BBC journalist ‘liked’ tweet calling reports of Hamas rapes ‘nonsense’

It turns out that a BBC Wales journalist liked a tweet calling reports of a rape on October 7 “nonsense.”

Shazia Ali liked a post published on October 8 that read: “Nobody raped anyone. Stop this nonsense.”

The news reporter also liked a number of other tweets that seemed to justify Hamas’s atrocities on October 7. This included a post from another account that said: “You can’t expect a beaten and caged lion to purr when it finally breaks free.”

Another post liked by Ms Ali read: “Y’all wanted ‘decolonization’ and ‘the country back’ until they decolonized and took the country back. I won’t forget that (sic).”

Another tweet from another account quoted French Marxist Frantz Fanon as saying, “Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.”

Writing on a website showcasing the experiences of Welsh people from BAME backgrounds, Ms Ali from Swansea said: “My passion for journalism is telling real people’s stories, reporting on BAME communities and portraying them not just as victims, but as victors!”

These findings came after it was revealed that the BBC still employs several BBC Arabic journalists who apparently supported the October 7 Hamas attacks, despite the corporation saying it was “urgently” investigating the social media activities of its journalists working in the Middle East.

Social Media Guidelines

The BBC’s social media policy states: “Individuals working in news and current affairs production and in factual journalism production (all departments) have a special responsibility to maintain the impartiality of the BBC.”

It tells reporters: “Do not express an opinion on a policy that is the subject of a current political debate or a matter of public policy, a political or industrial controversy, or any other ‘contentious issue.'”

“Think about what your likes, shares, reposts, use of hashtags and who you follow say about you, your personal biases and opinions.”

A spokesman for CAMERA, a US-based media monitoring group that promotes “accurate and balanced” reporting on Israel, said: “Despite the BBC’s Director General’s repeated promises to address the issue of inappropriate use of social media, as this example shows, little progress has been made on this front.”

“The BBC’s claim to produce accurate and impartial ‘trustworthy news’, including on the current war in the Middle East, continues to be compromised by its own staff, some of whom – as Ms Ali’s social media activity shows – are clearly woefully ill-informed on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

In March this year, a UN report found that Hamas attackers had raped the bodies of women, citing “clear and convincing” evidence of numerous reports of sexual violence.

Pramila Patten, the UN special envoy on sexual violence and women, said there were “sufficient grounds” to believe that Hamas committed “sexual torture” in its October 7 attack on Israel.

A BBC spokesman said: “We do not comment on individual staff matters, but we take breaches of our social media policies very seriously and always take appropriate action where required.”

Shazia Ali was contacted for comment.

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