‘We’ll burn Jews like Hitler did’ – BBC Arabic freelance reporter exposed for glorifying terrorism against Jews

The UK’s Daily Telegraph has exposed several BBC Arabic contributors and reporters who have been caught making statements on social media glorifying terrorism against Jews.

The first, Samer Elzaenen, has appeared on BBC Arabic more than a dozen times since the unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on southern Israel.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) revealed that Elzaenen has referred to the thousands of Hamas terrorists who stormed Israel that day as “resistance fighters.”

CAMERA also discovered the following race-hatred and incitement:

• After a car-ramming attack in Jerusalem in February 2023, when two children and a young man were killed, he wrote that the victims “will soon go to hell.”

• In a July 2022 Facebook post, Elzaenen wrote, “When things go awry for us, shoot the Jews, it fixes everything.”

• In May 2011, he addressed “Zionist Jews,” with the words: “We are going to take our land back, we love death for Allah’s sake, the same way you love life. We shall burn you as Hitler did, but this time we won’t have a single one of you left.”

In total, over the past decade, CAMERA documented more than 30 instances in which Elzaenen expressed support for attacks on Israeli civilians, describing the terrorists as “heroes” and “martyrs.”

Another regular contributor to BBC Arabic, Ahmed Qannan, was found by CAMERA to have praised Palestinian terrorists and to have apparently expressed hope that Israeli civilians wounded in a terrorist attack would die.

Earlier this month, the Telegraph exposed yet another freelancer who has appeared regularly to report on Gaza for BBC Arabic.

Both before and after the Oct. 7 attack, Ahmed Alagha made antisemitic comments about Jews, including calling them “devils.” He also praised a terrorist from Jerusalem who killed seven civilians in a shocking Sabbath shooting near a synagogue in January 2023.

In response to the reports, the BBC stated, “International journalists including the BBC are not allowed access into Gaza so we hear from a range of eyewitness accounts from the strip. These are not BBC members of staff or part of the BBC’s reporting team.

“We were not aware of the individuals’ social media activity prior to hearing from them on air. We are absolutely clear that there is no place for anti-Semitism on our services.”

However, CAMERA UK told the Telegraph, “The BBC misleadingly frames freelance journalists used by the Arabic service as mere ‘contributors’ so it won’t have to take responsibility for the hatred they regularly spew in social media.”

The watchdog continued, “Freelancers who divulge such egregious bias should not be covering Israeli and Jewish affairs for the BBC. Any individual whose social media activity indicates their support for violence targeting Israel’s Jewish civilians lacks the basic journalistic skill of distinguishing between combatants and uninvolved bystanders.”

In response to a new report released by CAMERA UK into BBC Arabic, the UK’s opposition conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, called for a “wholesale reform” of the channel last month.

The report “makes for shocking reading, even for those familiar with these problems,” she wrote to the BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie.

“It reveals flagrant and appalling antisemitism and anti-Israel bias. A public service broadcaster appears to have become a regular platform for race-hate extremism and the endorsement of terror.

“This has been going on for years… [It] is simply unacceptable and must stop,” Badenoch added.