There’s something I occasionally ask myself when I see that a group of celebrities and professional political agitators have added their names to a letter against a particular injustice. Namely – have they actually read the letter in question before signing? Or have they instead issued a certain organisation with carte blanche to affix their name to all such missives?
I ask because I recall at least one instance which caused considerable embarrassment, where an activist’s name was added to a letter despite the widespread knowledge that he had sadly not been compos mentis for years.
No matter. I’m sure we can assume that the raft of celebrities who have signed the latest “Artists for Palestine” letter – including footballer, pundit and podcast supremo Gary Lineker, actresses Juliet Stevenson and Miriam Margolyes, and directors Ken Loach and Mike Leigh – were fully present and incorrect when they added their names.
This letter, as anyone who keeps track of the news may have worked out, condemns the BBC for removing a film called Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, from its streaming services.
In the belly of the beast: Israeli captive Arbel Yehoud, 29, who had been held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since October 7, 2023, is escorted by Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters as she is handed over to the Red Cross in Khan Younis
The BBC first broadcast the documentary a couple of weeks ago. Since then, investigative journalist David Collier has revealed numerous deeply problematic issues with a number of those associated with the documentary, with perhaps the most central point being that the key child narrator featured in the movie is the son of a senior Hamas official.
Phil Rosenberg, president of the Board of Deputies, the organisation I work for, called this week for an independent inquiry into the BBC, citing this latest egregious episode as yet another in a long line of examples of the Corporation’s bias on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There are, as you might imagine, many elements of the “Artists for Palestine” letter which will raise eyebrows, but one in particular merits focus, because it shows a fundamental widespread misunderstanding of the true nature of Hamas.
The relevant paragraph reads as follows:
“A campaign has sought to discredit the documentary using the father of 14-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri, one of the film’s child protagonists. Dr Ayman Al-Yazouri served as Gaza’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture, a civil service role concerned with food production. Conflating such governance roles in Gaza with terrorism is both factually incorrect and dehumanising. This broad-brush rhetoric assumes that Palestinians holding administrative roles are inherently complicit in violence—a racist trope that denies individuals their humanity and right to share their lived experiences.”
This is pretty telling, because Hamas is not merely a terrorist organisation; it is a dictatorial regime. After winning power in an election held in 2006, it subsequently murdered a significant number of its political opponents and seized power over every aspect of life within Gaza. Those who have expressed condemnation of its regime – or who are deemed to have broken the fundamentalist laws by which Hamas rules Gaza – have been routinely tortured or murdered.
I would like to think that absolutely none of the people who signed this letter would have been credulous enough to agree with a similar argument made about Assad’s Syria, for example, or Kim’s North Korea.
Can you imagine? “The boy’s father served as Deputy Minister of Agriculture to the Assad regime. He had nothing whatsoever to do with the mass murder of civilians or the torture being conducted in dungeons, and anyone who suggests that he should be treated as anything other than a harmless agronomics professor is guilty of hideous racism”.
I would like to think none of the people who signed this letter would have been credulous enough to agree with a similar argument made about Assad’s Syria
This, by the way, is a key reason why in 2021 the ludicrous distinction between Hamas’s military and political wings was ended in this country and the group was proscribed as a terrorist group in its entirety. But it appears that reality has yet to catch up to this letter’s signatories. It is also worth pointing out that during his extensive and damning exposé of this documentary, Mr Collier also found that Dr Al-Yazouri used social media to praise Hamas terrorists who murdered Israeli civilians.
These are points which I imagine Mr Lineker – and many other signatories – would struggle to answer. But even as I was writing this ccolumn, the BBC published a further statement. Again, it might be helpful to quote the most relevant passage:
“One of the core questions is around the family connections of the young boy who is the narrator of the film. During the production process, the independent production company was asked in writing a number of times by the BBC, about any potential connections he and his family might have with Hamas. Since transmission, they have acknowledged that they knew that the boy’s father was a Deputy Agriculture Minister in the Hamas Government; they have also acknowledged that they never told the BBC this fact. It was then the BBC’s own failing that we did not uncover that fact and the documentary was aired.”
Among other things, this shows that the BBC has fundamentally rejected the Artists for Palestine letter and has fully accepted what is obvious to most other people – that a national broadcaster has a responsibility not to air documentaries about a place in which the audience are not told that a key character has close familial ties to the proscribed terrorist organisation which rules it.
Perhaps this episode might encourage Mr Lineker – and the hundreds of other worryingly credulous signatories – to wonder whether embarrassing oneself publicly is in fact an effective way to advocate for the Palestinian people.
