The BBC's moral cowardice is shocking

Describing Hamas as terrorists is not a subjective act, but legal fact
Simon Heffer 15 October 2023 • 7:00am Simon Heffer

I admire John Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor, for his expertise
and for the courage he has shown reporting from war zones. For 30 years
I have counted him as a friend. However, I simply cannot agree with the
defence he has made of the Corporation’s decision not to call Hamas
“terrorists” or to describe the savagery with which it butchered
babies, elderly women and others as “terrorism”.

Parliament designated Hamas in its entirety as “a proscribed terrorist
organisation” in November 2021. Its members or anyone recruiting for
it in the UK risk up to 14 years in prison. Simpson notes that, in the
Second World War BBC staff were told not to call the Nazis “evil or
wicked”, but could call them “the enemy”. He makes my point for
me. The Nazi regime was the enemy because we had declared war on it,
legitimising the term. Hamas is proscribed in the UK – the country the
BBC serves, and whose citizens fund it. That legitimises calling Hamas
“terrorists”. Otherwise, we might as well debate whether the Pope
should be called “Catholic”.

Simpson says that “we [the BBC] don’t take sides”; but they
did when calling the Nazis “the enemy”. “They” can, equally,
describe a legally proscribed terrorist group as terrorists – and
unless the Corporation has decided to ignore Parliament, “they”
should. His “enemy” point contradicts his assertion that, to call
Hamas terrorists, compromises the “founding principles” of the
BBC. These principles are evoked when it suits the BBC: otherwise they
are ignored, violated and flouted. John Reith’s moral view was such
that turning in his grave would be but the start of his reaction to much
the BBC does today.

“Terrorism is a loaded word, which people use about an outfit
they disapprove of morally,” Simpson says. That is a point of
view. But terrorism also has a legal definition, which is why our
democratically-elected parliament designated Hamas as a terrorist
organisation. “It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who
to support and who to condemn – who are the good guys and who are the
bad guys,” he continues. To do so, he says, would be “abandoning
our duty to stay objective”.

Describing a group using a legally defined-term that our legislators
have decided to apply to it does not instruct people whom to support
and whom to condemn: it simply recognises a legal fact that is obvious
to most of the BBC’s audience. It is the difference between nouns and
adjectives. “Evil” and “wicked”, if applied to Hamas, would in the
view of most decent people be accurate descriptions, but if the BBC were
to deploy them it would be editorialising. Using a legally-verified noun
such as “terrorists” is a statement of fact, not a subjective act.

I suspect that getting a man of Simpson’s distinction to defend this
indefensible stance shows a state of moral or intellectual panic at the
BBC. One suspects it has not called Hamas terrorists because it does not
wish to aggrieve that section of opinion that believes Israel gets all
it deserves, however bestial an atrocity it suffers, and that Hamas is
simply responding to chronic provocation.

Such views merit no respect, any more than Mosley’s did in the
1930s. Would the BBC call it an act of terrorism if Hamas blew up women
and children in a British shopping centre? I hope it never has to confront
that question. If the BBC does not change its approach, any claim it
makes to moral conduct is bogus; and any sane government would recall
its shocking cowardice when considering a further renewal of its charter.