For several years, observers of the Arabic-language channel Al-Hiwar TV, based in the United Kingdom, have tracked its output with growing alarm, even as the British broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, has thrown up its hands in the face of blatant extremism.
Investigations over the last seven months by The Telegraph, The Jewish Chronicle and The Times have finally shone a much-needed nationwide spotlight on this channel, detailing how it has provided an uncontested platform for convicted terrorists and other Hamas apologists.
But while many Brits—Jews and non-Jews alike—are justifiably shocked by recent headlines exposing the network’s pro-terror tilt, CAMERA’s years-long research into Al-Hiwar’s programming demonstrates a disturbing reality that predates the Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 others in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s ensuing war against Hamas in Gaza. The network’s promotion of terrorism is not a recent phenomenon sparked by the situation in Gaza; it is a deeply entrenched, multi-year campaign of terror normalization that has exploited Ofcom’s blind spots for far too long.
The catalyst for the current public outcry was a series of broadcasts in the spring of 2026 in which Azzam Tamimi, Al-Hiwar’s co-founder and chairman, interviewed Othman Bilal, a convicted Hamas terrorist who, by his own admission to Tamimi, helped orchestrate two suicide bombings in 1995 that killed 10 civilians.
Bilal chillingly described his ability to deliver explosives for one of his two massacres while evading detection as “God’s destiny.” He also referred to the emergence of suicide bombings targeting unarmed Israeli civilians as a “natural” development within the so-called “Palestinian resistance” and labeled it as a “mechanism” at the Palestinians’ service.
In a separate discussion with Bilal about the Oct. 7 massacre, Tamimi himself enthusiastically responded to the horrific events by calling them “like a fantasy,” while the accompanying YouTube text praised the “blessed Al-Aqsa Flood.”
The apologia for violence against Jews extends beyond Israel’s borders. Following the stabbing of two Jewish men in London’s Golders Green neighborhood in April, the network’s contributors grotesquely claimed the attack was not antisemitic, but rather, an “expression of his [the attacker’s] rejection” of Israeli policies, placing the “lion’s share” of blame on the Jewish state.
Al-Hiwar likewise framed the terrorist attack on Bondi Beach last Chanukah, which resulted in the deaths of 15 people, as a direct response to Chabad’s Zionist ideology under the pretext that the Chabad-Lubavitch movement had organized the event where the tragedy occurred.
On air, the network staff debate was not focused on moral condemnation of the deadly attack, but on strategic optics. One presenter asked whether it seems like a “false flag” operation by the Mossad. Another, who previously argued that kidnapping civilians from their homes inside Israel was legitimate because it occurred on what he deemed “Palestinian” land, stressed that the Australia attack was only “forbidden” because it didn’t occur on the attackers’ “own land.”
Another participant argued that while Israel should be unsafe for Jews, the rest of the world should be out-of-bounds for attack. This reasoning reveals a terrifying, long-held worldview wherein the only debate is where it’s best to target Jewish civilians. According to this formulation, the legitimacy of targeting Jews is a given not up for question.
While British politicians and the Jewish Leadership Council have rightly condemned these broadcasts as a threat to social cohesion and Jews worldwide, Ofcom claims that the entity is entirely powerless to rein in the incitement. The regulator cites a loophole that prevents it from restricting content broadcast via foreign satellites or on YouTube streams, leaving it effectively neutered.
This argument ignores the fact that Al-Hiwar slipped into extremism well before that loophole existed. As CAMERA and other organizations have proven, this channel has served as a megaphone for global terror rhetoric for several years.
Long before the Oct. 7 atrocities, Al-Hiwar was hard at work sanitizing violence. For example, in March 2021, the channel broadcast an interview featuring the lawyer for Ahlam Tamimi, another notorious terrorist. In that segment, presenter Zaher Birawi, who would later gain prominence in world media for organizing allegedly “humanitarian” flotillas, agreed with the assertion that the attack, which Tamimi had planned and facilitated, killing 16 civilians, half of them children, constitutes “legitimate resistance according to international law.”
Our research reveals a consistent, years-long drumbeat of antisemitic rhetoric and the demonization of Israel. Presenters and participants have routinely described the Jewish state as a “cancer” in the heart of the Middle East that prevents Arab recovery and compared its behavior to that of “Satan.” Panelists even pushed classic antisemitic tropes, baselessly suggesting that the “Jewish lobby” and AIPAC buy members of Congress.
This spreading of hate is unrelenting. Across various broadcasts, Al-Hiwar panelists have routinely characterized Hamas’s Nukhba unit—the perpetrators of Oct. 7—as “martyrs,” alongside terror leaders like Hassan Nasrallah and Yahya Sinwar, whom one participant described as a “hero” who “confronted” Israel “behind enemy lines.” They have praised the “Lebanese resistance” and implied that attacks on international shipping are a “legitimate act.”
There is absolutely no journalistic value in a program in which sycophantic interviewers and convicted murderers casually agree that Palestinians have the right to target and kill Jewish civilians. The only criterion by which Al-Hiwar’s presenters and pundits seem to assess the killing of Jews is its tactical effectiveness in advancing their cause.
The evidence we have compiled proves that Al-Hiwar’s radicalism is a systemic issue spanning several years. The channel’s continued operation poses a severe and urgent threat to the British Jewish community. Allowing extremists to exploit the digital frontier with impunity invites more deadly attacks on British soil.
It’s time for the government to close the Ofcom loophole and for the Metropolitan Police to urgently investigate these broadcasts under the Terrorism Act 2006. Turning a blind eye to a multi-year terror propaganda operation is a dereliction of duty that the United Kingdom can no longer afford.
