In an interview with the JC following the leak of the Prescott report, Roth claimed that the BBC’s Arabic-language service has “quietly encouraged” sympathy for terrorists, including the woman who orchestrated his child’s murder, Ahlam Tamimi. For Roth, Prescott’s findings confirm a pattern at the channel that he has been “forced against my will” to confront.
Arnold Roth believes the BBC's sympathetic coverage of the terrorist who masterminded his daughter's murder has contributed to her being able to evade justice in Jordan (Photo: Jennie Wren Milne)[Missing Credit]
“I am caught up in this entirely as a victim,” he said, “I have been exposed to some of the worst of the BBC.”
In 2020, BBC Arabic’s Trending programme featured a broadcast interview with Tamimi in Jordan. Tamimi – released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, along with her husband, Nazar, who was convicted over the 1993 murder and burning of Chaim Mizrahi – has long evaded extradition despite US charges.
Yet on the BBC, Tamimi, who declared she is “not sorry” for her role in the massacre, was not portrayed as a terrorist. Instead, viewers saw her presented as a distressed wife separated from her husband Nizar, who had been deported from Jordan to Qatar, a she appealed for their reunification. It was a “grotesque inversion of reality,” said Roth.
The families of the victims of the 2001 attack complained at the time, and Jamie Angus, then the head of BBC World Service and now working in the UAE, contacted Roth to meet on Zoom.
An FBI wanted poster for Tamimi (Photo: FBI)[Missing Credit]
“[Angus] took the initiative of reaching out to me after I had spoken to other channels… and expressed my fury at the way the BBC Arabic arm had given a sympathetic platform to the woman who murdered my child,” Roth said.
“On Trending, they turned her into something amazing. She’s not a murderer for them; she is a victim whose husband has been taken away… That’s really the way the BBC Arabic programme presented it.”
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Malki Roth (Photo: Arnold Roth)[Missing Credit]
Recalling his meeting with Angus, he went on: “I laid out how angry my wife and I were and suggested a better apology… and an opportunity for my wife and I to explain to BBC Arabic journalists where they have gone wrong.”
His request to address BBC staff was apparently “dismissed out of hand.”
BBC Arabic did issue an on-air apology, but it obscured responsibility, Roth claimed. “The apology was never put on their website. If you weren’t tuned in at the moment, you would never have seen it.”
And, when the corporation circulated an English version of the apology to outlets that had reported on the story, they cut the clip after a “critical line”.
“They left out the first line – ‘I have been asked to say this by the BBC’ – which was not included in English-language translations,” Roth said.
The line spoken by the presenter diminished the programme’s responsibility and suggested the apology was only being aired because of requests from high up, Roth argued.
The presenter of Trending, Rania Attar, who delivered the on-air apology, is still a journalist at BBC Arabic. The corporation told the JC in 2020 “the apology aired by the programme was unequivocal”.
Malki with her younger sister Haya (Photo: Arnold Roth)[Missing Credit]
Roth believes the platform given to Tamimi on the show helped her maintain a following and downplayed her crimes. “She is an inciter of terrorist passion… By [this terrorism] being ignored by the media, it is almost impossible for us to bring pressure to bear so she is put on trial.”
And he accused the BBC of sanitising its portrayal of Tamimi and implicitly encouraging support for her actions. “There are people inside some of the most important media channels who really care for this woman and for what she stands for… That’s why the story isn’t getting coverage.
“The BBC is the paragon of this problem by quietly encouraging people to follow in her footsteps, not using those words ever, but they have certainly done what they can to engender sympathy and support for her. And she has devoted her entire life to terrorism.
“I’m a father of a murdered child, confronting a situation where the facts of that murder are buried, the facts of the chief protagonist of the murder are obscured, and she’s free. She shouldn’t be free; she should be in prison.”
The US government has offered a reward of up to five million dollars for anyone who brings information that leads to the arrest or conviction of Ahlam Ahmad Al-Tamimi (Photo: FBI)[Missing Credit]
In his memo, Prescott pointed to the analysis of five months of coverage – from May to October 2024 – including more than 500 BBC Arabic articles which were compared to reports on the corporation’s main English-language website. He told senior BBC figures the findings made it “clear” that BBC Arabic’s story selection, tone and focus were considerably different to the BBC News English website.
“It is hard to conclude anything other than that BBC Arabic’s story treatment was designed to minimise Israeli suffering and paint Israel as the aggressor,” Prescott warned. “Errors come thick and fast,” he told executives.
For Roth, this confirms what he has witnessed for years.
“BBC Arabic is the tail wagging the BBC dog,” he said, arguing that a “consistent message” runs through the channel, suggesting that Israel’s account “cannot be trusted”.
“It is an indication of something much more serious when you look at it against the background of a consistent track record on the part of talent, producers and people running public relations at the BBC which all is consistent with one message – you cannot trust the Israeli version, Hamas are doing something worth knowing about, and if we highlight some of their resistance heroes, you can’t be too upset and we’ll apologise for it afterwards.
“The BBC is not interested in presenting the facts when it comes to Hamas terrorism in an objective way, but rather it involves them being fully engaged in advocacy reporting and doing so at the expense of British taxpayers.”
Malki surrounded by friends (Photo: Arnold Roth)[Missing Credit]
Roth believes there is only one solution to the bias at BBC Arabic: “Do I want it to be shut down? Absolutely. It is not working in the current format. There has to be a limit.”
And until something changes, he warns, the victims of terrorism – including his daughter Malki – are betrayed.
When the JC reported on Roth’s story in 2020, a BBC spokesperson said: “Airing an apology on live TV gives it the highest of prominence.
“The fact that BBC Arabic did this, and the breach in editorial guidelines acknowledged by the programme, is a reflection of the seriousness with which BBC Arabic dealt with it. The very clear apologies published online in both English and Arabic also show how seriously it is still taken.”
A BBC World Service spokesperson added: “This segment of the programme was in breach of our editorial guidelines and we removed the clip from all our digital platforms.
“It should not have been shown and we apologised at the time on air and online for the offence caused, both in English and in Arabic. BBC Arabic frequently refers to itself when on air as ‘the BBC’ as it is how its audiences know it, and the apology aired by the programme was unequivocal.”
The JC has contacted the BBC for comment.
