Roberto De Vogli

Trump got an apology. Gaza got silence: Why I quit as a BBC correspondent (My latest piece) thenational.scot/politics/25… By Bassam Bounenni The BBC swiftly conceded its clash with Donald Trump, predictably, by apologizing for a grave professional lapse that could have been easily avoided. Yet this misstep, among others, pales beside the far greater wrong the corporation inflicted upon an entire nation. Back on October 12, 2023, the editorial meeting was routine, despite Hamas’s attacks the previous Saturday. Tunisia was set to host the world’s first anti-Israel demonstration, and I was assigned to cover it live for the Arabic service. But just before my scheduled broadcast, London went silent. I waited thirty minutes. Then came a terse reply: “All requests have been dropped.” Over the weekend, the BBC issued an apology for labeling London demonstrators as Hamas supporters. These weren’t the first incidents. Forty-eight hours after October 7 attacks, I was asked to travel to Djerba to interview members of Tunisia’s Jewish community. I refused. Such a request risked stigmatizing citizens simply for being Jewish and could have exposed them to danger. Editorial meetings grew tense. The coverage was far from balanced. A Palestinian “dies,” but an Israeli “is killed.” “Clashes” replaced “bombardments.” “Conflict” replaced “siege.” Context vanished. Warnings about war crimes were softened or buried. Pro-Israel voices spoke freely, rarely challenged. International law was treated as optional. Then came chilling news: six Arabic service journalists were being targeted by a forthcoming Telegraph article accusing them of supporting Hamas, based on social media activity scrutinized by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, a pro-Israel group. Management offered no defense. Meanwhile, it shielded the identity of Huw Edwards, a prominent presenter accused of misconduct. Nada Abdel Samad, a veteran correspondent in Beirut, saw her 25-year career reduced to a single “like” on a tweet. On October 16, International Chief Correspondent Lyse Doucet speculated about Hamas using civilian infrastructure—a claim Israel has never substantiated. Less than 24 hours later, an Israeli airstrike obliterated Gaza’s Baptist Hospital, killing and injuring hundreds. The next morning, an email from the Board landed with chilling finality: “No one who has watched or listened to the harrowing reports over the last ten days could be left in any doubt about the horror brought about by Hamas’s attack on defenseless civilians in Israel.” Then came the sentence that shattered any illusion of integrity: “As this war continues, with so many deaths of innocent civilians in both Israel and Gaza.” A line that dared to equate the oppressed with the oppressor, the besieged with the besieger. By October 18, Israel had already killed over 4,200 PalestiniansAnd yet, the language remained symmetrical, sanitized, evasive. That was the breaking point. I resigned, effective immediately. My conscience no longer allowed compromise. What I witnessed in those eleven days was only a glimpse of what the BBC would go on to do. Every day since has confirmed my decision was right. The BBC, longconsidered a beacon of journalistic integrity, has fallen far. During the war in Ukraine, journalists spoke with moral clarity. But when it came to Gaza, the compass vanished. Even the basics were missing. When a UN investigation found no credible evidence that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7 attacks, the BBC sidestepped the exoneration, spotlighting instead a boilerplate call for “improved neutrality.” The organization refused to air a documentary narrated by the son of a Hamas official—then published the child’s photo online, violating the duty to protect minors. The G-word—genocide—became taboo. South Africa’s address before the International Court of Justice wasn’t broadcast. Israel’s rebuttal was. When Israel killed Al Jazeera’s Anas Al Sharif and four colleagues in August, a BBC piece read: “there is the question of proportionality. In targeting Sharif, the IDF killed four other Al Jazeera journalists with no suggestion of any links to Hamas.” A medieval logic, fit for rituals of vengeance. Before her resignation, BBC News CEO Deborah Turness wrote that it had been “almost two years since October 7 when the world witnessed Hamas’s atrocities,” as if the thousands of Palestinian deaths since then did not count. In a final act, the BBC allowed a team to embed with the Israeli military in Gaza—on the condition that all footage be vetted by Israeli censors. The BBC is not alone. The BBC is not alone. Australia’s ABC fired Antoinette Latouf for sharing a Human Rights Watch video accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. France’s David Pujadas once asked whether a civilian in Gaza should be treated the same as an Israeli. That is not journalism. That is moral collapse. This is not about personal grievance. It is about conscience. And that is why I believe the BBC—and many Western media outlets—owe the people of Gaza an apology. Not just for their silence, but for the consent they helped manufacture to justify the unjustifiable: a genocide.