The BBC has defended giving airtime to a retired Egyptian army general who hailed the Hamas attacks on October 7 as a “month of victory”.
Samir Ragheb has been interviewed by BBC News Arabic nine times since the war began despite sharing anti-Semitic material and pro-Palestine posts online, analysis claims.
They include mocking Israeli civilians for seeking shelter during Hamas rocket attacks and claiming that Sinai returning to Egypt in 1982 was an act of “purifying it from the Jews’ filth”.
Critics accused the broadcaster of becoming a “propaganda outlet” but the BBC yesterday defended its decision to host the retired general, instead insisting that it challenges “the views” of contributors.
A spokesman said: “BBC News Arabic is committed to hearing from a range of contributors to offer a variety of views and perspectives across our output.
“Samir Ragheb is a retired senior officer in the Egyptian army and has previously been interviewed as a military expert across media including on BBC News Arabic. As with all our interviews, we challenge the views provided by contributors on air, as our audiences would expect.”
Of the nine times Mr Ragheb was hosted by the broadcaster, eight of them were on “strictly Israel-related issues”, according to analysis by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera).
The ninth appearance was “a broader overview on Egypt’s strategy, which is also about its other neighbours”, Camera claims.
Camera, which lobbies for “accurate and balanced” coverage of Israel, analysed Facebook posts made by the general.
Writing on Facebook on October 7, Mr Ragheb said: “For the first time in half a century, the legend of the military that is never defeated is shattered – it is defeated in six hours. A new military miracle by all criteria – strategic, operational and tactical. October is the month of victory.”
The massacre carried out by Hamas in Israel left 1,200 dead, and 252 hostages were taken to Gaza.
Previously, Mr Ragheb shared a link to download the notoriously anti-Semitic “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and suggested that questioning the Holocaust was not allowed in the West because “these people are quietly fooling us”.
Campaign Against Anti-Semitism accused the BBC of courting controversy on a “regular basis”.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Anti-Semitism said: “Some views – like praising the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and propagating the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jews control the world – are not the sort of views that the BBC, our national broadcaster, can justify as simply part of a the variety of views and perspectives that they must broadcast.
Controversy
“BBC Arabic courts controversy on a regular basis, and these scandals have metastasised since Hamas carried out its barbaric attacks on October 7. They have related to anchors, employed and freelance journalists and partiality, bias and inaccuracies in content. We are rapidly approaching the point when the BBC must conduct an audit of the entire department. BBC Arabic risks becoming more of a propaganda outlet than a news service.”
A spokesperson for Camera Arabic added: “Part of the problem with BBC Arabic inviting these dubious characters is that they then have the BBC’s seal of approval in the eyes of other outlets with self-professed Western journalistic standards.
“For example, after Ragheb appeared repeatedly on BBC Arabic, he was interviewed last week by the LA Times.”
The discovery comes just weeks after The Telegraph revealed BBC Arabic had repeatedly used a commentator who was jailed for his role in the murder of an Israeli without disclosing his conviction.
Peace talks
Ismat Mansour was interviewed by BBC Arabic at least seven times in the first seven months of the war in Gaza, billed as a “Palestinian political analyst” and “Palestinian author and researcher”, according to Camera.
Mansour was among 26 Palestinian prisoners freed early from prison by the Israeli authorities in August 2013, as part of a gesture to the Palestinian Authority in peace talks brokered by the US.
He had been jailed at 16 after helping two older teenagers stab Haim Mizrahi to death near the West Bank settlement of Beit El in October 1993, a month after Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords. Mr Mizrahi’s wife was pregnant at the time.
Though Mansour denied doing the stabbing himself, an Israeli judge found that he held the Israeli down during the stabbing.
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