THE BBC has paid an Israeli family £28,000 after filming inside their destroyed home without consent – just days after the October 7 attacks.
A written apology was also issued after an entire film crew – led by senior reporter Jeremy Bowen – entered the property without prior permission.
The broadcaster compensated the Horenstein family after a team entered their home in the small village of Netiv HaAsara.
Crew members filmed personal photographs of the couple’s two young children just days after the horrifying terror attack.
At the time, many of the family’s friends and relatives did not know if they were still alive.
Speaking to Jewish News, Tzeela Horenstein said Hamas terrorists attacked the village early in the morning.
Sick operatives for the terror group then threw a grenade at her husband Simon.
The family only survived because their home’s door twisted and jammed when the attackers tried to blow it out with explosives, she revealed.
Mrs Horenstein called on the organisation to be “held responsible” for its “intrusive” actions.
She said: “Not only did terrorists break into our home and try to murder us, but then the BBC crew entered again, this time with a camera as a weapon, without permission or consent.
“It was another intrusion into our lives. We felt that everything that was still under our control had been taken from us.
“Even in times of war there are limits, and when a media outlet crosses them, it must be held responsible.”
BBC News issued a written apology to the family and paid them £28,000 in compensation after legal proceedings were reportedly started in Israel.
A BBC spokesperson said: “While we do not generally comment on specific legal issues, we are pleased to have reached an agreement in this case.”
Last year, Ofcom sanctioned the BBC after a controversial documentary about Gaza was deemed to have breached broadcasting rules.
Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone faced backlash after it was revealed its narrator was the son of a Hamas official.
An independent probe into the documentary had previously been commissioned by the broadcaster.
The Beeb spent £400,000 of licence payers’ cash making the doc, which was branded a propaganda show for the evil terror group Hamas.
It was revealed the main narrator was 13-year-old Abdulla Eliyazour – the son of senior Hamas official Dr Ayman Al-Yazouri.
Ofcom said the failure to disclose the position of the boy’s father was “materially misleading”.
On October 7, 2023, some 1,175 civilians, soldiers and foreign nationals inside Israel were savagely murdered in a hideous early-morning assault.
Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel from Gaza, firing thousands of rockets, flying over in paragliders and bulldozing trucks across the border.
I visited kibbutz where Hamas slaughtered families… what I saw made my blood run cold
By Katie Davis, Chief Foreign Reporter (Digital)
WALKING across endless charred rubble and looking up at more bullet holes than I could count, my stomach turned.
For almost seven decades, kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel was a haven for its 400 residents.
But their paradise just a mile from the Gaza border was torn apart on October 7, 2023.
Dozens of Hamas terrorists stormed the village – killing at random and inflicting a wound that may never fully heal in one of the darkest days in Israel’s history.
Walking around this gut-wrenching crime scene is not for the faint-hearted.
Like many of us, I’ve seen countless photos and videos of the kibbutz – each one more sickening than the last.
But nothing could have prepared me for seeing the area that should be filled with life and instead bears the scars of inconceivable horror in person.
Aside from the occasional cry from a cat or the soft sound of wind chimes, the silence in the kibbutz is deafening.
Once a close-knit community where children grew up and adults grew old, every aspect of human life has been shattered.
Rows of modest, single-storey homes sit burnt-out in a harrowing reminder of Hamas’ callous actions.
An IDF report later found that 6,000 fighters from Gaza managed to get into Israel that day.
That included 3,800 from the Hamas terror group’s elite Nukhba forces.
Horrifying reports that followed revealed children were killed, women were raped and around 250 had been kidnapped and taken back to Gaza.
It was described by many, including US President Joe Biden, as “the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”.
