OPINION: We Will Dance Again shows why the BBC must correct how it refers to Hamas
Former BBC journalist John Ware on why the corporation's refusal to call Hamas 'terrorists' falls apart in the face of hard facts and the English language
On Thursday evening, BBC2 viewers were given a 90-minute insight into the paralysing terror experienced by young Israeli partygoers as they fled Hamas’s genocidal assault on the Nova music festival – one of multiple sites Hamas attacked almost a year ago.
The documentary, Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again, was mostly footage from the cell phones of survivors, their testimony, CCTV footage, dash cams and the go-pro cameras of Hamas.
As the BBC’s advanced publicity says, the all-night festival was a “party that began as a celebration of love and spirituality for around 3,500 Israelis and other foreign nationals, ended with 364 people murdered and 44 others taken hostage.”
In every sense, October 7 has taken us to a civilisational crossroads. This was not just the Palestinians “fighting back”, although that is how it felt for many of them. It was the deliberate stalking, hunting and extermination, burning, mutilation, and torture of human prey and then revelling in it. A pogrom in every sense.
“Show me, don’t tell me” says the documentary maker in the best tradition of the craft. This documentary also shows why the BBC should be encouraged to rethink its policy of refusing to refer to how Hamas conducted itself on 7 October as terrorism on the basis that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
Knowing those responsible for this policy, as I do, I know it is based on the best of impartiality intentions, namely that it’s not for the BBC (“and never has been” says Deborah Turness, chief executive of BBC News) to declare one side of a long running highly charged conflict like Israel-Palestine as ‘terrorists’.
Labelling must be left to others, is the firm view.
In every sense, October 7 has taken us to a civilisational crossroads. This was the deliberate stalking, hunting and extermination, burning, mutilation, and torture of human prey and then revelling in it.
However, that policy doesn’t appear to have been applied consistently. For example, the 2019 attack by a self-declared white supremacist against a New Zealand mosque killing 51 people was described by the BBC as “New Zealand’s worst terrorist attack” without attributing the “terrorist” label to anyone else.
And down the years, there have been many other instances of straightforward labelling:
9/11, New York (2001): “al-Qaeda terrorists …..the deadliest terror attacks on US soil…..the al-Qaeda terror group….”
7/7, London (2005): “…it was the worst single terrorist atrocity on British soil…”
Charlie Hebdo, Paris (Jan 2015): “Three days of terror….”
Bataclan, Paris (Nov 2015): “…… France’s worst ever night of terrorism.. .”
Manchester Arena bombing (2017): “Manchester terrorist attack…..”
IRAN-IS attack (2017): “… the most serious terrorist violence in Tehran since the turbulent early years after the 1979 Islamic revolution”
Boko Haram, Africa (2019): “A decade of terror explained… “
Afghanistan (2023): “Can the Taliban tackle Afghanistan’s terror problem?”
And so on.
So, the question posed by this documentary, is whether this policy has become too doctrinal in respect of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the face of the sheer volume of overwhelming, unarguable visual facts.
Some of the most harrowing footage comes from Hamas’s own go-pro cameras which they broadcast for propaganda purposes. They appear to have wanted the world to see them literally revelling in sadistic pleasure as they slaughtered defenceless women and men.
Yet traumatic and powerful though the documentary is, I know from my own research in Israel earlier this year, that the footage gathered by the filmmakers was the not the worst of it. The Israeli police shared with me other, corroborating footage that has never been shown because it is even more harrowing.
Children were also mercilessly slaughtered. In recent months compelling evidence has also emerged that Hamas and other Palestinians engaged in a pattern of rape and sexual mutilation of women and men, despite the best efforts of some in the alternative media to persuade the world otherwise.
Some viewers will doubtless argue that Hamas’s horrific acts of violence can be explained by what Israelis have done to Palestinians for decades, that there is a kind of moral equivalence.
There are two key moments in the film which convincingly dispel that notion.
