The BBC Royal Charter is the constitutional basis for the Corporation. Section 4 of the charter provides the Impartiality Guidelines for the BBC and when it comes to the reporters and presenters that we regularly see and hear talking about Israel and the Middle East, it’s the section below that is of most interest.

Presenters, reporters and correspondents are the public face and voice of the BBC – they can have a significant impact on perceptions of whether due impartiality has been achieved. Our audiences should not be able to tell from BBC output the personal opinions of our journalists or news and current affairs presenters on matters of public policy, political or industrial controversy, or on ‘controversial subjects’ in any other area. They may provide professional judgements, rooted in evidence, but may not express personal views on such matters publicly, including in any BBC-branded output or on personal blogs and social media.

It is my view that after listening to these BBC reporters for many years, that compared to almost any other reputable media broadcaster, the BBC, as the main broadcaster in the UK and through its global reach, has been responsible for a high level of the incitement of hatred against Israel. Its biased agenda, which is regularly pursued by some of its journalists, continues to generate and build aggression and hatred towards the Jewish State. The BBC pretence of adherence to the principles in its charter encourages prejudiced condemnation of Israel by international bodies and human rights groups by providing them with distorted material with which to unfairly criticise the only real democracy in the Middle East.

Of course there are numerous broadcasters and media organisations that do not fairly report on Israel, but as the BBC is likely to be more influential than its rivals, its reputation for objectivity to news, often provides it with false respectability that only strengthens its ability to twist the narrative for those who seek to condemn and denounce Israel.

Looking more closely at the BBC and its peculiarities against Israel, does any other respectable broadcaster refuse to designate Hamas as a terrorist organisation because, it says, it fears being banned from reporting in Gaza, and excuse itself with the statement that the group is “a proscribed terrorist organisation by the UK government and others” – but not so by the BBC.

Throughout the BBC’s reporting of the current Gaza war and the horrific atrocities committed by the Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians including babies, kids, women and the elderly, the BBC regularly stated that the material it had was too shocking to broadcast to its audiences, but was carried out by “militants”, “fighters” or “armed men”. But not “terrorists”.

Regarding one particular sequence of atrocities thought by the BBC as “too graphic to publish”, showing a motorist being dragged from his car and having his throat slashed as well as bodies of dead civilians and soldiers being defiled, the BBC stated that these were carried out by Hamas militants.

When quoting casualty figures, the BBC often attributes the numbers to “Health ministry officials” and the numbers never distinguish between military and civilian deaths. Often after pressure or complaints to the BBC, it would sometimes amend its statement by saying that the Health ministry is part of Hamas but it doesn’t confirm how many of the casualties are members of its own organisation’s armed militias.

After pressure from several organisations, the BBC is still refusing to label Hamas members as terrorists but said it would no longer use the term “militants” to describe the terrorist group.

Even when listening to the reporters who normally broadcast from the Middle East, how many of the following could be described as fully compliant with the BBC guidelines?

Tom Bateman, Lyse Doucet, Orla Guerin, Yolande Knell and of course Jeremy Bowen, probably none.

But it is Jeremy Bowen, the BBC international editor, who is primarily identified as the main instigator of anti Israel bias. Bowen has long been associated with the Middle East, initially as the BBC’s ME correspondent based in Jerusalem between 1995 and 2000, he continued as the BBC Middle East editor from 2005 to 2022 and subsequently as the BBC’s International Editor.

His apparent unprincipled and unprofessional stand against Israel was clearly demonstrated following the attack on the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City on the evening of 17 October 2023. BBC News immediately attributed the attack to Israel, with the words of a BBC reporter, Jon Donnison “But, you know, it’s hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes, because, you know, when we’ve seen rockets being fired out of Gaza, we never see explosions of that scale”.

Other BBC reporters and presenters also accepted the Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers killed, without mentioning that it is controlled by Hamas. At the beginning of The Ten O’Clock News, Clive Myrie announced solemnly, “Hundreds are killed” without mentioning the usual BBC immunity that “According to Hamas, hundreds are killed but these figures have yet to be verified.”

But it was Bowen’s inaccurate and untruthful report that the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza was “flattened” by an Israeli airstrike that led to a torrent of anti Israel responses. Bowen reported, “The missile hit the hospital not long after dark. You can hear the impact. The explosion destroyed Al-Ahli Hospital. It was already damaged from a smaller attack on the weekend. The building was flattened.”

Citing completely unverified Hamas sources, Bowen told BBC audiences that “hundreds” had been killed and “thousands” injured in what he described as “the attack” – terminology to clearly steer viewers towards the erroneous conclusion that Israel was responsible.

However, following an investigation by Israel, the cause of the blast was identified as a rocket launched by Islamic Jihad that misfired whilst targeting Israel. The rocket hit the hospital car park but the hospital building was mostly undamaged.

When asked sometime later on his reporting and the “hospital being flattened”, Bowen said to the BBC “So it broke in I suppose mid-evening and to answer your question, no I don’t regret one thing in my reporting because I think I was measured throughout. I didn’t race to judgement.”

BBC – could it be renamed as the Biased Broadcasting Corporation