On Friday, the BBC removed a documentary about Gaza from its iPlayer streaming service while it carried out “further due diligence” after discovering its 13-year-old narrator was the son of a Hamas official.
The broadcaster has been subjected to a hate campaign for streaming the documentary Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone, which centered on the son of Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture. However, the BBC stated that it had not been informed in advance of the family connection by the film’s production company.
The documentary, which aired on BBC Two on Monday, was made by Hoyo Films.
The documentary depicts the lives of four young people enduring 15 months of Israeli genocide, including a 14-year-old English-speaking narrator, Abdullah, who was the son of a Hamas deputy minister for agriculture, Ayman al-Yazouri.
“Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone features important stories we think should be told—those of the experiences of children in Gaza. There have been continuing questions raised about the program and in light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company. The program will not be available on iPlayer while this is taking place,” said the BBC in a statement.
“The film remains a powerful child’s eye view of the devastating consequences of the war in Gaza, which we believe is an invaluable testament to their experiences, and we must meet our commitment to transparency,” reads a BBC statement on Wednesday.
The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) said the growing efforts to suppress Palestinian voices are “unacceptable.”
They noted that objections raised due to Abdullah’s father holding a government role in Gaza’s Hamas-run administration “do not negate Abdullah’s lived experience as a child in Gaza, nor do they invalidate his testimony.”
The statement emphasized the need to resist efforts to silence Palestinian voices, especially those documenting civilian suffering, and urged the BBC to uphold journalistic integrity and ensure that the realities of life in Gaza are not erased from public discourse.
Tayab Ali, an expert in Universal Jurisdiction, took to X stating, “The BBC’s decision to remove Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone is a blatant act of censorship, driven by relentless pressure from the Israeli lobby.”
“Again, a mainstream media institution has caved to pro-Israel forces, proving that Palestinian voices are only allowed if they conform to an Israeli-approved narrative,” he said.
“This is not just a disgraceful betrayal of journalism, it is active complicity in the erasure of Palestinian suffering. The BBC has shown that it will always prioritize the sensitivities of Israel’s defenders over the truth,” he alleged, asserting that “Israel’s war crimes and the genocide of Palestinians, as well as their brutal experience under Israel’s belligerent occupation, will not and cannot be silenced.”
