BBC’s anti-Muslim slur claim during Chanukah bus attack is FALSE, expert says

Claims an anti-Muslim slur was muttered during the Chanukah bus attack earlier this month are false “beyond any doubt”, according to an expert report published on Thursday.

The study by Ghilad Zuckermann, a linguist who was commissioned by the Board of Deputies, found there was no remark made against Muslims in any part of the footage in either Hebrew or English.

It follows widespread anger in Britain’s Jewish community at the BBC for its report of an antisemitic attack on youngsters celebrating Chanukah in central London at the beginning of December.

A group of six males made Nazi salutes, spat and shouted anti-Jewish slurs at the youngsters on board a bus on Oxford Street.

The BBC’s report of the incident also carried the line: “A slur about Muslims can also be heard from inside the bus.”

But Prof Zuckermann, who studied with the original footage also supplied to the Corporation, said there was no evidence of this.

“I have listened to the rest of the clip in its entirety,” he wrote, “and was unable to detect any anti-Muslim slur at any point in the footage: neither in Israeli [modern Hebrew] nor in English.”

His report adds that BBC journalists writing the report may have applied the “Apollonian tendency”, which he describes as a wish to create order and crave meaningfulness when encountering unfamiliar information.

The broadcaster has defended its coverage of the Chanukah bus incident, telling the Jewish News it had consulted Hebrew speakers in determining an Islamophobic slur was uttered on the bus.

But Jewish community leaders including Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis have written to BBC director-general Tim Davie on the matter.

Davie is also understood to have arranged a meeting with Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl in the New Year.