BBC paid our licence money to Hamas.

[RubyTuesday48]

No words. See BBC news for announcement and apology for 'serious flaws' over Gaza documentary.
Perhaps the 500 luvvies who lobbied for the documentary to be reinstated will also apologise for their stupidity.

Any documentary the BBC would make on Gaza would have the same people trying to shred it apart.

Did they care about the content of the documentary?

I also don’t think it’s fair that you are punished for the sins of your father.

I don’t agree that this is a mistranslation rather translating into more palatable/understandable English. If someone hears Jihad, they think terrorist and not ‘just war’ which is a closer translation of the word. Can you imagine what the arguments would have been if the bbc had left it saying ‘the Jews’ etc. Imo it doesn’t diminish what is actually being said and still highlights the anger that Palestine’s feel towards Jews/Israel. I think it fair to say that the feeling is mutual!
ultimately, I haven’t seen anything to say that what was reported in the documentary was untrue, some may not like the voices or words used but they are telling there story as they are experiencing it

I posted on the previous thread. Keir Starmer was questioned about the making of this documentary at the live news broadcast from Washington yesterday. The story is now world wide news. It has done huge harm to the BBC's reputation for impartiality. It has damaged news reporting from Gaza. Many ordinary people, not Guardian readers etc, will dismiss news stories from Gaza as fake news. It has indirectly therefore minimised the suffering of children in Gaza. BBC management has already sacked people over this. It is unbelievably foolish of the BBC team not to have done their due diligence on the background to the children.
Those posters defending the documentary, I can see why you want wider publicity for Gazan children. Do you really believe that Trump and his followers won't just hear about this documentary and dismiss all news stories from Gaza as fake news? it is not the publicity that Palestinians need. It plays into the hands of Trump's narrative about taking over Gaza for the sake of the children.
I absolutely do not agree with Trump and the BBC has been so foolish in it's failure to manage unbiased news output. It will struggle to get the Government on side over the licence fee in future given this and other incidents this week.

Wow! You can't see that by changing the word Yehud to Israeli is a) incorrect and b) illustrated that these people see all Israelis as Jews (who need to be killed). This change of words is in no way 'more palatable' at all.

Thank you, I will try. I learned about all of these from MN, and it completely destroyed my trust into BBC impartiality, I was actually their avid supporter before and never questioned licence existence.

I would also love to know the names of sensible people who raised the alarm about this documentary…

Disagree, it’s completely different to say you want to wage war on Jews vs fight Israeli forces, and gets to the crux of the issue. Hamas’s founding charter states they will kill every Jew they find and proved they will on 7th October. The population have been indoctrinated to hate Jews - witness the appalling scenes of celebration for 7th October, Palestinian children dancing next to thr coffins of Jewish children. Even at the height of the troubles I don’t remember catholics rejoicing and handing out sweets after terror attacks or children dancing to celebrate the deaths of Protestant kids or vice versa. How can peace ever be achieved?

pizzaHeart the journalist who uncovered the facts that the BBC should have done themselves during production of the documentary is David Collier. He is known for chasing down anti semitism wherever he sees it. A lot of people disagree with him but in this case he is to be congratulated.

I agree with you. This, alongside the recent polls published in the guardian detailing the amount of support hamas STILL receives, has not done the Palestinian cause any favours. I don't know how it is possible to de radicalise an entire population. I'd like to think someone has the answers, because otherwise I don't see lasting peace as a very likely event. We can only hope...

Who’s being punished for the sins of his father?

You're not allowed to work with Hamas in a way that may support their activities. You are not allowed to pay money to Hamas. Regardless of people here trying to minimise the impact of this, it isn't allowed. The production company knew this because they didn't tell the BBC about the child's father being a prominent member of Hamas. They arranged for payment for the child's involvement to the mother via a sister instead of to the father, presumably to avoid accusation of funding Hamas. Because they know it's not allowed.

Therefore the production team who made this film cannot be trusted. They knowingly made this film with the involvement of Hamas which is not allowed, and paid money to Hamas which is not allowed. They deliberately hid this from the BBC, and deliberately hid this from the viewers. Why? Why did they deliberately use this child despite knowing the connection to Hamas and cover it up instead of using a different child? It casts doubt over the whole enterprise. And now concerns are being raised that they translated 'jihad against the Jews' as 'struggle against the Israelis'. They would have known how startling it would have sounded to a British ear, so were they again seeking to hide something from the viewer? Regardless of arguments as to whether that is a legitimate translation, the production company have shown themselves not to be trusted so you cannot definitively say that they did not intend to deceive.

The BBC massively fucked up by not uncovering the connections. Apparently this Hamas minister is on Linked-in so it wouldn't be that difficult.

And the film that needed to be made now can't be shown. The trustworthiness of the BBC as a reliable and impartial news organisation is damaged.

