Kemi Badenoch, leader of the UK's Conservative Party, has demanded an investigation into whether Hamas received payments from the nation’s public broadcasting channel BBC during the production of the documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone,” which aired last week, the UK-based outlet Daily Mail reported on Monday.
In a letter to BBC Director-General Tim Davie, Badenoch questioned whether UK taxpayers' money — funding the BBC in part through television license fees — ended up in the hands of the terrorist group.
According to the outlet, she argued that the BBC's biased coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not an “isolated incident" and called for an end to its "systemic and institutional bias against Israel." She also threatened to withdraw her party’s support for the license fee unless "serious action" was taken, including an investigation into senior BBC executives.
"It is now clear to me that you should commission a full independent inquiry to consider this and wider allegations of systemic BBC bias against Israel,” she said, noting that Hamas exerts significant control over Gaza and questioned how the BBC could commission a program from there without ensuring that presenters and participants were not affiliated with the "appalling regime."
"'Would the BBC be this naive if it was commissioning content from North Korea or the Islamic Republic of Iran?” she added.
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The controversy erupted after independent journalist Dave Collier revealed that the film’s central figure, Abdullah Ayman al-Yazouri, is the son of senior Hamas official Ayman al-Yazouri, who currently serves as the terror group's agriculture minister. The information was not disclosed to viewers, despite al-Yazouri narrating the documentary.
Initially, the BBC attempted to deflect responsibility by blaming London-based production company Hoyo Films, which allegedly failed to share details about al-Yazouri’s father. The BBC said it would add this information in future broadcasts, but contract details revealed that the broadcaster had been directly and consistently involved in the documentary's production.
According to online news site Deadline, BBC journalists expressed concern over how the film aired without proper scrutiny. One described the situation as a "terrible mess," saying: “It’s really weird that they got themselves into this position and didn’t see the problems coming.”
A protest letter also noted that if the BBC’s claims were true, the film violated the broadcaster’s strict guidelines on working with minors under 18.
Amid growing backlash — including a letter signed by nearly 50 senior figures in British media — the BBC announced it would temporarily remove the documentary from its digital platforms.
A report published in September found that the BBC committed 1,500 violations related to Israel in its war coverage. "The findings reveal a deeply worrying pattern of bias and multiple breaches by the BBC of its own editorial guidelines on impartiality, fairness and establishing the truth," the report read.