BBC correspondent says the broadcaster has a pro-Israel bias and should be questioning the 'facts' of October 7 - sparking fury among Jewish colleagues

A BBC correspondent has accused the broadcaster of having a pro-Israel bias, urging his employer to question the 'facts' of Hamas' October 7 attacks.

Rami Ruhayem, a Lebanon-based journalist for BBC Arabic, accused the BBC of bias in an email sent to hundreds of staff, prompting complaints from Jewish workers.

In the correspondence, he claimed the BBC had failed to properly investigate claims made by Israel about Hamas' deadly incursion into southern Israel last year.

'Why does the BBC seem to have steered away from the growing body of evidence that casts doubt on the official Israeli version of the events of October 7?' he wrote.

The email provoked concerns from Jewish staffers at the BBC, according to The Times, which reported staff are understood to have launched a formal complaint.

'Nothing has quietened down,' one told the newspaper, accusing the BBC of failing to adequately tackle anti-Semitism across its network. 'It's a s**t show.'

The email was shared with the BBC's director-general Tim Davie, as well as news chief executive Deborah Turness and staff from the BBC Asian Network, Radio 4, Radio 5 live and the BBC's foreign language service.

Ruhayem said that the BBC's forum set up to interrogate concerns over its coverage of a deeply sensitive and unsettling conflict were 'little more than a short-lived venting exercise' and said that his concerns had been ignored.

'Words like 'massacre', 'slaughter' and 'atrocities' are being used prominently in reference to actions by Hamas, but hardly, if at all, in reference to actions by Israel,' an extract from the email seen by The Times read.

'Does this not raise the question of the possible complicity of the BBC in incitement, dehumanisation and war propaganda?'

The email was reported to have drawn backlash from a number of Jewish employees, who told The Times they found it 'sickening'.

One employee told The Times the email had 'caused a lot of anger and upset'.

The outlet reported that Liliane Landor, director of the BBC World Service, advised Mr Ruhayem to use the appropriate channels for feedback on coverage.

In October, some three weeks after the war in the Levant began, Mr Ruhayem reportedly sent an email to Mr Davie urging the broadcaster to use the terms like 'settler-colonialism' and 'ethnic cleansing' in its coverage to avoid 'reinforcing Israeli propaganda meant to dehumanise the Palestinians'.

'Words like 'massacre', 'slaughter' and 'atrocities' are being used – prominently – in reference to actions by Hamas, but hardly, if at all, in reference to actions by Israel,' he wrote. 

A letter, later sent to BBC bureaus around the world, warned that the broadcaster risked being complicit in 'war propaganda' if it did not carefully employ language to reflect the 'apartheid' nature of the conflict.

'The BBC has taken upon itself in recent years the task of fighting fake news, disinformation, hate speech and such things, a trend in western media,' he said at the time.

'Where is the content analysing the flood of incitement against Palestinians and tracking its impact?'

Commenting on the email, a BBC spokesperson said: 'Regular feedback and robust editorial discussions are central to our journalism at the BBC and essential for our commitment to impartiality. 

'While we don't comment on specific internal emails, we do expect our staff to use the appropriate routes.' 

The BBC has faced scrutiny over its use of the language since the beginning of the 2023-24 conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Some criticised the broadcaster for refusing to refer to Hamas as 'terrorists', per the government's designation for the de facto governing authority of Gaza, in the early days of the war.

John Simpson, World Affairs editor for the BBC, argued that the decision 'goes right back to the BBC's founding principles', that terrorism 'is a loaded word'.

'It's simply not the BBC's job to tell people who to support and who to condemn - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys,' he wrote.

In November, a 2,300 word letter shared with Al Jazeera by employees of the BBC reiterated accusations the broadcaster had employed a 'double standard' in humanising Israeli victims compared to Palestinians, and omitting historical context from its coverage.

The group, requesting anonymity, said their employer had 'therefore failed to help the public engage with and understand the human rights abuses unfolding in Gaza'.

Across its coverage of a deeply divisive and sensitive topic, the BBC has also been accused of favouring the Palestinian perspective in its coverage.

A survey carried out in November 2023 found 45 per cent of those sympathising with 'the Israeli side' believed the BBC had been mostly biased in favour of 'the Palestinian side'.

Just 13 per cent believed the BBC had been more biased in favour of 'the Israeli side'. 

Of those sympathising 'more with the Palestinian side', 38 per cent believed the BBC had been more biased in favour of 'the Israeli side'.

Fourteen per cent believed the BBC was favouring 'the Palestinian side'.

Among those expressing 'equal' sympathies, a majority 50 per cent believed the BBC had been mostly neutral, 11 per cent assessing bias towards Palestine and 15 per cent towards Israel.

And among those sympathising with neither side, 40 per cent believed the BBC had been mostly neutral. Nine per cent believed the BBC showed bias in favour of Palestine and 14 per cent believed there was bias towards Israel.

The researchers warned that 'many of those with the strongest views on the conflict' have switched to getting their news from social media, 'and particularly Instagram'.

'There is a risk that low trust in the BBC from those with strongly held pre-existing views on the conflict means the most opinionated Britons end up with no shared facts to inform their debates about the conflict.'