BBC contributor Samer Elzaenen, 33, has appeared on BBC Arabic over a dozen times after the Hamas-Israel war started in the Middle East. Last month, Elzaenen reported live, and other appearances have included him reporting from a refugee camp last June after the IDF performed a rescue operation to save more of the hostages.
According to the outlet, the so-called reporter has written a slew of different social media posts condemning Jews as well as calling for violence against the group. The outlet reported that in 2022, Elzaenen wrote in a post on Facebook, "When things go awry for us, shoot the Jews, it fixes everything.”
“My message to the Zionist Jews: We are going to take our land back, we love death for Allah’s sake the same way you love life. We shall burn you as Hitler did, but this time we won’t have a single one of you left," Elzaenen said in a post in May 2011.
He has also used the hashtag “#We Are All Hamas You Son of a Jewess” multiple times on social media. He has called different terror attacks on Israel "heroic" as well as "blessed," in addition to describing the terrorists as "heroes" and "martyrs."
When there was a February 2023 attack, where a Palestinian terrorist killed two young boys as well as a 20-year-old man, the media reporter said that the victims would "go to hell." He has also called the Hamas terrorists who carried out the October 7 slaughter in Israel "resistance fighters" multiple times, including those Hamas terrorists who killed the young fans at the Nova festival.
The BBC has used Elzaenen as a contributor multiple times, but employees at the outlet emphasized to the Telegraph that they are not members of the staff. A Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis spokesman said on the topic: "The BBC misleadingly frames freelance journalists used by the Arabic service as mere 'contributors' so it won’t have to take responsibility for the hatred they regularly spew in social media."
“Providing live reporting from the Gaza Strip and other world locations, it is not their opinion that the BBC asks them to share with its audience but their eyewitness, based on their presence on the ground. Freelancers who divulge such egregious bias should not be covering Israeli and Jewish affairs for the BBC. Any individual whose social media activity indicates their support for violence targeting Israel’s Jewish civilians lacks the basic journalistic skill of distinguishing between combatants and uninvolved bystanders," the spokesman added.
A BBC spokesman responded to the report, saying, "International journalists including the BBC are not allowed access into Gaza so we hear from a range of eyewitness accounts from the strip. These are not BBC members of staff or part of the BBC’s reporting team. We were not aware of the individuals’ social media activity prior to hearing from them on air. We are absolutely clear that there is no place for anti-Semitism on our services.”
