Mick Hartley

Daniel Sugarman at Jewish News:

The BBC has been unable to confirm whether its Arabic language channel will stop hosting a proudly antisemitic contributor who has talked about “the fear and cowardice of the Jews”, is an unabashed supporter of a proscribed terrorist group and publicly supports attempts to murder British author Salman Rushdie.

Ali Mattar, a Lebanese academic, has been a recurring contributor to BBC Arabic, with his latest appearance in December. However, Jewish News has seen a series of tweets by Mattar in which he glorified terror attacks against Israeli civilians, celebrated the former heads of both Hamas and Hezbollah, and said, of “Jews”, that “the day will come when they are dragged out of their holes.”…

Mattar has regularly praised terror attacks against Israelis. In July 2023, after a Palestinian drove a pickup truck into a crowd of pedestrians in Tel Aviv that day, Matar responded saying: “The operation in Tel Aviv is a stunning response because it defies what the enemy expected—that an operation would come in Tel Aviv”. In October 2024, he shared video footage of a ramming attack against Israelis which showed elderly civilians trapped under the lorry used in the attack. Matar captioned the video: “One of the most beautiful mornings”

Furthermore, on his social media Mattar endorsed and supported the 12 August 2022 murder attempt on Salman Rushdie, in which the author was stabbed 15 times. Rushdie has required constant protection since the late 1980s after the former Supreme Leader of the Iranian regime, Ayatollah Khomeini, instituted a fatwa – a religious decree – against him calling for his death. On 13 August, 2022 – the day after the attempted murder, Mattar tweeted: “Any true-believing Muslim, if they were able and the matter made easy for them, would not have delayed in carrying out Imam Khomeini’s verdict on that devil Salman Rushdie.”

The BBC claims to have tightened up its vetting of BBC Arabic contributors, while admitting that a Samer Elzaenen, who called for Jews to be burned “as Hitler did”, had somehow got through the net. Whoops. And while it seems that Mattar hasn’t appeared on BBC Arabic since early December, the BBC were unable to rule out future appearances.

Danny Cohen, former director of BBC Television and controller of BBC One, said: “‘The BBC has claimed that it has cleaned up its act and that terrorist-sympathising antisemites no longer appear on its channels. Yet only a few weeks ago this man was given a platform on BBC Arabic. Many in the Jewish community have lost faith in the BBC’s ability to uphold standards and ensure that anti-Jewish racists do not appear on its services. This latest evidence of the views of a man given prominence by the BBC will be sickening to many British Jews.’

A spokesperson for CAMERA UK said: “What Jonathan Munro described in parliament as the ‘very sophisticated tools’ regularly used by BBC Arabic and BBC monitoring, failed to identify an entire X account showing that one of BBC Arabic’s frequent interviewees is a Hezbollah mouthpiece and an unabashed antisemite.”

When contacted for comment by the Telegraph in January, Mattar said: “I am honoured to condemn Israel and to expose its true nature and crimes against Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and others. The BBC knows this very well, and I have the right to express my opinion with complete clarity and courage.”

With the BBC’s full imprimatur.