BBC Gaza documentary cameraman appears to celebrate October 7 attacks

A cameraman on the BBC’s controversial Gaza documentary appeared to celebrate the October 7 massacre, The Telegraph can reveal.

Hatem Rawagh, who was listed as an additional cameraman in the credits of the film, posted two tweets apparently praising the worst terror attack in Israel’s history.

In one of the posts on X, he appeared to applaud the killing of an Israeli soldier, sharing a video of a gunman which he said should be watched “a million” times.

It comes as the BBC is under pressure to reveal whether any taxpayers’ money was paid to Hamas during the making of the film, Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone.

Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, has demanded an inquiry into allegations of “potential collusion” with the terrorist group after it emerged that the film was fronted by a Hamas minister’s son.

The BBC initially kept the documentary online with an added disclaimer at the start, arguing that it remained an “invaluable testament” to Palestinians’ experiences of the war.

But the corporation has since removed it from iPlayer while it conducts “further due diligence” with Hoyo Films, the production company.

The documentary was trailed as revealing in “gripping detail the lives of four young people living in Gaza” that would present “an unflinching and vivid view of life in a warzone”.

It is co-directed by Jamie Roberts, an Emmy-award-winning filmmaker, and Yousef Hammash, a Bafta-award-winning Palestinian journalist.

Additional cameraman

The BBC said the pair “remotely directed” two cameramen in Gaza over nine months but the on-screen credits reveal Mr Rawagh was also hired as an “additional camera”.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera) has now uncovered tweets by Mr Rawagh which appear to praise the October 7 massacre, when Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostage.

On the day of the atrocity, he seemed to reference the Yom Kippur War of 1973 when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel, tweeting: “Whoever missed Oct 6 [1973] in Egypt … Oct 7 is happening [now] in Palestine”.

A day later he shared a video clip posted by the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, filmed from the head camera of a gunman as he fired with a rifle and killed an Israeli in Erez near the Gaza border.

“You are going to come back to this video a million times”, he wrote.

Other posts include one sharing celebrations at the Omari mosque in Gaza in April 2023 after a car attack in Tel Aviv where an Italian tourist died and seven others were injured.

“A festive atmosphere in Gaza’s Omari Mosque at the moment the news about the operation in Tel Aviv arrived,” he wrote.

A spokesman for Camera said: “These posts appear to be glorifying the horrific terrorist acts committed on October 7, 2023. Anyone who wrote them has no place working for the BBC. Here is yet more evidence of the editorial failings in the documentary for which the BBC must answer.”

The disclosure comes as the BBC faces growing questions over the documentary. An internal report into the programme will be presented to the BBC board on Thursday.

The report is being compiled by a team inside BBC’s current affairs department, which commissioned the documentary in the first place.

It is unclear whether the full report will be made public but the corporation is expected to announce a summary of findings either on Thursday or by Friday morning.

Insiders fear that the commissioning editors at the BBC, Gian Quaglieni and Sarah Waldron, might be made “fall guys” for the due diligence failings that led to the Gaza documentary being broadcast without suitable disclaimers.

It is unclear whether the project would have been given the green light had the details been known at the outset.

‘Immense consequence’

The Telegraph understands that the programme was viewed by Jo Carr, the BBC’s head of current affairs, prior to broadcast. She described the documentary as a “story of immense consequence” in a press release issued on Jan 20.

But multiple sources suggested the programme should have been sent to the BBC News Board for a full compliance check.

The board is headed by Deborah Turness, the chief executive in charge of news and current affairs, who is on a salary of more than £400,000 a year. It also includes Jonathan Munro, the BBC’s global director and Ms Turness’s deputy, as well as Richard Burgess, the director of news content, and John McAndrew, director of news programmes, among others.

The internal inquiry is expected to look at whether the documentary was referred to the BBC News Board – and if not why not. The BBC identifies “high-risk programmes” which require the full scrutiny of at least one senior executive who sits on the board. It is unclear whether the Gaza documentary was ever placed on the high-risk programmes list. A failure to do so will also cause alarm within the BBC.

There are suggestions that within the BBC there was a sense that executives were so pleased to have managed to produce a film out of Gaza from the perspective of children that they were “blinded” to any problems in the making of it.

Amid questions over the documentary, counter-terror police have also been urged to investigate whether any criminal offences had been committed during the production.

UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) said they had drawn the attention of the police to various potential criminal offences for providing money with reasonable cause to suspect that it will or may be used for the purposes of terrorism.

They have asked counter-terrorism police to investigate urgently whether any payments were made by the film production company to Abdullah Al-Yazouri, the child at the centre of the film, and his family.

A UKLFI spokesman commented: “If money was paid to the 13-year-old Abdullah and his family, this may be an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000. We hope the police will investigate accordingly.”

Mr Rawagh was contacted for comment.

A BBC spokesman said: “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.”

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