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BBC Edits Hamas to Be More Palatable

(Israel Hayom) Miri Weissman - The BBC repeatedly mistranslated the views of Palestinians in its recent Gaza documentary. On at least five occasions, the words in Arabic "Jew" or "Jews" were changed to "Israel" or "Israeli forces," or were removed from the subtitles altogether. When a Gazan woman tells the cameraman: "The Jews invaded our [area]," the BBC subtitles quote her as saying: "The Israeli army invaded our area." In another clip, a boy says, "the Jews came, they destroyed us," which was translated in subtitles as "the Israelis destroyed everything." A woman interviewed about Oct. 7 says: "We were invading the Jews for the first time," while she is quoted as saying that was the "first time we invaded Israel." A woman describes Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as "engaging in resistance and jihad against the Jews," but BBC quotes her as saying: "He was fighting and resisting Israeli forces." Alex Hearn, the co-director of Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said the BBC "sanitized" the views expressed "and instead presented a more acceptable version for a Western audience. It is this whitewashing that keeps viewers ill-informed about the nature of Hamas, and promotes sympathy for their deadly ideology." Orly Goldschmidt of the Israeli embassy in the UK said the "intentional mistranslation...excuses racism...[and] does not allow viewers to see how children, and Palestinians at large, have been taught to hate Jews from a very young age." Moreover, omitting the word "jihad" from the translations "downplays the threat of terrorism that Israelis face on a daily basis."
2025-02-27 00:00:00
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