A man looks at pictures and memorabilia related to fallen soldiers, hostages, and people killed during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, ahead of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, at a public square in Tel Aviv, Israel, Jan. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shir Torem

On January 20, the BBC News website published a filmed report on its Middle East page, under the headline “Moment freed Palestinian prisoners reunite with family and friends”:

Ninety Palestinians were released from Israeli jails as part of the first phase in a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

Footage shows the prisoners, mostly woman and children, greeted by cheers upon arrival as people gathered to welcome them in the occupied West Bank.

In exchange for these prisoners, three hostages were released from Gaza to Israel.

That 59-second-long filmed report does not include any commentary or subtitles beyond “Palestinian prisoners freed” and “West Bank” in its opening frame.

It does show the same released prisoner twice — between 00:18 and 00:22 and between 00:45 and 00:54 — without any context provided to viewers:

Also on January 20, listeners to the BBC World Service radio station and BBC Radio 4 heard a report on that story from Jon Donnison.

In the version aired on Newshour, presenter Tim Franks told listeners (from 15:41 here) that: [emphasis in italics in the original]

Franks: “Hours after the release of those three Israeli hostages, ninety Palestinian prisoners — women and teenage boys — were freed from Israeli jails. Thirty prisoners for each hostage. Our correspondent Jon Donnison watched that detainee release take place in the West Bank.”

At 17:17 Donnison described one of those released — the same woman who appeared in the BBC’s filmed report — as follows:

Donnison: “Among them was 62-year-old Khalida Jarrar — a politician from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP] — jailed after the October 7th attack. She said it was a bittersweet moment.”

Listeners then heard a voice-over translation of comments made by Jarrar — but Donnison did not bother to inform listeners around the world that the PFLP is an internationally-designated terrorist organization, which took part in the October 7 massacre.

Neither did he bother to clarify that Khalida Jarrar was arrested in 2015 and charged with being a member of the PFLP and inciting people to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Jarrar confessed to those charges and under the terms of a plea bargain, was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment.

After her release, Jarrar became one of the heads of the PFLP in Judea & Samaria, and she was re-arrested in October 2019 following the terror attack perpetrated by that terrorist organization in which 17-year-old Rina Shnerb was murdered.

Once again, Jarrar confessed to the charges and was sentenced to 24 months in prison. While serving that sentence, Jarrar chose to once again run for political office on behalf of the PFLP terrorist organization. She was released in September 2021.

As was noted here in 2019, the BBC elected to ignore the arrests of PFLP operatives in connection with that terror attack.

Readers may also recall that in 2014, Jon Donnison portrayed a PFLP “fighter commander” as a “charity worker.”

The BBC’s failure to adequately explain the terror links of Palestinian prisoners is of course by no means new: audiences saw the same style of reporting in November 2023 and indeed long before that.

Nevertheless, BBC audiences obviously cannot properly understand the story that the corporation purports to report in these two items — or similar future ones —  if they are not provided with an accurate and impartial portrayal of the reasons why those now being released from prison by Israel were detained in the first place and the terrorist organizations to which they are linked.

Hadar Sela is the co-editor of CAMERA UK — an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.