How to survive a deletion
The BBC failed to anticipate inevitable criticisms of the documentary 'Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone' and now looks like it's indulging in censorship.
Previously: Genesis of the Blahleks
Before the BBC aired the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone1 on BBC Two last Monday (17 February), the reviews in the British press were positive:
There is nothing wrong with limiting a film to one side of this conflict; there have been documentaries about the October 7 attacks told only from the Israeli perspective, and others from Gaza. Yet when this one ventures beyond children’s voices, the omissions can feel glaring. Towards the end, the young mother is asked what she thinks about Hamas taking Israeli hostages. “Civilians shouldn’t be kidnapped,” she says. But she speaks of celebrating October 7, and is not pressed on what she thinks of Jewish civilians being massacred.
Focus on the children, though, and this portrait of everyday life is agonising. “Are we in a safe place?” an unaccompanied little boy asks a cameraman by the roadside, forced to evacuate his home as the Israeli army moves in. Sadly, the answer is no.— 4/5 review, The Daily Telegraph, 17 February 2025
This exceptional documentary offered a fresh perspective because it was filmed largely through the eyes of three Gazan children, with two London-based producers directing two cameramen on the ground, remotely, over nine months.— 4/5 review, The Times, 17 February 2025
The children of Gaza will be its future, if they are able to remain there. Starting several months into Israel’s bombardment and continuing right up until the recent ceasefire, London-based directors Jamie Roberts and Yousef Hammash made their documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone by remotely instructing two local cameramen, Amjad Al Fayoumi and Ibrahim Abu Ishaiba, as they captured life inside the “safe zone” – an ever-changing, ever-dwindling area in the south-west of Gaza, designated by Israel as the place where displaced Palestinians should reside. That the cameras predominantly follow children has an unexpected double effect: it makes the film’s many deeply distressing moments all the more unbearable, yet it tinges them with some sort of hope.— 5/5 review, The Guardian, 17 February 2025
The day after the broadcast, antisemitism researcher David Collier published a thread on X stating that the father of Abdullah, the documentary’s 13-year-old narrator, is “an official in the Hamas government [who] currently holds the position of Deputy Minister of Agriculture — but has held official positions in education and planning.”
Collier alleged that the BBC was “broadcasting Hamas propaganda” and that scenes in the documentary were “clearly staged”. The BBC subsequently apologised for failing to inform viewers that Abdullah Al-Yazouri is Ayman Alyazouri’s son. A new line was added to the beginning of the film to note the relationship when it was repeated last Wednesday.
A group of 45 prominent Jewish journalists and members of the media, including former BBC One controller Danny Cohen and BBC governor Ruth Deech, sent a letter to the broadcaster demanding the film be removed from iPlayer and that it give more details on the production process and the due diligence undertaken before its broadcast. On Friday, the BBC removed the film from its streaming platform and issued a statement saying:
Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone features important stories we think should be told, those of the experiences of children in Gaza. There have been continuing questions raised about the programme, and in the light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company. The programme will not be available on iPlayer while this is taking place.The letter demanding the documentary’s removal asked:
If the BBC was aware that Abdullah Alyazouri was the son of a terrorist leader, why was this not disclosed to audiences during the programme? If the BBC was not aware that Abdullah Alyazouri is the son of a terrorist leader, why due diligence checks were undertaken and why did they fail? Dr Ayman Alyazouri is — as Middle East Eye noted — a British-educated scientist, who received his Master’s in Chemistry from Anglia Ruskin University and his PhD in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Huddersfield. Another question is: Would it be possible to find any child in Gaza without some connection to Hamas given that it dominates government and civil society in the territory? And is it reasonable to call the Deputy Minister of Agriculture a “terrorist leader”? Hamas is a proscribed organisation in the UK but there is no other authority to work for in Gaza.
Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone was produced by a British production company working remotely with Palestinian cameramen because foreign journalists were banned from entering the territory by Israel. Another question is whether there could be any form of footage taken from Gaza that would be acceptable to those who are enraged by the documentary.
Near the end of the film, a young mother is asked what she thinks about Hamas taking Israeli hostages. She says, “Civilians shouldn’t be kidnapped.” Later when she talks about celebrating the October 7 attacks, she says, “If we had known this would happen to us no one would have celebrated.” Why she celebrated in the first place is not explored. Of course, the documentary is partial, it features Palestinian voices speaking about Palestinian experiences in territory controlled by Hamas.
