Last month, the BBC appointed French-Lebanese journalist Mayssaloun Nassar as head of its Arabic Service. BBC described her as “the outstanding candidate for the role” who “brings a wealth of experience in journalism and a strong record of leadership.”
She also brings a rather troubling record when it comes to Israel – one that includes erasing Israel from the map, referring to Israelis inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders as “settlers,” and sanitizing a convicted terrorist involved in the assassination of an Israeli government minister.
As The Telegraph reports:
The BBC’s new head of Arabic news described Israeli cities as “occupied” and Israelis injured by rocket attacks as “settlers”, The Telegraph can reveal.
Mayssaloun Nassar, who took charge of BBC News Arabic last month, made the remarks in a series of social media posts while working for France 24.
The disclosures raise fresh questions about impartiality at the troubled Arabic service, which has faced repeated accusations of anti-Israel bias.
During fighting between Israel and Hamas in November 2012, Ms Nassar referred to Beersheba, a city in southern Israel, as the “occupied city of Beersheba”. The following day, she wrote that Israel had reported that 100 rockets had landed and 28 “settlers” had been injured.
Contemporary reports placed the rocket attacks in southern Israeli towns within Israel’s pre-1967 borders, rather than in settlements in the occupied West Bank.
On Nov 21 2012, she described a projectile fired from Lebanon as targeting “Israeli settlements”. A minute later, she reported that another had landed in Metula, “inside the occupied territories”.
Beersheba and Metula both lie within Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries.
Ms Nassar previously served as deputy editor-in-chief of France 24, which came under scrutiny over a programme aired in September 2016 featuring the wife of Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, a Palestinian prisoner serving a life sentence in Israel.
Introducing the report, Ms Nassar said Abu Ghoulmeh had been jailed by Israeli authorities, but she failed to mention that this was for his role in the 2001 assassination of Rehavam Ze’evi, Israel’s tourism minister.
The news package, which was presented and narrated by a different reporter, described Abu Ghoulmeh as having “struggled and made sacrifices”, without explaining the crime he had committed.
So the question is not merely how someone with this record ended up running BBC News Arabic. It is whether the BBC knew about it before declaring Nassar its “outstanding candidate.”
Because when someone has described internationally recognized Israeli territory as “occupied,” Israelis under rocket fire as “settlers,” and introduced a convicted terrorist without bothering to mention the assassination that put him behind bars, these are not insignificant details buried in an otherwise spotless record. They go directly to the question of impartiality.
And for a BBC Arabic service already dogged by allegations of anti-Israel bias, appointing someone with this history to lead it hardly inspires confidence that the corporation has learned anything.
Then again, perhaps that is precisely why she was the “outstanding candidate.”
The BBC certainly has a type.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
