BBC ‘cut line from Nova massacre documentary calling Hamas terrorists’

The BBC has been criticised for airing a documentary about the Oct 7 Nova music festival massacre without describing Hamas as terrorists.

This week, the corporation showed a different version of the acclaimed 90-minute film, Surviving October 7: We Will Dance Again, to the original one aired in America and around the world.

It features a chronological reconstruction of the massacre, in which more than 360 were murdered, using footage recorded by both victims and Hamas terrorists, interspersed with survivor interviews. I believe the film deals only with the music festival area of the pogrom and not the actrocities also committed in kibbutzim and residential areas. 

In the original, the opening title states: “The IDF says that 3,000 terrorists breached the 40-mile-long border…”

However, this does not appear in the BBC version.

The corporation has come under heavy criticism in the last year for refusing to refer to Hamas as terrorists, despite the group being designated terrorists by dozens of countries.

A spokesman for the Campaign Against Antisemitism described the BBC’s decisions around airing the documentary as “shameful”. “The BBC not only declines to call Hamas terrorists itself but it censors others from doing so as well,” they said.

The BBC said the film carried multiple descriptions of the Islamist group as terrorists directly from survivors.

However, in an interview with Hollywood Reporter last week, Yariv Mozer, the award-winning director behind the documentary, said: “The BBC, the version they’ll air won’t describe Hamas as terrorists. It was a price I was willing to pay so that the British public would be able to see these atrocities and decide if this is a terrorist organisation or not.”