The BBC’s assertion that the Arabic word “yahud” can be translated as “Israelis” or “IDF” is unequivocally wrong, a spokesperson for Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) Arabic told The Jerusalem Post following the publication of the BBC’s inquiry into whether its controversial documentary Gaza: How to Survive A War Zone had breached the BBC’s editorial guidelines.
“Colloquial Gazan Arabic has distinct terms for ‘military,’ ‘soldiers,’ ‘Israelis,’ and ‘Zionists’ – none of which is ‘yahud,’ a word that unequivocally means ‘[Jew or] the Jews,’” the spokesperson added.
On February 17, 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 was Ayman Alyazouri, a deputy minister in the Hamas government, sparking the BBC to announce an investigation into the matter.
BBC breached editorial guidelines
On Monday, the BBC reported the results of an inquiry into the failings, led by Peter Johnston, the BBC’s director of editorial complaints and reviews. It said that failure 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.”
However, Johnson notably declared there to be no issues with the program’s translation of the Arabic word “yahud,” meaning “[Jew or] the Jews,” into “Israel” or “Israeli forces,” despite the Arabic branch of CAMERA having highlighted the problematic nature of these translations earlier in 2025.
CAMERA’s previous report noted that in one interview shown in the documentary, praise of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s “jihad against the Jews” is mistranslated to say he was “fighting Israel forces.”
In another interview, a Gazan woman is subtitled as saying October 7 was the “first time we invaded ‘Israel’ – it was always the other way around,” but in Arabic, she actually said, “We were invading ‘the Jews’ for the first time.”
The Johnson report, however, insists that “people in Gaza often use the word yahud when referring to the actions of the IDF, the Israeli state, or Israeli citizens. Given the context of the documentary – people speaking colloquial Palestinian Arabic and describing the actions of the IDF or referring to Israel or Israelis – the interpretation that they meant to refer to Jewish people as a whole seems limited. Translating a contributor’s words to give the impression they meant to refer to Jewish people generally would therefore also risk misleading audiences.”
The CAMERA Arabic spokesperson told the Post that even when Gazans use “yahud” in reference “to actions by the IDF, the Israeli state, or its citizens” as the BBC now claims in its recent report, “this occurs within a widely held antisemitic worldview that sees all of these as indistinguishable.”
The spokesperson noted a notorious example of this mindset: the chant “khaybar khaybar ya yahud.” This chant is popular across the Arab world and particularly in Gaza, and references a 7th-century massacre of Jews in the Arabian Peninsula, centuries before the existence of Israel or the IDF.
“Yet the BBC continues to suggest that acknowledging this hateful worldview might ‘risk misleading audiences.’ As a result, it defends sanitizing phrases like ‘Jihad against the Jews,’ mistranslated in its nixed production as ‘fighting Israeli forces,’ along with several other similar errors.”
The CAMERA spokesperson also criticized the report’s recommendation that translators be given broad discretion to render “yahud” non-literally in future cases, if they believe a direct translation would “mislead the audience as to intent or motivation.”
“This assumes that the BBC can somehow divine intent without relying on the speakers’ actual words,” the spokesperson added. “In conclusion, the report’s findings are further evidence that even during formal reviews, the BBC fails to adequately oversee its own content, especially when biased coverage of Jews or Israel is involved.”
“The program was wrong because they needed to translate ‘yahud’ as Jews,” concurred Amira Halperin, an Arabic speaker and expert in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in Palestinians in the Middle East and in the UK, in a conversation with The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
“The Palestinians also use the word ‘Holocaust’ and [refer to] ‘concentration camps’ when they talk about what happened to Gaza, even before October 7,” she said. “This antisemitic language is very common among both the people and the leadership (not only Hamas, but also Fatah).”
She also drew attention to Point 104 in the BBC report, which said, “The evidence suggests people in Gaza often use the word ‘yahud’ when referring to the actions of the IDF, the Israeli state, or Israeli citizens”.
“The word ‘IDF’ here is problematic,” added Halperin. “The people in Gaza and the main Palestinians and Qatari media outlets don’t use the word ‘IDF,’ but rather use the word IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces).” Halperin explained that the translation of “yahud” to “IDF” is doubly problematic because it is not a word used by the Palestinians, who believe that the use of the word “defense” in Israel Defense Forces gives Israel legitimacy, so they prefer to use “occupation” instead.
A Jewish BBC employee anonymously told the Post that a large group of the broadcaster’s Jews were “alarmed” by the acceptance of the translation of “yahud” as “Israelis,” asking, “Under what circumstances can you translate as ‘Jews’ if not then!?”