Leaked messages from an internal communication forum for BBC staff reportedly show one of its employees claiming that calling Hamas “baddies” is “too simplistic”.
According to an investigation by GB News, the message read: “It seems really clear that a simplistic one-sided view of the conflict where Hamas are the baddies and Israel has a perfect right to do whatever it wants in response to their atrocities is just going to legitimise brutality, and allow a lot of people – Black and brown people – to be killed.”
The message was reportedly sent on 31st October 2023, only weeks after Hamas terrorists carried out a barbaric attack in Southern Israel, murdering over 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostage. It has been described as the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Hamas is a proscribed antisemitic genocidal terrorist group.
It is understood that the message was sent as part of a wider conversation about Israel.
A Jewish employee reportedly sent a message in the forum highlighting the efforts of Rambo Inbar Lierman on the day of the massacre, who “managed to save most lives, both Jews and Arabs” on one of the Kibbutzim that was attacked by terrorists.
The message also read: “Some of these lives she couldn’t save were some of the Palestinians who worked on the Kibbutz. Because Hamas first infiltrated the field they were working in and start[ed] shooting their own people, who called the main building and said they were being shot at. Why I’m saying this is that BBC staff have a variety of experiences and I would ask that perhaps on a topic that involves so much horrific death and destruction, please be sensitive to fellow staff who [are] suffering right now. We are also persecuted minorities who watched our friends and die [sic] in the most horrific ways I won’t repeat here and we are suffering greatly.”
A spokesperson for the BBC said: “We are aware of the content of a small number of posts on an internal messaging app and we are reviewing these.”
