Corporation claims it needs to review programme content and removes it from its iPlayer service
The BBC has removed its documentary ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’ from its iPlayer streaming service after complaints from Israel’s UK embassy and a pressure campaign by the UK Israel lobby.
The programme first went off air ‘temporarily’ on Wednesday, only a few days after its first broadcast, supposedly to edit in a mention that the child who narrates the programme has a father who is an agriculture official in the Gaza government, which fuming supporters of Israel had made the centre of their outrage-campaign against to have the programme removed, despite having no apparent issues with the BBC failing to disclose the pro-Israel links of its presenters, guests and supposed ‘witnesses’. Despite its editorial adherence to Israeli government talking points, the programme clearly struck a nerve because it humanised the Palestinian people, particularly children and youth, and exposed just a little of their suffering and the daily bombardment they faced under Israel’s genocide of more than two hundred thousand civilians, mostly women and children.
However, the programme was not re-published and has now been removed indefinitely for ‘further due diligence’. A statement this morning from the BBC reads:
Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone features important stories we think should be told – those of the experiences of children in Gaza.
There have been continuing questions raised about the programme and in the light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company. The programme will not be available on iPlayer while this is taking place.
The broadcast of the programme sparked complaints from the Israeli embassy and a concerted pressure campaign by UK pro-Israel pressure groups. LAAS, the notorious right-wing campaign at the centre of the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam made a formal complaint, other die-hards accused of gross anti-Palestinian fanaticism joined in and around forty-five pro-Israel media advocates wrote to the BBC to demand its removal. It appears the BBC has again caved.
At the beginning of this year, the BBC deactivated the option for iPlayer viewers to download programmes to desktop. However, a few people may still have it in their phone downloads and are invited to contact Skwawkbox via tips at skwawkbox.com if so.
Below are some clips from the documentary that may give a flavour of why Israel and its lobbyists wanted it removed:
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It is the peasants that keep the BBC afloat yet they bow down to those wastrels liars and thieves the truth will come out and the peasants will eventually learn they been lied to by our governments
Glad I recorded it “live” off the TV onto my Freeview recorder. I’d need technical guidance on how to get it from there to you, though, Skwawkie.
I’ve downloaded it on to my iPad. At the moment it seems to be playing
Off Subject. Better late than never The Trilateralist Keir Starmer
qwertboi – Have you sent this information via registered post to the (alleged) Caribbean so that the self defined oracle on all things Starmer can update his inn acuate records?
Back in 2003, the History Channel promised not to repeat its documentary “The Guilty Men” which was the final part in the series “The Men who Killed Kennedy”. This was after a concerted campaign by supporters of President Lyndon Johnson who was named in the programme as having played a central role in the assassination.
One of the people who complained about it was President Gerald Ford who had, it was revealed in 1997, falsified the autopsy report on Kennedy whilst serving on The Warren Commission.
It is getting harder these days to find that episode on the internet. However, the full series can be seen here. The “Guilty Men” episode begins at 6.31 (approx).
https://archive.org/details/the-men-who-killed-kennedy-full-series