A peculiar incident occurred this month at an Israeli army base in the Negev: a wild caracal – a desert feline native to the region – bit two Israeli soldiers. Though minor and medically insignificant, the episode subsequently found its way across BBC Arabic’s platforms: X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Within a couple of days, the BBC had published this story across its Arabic-language social media properties, giving it a visibility usually reserved for serious geopolitical events. Far from treating it as harmless filler, the framing and timing of the coverage encouraged a deluge of celebratory comments from Arabic-speaking users, who gleefully described the cat as a hero or a symbol of resistance. Remarkably, BBC Arabic returned to the story the next day, running another cycle largely focused on showcasing and linking to that very type of comment.
What did not receive this kind of attention from BBC Arabic was something else that happened in the same 24-hour window of the story being published: the shooting of an 85-year-old Jewish Israeli man in northern Israel by an Arab-Israeli terrorist. The man was evacuated to hospital in serious condition, yet this brazen act of anti-Jewish violence – targeting a civilian, elderly and unarmed – received no mention on any of BBC Arabic’s prominent social platforms. Not on X, not on Facebook, not on Instagram, and not on YouTube.
This juxtaposition – trivial story amplified, real act of terrorism ignored – illustrates a deeper, systemic problem: BBC Arabic’s editorial posture not only lacks neutrality, but increasingly exhibits a subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, bias against Israel. Indeed, while BBC’s English-language coverage is already frequently criticised for its disproportionate scrutiny of Israel, BBC Arabic routinely goes further – portraying Israel not merely as a state to be analysed critically, but as a subject of mockery, delegitimisation, or outright hostility.
The caracal story is not, in itself, objectionable. Newsrooms often feature animal-related oddities as brief human-interest interludes. But the issue here is twofold: the prioritization of this story over genuine news, and the amplification of inflammatory reader reactions. BBC Arabic chose to spotlight the story with the framing that Israeli soldiers were bitten by a wild animal inside their own base, setting the stage for a cascade of celebratory comments that went entirely unmoderated. A glance at the replies shows hundreds of Arabic-speaking users glorifying the animal as if it had committed an act of anti-colonial sabotage. This was not merely reporting a strange occurrence—it was platforming schadenfreude directed at Israeli misfortune, and allowing a feral cat to become a proxy for political hatred.
Contrast this with the complete silence around the terrorist shooting. Here we have an elderly man shot at point-blank range by an Arab gunman. No provocation, no combat context – just an elderly civilian targeted on a quiet street. That such a clear-cut case of terrorism did not meet the editorial bar for even a tweet or a headline on BBC Arabic’s platforms speaks volumes. The violence was real, the victim innocent, and the event newsworthy by any standard. And yet, nothing.
This pattern is not isolated. For years, media watchdogs have documented the BBC’s imbalanced treatment of Israel, but BBC Arabic operates on an entirely separate wavelength. While the English-language BBC, for all its flaws, still hews – if unevenly – to the conventions of western journalism, its Arabic-language counterpart is shaped far more directly by the political and cultural biases of its regional audience. The result is a brand of coverage where anti-Israel narratives are amplified, Israeli victims marginalised, and acts of violence against Jews are either euphemised or ignored altogether.
Such bias has tangible consequences. The BBC is not merely a broadcaster – it is a publicly funded institution, carrying with it a reputation for impartiality and a global reach. When its Arabic division abdicates that impartiality, it becomes complicit in deepening regional animosities. It ceases to inform and instead begins to affirm the most destructive views of its audience.
Moreover, this discrepancy between the BBC’s English and Arabic outputs undermines the integrity of the institution as a whole. It is no longer credible to claim the BBC is simply ‘reporting both side’s when one division is effectively egging on celebratory responses to Israeli injuries while ignoring Israeli dead and wounded. This is not balance. It is moral dereliction.
Ultimately, the BBC must reckon with this bifurcation in its identity. It cannot credibly aspire to be the world’s leading impartial broadcaster while allowing one of its linguistic arms to indulge in regional propaganda.
No wonder the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, which regularly documents such BBC failings, has called for an independent inquiry ‘with real investigative powers that would delve into BBC Arabic’s editorial policy towards Jewish and Israeli affairs’.
Either editorial standards apply across all languages – or the institution admits it no longer practices journalism in the classical sense, but something else entirely. Until then, we are left with this grim reality: that for BBC Arabic, a cat bite is worth more airtime than the bullet that struck an 85-year-old man. And that says more about the broadcaster than any editorial mission statement ever could.
