The BBC logo is seen at the entrance at Broadcasting House, the BBC headquarters in central London. Photo by Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images/Sipa USA.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has apologized after its news anchor Anjana Gadgil said “Israeli forces are happy to kill children” while commenting on the air about the Israel Defense Forces’ latest security operations in the West Bank city of Jenin.

Gadgil had directed her comments to former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, whom she was interviewing.

“The United Nations raised the issue of the impact of the operation in Jenin on children and young people,” BBC said on Wednesday in a statement. “While this was a legitimate subject to examine in the interview, we apologise that the language used in this line of questioning was not phrased well and was inappropriate.”

The statement followed a quick investigation prompted by numerous formal complaints, one of which was filed by Israeli legal nonprofit International Legal Forum (ILF). “You know, it’s quite remarkable that you would say that, because they’re killing us,” Bennett responded to her statement. “Now if there is a 17-year-old Palestinian that is shooting at your family, Anjana? What is he?”

Gadgil responded by insisting that the United Nations classifies 17-year-olds as children and refused to say what she would call a person of similar age who attempted to kill her family, adding, “We’re not talking about that.”

On Wednesday, ILF wrote to BBC, expressing “utter dismay and shock at the appalling conduct of Ms. Anjana Gadgil.” The group charged that her comments were “not only entirely false and misleading but tantamount to dangerous incitement and a blood libel that will only fan the flames of already surging antisemitism and potentially lead to violence against Jews in the UK.”

ILF also called on the network, the oldest public broadcaster in the world, to issue an apology for Gadgil’s remarks, arguing that they violated its editorial guidelines on “impartiality and accuracy.”

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, a UK Jewish civil rights group, condemned what Gadgil said as well, tweeting, “the comments made…are simply disgraceful.”

This latest controversy over BBC’s reporting comes just six months after the UK Parliament opened an investigation, triggered by a Change.org petition demanding one, into its alleged anti-Israel bias.

Last November, UK media watchdog Ofcom, determined that the broadcaster had failed to be “duly accurate or duly impartial” in its reporting on  2021 antisemitic attack on a bus carrying Jewish teenagers who were celebrating Hanukkah in London. After the incident, it reported that some of the victims had uttered anti-Muslim slurs, a claim that was roundly rejected by the Jewish community and debunked when the Board of Deputies of British Jews released two independent forensic reports concluding that no such slurs can be heard in footage of the incident. BBC, however, stood by its original reporting, eliciting outrage. 

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.