The BBC’s chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet, sparked an outcry after she appeared to suggest that Syrian Jews want to return to Syria's capital following the fall of the Assad regime, despite the fact that only a handful of Jews remain in the entire country, the Jewish Chronicle reported.
In a report from Damascus today (Wednesday), Doucet said, “This is one of the most diverse countries in the Middle East with multiple Christian [and] Muslim sects and you can see it here in the Old City, all the different quarters, Jewish, Muslim, Christian - they’re all here and they want to believe they have a space now as Syria embarks on this new chapter.”
Israeli Embassy to the UK spokesperson Orly Goldschmidt wrote in response to Doucet's report, “In the 1940s, Syria's Jewish community was 40,000 strong. Today just an estimated three remain. Good luck finding a Jew in Syria for an interview.”
Daniel Sugarman, the Director of Public Affairs of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, made a similar comment on X and wrote, "You may find a 'Jewish Quarter' in Damascus. You won’t find Jews to interview, though. In 1947, there were 15,000 Jews in Syria. After hideous state repression (starting well before the Assad regime), the number of Jews there is now 3. Three."
Sugarman added, "The ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands is something that all post-colonial theorists across the world will ignore, deny or downplay (as soon as you see someone say the words ‘Avi Shlaim’ to back themselves up you can safely assume they’re a crank.)"
The BBC has repeatedly been criticized for the blatant anti-Israel bias in its reporting and this criticism has increased since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and the war in Gaza which followed.
In November of 2023, the corporation published an apology after falsely claiming that IDF troops were targeting medical teams in battles in and around the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
Before that, the BBC falsely accused Israel of being responsible for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza, which the IDF proved was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket.
The network later acknowledged that “it was false to speculate” on the explosion.
In wake of the criticism, BBC Chair Samir Shah said last December that he intends to review the corporation’s reporting guidelines on the Israel–Hamas war.
In August, more than 200 people from Britain's TV and film industry called for an urgent investigation into allegations of antisemitism at the BBC.
A month later, a report found that the BBC violated its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times during the first four months of the war between Israel and Hamas, and noted “deeply worrying pattern of bias" against the Jewish state during that period.