CAA launches petition calling for suspension of TV licence fee

Campaign Against Antisemitism has launched a petition calling for the suspension of the TV licence fee, pending an independent inquiry into whether the BBC handed licence fee to Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation.

You can sign the petition at antisemitism.org/suspendthelicencefee.

Outrage has engulfed the BBC over its so-called documentary ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’, which is just the latest in a longstanding pattern of bias and brazen misreporting.

The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, has demanded that the BBC’s Director-General, Tim Davie, give her assurances that licence fee funds did not end up in the hands of terrorists.

Not only has he been unable to provide those assurances, but the BBC has now admitted that money went to the family of a senior Hamas official, and it is still investigating whether further licence fee funds came into terrorists’ hands.

The longer that this goes on, the more untenable Tim Davie’s position starts to look.

We have had enough of letting the BBC mark its own homework. We call for an independent investigation and for a suspension of the licence-fee pending the outcome of that investigation.

The investigation must look into the commissioning and production of this propaganda film, how much licence-fee money was handed to terrorists, and the BBC’s longstanding history of bias on this subject.

It is unconscionable that the British public should be forced to pay money to an institution that has apparently given money to a proscribed terrorist organisation, and whose biased broadcasting has become propaganda instead of journalism.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “A national treasure has become a national embarrassment. The BBC has now admitted that licence fee funds were paid to the family of a senior Hamas official. It has not yet been able to rule out that further payments to Hamas were made as it continues to investigate where hundreds of thousands of pounds went. The BBC’s statement is an exercise in desperate damage control, and shows why an internal review is no substitute for an independent investigation into this documentary and the wider bias at the BBC that allowed it to be made and aired. Clearly those responsible must lose their jobs.

“It is unconscionable that the British public should have to pay a licence fee to an organisation that gives that money to proscribed terrorists. It represents a shocking double standard in our law. Pending an independent investigation, the licence fee must be suspended.”

Sign the petition now at antisemitism.org/suspendthelicencefee.