Why the need to make it more “palatable”?
Why not translate it accurately or at least as “war”, without swapping “Jews” for “Israeli forces”? Because “war against Jews” still wouldn’t be palatable enough?

Firstly, out of all the children in Gaza whose stories could be told, the production company chose to use, as the narrator, the son of a government minister.

I agree. I watched it when it was aired before the real circumstances behind the documentary came out and though I had no idea the narrator was the son of a Hamas minister, was struck by the oddness of using a boy who told us he went to the best school in Gaza, the English international school - as he seemed in so many ways to be comfortable and secure compared to the children we have been seeing in the news over the last fifteen months. In a similar way, the charming little girl who makes tik tok cookery shows and her sister seemed to belong to a more protected group in some way. Not that their stories do not matter too, and Zakaria the little would-be- paramedic’s story was altogether very different, but the other two oddly almost gave the impression that it is not so bad in Gaza (for all that we also saw their fear and loss of childhood).

As to the BBC, it is so very careless of them to have made the mistake of unknowingly involved themselves with and paid a Hamas minister that it may in the end mean their licence fee system is stopped.

You may know better about the alleged sleights of hand with translations of certain Arabic words into English. If this is true, that is particularly wrong and discrediting in my pinion.

@ScrollingLeaves I haven't watched it myself so can't directly assess the quality of translation from personal experience, sorry. My thoughts based on the information I have are...

Accurate translation matters more than palatability. This is a recurrent issue with translators in healthcare, where people paraphrase to what they think someone means rather than giving a verbatim translation. If a documentary is claiming to represent people's voices, it should do so accurately, including the controversial/unpleasant bits.

The words for Jewish people and Israel are different. Not just slightly, but easily distinguishable.

The concept of jihad is a broad one, covering everything from the 'greater jihad' of internal/personal struggle to become a better person, through to the 'jihad of the sword' or 'lesser jihad' which includes fighting, and in modern society has come to be mostly identified as extremist violence including terrorism. While 'struggle' can arguably be a valid translation option, if someone talked about "jihad against" a population defined by ethnicity and/or faith, the context would likely be as a reference to conflict and violence. Paraphrasing and using one meaning/translation option is imposing what the translator wants the person to have meant on the narrative, rather than simply saying what the person has said.

It's bloody stupid to do a fudgy mistranslation in this context. People know what 'jihad' sounds like. People can easily check if a translation is accurate.

The words for Jewish people and Israel are different. Not just slightly, but easily distinguishable.

They are different but often used interchangeably, it's how Palestinians and Arabs are also sometimes used interchangeably by some in Israel.

If I hadn't already cancelled my TV licence over their promotion of trans ideology at the expense of women, children and gay and lesbian people, I would have cancelled it over this. I still listen to the radio and Radio 4 Today consistently has an anti-Israel, antisemitic slant to its reporting. BBC disgust me.

Really? So you think all these people talking about Jews actually meant the Israeli army rather than what they actually said? And the translators just magically read their minds?

I do remember loyalists throwing balloons full of piss and fireworks at small children on their way to school.

Yet 5 years later a peace process was being rolled out.

Peace always seems impossible.

WTF is that supposed to mean? There are dozens of hostages still in Gaza, possibly half of them are dead. How many Jews do you think Hamas should kill?

I can understand that the production company would have needed permission from Hamas to film, and as a pp said everyone in Palestine is going to toe the party line no matter what they believe, it's not exactly a free press. But there are ways to create a documentary that doesn't involve funding terrorism 🤦🏻‍♀️ I think I would be fired if I made a payment to a known terrorist organisation.

@wherearemypastnames are you seriously trying to use the fact that Hamas still have hostages as evidence that they don't want to kill every Jew? That's seriously sick if so.

I agree with others regarding translation. If the two words exist (rather than two meanings in one word) it is bang out of order to mistranslate. And, given the info we have about the makers of the documentary, I'm not particularly inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. An honest documentary would translate properly and leave it to the viewer to form an opinion.

I don't think claiming "Israeli forces and Jews are interchangeable" is quite the get-out-of-jail-free card some people seem to think it is either. Because it does tend to be the seriously antisemitic people who are unable to separate the acts of a country (Israel) from how society should treat those of a particular ethnicity (Jews).

I am still a license fee payer as I watch a fair bit of live tv. I'm incensed that my money has been used to illegally fund a terrorist organisation.

But you see that this is pretty critical - it’s a supposed documentary, in which the producers decide to change the content of what is said!

God yes I remember that too

No, the feeling is not ‘mutual’. I don’t bring my children up to believe that murdering Muslims is a holy act or a goal we should aim for. I bring them
up to respect other people and ways of life and belief systems, to treat people how they would like to be treated, to do no harm. These children are literally brought up to believe that Jews are subhuman and should be eradicated. Don’t minimise that please.

This

Trad it Lineker . He won't.