Lineker among media figures urging BBC to reinstate Gaza documentary

Gary Lineker, Ruth Negga, Juliet Stevenson and Miriam Margolyes are among 500 film, TV and other media professionals calling on the BBC to reinstate its documentary on children and young people living in Gaza, describing it as an "essential piece of journalism".

- Aamna Mohdin Chris Osuh

The broadcaster removed Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone from BBC iPlayer pending a “due diligence” exercise after it emerged that the film's 14-year-old narrator was the son of a deputy agriculture minister in the territory's Hamas-run government.

Critics of the programme, including dozens of prominent Jewish journalists, condemned a failure of commissioning standards and questioned whether the BBC had paid any member of Hamas as part of the filming of the documentary.

A letter, sent yesterday to the BBC executives Samir Shah, Tim Davie and Charlotte Moore and seen by the Guardian, describes the film as “an essential piece of journalism, offering an all-too-rare perspective on the lived experiences of Palestinians”.

The letter claims that some criticism of the documentary is based on “racist assumptions and weaponisation of identity”, and that the deputy agriculture minister and father of the teenage narrator is a civil servant concerned with food production.