Campaigners told BBC about Gaza staff’s anti-Semitism 18 months ago

THE BBC was warned 18 months ago that some of its journalists had made anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments online, but still assigned them to report on the war in Gaza, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

MPs have demanded an inquiry into BBC bias following an exposé in this newspaper about the views of several BBC Arabic reporters.

Last night, it emerged that the campaign group HonestReporting wrote to the corporation in August 2022 to complain about anti-Jewish posts made by some of the same reporters.

Despite this, the reporters were tasked with covering the Israel-Hamas war following the October 7 terror attacks that killed 1,200 people in Israel.

One BBC staff reporter, Marie-José Azzi, who is based in Lebanon, labelled Israel a ‘terrorist apartheid state’ on Twitter in 2018. This was flagged up to the BBC by HonestReporting, a pro-Israel group, in August 2022.

But Ms Azzi continued to work for the corporation. Earlier this month she was a main contributors to a report which made allegations that Israeli troops tortured medics at a Gaza hospital.

Last week, we revealed that six of the medics quoted had spouted anti-Semitic slurs on social media.

Another BBC freelancer, Aya Hossam, was dropped by the BBC last year after she appeared to justify the October 7 attacks.

She liked a tweet stating: ‘Every member of the Zionist entity served in the army at some point in his life, men or women.’

She also retweeted a post saying: ‘The Zionist must know that he will live as a thief and a usurper.’ After those tweets came to light, the BBC said Ms Hossam would no longer work for it. But HonestReporting said it had complained about Ms Hossam in 2022 after she used the word ‘Jews’ as an insult online.

Last night, Simon Plosker, of HonestReporting said: ‘How many of their journalists have to be exposed before BBC management acknowledges that there is a systemic issue of fundamental bias in the heart of their newsroom?’

The BBC said: ‘We take any breaches of our social media guidance very seriously.’