Immigration minister Robert Jenrick has blasted the BBC for refusing to call Hamas terrorists.
Mr Jenrick said the attack was “pure terror, fuelled by anti-Jewish hate” as he slammed the use of the words “militants” and “fighters”.
He said the “events of the last 48 hours are not a story with two sides to tell”.
The senior minister, whose wife Michal is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, said: “In the shock and confusion of the last 48 hours, let us be clear what the World has witnessed.
“These weren’t, as the BBC wrongly continues to say, militants or fighters – these were terrorists.
“This was not a political resistance. The events of the last 48 hours are not a story with two sides to tell. It was pure terror, fuelled by anti-Jewish hate and inflicted upon one of Judiaism’s holiest days.
“This was not a barrage against military targets – it was the indiscriminate murder, rape and kidnapping of hundreds of completely innocent people; of children as young as three, and those old enough to have survived the Holocaust.”
BBC chiefs were accused of of double standards for advising reporters to refrain from using “terror” and “terrorist” which have “significant political overtones”.
They have instead described the terrorists as “militants” and “fighters”.
The online style guide for the BBC has a specific section on Israel and Palestine, stating: “Terrorism is a difficult and emotive subject with significant political overtones and care is required in the use of language that carries value judgments.”
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Luciana Berger, a Jewish politician who resigned from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, also slammed the BBC for failing to label Hamas terrorists.
She said: “There’s a responsibility on all the media. These people are terrorists. Hamas is a terrorist organisation..Language matters. When you treat countries differently you exacerbate the problem.
“If you don’t call it out for what it is, you have to ask yourself why is it that you treat what happens in Israel differently from any other country? This would not have been acceptable in the other atrocities that we’ve seen. Why in this conflict is it treated differently?”.
Former BBC executive Danny Cohen, writing in the Telegraph, stated: “On the BBC, my former employer, there appears to be a diktat not to use the word ‘terrorism’ even when the acts being reported are terrorism of the most egregious and barbaric kind.
“Across its platforms, the BBC describes the actions of ‘militants’, as if shooting children in cold blood is some part of conventional military warfare. It is nothing of the sort. It is murder, pure and simple. It is terrorism.”
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The immigration minister, during the moving vigil in Westminster on Monday night, declared “What Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran – the World’s leading state sponsor of anti-Semitism, with a constitution committed to wiping out the Jewish state – do not understand is that the Jewish people will never be cowed.
“The story of Israel is the story of unparalleled resilience, perseverance and faith. Violence will not weaken them. Hatred cannot dampen their irrepressible spirit and terror will not suppress the hopes and dreams of the young Israeli nation.”
Mr Jenrick also said anyone glorifying violence in Israel “must be hunted down, arrested and prosecuted.”
He told those gathered in Westminster: “There will be those that recoil at Israel safeguarding its security and its people. There will be bigots and racists who will use it as a pretext to spread hatred against Jews here in the UK.
“So let me be very clear: valorising the terrorism of Hamas on the streets of the UK is a serious criminal offence and those who engage in it – or indeed any other form of anti-Semitic attack – must be hunted down, arrested and prosecuted. There can be no tolerance for his hatred and intimidation.”
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