Senior BBC executive revealed to have anti-Israel leanings

Maysaloun Nassar, who was appointed head of the BBC's Arabic news department last month, previously published statements describing Beersheba as an "occupied" city and Israeli residents wounded by rocket fire as settlers. The statements were revealed by Britain's Telegraph newspaper following a review of Nassar's old social media posts. The remarks were published in November 2012, when Nassar was working for the French news network France 24 .

They have now raised questions about the views of a senior figure in the BBC's Arabic-language news operation. According to the investigation, during Operation Pillar of Defense, Nassar referred to Beersheba as "the occupied city of Beersheba." The following day, she published a report saying Israel had announced that 100 rockets had landed and 28 people had been wounded, describing them as "settlers." In another statement, dated November 21, 2012, Nassar described rocket fire from Lebanon toward "Israeli settlements."

A minute later, she reported that another rocket had landed in Metula, which she described as a community "inside the occupied territories." According to the Telegraph , the discovery of the old posts renews questions about the objectivity of the BBC's Arabic news service, which has previously faced criticism and accusations of anti-Israel bias. The revelations come about two weeks after the BBC was forced to apologize over a guest's appearance on a television program, after it emerged that she had previously published social media posts against Jews and Israel, as well as praise for the October 7th massacre.

The guest, Bushra Shaikh, a former contestant on the reality show " The Apprentice ", was invited onto BBC One's "Sunday Morning Live " last month to present her position in support of women's right to wear a burqa in public. Following her appearance, earlier posts of hers came to light, including harsh insults directed at Jews who had immigrated to Israel from Europe. Among other things, she called them "lying scum" and "the biggest charlatans on the face of the earth."

Just hours after the October 7th massacre, Shaikh wrote, "The Palestinians have done more in five minutes than Zelensky has done with 75 billion. Humiliation is an understatement." In another statement, following the October 2025 attack at a Manchester synagogue in which two people were murdered and three others seriously wounded, Shaikh blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tweeting, "Jewish blood on his hands." In January, responding to reports of deaths among protesters in Iran, she commented on the death toll and alluded to the Holocaust, writing, "The real number is 6 million."

Following the criticism, the BBC acknowledged in a response to a British MP that its checks into Shaikh's previous social media activity had fallen short of the broadcaster's expected standards. It also said the incident would lead to changes in its vetting procedures. The two cases add to earlier controversies surrounding the BBC's coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas. In November 2023, the broadcaster apologized after incorrectly reporting that Israeli forces were attacking medical staff during a military operation near Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip.

In another case, the BBC faced criticism over its initial reporting on an explosion at a hospital in Gaza, which raised the possibility that Israel was responsible. The IDF subsequently presented evidence indicating that the explosion had been caused by a failed rocket launch by Islamic Jihad. The broadcaster later acknowledged that it had been a mistake to speculate about responsibility for the explosion. In 2025, another controversy arose over the documentary " Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone ", after it emerged that its narrator was the son of a senior Hamas official.

Following the affair, the BBC acknowledged "serious failings" in the management of the production. Last week, another case was reported in which the BBC agreed to pay £400,000 in compensation to an award-winning Jewish documentary filmmaker. The filmmaker alleged that she had experienced antisemitic harassment from colleagues and had been forced to leave the broadcaster following the October 7th massacre. Nassar, who took up her senior role at BBC Arabic last month, is now the focus of the latest report.

The statements that have come to light date from her time at France 24 , more than a decade before her current appointment.