But the documentary also features a moment when Zakaria, another of the children whose experiences are central to the production, is asked, “Do you like Hamas?” He replies: “No, because they started the war… They caused all this misery.” That context is present right from the start of the documentary with onscreen text that states:
On October 7 2023 Hamas attacked Israel. They killed around 1200 people and took 251 hostages. Israel immediately declared war on Hamas in Gaza. By Summer 2024, the war is ongoing. This is the story of young people trying to survive The film also shows the results of Israeli military operations in Gaza. It shows someone in flames after a strike hits tents near the al-Aqsa hospital and in an operating theatre, a doctor holds up a severed arms and declares: “Look what the Israelis are doing to the children of Gaza.” He has just performed an amputation on a 10-year-old.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has written a letter to BBC Director-General, Tim Davie — which just happened to also get into the hands of the Mail on Sunday — demanding an independent inquiry into the documentary and “wider allegations of systematic BBC bias against Israel.” She goes on to write:
It is well known that inside Gaza the influence of the proscribed terrorist organisation Hamas is pervasive. How could any programme from there be commissioned, without comprehensive work by the BBC to ensure that presenters or participants were — as far as possible — not linked to that appalling regime? Would the BBC be this naive if it was commissioning content from North Korea or the Islamic Republic of Iran?Badenoch’s underlying argument is that documentary footage from Gaza should not be shown because of Hamas’ presence. The suggestion is also that viewers cannot understand that all footage has a perspective and is partial. The idea of presenting an impartial account in this situation is laughable.
In October 2024, to coincide with the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, the BBC broadcast Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again, a documentary featuring testimony from survivors and footage of the events. It rightly told that traumatic story without stretching for artificial balance.
The BBC failed here because it did not anticipate the inevitable criticisms and attacks it would receive for broadcasting a documentary presenting Palestinian perspectives. It should have made sure the family backgrounds of the children featured were stated on screen. Pulling the film from iPlayer allows it to be dismissed as Hamas propaganda because most people won’t watch it now. From the other side of the argument, deleting the programme from the streaming service looks like censorship.
There’s a tendency in the BBC to believe that if it is being criticised by both sides then it’s probably getting it right. But that’s obviously not the case here. Its response to the initial criticisms of the programme was to say that it had “followed all of our usual compliance procedures in the making of this film” but this wasn’t a usual situation. By reacting in haste, the corporation was then forced to pull the programme when the next wave of criticism crashed over it.
The damage done by the way the BBC presented Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone and then responded to the criticisms of it will be long-lasting. Given the political heat, the chances of the film returning to iPlayer look slim and the broadcaster will be shy about attempting to tell Palestinian stories in the future.
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I’m linking to this reuploaded copy at Archive.org for reference purposes.
The more I hear about Gaza, the more I feel that you can’t be allowed to just react to it. In a normal way. Like many “debates” these days about almost anything particularly on tv and I don’t just mean the BBC it seems to me to be about what the official line is and what your personal politics are. There is nothing less helpful or informative than having a bunch of politicians squabbling about it. I’ve started watching Middle East Eye for this stuff. I particularly trust Daniel Levy and Peter Oborne. I trust Peter Oborne on this issue after I started reading him in Byline Times (a paper I trust) because he’s a good reporter and the news from this paper is reliable.
I started seeing footage about Gaza on the news. When they were bombing hospitals. That was shocking. The kids saw it. They were shocked. Kids screaming covered in dust and rubble having lost entire families. Even the snapshot in your article. You can clearly see they’re starving to death now. And to think our arms were being sent there. I then watched the Al Jazeera documentary about the October massacre and that was terrible kids being executed at a concert.
David Collier in his own words
“I am 100% a Zionist ( ‘Zionism’, such a loaded word, a different meaning to every ear, but a discussion for another day). The perspective of some that believe Israel is a European colonial enterprise and everything since is a continuation of that original sin is both absurd and alien to me. I understand its origin, I appreciate the enormous divide it creates when discussing Israel, but I think it is an argument devoid of factual content, realism and context.”
The problem for me is just when are we able to discuss the context in which this is happening.
I have nothing against Mr Collier. But even he surely needs to understand that there comes a point where you have to confront the fact that bombing civilians living in an open air prison denied food or water or medical care regardless of your political views or whether you’re a Zionist is abhorrent. In fact many Israelis are angry at Netanyahu and protest widely which I think is under reported here.
Apart from the Jews whose European ancestors converted to Judaism, every other jew in Israel is distantly related to every Palestinian. The difference between them is that, a couple of thousand years ago, some Jews converted to Christianity, and a few hundred years later, some converted to Islam. This has been supported by DNA.
When Israelis claim that Palestinians are less than human, does that also make them - their brothers and sisters - also less than human?
They are both human, and each side needs to acknowledge that fact.