A leaked internal memo at the BBC reveals the news corporation instructed its staff to slant its reporting of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to vilify Israel and the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is trying to feed the citizens, according to a new report.
As Jonathan Sacerdoti of The Spectator reports, “A leaked internal email from a BBC executive editor reveals that the Corporation has issued prescriptive instructions to staff on how to cover the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The memo, titled ‘Covering the food crisis in Gaza,’ amounts to a top-down editorial diktat that discards impartiality, elevates one side of a deeply contested narrative, and imposes a specific anti-Israel legal-political framing as settled fact.”
The email was sent on Friday, June 25. It commences by contending that “the argument over how much aid has crossed into Gaza is irrelevant,” while enjoining the staff that “we should say” the current distribution system “doesn’t work.”
“It explicitly favours a particular explanation of suffering in Gaza: one that blames the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a relatively new aid body established with US and Israeli cooperation, while glossing over the role of Hamas, the rulers of Gaza and a proscribed terrorist organisation under British law,” Sacerdoti writes, adding that by arguing that the amount of aid doesn’t matter, the BBC ignores that Hamas has been widely reported to be hijacking, obstructing, or reselling aid.
“The BBC’s memo labels the GHF system a failure and instructs staff to say so,” Sacerdoti reports, pointing out, “The BBC – which declined to comment on the email – appears content to accept casualty figures and starvation claims from Hamas-linked bodies or sympathetic NGOs as definitive, while dismissing or omitting Israeli data and counterclaims. The email directs staff to reference ‘mounting evidence’ of starvation and deaths around aid centres, yet makes no mention of Hamas operatives looting convoys, obstructing access, or even firing on civilians attempting to collect food – allegations which have been made publicly by Israel and backed at times by video and eyewitness testimony.”
“Nor is the GHF model simply an improvised, amateur system as the memo suggests,” he continues. “On the contrary, it is a tightly managed, military-grade distribution network designed to ensure aid reaches civilians directly and safely. Operated by vetted personnel with logistical oversight, GPS tracking, and on-the-ground medical and security staff, the GHF has reported a zero aid diversion rate. By contrast, the UN system the BBC nostalgically defends saw multiple convoys looted at gunpoint, with documented losses reaching 90 per cent in some cases.”
Sacerdoti notes that the BBC’s contention that the older model of supplying humanitarian aid (prior to the advent of the GHF) “did work” fails the acid test, as the BBC itself “breathlessly reported widespread hunger under that very system well before the GHF system was in place.”
He then turns to the email’s declaration that it is “indisputable” that Israel is the occupying power in Gaza and thus the entity responsible for preventing hunger. “This claim is presented without qualification, despite the fact that the status of Gaza under international law is disputed,” he points out, adding that Israel has stated it neither governs Gaza nor maintains a permanent presence.
“The BBC’s own editorial guidelines insist that politically contested labels such as ‘occupation’ should be attributed and contextualised, not asserted. That rule has been disregarded,” he states.
“Why is it our national broadcaster seems so desperate to attack the one non-Israeli body which is doing the most to undermine the Hamas stranglehold over Gaza and its people?” Sacerdoti asks rhetorically. “The closer the GHF and Israeli army get to finally defeating the terrorists, the more shrill the BBC’s insistence that the Jewish state is deliberately starving children. They have trouble believing a self-declared Islamic jihadist dictatorship might have designed this level of suffering and torture, but none in believing the Jewish democratic state did so.”
“The BBC is publicly funded and legally obligated to remain impartial. This latest leaked email suggests it is failing in that duty. As ever, there is virtually no chance the organisation will admit, redress or be penalised for this failing. They never are,” he concludes.