We need to talk about Emily
TetleysTLDR: The Summary
- Emily Damari, a British-Israeli woman recently freed from Hamas captivity, was widely described by the BBC as a hostage and civilian victim.
- But she was an active-duty IDF soldier when captured — a crucial fact the BBC failed to mention when she was given airtime to criticise UK policy on Palestinian statehood.
- Meanwhile, Palestinian civilians are routinely discredited or silenced by UK media. A programme about a child in Gaza was pulled simply because they had a relative in Hamas.
- This double standard is blatant: Palestinians are guilty by association, while Israeli soldiers are portrayed as neutral voices.
- The BBC’s omission wasn’t impartiality — it was propaganda by omission, sanitising Israeli violence and dehumanising Palestinians.
- If we can’t even be told who’s a soldier and who’s a child, journalism has failed. Completely.
TetleysTLDR: The Article
The BBC has once again betrayed the public trust. On paper, it’s a public service broadcaster committed to impartiality, truth, and the highest editorial standards. In practice, it increasingly functions as a propaganda machine for the powerful, obediently following the narratives of Western governments and their allies.
Take the recent case of Emily Damari.In January 2025, Damari, a dual British-Israeli national, was released from Gaza after being held captive for 471 days.
Her abduction by Hamas was wrong. Now Hamas should never have taken her, just as no one, civilian or combatant, should be held outside the protections of international law. But what the BBC failed to mention during its extensive coverage was that Emily Damari wasn’t just a random civilian or a bystander caught up in the chaos.
She was a serving soldier in the Israeli Defence Forces at the time of her abduction.
That detail changes everything. And yet, the BBC, along with all our other media platforms, despite giving her a prominent platform to attack Keir Starmer’s recognition of a Palestinian state, neglected to inform viewers of her military status.
In other words: a combatant in an occupying army was presented as a neutral voice of moral clarity.
The double standards are staggering. Every single article on Gaza casualties is contractually obligated, it seems, to remind us that Hamas controls the Gaza Strip , with every Israel death casued by bombs or snipers prefixed with acccording to the 'HAMAS Controlled authority'. The subtext is always the same: every Palestinian is suspect, every civilian is conditional.
Had she not being one of the unfortunate hostages, she, along with other British Israelis serving in the IDF could very well be embedded in the military currently carrying out a Genocide in Gaza.
Earlier this year, a programme about a young child in Gaza, a child with no political affiliation, was pulled from UK broadcast because she had a relative connected to Hamas. He was not in Hamas. He wasn’t a soldier. He was a child. But that was enough. Family guilt. Collective punishment. By association. By bloodline. That’s the standard applied to Palestinians. It's not just political grandstanding by a so called impartial broadcaster: it's overt racism.
But when an actual soldier from the Israeli military, a force currently engaged in bombing civilians, levelling hospitals, flattening refugee camps and killing starving children - some whilst queuing for food, is given a national media platform, the BBC suddenly forgets how to contextualise. Not a single mention of her rank. Not a word about the uniform she wore.
This is not a minor editorial oversight. It’s not a footnote. It’s a deliberate choice, and it has consequences. The BBC’s Editorial Guidelines state that audiences must be informed when contributors have a personal or political interest relevant to their views.
How is it possible that a serving member of the IDF, allowed to criticise British foreign policy on prime-time media, is not identified as a member of an army engaged in an active war? Imagine the reverse: a Palestinian resistance fighter appears on the BBC to denounce Israel or the UK. Can you honestly imagine them being introduced without full disclosure? Can you imagine their family history not being dissected on air? Of course not. The BBC wouldn’t just highlight their affiliations, it would probably wheel out former intelligence officers to cast doubt on their humanity.
This is how media bias works in 2025. It’s not always what’s said, it’s what’s left out. What’s edited. What’s stripped of context. When the BBC frames an Israeli soldier as a civilian and simultaneously erases Palestinian civilians for having the wrong surname, it is not being impartial. It is manufacturing consent for apartheid, occupation, and genocide. It presents the agents of state violence as victims, and the victims of state violence as threats.
This is the same BBC that hesitated for weeks to use the word 'famine' in Gaza, long after the UN had done so. The same BBC that labels mass protests for ceasefire as 'divisive' The same BBC that treats every Israeli voice as authentic, and every Palestinian one as suspicious, unless scrubbed clean of politics, anger, or family ties.
Public service broadcasting should serve the public, not the policies of powerful states. When someone in uniform speaks, that uniform matters. When a child is silenced because of who their uncle is, that matters too. We are living through a media crisis as much as a political one. One where truth is filtered, context erased, and victims sorted into worthy and unworthy categories based on the geopolitical interests of the West.
Emily Damari should never have been taken, but the BBC should never have lied by omission. Because a lie of omission is still a lie. And if we can’t trust our national broadcaster to tell us who is a soldier and who is a child, then it’s not journalism, it’s propaganda.
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