BBC settles with Oct 7 attack survivors after filming their destroyed home ‘without permission’

LONDON - The BBC said on Jan 2 that it had reached a settlement with a Jewish family who survived Hamas’s Oct 7 attacks on southern Israel after a news crew filmed inside their destroyed home.

The crew, which included senior correspondent Jeremy Bowen, entered the Horenstein family’s home in the days after the attacks in 2023.

“While we do not generally comment on specific legal issues, we are pleased to have reached an agreement in this case,” a BBC spokesperson said.

Mr Simon Horenstein, his wife Tzeela, and their two young children survived the attack when a door the Hamas militants tried to blast open twisted and jammed.

But at the time the news crew filmed in their wrecked home many of the family’s friends and relatives did not know if they were alive.

Ms Tzeela Horenstein told the Jewish News that not only had the militants tried to break into their home and murder them “but then the BBC crew entered again, this time with a camera as a weapon, without permission or consent”.

This second “intrusion” had left the family feeling as if “everything that was still under our control had been taken from us”, she added.

The BBC had reportedly agreed to pay the family £28,000 (S$48,400), according to the Jewish News.

US President Donald Trump has filed a defamation lawsuit against the BBC seeking US$10 billion in damages over the way it edited his 2021 speech before a mob of his supporters attacked the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021.

British taxpayers largely fund the cash-strapped broadcaster through an annual licence fee that is mandatory for anyone in the country who watches television.

BBC director general Tim Davie announced his resignation in November over the edit.

UK media regulator Ofcom ruled against the BBC in October over a documentary that featured narration by a boy who was later revealed to be the son of a Hamas official.

The broadcaster failed to disclose that link.

Ofcom said the omission constituted “a significant source of deception”, further fuelling accusations of editorial bias.

Hamas’s deadly Oct 7 attacks on southern Israel sparked a devastating war in Gaza.
A fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been in place since Oct 10. AFP