The BBC hid Hamas links and statements in a recent documentary about Gaza. Many are defending the film.
Subsidised by British taxpayers, the BBC has long been a byword for journalistic integrity and high standards. Shockingly, a recent BBC documentary about Gaza has been revealed as a mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda. Even more surprisingly, British artists and cultural figures are clamoring to defend the Hamas-inflected film.
Major new documentary
On February 17, 2025, the BBC broadcast Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone to ecstatic reviews. Over a year in the making, it was, the BBC described, an “unflinching view of life in a warzone.”
Since “Israel does not allow foreign journalists to report independently in Gaza,” the BBC wrote in its promotional material — (Israel does allow foreign journalists into Gaza, though they must be embedded with Israeli troops) — the BBC contracted with “cameramen” inside Gaza. However, editorial decisions were made by producers in London.
Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone follows four people as they go about their daily routines during the past year. Here is the cast of characters:
A bright 13-year-old named Abdullah speaks directly to the camera, cheerfully cautioning the cameramen not to hurt themselves as they film him scampering over rubble. Like a Gazan Oliver Twist, he introduces the other characters and describes their lives and motivations. “I help out my family as best I can,” he confides after buying a few nuts in a market.
Zakharia is 11 and lives inside Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital, where he’s an indefatigable volunteer, rushing to the front of crowds of adult men to be the first to unload an ambulance, carrying patients to the operating room, and assisting doctors with a smile.
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Renad is a 10-year-old girl with a mischievous smile. She’s lucky to still have her own home, Abdullah explains. She spends her days cooking over a camp stove on her building’s rooftop, substituting water for milk and making other adjustments to traditional recipes because she has little food in Gaza.
BBC failed to disclose that this boy is the son of a senior Hamas member who has been a child propogandist for year.
Rana is a young adult who lives with her family in a tent. She gave birth a month prematurely to a baby girl, whom she brought home to her displaced family.
Omitting Hamas
The film does nothing to disguise its strongly anti-Israel tone. Hamas is notably absent from any scenes in the film. There are scores of scenes of terrified civilians fleeing or cowering in fear from what we’re told are Israeli bombs, yet not one single scene of Hamas fighters.
This omission is bizarre. Hamas’ use of human shields inside Gaza is well documented. NATO observes that “Hamas…has been using human shields in conflicts with Israel since 2007… Hamas has launched rockets, positioned military-related infrastructure-hubs and routes, and engaged the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) from, or in proximity to, residential and commercial areas.”
In 2024 the Israeli military described how saturated Gaza is with Hamas fighters: “Hamas has systematically embedded its terror infrastructure inside and under civilian areas in Gaza as part of its human-shield strategy… IDF troops discovered that most homes in Gaza have terror tunnels underneath or weapons caches inside, and the majority of schools, mosques, hospitals and international institutions have been used by Hamas for their military operations.”
Yet none of this appears in the BBC documentary. All civilian suffering is said to be the fault of Israelis. It’s not subtle: during terrible scenes of civilians running for cover, Abdullah explains that Israeli bombers and snipers decided to attack civilians for no reason. In one memorable scene, a British-accented surgeon working in Gaza amputates an arm, then holds it up for the camera, announcing “Look what the Israelis are doing to the children of Gaza.”
BBC hid Hamas links
When British journalist David Collier watched the film, he recognised the four young people the documentary features from other British news outlets. In Abdullah’s case, Collier recognised him from previous BBC programmes.
“Zakharia Sarsak (is) the young boy in the hospital,” Collier noted. “His story was all over the news in April 2024. The young mother is Rana Salah. Her story has also been all over the news for months. Ten-year-old Renad Attallah…has over a million followers on Instagram,” Collier found. “Her story has been all over the news for months.” Her family has also amassed hundreds of thousands of Euros in Go-Fund-Me donations over the past year. “It seems as if there are so few stories in Gaza, the BBC had to borrow targets from other channels,” Collier concluded.
