A BBC employee claimed calling the terrorist group Hamas the “baddies” was too simplistic, leaked messages show.
A GB News investigation found a BBC employee wrote on an internal company forum: “It seems really clear that a simplistic one-sided view of the conflict where Hamas are the baddies and Israel has a perfect right to do whatever it wants in response to their atrocities is just going to legitimise brutality, and allow a lot of people – Black and brown people – to be killed.”
The message was posted as a part of a discussion on Israel which featured another BBC staffer defending the antisemitic phrase “From the River to the Sea”.
Jake Wallis Simons, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, told GB News: “On the one hand, we have the sole liberal democracy in the Middle East. On the other, we have a savage terror group that revels in murder, rape, kidnap and mutilation.”
“It should not be difficult for the BBC to see who the good guys and the bad guys are.”
He continued: “Nobody is to blame for October 7 other than the bloodthirsty jihadis of Hamas themselves. Israel withdrew entirely from Gaza in 2005 and has only acted defensively since. It is not Israel’s fault that Hamas took over the Strip and turned it into a militarised terror enclave.”
“The fact that BBC employees place themselves among the ranks of mealy-mouthed Hamas apologists who reach for the ‘context’ to legitimise the worst antisemitic atrocities is beneath contempt. It shows how far some members of the media have strayed from the basic moral compass possessed by the majority of Britons.”
The comments, seen by GB News, were posted on the BBC’s internal communications platform, Slack, which is available to all 5,000 of the corporation’s employees to see.
The posts were made on 31 October 2023, just two weeks after Hamas murdered more than 1,000 Jewish civilians.
On Slack, a BBC software engineer linked to a report from the BBC Sport website describing how a Leicester City player, Hamza Choudhury, apologised for using the antisemitic phrase “From river to sea” on social media.
The phrase was described by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman last year as an “expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world”.
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GB News has revealed a series of comments from BBC staffers
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The BBC staffer warned his peers against reading his comments on the story “if media representation of Gaza conflict is triggering”.
The employee claimed: “As a black person I’m feeling bullied by the BBC, my employer, for being black. To clarify, I am not saying the BBC is bulling [sic] me for being black, I’m just feeling that they are”.
The BBC staffer continued: “I am a member of the Labour party and there is a division of views on Gaza – this is a news story but a black guy posting his sympathy for other black people is not a story… Who is the next black guy the BBC is going after? Me?”
The post received five black love heart emojis in reaction from other BBC employees.
Another BBC staffer commented in agreement, saying the BBC’s report was “triggering”.
They continued: “The attempts to silence dissent and brand people as terrorist sympathisers or antisemites (when many are just calling for a ceasefire) are just appalling.”
“Likewise it seems really clear that a simplistic one-sided view of the conflict where Hamas are the baddies and Israel has a perfect right to do whatever it wants in response to their atrocities is just going to legitimise brutality, and allow a lot of people – Black and brown people – to be killed.”
This comment was given five supportive emojis by other BBC colleagues.
However, the posts led to a reply from a Jewish BBC staffer who said they “lived on one of the Kibbutzim infiltrated by Hamas”.
The BBC employee described details of Hamas atrocities, including the story of “a security guard lady Rambo -Inbar Lieberman – [who] managed to save most lives, both Jews and Arabs.”
The employee continued: “Some of these lives she couldn’t save were some of the Palestinians who worked on the Kibbutz. Because Hamas first infiltrated the field they were working in and start[ed] shooting their own people, who called the main building and said they were being shot at.”
“Why I’m saying this is that BBC staff have a variety of experiences and I would ask, that perhaps on a topic that involves so much horrific death and destruction, please be sensitive to fellow staff who [are] suffering right now. We are also persecuted minorities who watched our friends and die [sic] in the most horrific ways I won’t repeat here and we are suffering greatly.”
The post received no emojis in support.
A BBC spokesperson said: “We are aware of the content of a small number of posts on an internal messaging app and we are reviewing these.”
