Freelance reporter frequently featured on BBC Arabic found to have a history of violently antisemitic social media posts, raising serious concerns over BBC Arabic’s editorial standards.
A freelance reporter frequently featured on BBC Arabic has been revealed to have posted antisemitic content online, including calls for violence against Jews, The Telegraph reported on Saturday.
Samer Elzaenen, who has appeared on BBC Arabic broadcasts multiple times since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, has a documented history of incendiary social media activity. Elzaenen, 33, reported live from Gaza as recently as last month, with earlier coverage from the Nuseirat refugee camp following an Israeli rescue operation last year that resulted in numerous Palestinian Arab casualties.
Investigations have now surfaced showing that Elzaenen has made repeated posts targeting Jews with vitriol and advocating violence, according to The Telegraph.
In a Facebook post from July 2022, he wrote: “When things go awry for us, shoot the Jews, it fixes everything.” In another post from May 2011, he added: “My message to the Zionist Jews: 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.”
Additionally, Elzaenen has used inflammatory hashtags, such as “#We Are All Hamas You Son of a Jewess,” and repeatedly praised terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. He lauded terrorists as “heroes” and “martyrs,” celebrating deadly assaults and expressing joy over the deaths of Jewish victims. Following a February 2023 car-ramming attack in Jerusalem that killed two young children and a young man, Elzaenen declared the victims “will soon go to hell.”
Elzaenen has consistently referred to the October 7 Hamas terrorists, including those who massacred civilians at the Nova music festival, as “resistance fighters.”
The same report revealed that another freelance journalist for BBC Arabic, Ahmed Qannan, has also been implicated in promoting violence.
In response to a Facebook comment advocating for throat-slitting after a terror attack near a Jerusalem synagogue that killed seven civilians on Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2023, Qannan replied: “Don’t give up on your ambition.” He also hailed a Palestinian gunman who murdered four civilians and a police officer in Bnei Brak in 2022 as a “hero.”
The BBC has distanced itself from both men, clarifying that neither Elzaenen nor Qannan are official staff members. Nonetheless, critics have accused the broadcaster of failing to vet its freelance contributors adequately.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) condemned the situation, arguing it reflects systemic problems within BBC Arabic.
CAMERA UK stated, “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… Freelancers who divulge such egregious bias should not be covering Israeli and Jewish affairs for the BBC.”
The BBC said in a statement, “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 antisemitism on our services.”
The BBC has long been criticized for its blatant anti-Israel bias. This criticism has increased since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and the war in Gaza which followed.
In November of 2023, the corporation published an apology after falsely claiming that IDF troops were targeting medical teams in battles in and around the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
Before that, the BBC falsely accused Israel of being responsible for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza, which the IDF proved was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket. The network later acknowledged that “it was false to speculate” on the explosion.
In September, a report found that the BBC violated its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times during the first four months of the war between Israel and Hamas, and noted “deeply worrying pattern of bias” against the Jewish state during that period.
Last month, the British corporation issued an apology after using footage of the Israeli city of Tiberias – located well within Israel’s internationally recognized borders – while discussing “settlements” in the Golan Heights.
