When Propaganda Poses as Journalism: the Collapse of “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack”
The BBC spiked the film for failing basic impartiality, but Channel 4 broadcast it and Zeteo monetised it—while both platforms ignored the tunnels, the hostages and every legal nuance that shatters its narrative.
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When even the BBC, an outlet routinely accused of leaning toward the Palestinian side, refused to air “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack” on grounds of blatant bias, you would expect other publishers to tread carefully.
Instead, Channel 4 rushed the footage to prime time and Zeteo, the new subscription platform launched by Mehdi Hasan, splashed it online as “the film the establishment tried to silence,” complete with paywall and fundraising push. Viewers got ninety minutes of heart-rending images, bleeding children, frantic surgeons, dark hospital corridors, but not a second of the evidence that Hamas built fortified tunnels under wards, stashed weapons beside incubators, and paraded Israeli hostages through emergency rooms.
Strip away those facts and what remains is not a documentary; it is a slick propaganda reel that both Channel 4 and Zeteo chose to platform and profit from. The analysis that follows restores the missing half of the story and shows why the BBC’s red flag was the only responsible editorial decision.
1. The BBC’s Scarlet Letter of Bias
On 20 June 2025 the BBC quietly announced that talks over how to broadcast Gaza: Doctors Under Attack had “reached the end of the road.” The corporation killed its own commission because airing it would create “a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards the public rightly expect.”
This was not a Zionist mouthpiece speaking; the BBC has spent the entire war being accused, loudly, of pro-Palestinian bias. Even The Guardian’s Karishma Patel, who thinks the BBC is already too cautious in its Gaza coverage, blasted the decision as “craven cowardice.” If a broadcaster habitually criticized for favoring Hamas decides that this particular film is too one-sided to air, that is the journalistic equivalent of a five-alarm fire.
Channel 4 grabbed the documentary anyway, premiering it yesterday (Monday) with much self-congratulation about “fearless journalism.” Viewers deserved fearless truth instead, and the film did not supply it.
2. Sleight of Hand: Testimony In, Verification Out
The documentary relies almost entirely on anonymous or unverifiable testimonies of Gaza medics who accuse Israeli soldiers of torture, executions, and deliberate hospital bombings. Nowhere are viewers shown medical forensics, timestamps, or neutral investigators that corroborate these capital-crime claims. Nowhere does an Israeli officer, an IDF legal-affairs adviser, or even a Red Cross representative appear to test the allegations. That is not “forensic investigation”; it is litany. The BBC’s editorial lawyers saw the hole and hit the brakes.
3. The Evidence the Film Hides
Below are four critical facts the documentary omits, along with the documented sources and why each matters:
Source: IDF video and photos, 19 Nov 2023.
Why it matters: A hospital actively used for military command can lose its protected status under international humanitarian law.
2. United States intelligence independently assessed that Hamas ran command-and-control operations and held hostages inside Al-Shifa.
Source: Declassified assessment, Dec 2023.
Why it matters: This is not Israeli propaganda; it is the judgment of Israel’s closest ally.
3. Hamas has a documented history of exploiting hospitals, including executions in Shifa during the 2014 war.
Source: Amnesty International report, 2015.
Why it matters: Proves the tactic predates the current conflict.
4. Witness-corroborated raids on Indonesian and Kamal Adwan hospitals found militants, weapons, or hostages on site.
Source: Associated Press investigations, 2024-25.
Why it matters: Confirms the pattern extends beyond Shifa.
4. International Law, Conveniently Omitted
The film declares every strike on a medical facility a war crime, full stop. Yet the International Committee of the Red Cross itself states that hospitals “lose their special protection if they are used to commit acts harmful to the enemy.” That crucial legal qualifier, central to judging Israeli conduct, is never explained. By erasing the law’s nuance, the filmmakers turn complex battlefield law into a cartoon morality play.
5. Humanitarian Realities the Cameras Refused to Show
Leaving out these realities allows the film to sustain its chosen storyline: Israel as mindless aggressor, Hamas as invisible.
6. A Catalogue of Double Standards
7. Why the BBC’s Refusal Matters
When a broadcaster already castigated for “failing viewers with its Gaza coverage” still finds your edit irredeemably partial, you have not produced journalism; you have manufactured vetoed propaganda.
Channel 4 tacked on a disclaimer that it had “fact-checked” the film, but fact-checking cannot fix a narrative that deliberately excises half the facts. The result is a ninety-minute indictment in which the prosecution speaks uninterrupted, the defence is bound and gagged, and the jury is handed a box of tissues instead of evidence.
8. The Bottom Line
War crimes should be exposed, whoever commits them. But Gaza: Doctors Under Attack abandons that principle, treating Hamas’s systematic militarization of Gaza’s hospitals as an inconvenient subplot to be written out of the script. The filmmakers expect the audience to swallow anonymous torture stories while ignoring on-camera proof of tunnels, weapons, and hostages. That is not courageous journalism; it is deceptive advocacy.
Even organizations that routinely skewer Israel, the BBC, Amnesty International’s earlier Gaza report, and the ICRC’s legal briefing, provide the evidence that punctures the film’s thesis. A documentary that cannot withstand the basic scrutiny of the broadcaster that paid for it cannot withstand the scrutiny of history either.
9. A Challenge to the Filmmakers
If “forensic investigation” is truly the goal, release your raw interview transcripts, your fact-checking memos, and your unedited rushes. Show the world the tunnel entrances, the captured Hamas gunmen, the United States intelligence assessments, and the premature-baby evacuation convoys you chose not to film. If you cannot, or will not, then wear the label “propagandist” with whatever pride you can muster. Journalists are obliged to tell the whole story, even when it hurts their preferred narrative.
Until then, viewers should treat Gaza: Doctors Under Attack exactly as the BBC ultimately did: as a cautionary tale of how easy it is for righteous outrage to replace rigorous reportage.
Compiled with open-source evidence, mainstream media reporting, and international-law references to ensure every claim is backed by verifiable fact, not selective emotion.