BBC censors Gaza documentary

The film follows the lives of four young Palestinians trying to survive Israel’s brutal onslaught and siege of Gaza. Before taking it down, the BBC described the documentary as a “vivid and unflinching view of life in a warzone”, with 13-year-old narrator Abdullah asking viewers: “have you ever wondered what you’d do if your world was destroyed?”

It’s not just a personal story of how children are navigating life through a genocide, but also a shocking exposé of Israeli war crimes, including against medics and healthcare institutions in Gaza. In the final 15 minutes of the documentary, an Apache helicopter can be seen firing in the vicinity of paramedics as they try to rescue victims of a recent bombing.

It’s not difficult to understand why Israel and its supporters were so incensed by the BBC’s screening of the film. It marked an exceptionally rare incident of the British mainstream media publishing journalism produced by Palestinians, centring Palestinian voices.

The response was correspondingly furious. Israel’s ambassador in London, Tzipi Hotovely, wrote a frothing letter to Tim Davie, the Director General of the BBC. BBC One controller Danny Cohen also declared that the documentary failed “the most basic of programme standards”.

In typical fashion, the Israeli government and its associated lobbyists sought to exploit a technicality within the BBC’s impartiality guidelines to remove content that challenged their interests and allowed Palestinians to speak for themselves.

They claimed the film was linked “to the terrorist group Hamas”, adding “it appears that children have been manipulated by terrorists”. The allegation apparently rested on the fact that Abdullah was the son of a Hamas deputy minister for agriculture, Ayman al-Yazouri.

The BBC said in a statement: “There have been continuing questions raised about the programme and in light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company”, suggesting there was in fact no issue with the accuracy of the documentary.

More than 170 British Jews have now rallied to call on the BBC to reject complaints about the documentary, including Mike Leigh, Alexei Sayle, and Miriam Margolyes.

The London-based International Centre of Justice for Palestinians also commented: “For some, almost any Palestinian perspective appears to be deemed unacceptable. In this case, objections have been raised because Abdullah’s father holds a government role in Gaza’s Hamas-run administration. However, this does not negate the child’s lived experience or invalidate his testimony”.

The effort to censor the film has now produced what is known as the Streisand effect, defined as “an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness”.

The documentary has now been viewed millions of times across social media, earning engagements across demographics that may otherwise have never heard of it

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