A journalist who frequently reported from Gaza for BBC Arabic has described Jews as “devils” and claimed Israelis were “not human beings” on social media, The Telegraph reported on Saturday.
Ahmed Alagha, who has reported for the British public broadcaster since early 2023, described the Israeli army as “the embodiment of filth” and referred to Jews as “the devils of the hypocrites,” according to The Telegraph’s report.
He also stated, “Israelis are not human beings ... they are not even beasts,” adding that Israel represents “an unrivalled swamp of wickedness.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, the day that about 6,000 Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel, killed some 1,200 people and abducted another 251, Alagha wrote: “Rip your sympathy out. … No spilled blood of theirs is honorable.”
He also praised a terrorist who killed seven people near a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January 2023, calling him a “martyr” who “stole my heart.”
In another post from March 2023, Alagha appeared to call for the erasure of Israel, stating that “Palestine is entirely Arab, east and west,” referring to the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Alagha is not directly employed by the BBC, according to the report. His regular appearances as a freelance contributor have drawn criticism from media watchdogs.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) condemned the BBC’s reliance on contributors with evident biases. “Alagha’s social media history shows he cannot be trusted to deliver objective and balanced reporting,” a spokesperson said.
BBC officials responded by clarifying that Alagha is not on staff and claiming they were unaware of his online comments before using him. “His views were not expressed on a BBC platform,” a spokesperson told The Telegraph. “There is no place for antisemitism on our services.”
Kemi Badenoch, leader the British Conservative Party, wrote to BBC Director-General Tim Davie, warning that the outlet risks “fomenting extremism” while being funded by U.K. taxpayers.
Alagha has not responded to The Telegraph’s request for comment, the newspaper said.
The BBC has come under criticism for decades over its entrenched hostility toward Israel.
The BBC violated its own editorial guidelines 1,553 times during the four-month period beginning Oct. 7, 2023, repeatedly downplaying Hamas terrorism and presenting Israel as an aggressor, according to one analysis.
Last month, critics said the correspondence of one producer with the Israeli embassy in London revealed how the BBC manipulated its content about Israel to fit its narrative. The producer asked to interview an “Israeli military voice” that was “critical of Netanyahu and the ground offensive.”
In February, the BBC removed from its streaming service a documentary that it said had “serious flaws” after it emerged that the film featured the son of a Hamas official, who was portrayed as a random Gazan child suffering the consequences of warfare.
Amid an increase of antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom—often because of Muslims who target Jews in connection with Israel—the BBC has frequently been accused of failing to report that phenomenon accurately and even inciting it.
In 2022, the broadcaster reported that several young men caught on video harassing a Chabad-affiliated bus of Jews publicly celebrating Chanukah were reacting to an anti-Muslim slur from one of the Jews on the bus. Several analyses of video from the scene determined that none of the Jews on the bus had said anything Islamophobic.
Despite these and other scandals, Davie has repeatedly rejected offers of training on antisemitism, the British government’s official adviser on anti-Jewish discrimination revealed in an interview with The Telegraph last week.
