‘We’re playing violins on the Titanic’ – the whistleblower who won’t stay silent
INTERVIEW: Undercover reporter David Collier says British Jews must stop whispering and start shouting, after blowing the lid off the BBC’s disgraced Gaza documentary
There comes a point when you stop whispering and start shouting.
When playing the violin on the deck of the Titanic, as water floods the lower floors, isn’t dignified – it’s deranged. For David Collier, that point, for British Jews, is now.
In February, the investigative journalist from London blew the lid off one of the BBC’s most controversial programmes in recent memory – the Gaza documentary How To Survive a Warzone. At first glance, it was a hour-long look at children growing up in conflict. But Collier knew the ground too well to be taken in by its sentimentality.
His revelations – that one of the central characters, 14-year-old Abdullah, was the son of Dr Ayman Al-Yazouri, a Hamas government official with ties to the terror group’s founding leadership – detonated across media and politics.
It wasn’t just poor judgment. It was editorial malpractice.
Worse, Collier found that a cameraman involved in filming, Amjad Al Fayoumi, had publicly celebrated the 7 October attacks and shared grotesque “resistance” clips online, including footage of dead Israelis and Hamas fighters launching rockets.
The BBC’s initial apology was vague, a hurried afterthought. But insiders – some deeply uncomfortable – described the internal reaction as a “slapdash cover-up”. That only fuelled the outrage.
Within days, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy raised the matter in Parliament. Former BBC One controller Danny Cohen called for an investigation. The backlash spread to ITV, Sky, and beyond. Eventually, the broadcaster had no choice: How To Survive a Warzone was deleted from iPlayer.
And at the centre of the storm was David Collier. Utterly unfazed.
“I’ve done far harder investigations than this,” he tells Jewish News. “It was the scale of the failure that left the BBC no room to manoeuvre. They were cornered.”
If that sounds stark, it’s meant to. Collier doesn’t believe the BBC will change, despite his exposé.
“Of course not,” he scoffs. “The BBC is just a sum of its parts. Amnesty International is just a sum of its parts. It has nothing beyond the DNA of the people that work there.”
The BBC documentary wasn’t the 59-year-old’s first firestorm. In 2018, he went undercover as a fake anti-Israel activist, infiltrating hard-left online circles under the name “John”.
His revelation of Jeremy Corbyn’s membership in a secret pro-Palestinian Facebook group – one riddled with 9/11 and Rothschild conspiracies – forced Labour into damage-control mode and put Collier on the map.
Before that, he was anonymous. A former tourism professional who’d lived in Israel, his family returned to the UK and he pivoted to online investigative work. Initially, he simply wanted to promote Israel. But it quickly became something more.
“I went in undercover,” he says. “It almost started as a hobby, but I realised how serious it actually was.”
By then, “John” was a fixture in private anti-Zionist spaces. “I was sitting in the corner, recording everything. I wasn’t scared – nobody knew who I was. Over time, I became a recognised face in those circles, just not as David.”
He dismisses the idea that his work makes him a spy. “There is value in what I do. I feel almost blessed in some ways, because my life has purpose. I’m doing something fundamentally good, so there is an inner peace that comes with this.”
But the stakes are rising. Collier receives daily death threats. He’s been assaulted in the street – twice. He refuses to report the threats, not wanting to “waste police time”. If someone means to hurt him, he says, “they won’t send a warning”.
What worries him more is the political climate in Britain. “We’re fighting a very, very complex battle,” he says of UK Jewry. “It’s multifaceted. Not every ally is an ally. Not every enemy is an enemy. Our community is fractured. But we need to unite. Fast. We’re in trouble.”
He sees social media as a self radicalisation tool. “I spend so much time in the sewers. I still have active anti Zionist accounts.”
He paints a grim picture, one roundly rejected by many in the mainstream of the Jewish community, of a nation spiralling toward extremism. Of Islamist radicalisation surging online and an emboldened far right preparing to return fire. With the Jewish community stuck in the middle.
“These two elements are feeding off one another,” he warns. “A spiral. And in that chaos, moderate voices get pulled into dangerous territory.”
And what of British Jews? “There will be your Stamford Hill, ultra-Orthodox communities. They won’t go anywhere. The ultra-Orthodox communities are growing while our communities are shrinking.”
We’re fighting a very, very complex battle. It’s multifaceted. Not every ally is an ally. Not every enemy is an enemy. Our community is fractured. But we need to unite. Fast. We’re in trouble
His analysis of Western society is bleaker still.
“We’re on the Titanic,” he says. “And the question becomes — what is my role? Some people may be good engineers. Some may be just standing there with buckets trying to throw the water out faster than it can come in. I reference organisations like the Board of Deputies here, playing the violin on deck, just to make sure everybody else is calm.”
His role? “I’m screaming at people to get in the lifeboats.”
Collier is under no illusions. “We might lose,” he says. “But I’ll be damned if I go down playing music. I’ll fight to the utmost of my ability, using every weapon I have.”
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