the BBC making “lamentable excuses” over the story.
“These extremists are not news journalists, they are political activists. The two cannot ever be the same for any credible broadcaster and particularly a public broadcasting corporation,” Mann posted on X.
Last month, the government advisor and former Labour MP accused the corporation of repeatedly rejecting his offers of antisemitism training. He said he had visited the offices of the BBC three times since assuming his role in 2019 but bosses had not taken up his offers.
“I’ve offered them training, they’ve never accepted it... I think there’s often an arrogance there.”
Mann claimed there was “ignorance” of antisemitism at the corporation. “They have got, I think, particularly, a generational problem of people who really don’t understand it.”
In a statement to the JC, a spokesperson for the BBC said: “International journalists including the BBC are not allowed access into Gaza so we hear from a range of eye-witness accounts from the strip. These are not BBC members of staff or part of the BBC’s reporting team. We were not aware of the individuals’ social media activity prior to hearing from them on air. We are absolutely clear that there is no place for antisemitism on our services.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews recently demanded the BBC tackle concerns over its reporting on the Israel-Hamas war and the wellbeing of its Jewish staff.