When it came to Abdullah, the narrator, Collier found strange anomalies: the BBC featured him before (with a different name) in a previous programme, and seemingly didn’t recognise him in this documentary. They also seemingly overlooked the fact that Abdullah is part of Hamas royalty.
Collier found a November 2023 BBC programme featuring Abdullah and a man said to be his father. Digging through Abdullah’s family’s social media posts, Collier found that the BBC misidentified as his father a man named Khalil Abushammmala. Abushammala is director of Al Dameer, a political group in Gaza that’s closely aligned with the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He’s also Abdullah’s uncle. Abdullah’s real father is Ayman Al-Yazouri, a senior Hamas official.
This explains Abdullah’s frequent appearance on British TV: “Abdullah has been shaped as a child propagandist for years,” Collier concluded.
Biased documentary makers
It’s inconceivable that BBC editors and producers would fail to spot that Abdullah had appeared in a previous programme under a different name. Yet when they were presented with Collier’s research, that is what they claimed, saying they needed time to “conduc(t) further due diligence with the production company.”
The production company behind Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone is Hoyo Films, a company controlled by British filmmaker Jamie Roberts. Roberts hasn’t worked on anything related to Gaza before. For this documentary, he teamed up with Yousef D. Hammash, a Gaza native who moved to Britain in 2024 and a harsh critic of Israel.
The two cameramen they employed in Gaza are similarly predisposed to view Israel negatively. Cameraman Amjad Al Foyoumi posted a two-word phrase on Facebook — “The Flood” — Hamas’ name for its brutal October 7, 2023 attack on Israel - on October 6, 2023, the day before the attack. Cameraman Ibrahim Abu Ishaiba refers to Israel’s fight against Hamas as a “genocide.” *Read full article on www.thestandard.co.zw
Given Hamas’ near-absolute power in Gaza, it should have been obvious to BBC officials that any documentary purporting to show life in the region would be carefully controlled by local officials and would have to adhere to Hamas’ narrative. Yet BBC producers turned a blind eye to this documentary, advertising it as a piece of independent journalism, when it was anything but.
Distorted Translations
Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone also contains lies in its translation of Arabic words and phrases. The British newspaper The Telegraph combed the film and found that references to terrorism, Hamas, antisemitism, and Jihad were systematically removed from the movie’s English subtitles.
“Jews” is mistranslated as “Israelis” or “Israeli forces.” “Jihad” is mistranslated as “battle” or “resistance.” For instance, towards the end of the film, Rana speaks lovingly of Hamas commander and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar and says he “was engaging in resistance and jihad against the Jews.” The film mistranslates her words in its English subtitles as “he was fighting and resisting Israeli forces.”
Orly Goldschmidt, an Israeli official in Israel’s London Embassy, said these mistakes are “intentional mistranslations” and that “it reflects a very serious and systematic issue, which has taken root at the BBC.”
Cancelling the Film - and Facing Calls to Restore It
Facing mounting criticism, the BBC removed Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone from its BBC iPlayer on February 20, 2025. But the film remains easily accessible online.
This was the right move. This so-called documentary is a Hamas-designed piece of propaganda that distorts the facts of Israel’s war with Hamas. It whitewashes Hamas crimes, deceitfully and inaccurately portrays Israel’s self-defensive war as a series of unprovoked attacks on civilians, and omits any mention of Hamas’ crimes and use of human shields in Gaza.
Yet hundreds of British artists and cultural figures are clamoring for the BBC to restore this odious movie to the BBC’s iPlayer. On February 26, 2025, 500 prominent artists wrote to the BBC, calling the film “an essential piece of journalism.” The signatories asserted that criticisms of the movie are based on “racist assumptions and weaponisation of identity.”
Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone has already caused incalculable damage by promoting lies and anti-Israel hatred. If the BBC gives in to the current groundswell of calls to reinstate this dangerous movie, we all will be harmed by the lies and distortions it contains.
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