For the first time in at least five years, BBC Arabic did not mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
The BBC’s Arabic-language service has recognised HMD annually since at least 2021.
But last Tuesday, when the world marked 81 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, BBC Arabic failed to acknowledge the day, marking a significant break from the channel’s practice.
Previous Arabic-language reports on HMD have carried titles such as “The Holocaust or Jewish Holocaust: What do we know about it” and have featured interviews with Nazi hunters as well as Holocaust survivors.
But the JC has found dozens of comments underneath BBC Arabic’s posts that include Holocaust denial and antisemitism.
The corporation is expected to monitor comments on its social media channels, but several comments claiming the Shoah was a “lie”, another stating the Holocaust had been used to “blackmail the globe... to glorify the Zionist entity,” and a third from a user who said “I wish the war had continued” remain underneath posts about HMD from previous years.
Following the JC’s enquiries to the BBC, some of these comments were removed.
The corporation also confirmed that the Arabic-language channel had plans to report a story on the Holocaust Educational Trust – but this comes a week after HMD.
Media monitoring group the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera) criticised this year's omission.
A spokesperson said: “BBC Arabic's editorial decisions make clear that, whatever structural overhaul and sensitivity training the service is currently undertaking, its systemic failure in covering Jewish affairs is still a long way from being addressed.”
The BBC Arabic failure to report on HMD comes as the BBC faces wider criticism over its coverage of the Holocaust on its main English-language channels. Several broadcasts on HMD failed to state the fact that Jews were the primary target of the Holocaust.
The corporation was forced to apologise after facing sharp criticism for broadcasts that described HMD as “a day for remembering the six million people who were murdered by the Nazi regime over 80 years ago.”
French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy accused the corporation of “Holocaust erasure”, describing the error as “shameful and disgusting”.
Former BBC Director of Television Danny Cohen said the “failure” marked “a new low point for the national broadcaster”.
And former US Special Envoy Against Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt also criticised another omission by the corporation, which failed to mention Jews in a report on the Battle of Cable Street. She described this as “not a mistake but a pattern that the BBC is perfecting”.
“Make Jews invisible: Holocaust w/out Jews, Mosley Blackshirt attacks w/out Jews,” Lipstadt said.
Responding to the JC’s enquiries, a spokesperson for the BBC said: “These comments are abhorrent. We strive to moderate comments on social media posts as quickly as possible or close the comment feature where possible.
“In common with many other media companies, we face issues with comment moderation on social media sites.
"Although we deploy filtering software, this doesn’t always identify problems the way we wish, so much of our moderation is manual and requires a lot of resource, but when such comments are brought to our attention, we take action.”
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