BBC flooded with complaints of anti-semitism by Jewish staff

JEWISH staff at the BBC have lodged formal complaints about anti-semitism and Gary Lineker’s social media use, sources have said.

Concerned employees are understood to have submitted grievances on a range of issues from the corporation’s perceived bias in its coverage of the war in Gaza to alleged anti-semitism in the workplace.

Workers have also complained about Lineker’s online remarks and the BBC’S defence of the Match of the Day presenter, according to sources. The football pundit shared, then deleted, a message calling for Israel to be banned from international soccer tournaments.

One of at least 22 people understood to have submitted formal complaints said that Jewish staff are “fighting fires all over the place” and “everyone here is unhappy”. They said concerns about anti-semitism are “met with indifference or a shrug by management”.

Another warned that “so many Jews believe they [the BBC] are anti-semitic, and so many Jewish staff are unhappy”.

Sources have said that some of the frustration among Jewish employees relates to the BBC’S continued defence of Lineker, despite his social media interactions on the subject of Israel. In November, Lineker shared a video of a discussion between Owen Jones and Raz Segal, a professor of Holocaust Studies at Stockton University, in which the academic argued that Israel was engaged in “genocidal killing”.

In January, the presenter shared a pro-palestinian campaign calling for Israel to be barred from tournaments and games over “its grave violations of international law”. It is understood Lineker believed he was sharing news of such a ban, rather than a call for one, and deleted the post.

Politicians and viewers have questioned the broadcaster’s refusal to refer to Hamas as terrorists. Referring to the issue in October, Rishi Sunak said: “This is not a time for equivocation, we should call it out for what it is.” Details of the complaints have emerged after the Government announced that Ofcom, would be given greater powers to police the BBC’S news website .

The corporation established support groups for its Jewish and Muslim staff following the Hamas massacres of Israeli civilians on Oct 7.

A BBC spokesman said: “The welfare of our staff is paramount and we have well-established and robust processes in place to handle any complaints raised with us, along with a range of support available to anyone who may need it.”

‘Jewish staff are fighting fires all over the place and everyone here is unhappy’

When do individual errors add up to something more? When do “mistakes” become a clear pattern of institutional bias? These are questions the BBC must answer when it comes to its reporting of Israel’s conflict with the terrorist group Hamas. They are questions that are occupying the Government too, with both Rishi Sunak and Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer commenting on BBC “bias” this week.

We all know mistakes happen, particularly in large institutions. But when they keep happening, they reveal something more. They tell us that the BBC is being undermined in its duty to impartiality by institutional bias, anti-israel sentiment and, in some cases, racism against Jews.

Since the pogrom in Israel on October 7, the Jewish community has been shocked by the number of times the BBC has made reporting “errors” and breached its obligations to impartiality when it comes to Israel.

So is the BBC just unlucky that this keeps happening? The answer is no. The sheer volume of these incidents instead tells us something highly significant about institutional bias at the corporation and its management’s failure to get to grips with it.

If you are in any doubt that there is a problem, here are 10 examples of BBC bias and breaches of impartiality since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October. Each is serious in its own right. Collectively, they form an undeniable and frankly scandalous charge sheet.

October 7: The BBC refuses to describe the massacre of children, the rape and sexual mutilation of women, the mass murder of young people at the Nova music festival, and the taking of hostages, including babies and Holocaust survivors, as a “terrorist attack”. This is despite this language being used on multiple previous occasions in BBC reporting of terrorist attacks not related to Israel.

October 17: A BBC News reporter blames Israel for a rocket attack on a hospital in Gaza before any evidence emerges to prove this was the case. It is quickly established that the rocket was fired by terrorists from within Gaza.

October 30: The BBC’S reporting of a mob attack on Jews in Dagestan describes the incident as simply “anti-israel”. The fact that the mob had chanted “We are here for the Jews … We came to kill them with knives and shoot at them” did not appear to qualify as a clear enough statement of racist intent to be reported as such.

October: The BBC’S diplomatic correspondent, Caroline Hawley, uses social media to repost messages and photographs from Gaza without context or any apparent attempt at basic journalistic verification. Her online feed barely mentions the October 7 massacres or the plight of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

October: The BBC’S Arabic Service fails to maintain standards of impartiality in its reporting of the Israel-hamas war. Among those failing to meet these standards is BBC reporter Rami Ruhayem who blames “Western media for being complicit in Israel’s attack”.

October: Presenters working for the BBC Asian Network use social media to accuse Israel of genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes. To make matters worse, senior BBC managers are warned about these posts but they remain online until being highlighted by this newspaper. Why the posts were not removed earlier is a question that has not been answered.

November 14: A BBC executive responsible for the flagship documentary strand Storyville lends warm public support to a Palestinian film-maker after he makes an anti-israel speech that includes genocidal statements. The BBC’S kneejerk response is to defend its reputation and excuse its executive’s behaviour. One Jewish employee of the BBC has since commented: “Working at the BBC at the moment is soul-destroying. It is a very hostile and difficult environment.”

November 15: A BBC newsreader twice claims that Israeli forces were “targeting medical teams and Arab speakers” at Gaza’s largest hospital. This was a gross distortion of the facts, apparently based on the BBC’S misinterpretation of a Reuters’ report.

December 24: The BBC reports unverified claims by Hamas that the Israeli army was carrying out “summary executions” of Palestinians in Gaza. The report is aired six times on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service before being pulled. It takes over two weeks for the BBC to acknowledge that what it had reported was not true.

January 13: The BBC’S highest-paid presenter, Gary Lineker, having shared material on social media that accuses Israel of genocide, reposts a call for the racist boycotting of Israel. It clearly breaches the BBC’S social-media guidelines, but BBC leaders claim Lineker’s latest output was a “mistake”.

In all honesty, can the BBC’S senior management look at a list this long, with this many egregious issues and not admit they face a serious problem? Far harder but absolutely necessary is for the BBC to confront the institutional bias and anti-semitism that has become evident in the corporation and take meaningful steps to address it. It is a mission it cannot afford to fail.