Traumatic and powerful though the documentary is, I know from my own research in Israel earlier this year, that the footage gathered by the filmmakers was the not the worst of it.
One is the sight of the half-naked broken body of 22-year-old Shani Louk with hundreds of Palestinians delirious with joy yelling “Allahu Akbar!” (God is the greatest) as Hamas paraded her and other hostages like trophies through the streets of Gaza, propagandising their humiliation by publishing it online.
The other is the film’s portrayal of the excruciating drawn-out terror experienced by 27 partygoers crammed into a tiny bomb proof concrete rocket shelter just 5ft by 8ft about three miles from the music festival.
We see the partygoers near certain they’re about to die because they’ve seen their friends shot as they were chased by Hamas.
Among the 27 is a Druse. He courageously leaves the shelter, hoping he can negotiate safe passage for them all because, like Hamas, he’s a Muslim. The gunmen see him as a “Yahudi” collaborator. As he begs for Hamas to spare the young people in the shelter, he is tortured and murdered. Like so much about October 7, the way this brave man met his end is too gruesome to show.
A grenade is then tossed into the shelter. Most grenades detonate within a few second of the pin being removed. But 22 year-old Aner Shapiro grabs the fizzing grenade and tosses it back outside in the nick of time before it explodes.
The gunmen, however, are determined to blow the 27 unarmed Israelis to pieces. So they toss in another grenade, and another and another – in fact six more, and each time Shapiro manages to toss it back. On the eighth attempt, the gunmen beat Shapiro to it and the grenade explodes killing this brave young man.
A grenade’s kill radius is some 15 feet, and blast radius, about 20 yards. But because so many bodies are packed so tightly into the shelter, it kills only those on top of the blast.
So Hamas keeps going. Several more grenades – at least four – are tossed in. A 28-year-old called Eitan Halley manages to throw all of them out – except the last. Miraculously he survives, the two blasts being absorbed by others. In all, 17 of those 27 souls were murdered.
What the documentary doesn’t show, because it’s so traumatic, is the post-blast footage inside the shelter. The hysteria and fear etched on the faces of survivors and those so badly mutilated they knew they were not going to survive, is excruciating.
So, back to my point about this film taking us to a civilisational crossroads.
Can the ease and giddy joy experienced by Hamas at killing non-combatants really just be explained by Israeli settlements, the harsh vicissitudes of permanent occupation in the West Bank and too often excessive force by some poorly disciplined IDF units?
The American philosopher Sam Harris has argued it cannot. The more credible explanation, he says, is “Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and Jihad” which has removed those Palestinians who’ve imbibed this ideology from the family of humanity.
For when you believe that life in this world has little value, apart from deciding who goes to hell and who goes to paradise, sadism, killing and rape come easy.
Hamas’s own filmed evidence shows Hamas thanking God and Islam non-stop for giving them the chance to massacre Jews. Well, goes the relativist argument, the jihadists are simply acting as we would, had we been treated as they have by us in the West. Again, as Harris argues, this is delusional naivety and downplays the pre-eminence of religion in inspiring the likes of Hamas.
Which brings me back to BBC editorial policy’s insistence on not referring to Hamas as terrorists or even describing their 7 October pogrom as a “terror attack”.
The BBC still requires reporters and documentary commentary to refer to Hamas as either “militants” or “fighters”. The noun “terrorist” can be used – but only when attributed to someone else.
When you believe that life in this world has little value, apart from deciding who goes to hell and who goes to paradise, sadism, killing and rape come easy
So which noun – “militant”, “fighter” or “terrorist” – comes closest to capturing factually the events portrayed by tonight’s documentary?
The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD), aimed at students of English, defines “militant” as “a person who uses or is willing to use force or strong pressure to achieve their aims, especially to achieve social or political change.” For example, “Student militants fighting with police.”
