The BBC’s head of news Deborah Turness told staff during a meeting that the Hamas government and its military wing were “different,” according to a video obtained and shared by The Telegraph on Wednesday.
Turness’ remarks, made in the aftermath of the BBC’s “catastrophic failure” in broadcasting the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, imply that Hamas politicians are not terrorists.
On February 17, 2025, the BBC broadcast the program, which was narrated by Abdullah Al-Yazouri, then 13, living in Gaza. Media outlets soon revealed that the father of the boy is Ayman Alyazouri, a deputy minister in the Hamas government, prompting the BBC to announce a report into the matter.
On Monday, the BBC released the results of an inquiry into the failings headed by its director of editorial complaints and reviews, Peter Johnston. It found that the BBC had breached its own guidelines. Failing “to disclose in the program the information about the narrator’s father’s position as deputy minister of agriculture in the Hamas-run government in Gaza was a breach of the BBC’s editorial guidelines,” the inquiry concluded.
In the video, Turness tells staff: “I think it’s really important that we are clear that Abdullah’s father was a deputy agriculture minister, and therefore was a member of the Hamas-run government, which is different to being part of the military wing of Hamas.”
“Externally, it’s often simplified that he was in Hamas, and I think it’s an important point of detail that we need to continually remind people of the difference,” she says.
The Telegraph noted that the UK government makes no such distinction, and the group is “proscribed in its entirety.”
The Jerusalem Post reached out to Amira Halperin, an expert and researcher specializing in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestinians in the Middle East and in the UK, terrorism, and radicalization.
Hamas's military and political wing
Halperin spoke of a specific part of the report in Section A, which says that “Notwithstanding their belief that the father’s position was a civilian or technocratic one, as opposed to a political or military position in Hamas,” the production company did not intend to mislead. Turness’ comments seem to be somewhat parroting this.
“This is problematic because Hamas’ military wing, ‘Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades,’ was proscribed by the UK in March 2001,” Halperin told the Post. And “In 2021, the Home Office assessed that the distinction between Hamas’s military and political wings is artificial. The Home Office decided to ban Hamas in its entirety.”
Halperin explained that membership in and/or expressing support for Hamas is illegal in the UK, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, and that a Hamas deputy agriculture minister is a minister in a government banned in the UK as a terrorist organization.
“The Palestinians I interviewed told me that they do not always want to declare that they are affiliated with the Hamas party and consume Hamas websites, as the Hamas party is, on one hand, a legitimate political power – the party that won the Palestinian legislative elections, but, on the other hand, Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by a few Western governments,” she added.
Concerns about the BBC's report
In a public statement shortly after the video was published, the vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Andrew Gilbert, released a statement saying he was “extremely concerned that within days of the BBC’s damning report... Turness appears to be obfuscating and minimizing the BBC’s failings.”
“Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization, and this so-called distinction between political and military wings has been categorically dismissed as artificial by the British government,” he said.
Gilbert noted that Turness’ remarks indicated the BBC has not learned from its mistakes.