The BBC’s Arabic-language service on Sunday cut ties with a Gaza-based freelance journalist after learning he had posted antisemitic content on social media, including calling Jews “devils” in an entry about Israeli airstrikes immediately after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
Ahmed Alagha, who had contributed to BBC Arabic, came under scrutiny after The Telegraph revealed in April that he’d been accused of describing Israelis as sadistic and less than human, based on research by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) nonprofit.
“Ahmed Alagha is not a BBC member of staff or part of the BBC’s reporting team. His social media posts do not reflect the BBC’s view, and we are absolutely clear that there is no place for anti-Semitism on our services. We will not be using him as a contributor in this way again,” the BBC wrote in a statement Sunday.
Commenting on social media regarding footage showing Gaza tower blocks destroyed by Israeli airstrikes after the Oct. 7 attacks, Alagha wrote that Israel “is the embodiment of filth, the unrivalled swamp of wickedness. As for the Jews, they are the devils of the hypocrites.”
The next day, he posted, “And as we know, the ‘Israelis’ are not human beings to begin with, rather they are not even beasts. Perhaps they belong to a race for which no description can capture the extent of their lust and sadism.”
The BBC continues to face criticism over its longstanding bias against Israel.
Last month, its highest-paid presenter, Gary Lineker, left the BBC over his sharing of an antisemitic video on Instagram. Titled “Zionism explained in two minutes,” it was accompanied by an illustration of a rat—an icon used by the Nazis to depict Jews.
Between Oct. 7, 2023, and February 2024, the broadcaster violated its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times, according to a media watchdog analysis by the Campaign for Media Standards, downplaying Hamas attacks while portraying Israel as the aggressor.
In May 2025, critics highlighted a leaked exchange between a BBC producer and the Israeli embassy in London, in which the producer requested an “Israeli military voice” who would be “critical of Netanyahu and the ground offensive”—a request some saw as evidence of narrative manipulation.
Back in February, the BBC pulled a documentary from its streaming platform after it was found to contain “serious flaws.” The film featured the son of a Hamas official, misleadingly presented as an ordinary Gazan child caught in the conflict.
As antisemitic incidents have surged in the U.K.—many linked to anti-Israel sentiment within the Muslim community—the BBC has been repeatedly accused of underreporting or mischaracterizing the trend, and in some cases, of fueling it.
A widely cited example occurred in December 2021, when the BBC reported that a group of men seen harassing a busload of Jewish teenagers celebrating Chanukah had been provoked by an anti-Muslim slur. Independent reviews of the footage found no evidence that any such comment was made.
BBC Director-General Tim Davie has repeatedly declined offers of antisemitism training, according to the British government’s official adviser on anti-Jewish discrimination, who spoke to The Telegraph in late March.