I think it’s fair to say that what happened in the bomb shelter was more forceful than a student scuffle with the cops.
The more definitive Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “militant” as one who is “engaged in warfare, warring. Also: disposed towards war; warlike…”
So while “militant” is not inaccurate, it clearly falls well short of the way Hamas waged war on October 7.
A “fighter” is defined by the OALD as an “approving term for someone who does not give up“.
Hamas certainly displayed tenacity in chucking so many grenades into the bomb shelter to massacre their terrified prey, but only someone utterly bereft of humanity would approve.
In the OED a “fighter” is defined simply as “One who fights; occasionally a fighting man, a warrior”.
“Warrior”, however, connotes a sense of the fighting man being “valiant” which manifestly Hamas is not.
“Terrorist” is defined by the OALD as a person who “use(s).. violence or the threat of violence to intimidate or coerce governments or societies for political, religious, or ideological goals.”
The OED’s meaning is almost identical: “A person who uses violent and intimidating methods in the pursuit of political aims; esp. a member of a clandestine or expatriate organisation aiming to coerce an established government by acts of violence against it or its subjects.”
It’s blindingly obvious, is it not, that both OALD and OED definitions of “terrorist” precisely describe Hamas’s intentions and execution on October 7.
The documentary’s Israeli writer and director Yariv Mozer has said that tonight’s broadcast on BBC 2 was conditional on him agreeing with the corporation not to describe Hamas as a terrorist organisation, without attribution either by the interviewees, or a third party. Mozer agreed to this condition and it’s created a bit of fuss in the Israeli media.
In fact, viewers will scarcely notice the difference, as the documentary is replete with survivors referring to Hamas as terrorists consistent with the BBC allowing the term because it was attributed to others than the BBC. For all practical purposes, the fuss in the Israeli media is a non-story.
Nonetheless, for Mozer, a principle was at stake, and one that he was willing to forgo “so that the British public will be able to see these atrocities and decide if this is a terrorist organisation or not.”
And to that extent, the documentary’s powerful imagery and testimony validates reviving the question as to whether it’s time the BBC reviewed its editorial policy on a matter that has upset and offended so many.
During a recent Editorial Policy Masterclass on “reporting war impartially”, the BBC’s international editor, Jeremy Bowen is reported to have said that there’s “a lot of truth in the cliché that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. He’s right.
Bowen is also reported to have said that good journalism is ultimately about searching for “the truth” rather than “some kind of spurious balance”. Here too, he’s in good company. Half a century ago, the late and legendary British journalist James Cameron, lauded by the Daily Mail as the most “honest, entertaining and perceptive reporter of the day”, argued that demonstrating neutrality to fulfil some “arbitrary concept of objectivity… was of less importance than the truth”.
If the BBC decides that on the facts Hamas acted as terrorists on October 7, it is surely time the corporation does as other broadcasters have: decide the terminology on an evidenced based case by case, because facts and evidence based truth are paramount.
The best advice I ever had as a much younger journalist came from a barrister perusing a somewhat over emotive draft script about an atrocity committed by the IRA: “Look, why don’t you just report the facts.”
On the facts shown by this documentary, the unassailable truth about Hamas’s conduct on October 7 is that it conformed precisely to the world’s definitive guide on the meaning of “terrorist” in the English language.
Truth must surely always trump fear of offence or engaging in a form of moral relativism which is how the BBC’s policy — well-intentioned though it is —strikes not just the prime minister but many ordinary folk.
If the BBC decides that on the facts Hamas acted as terrorists on October 7, it is surely time the corporation does as other broadcasters have: decide the terminology on an evidenced based case by case, because facts and evidence based truth are paramount.
In my time at the BBC, they were certainly the values that drove the vast majority of BBC journalists, despite what many in the Jewish community believes. They are also the values that help define the rest of us and give us moral clarity.
That is why this festering issue of terminology has become so central to the civilisational debate thrown up by this exceptional documentary.
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