I was about to write that it is inconceivable that a senior news editor with as long and storied a career as the BBC’s head of news, Deborah Turness, could be unaware that both wings of Hamas are proscribed - or even unaware that the idea of two separate wings is itself little more than a fiction pushed for years by those who believe Hamas is a legitimate organisation. But it clearly isn’t inconceivable, because it’s true.
In a leaked video of Turness addressing BBC staff in the wake of the BBC’s report into the catastrophic editorial failure that led to it showing the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, without mentioning that it was narrated by the son of a Hamas minister in Gaza – who had been paid for his participation – the BBC’s head of news said that the father was “a member of the Hamas-run government, which is different to being part of the military wing of Hamas” and that “we need to continually remind people of the difference”.
The more I think about this, the more telling it seems. At its most basic, it would be astonishing if even a junior reporter covering these issues was unaware that for the past four years Hamas as a whole has been a proscribed organisation on the basis that “the approach of distinguishing between the various parts of Hamas is artificial” and that it is “a complex but single terrorist organisation”.
That the most senior editor in BBC News hasn’t a clue about one of the most basic facts about Hamas is so revealing about the BBC and its coverage of Gaza and Israel. Because, shocking as it should be, it also helps to explain so much about the BBC’s reporting, much of which is plain wrong, and much of which treats the Hamas government – the so-called political wing, which Turness is so keen to tell viewers are simply a bunch of politicians rather than the terrorists they really are – as some sort of middle eastern version of the Nobel prize committee. As Hillel Neuer dryly put it: “It’s really important that we are clear that BBC News has a pro-terrorist wing, and a completely separate wing that are just idiots.”
