BBC reaches agreement with Israeli family for filming in home after 7 October without consent

The BBC has reached an agreement with an Israeli family who survived the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, after a team of journalists broke into their badly damaged home.

A BBC News team, including International Editor Jeremy Bowen, entered an Israeli family’s home on the Gaza border in the days after the deadly attacks and filmed the inside of the property.

They filmed personal photographs of the family’s children at a time when many of their friends and relatives still did not know whether they had survived or not, the Jewish News reported.

A BBC spokesman said that while they generally do not comment on specific legal matters, they were pleased to reach a settlement in the case.

Tzeela Horenstein said gunmen threw a grenade at her husband, Simon, during a Hamas attack on the village of Netiv HaAsara in the early morning hours of October 7.

The couple and their two young children survived because the door of their home was bent and jammed when the attackers tried to blow it up with explosives, he told the Jewish News. Who first reported the story?.

He said: “Not only did terrorists break into our home and try to kill us, but the BBC crew broke in again without permission or consent, this time with a camera as a weapon.

“It was a new intrusion into our lives. We felt like everything that was still under our control was being taken away from us.”

The Jewish News reported that the company paid a financial settlement of £28,000 to the family.

The war in Gaza was triggered by the attack on southern Israel led by Hamas on October 7, 2023, in which approximately 1,200 people were killed and 251 people were taken hostage.

Since then, more than 71,260 people have been killed in Israeli offensives in Gaza, according to the region’s Hamas-run health ministry.