The BBC has confirmed that it has parted ways with a journalist for its World Service who posted extremist content relating to Israel and Jews, stating that “we are clear there is no place for antisemitism on our services.”
Osman Ahmed, who had been working as a freelancer for BBC’s English World Service, and who previously worked in multiple roles for BBC Arabic, responded to yesterday’s announcement of the Home Secretary’s planned proscription of Palestine action by sharing a post which described the move by saying “to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise.” Sometimes wrongly attributed to Voltaire, this quote was in fact coined by Kevin Alfred Strom, a Neo-Nazi paedophile.
An Instagram post shared by Ahmed
Orly Goldschmidt, spokeswoman for the Israeli embassy in the UK, highlighted other examples of Ahmed’s social media activity, including a post he reportedly shared on Instagram along with a video of the fringe Neturei Karta group burning an Israeli flag along with the caption “Jewish people who actually understand their religion recognise that Israel is a terrorist state and Jewish people are actually not meant to have a land”. Another Instagram post Ahmed is accused of sharing mocks Jewish people running for shelter at Ben Gurion airport amid incoming missiles from the Iranian regime.
Goldschmidt also stated that the “BBC previously apologised to us for this journalist’s actions while he was working with BBC Arabic. Osman [Ahmed] has continued to promote antisemitism as a representative of the BBC since.”
This afternoon, the BBC told the Jewish News that “Osman Ahmed is a freelancer who is no longer engaged by the BBC. We will not be working with him again. We are clear there is no place for antisemitism on our services.”
Ahmed, who has previously also worked for both ITV and Turkish government broadcaster TRT World, also shared a twitter post from the account of Dr Anastasia Marie Loupis, a notorious antisemite. The tweet shows Holocaust survivors on a boat travelling to the British mandate after World War II, alongside a picture of rubble in Gaza today. The accompanying caption says “Big mistake, huge”.
On 7 October 2023, Ahmed shared a post from a notoriously extreme anti-Zionist, Mohammed El-Kurd, which sought to justify and contextualise the murder of 1,200 and the captivity of 251 others. El-Kurd’s post stated that: “What is happening in occupied Palestine is a response to weeks and months and years of daily Israeli military invasions into Palestinian towns, killings of Palestinians, and the very fact that millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are besieged under Israeli blockade.”
A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies said: “We are well aware of the problems at the BBC. While the corporation has made some progress in a number of areas, the pace of change has been, at times, painfully slow. The issue of antisemitism needs to be a top priority.”
