A BBC Arabic report on the impact of Israel’s war against Hamas on cultural life in Gaza features an author who once posted on social media urging Palestinians to “kill the Jews”.
A second contributor to the same item had previously written a post calling on God to “deal with the Jews”.
The BBC have been informed of the duo’s antisemitic history but have refused to remove the item from online.
The Corporation’s stance appears to be at odds with the commitment by BBC executive Jonathan Munro to address concerns over contributors appearing on the Arabic service.
Critics claim this latest case suggests the BBC’s Gaza coverage does not meet “basic standards of sound journalism”.
The nine-minute segment was first broadcast last year and is entitled: “Thought, Culture and Books - the Silent Victims of the Gaza War.”
Airing claims that Israel has targeted “intellectual life in Gaza” where Palestinians are “forced to burn books to light fire”, it features “intellectual and novelist” Yousri Alghoul.
The self-described “storyteller” talks about how the war has left books “torn apart”, and claims that schools, universities and libraries have been “targeted” by IDF bombs.
He also claims that for want of other fuel, Gazans have forced to resort to using books for fires, adding that he was “forced to burn my memoirs”.
Gaza Municipality Public Library chairman Raed Alwaheidi is also featured in the segment, which tells how the facility is unable to receive visitors and has only a small part up and running.
He says: “Culture here is a thing that is far from political issues, and we are not affiliated with any political side.”
He adds the work in the libraries concerns “culture, literature and thought”.
The social media history of both men includes antisemitic posts, research by US-based pro-Israel media watchdog, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera) reveals.
On October 13, 2015, after simultaneous bus stabbing and car ramming attacks across Israel resulted in the killing of four civilians and a further 26 injured, Alghoul tweeted: “O people of the West Bank... Kill the Jews. Before you are the gas cylinders, the gasoline, the screwdrivers, the cars, the buses, the tractors and the trucks – terrify them.”
In other tweets on the same day, he called on the “resistance” to “not return the settlers to their homes unharmed – kill them and burn their flesh” as well as to “blow them up and stab them and kill them and burn them”.
Also in 2015, Alghoul tweeted: “The Jews have been able, since the beginnings of history, to sow discord among the nations.”
In the wake of a 2016 Tel Aviv shooting attack which killed four civilians he wrote that it was “disgraceful” to condemn the “resistance”.
Gaza library chairman Alwaheidi posted on Facebook in 2021: “O God, keep our people everywhere safe, O God, deal with the Jews! O God, turn their scheming into their [own] destruction!”
The segment in which the two men feature was although broadcast last year only uploaded online in April. The BBC have told the JC the delay was due to “technical difficulties”.
In January, BBC Global Director Jonathan Munro responded to concerns after previous contributors on the Arabic service had been revealed to have a history of antisemitism.
He told MPs he was “very confident” in the BBC’s new, “overhauled” system for vetting potential contributors and examining their entire social media footprint.
Munro said: “As a result of some people coming to light who were interviewed on BBC Arabic platforms and had historical egregious views, we have now overhauled that diligence.”
He added: “I am very confident that we now have a much better system of vetting.”
A spokesperson for CAMERA UK said: “The portrayal of the suffering Palestinian humanist—eager to serve his or her community were it not for the "Israeli war machine" standing in the way—is a familiar trope across many Western and pseudo-Western media outlets, BBC Arabic among them.
“More responsible publications occasionally step in and show that some of these human-interest stories involve actors, doctors, singers, poets, or "journalists" whose views are far more hateful than either they or the outlets that previously platformed them were initially willing to admit.
“Whatever difficulties the BBC may face in obtaining reliable information from the Gaza Strip – more than two years after its own permanent reporters relocated to Doha and Istanbul – those challenges cannot justify airing carefully staged monologues in which interviewees are never meaningfully challenged about their own credibility, affiliations, or impartiality.
“Taken together with BBC Arabic's apparent failure to comply with the editorial guidelines that its own Global Director publicly committed the service to before Parliament, this demonstrates that its Gaza coverage remains a long way from meeting even basic standards of sound journalism.”
A BBC spokesman said: “BBC News Arabic is committed to reporting on the conflict in the Middle East impartially, independently, and accurately.
“Our enhanced social media checks – introduced in late 2025 – for contributors featured in significant pieces of content aims to further support the teams’ editorial decision-making and builds on existing practice.
“More broadly, the BBC has repeatedly called on the Israeli government to allow international journalists into Gaza to work alongside Palestinian journalists.”
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