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 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks, after a team of journalists entered their badly-damaged home without permission.

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

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

A BBC spokesperson said that while they did not generally comment on specific legal issues they were pleased to have reached an agreement in the case.

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

The couple and their two young children only survived because their home’s door twisted and jammed when the attackers tried to blow it out with explosives, she told the Jewish News, who first reported the story.

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.”

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

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

More than 71,260 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.