The BBC has reached a settlement with a Jewish family who survived Hamas’s 7 October attacks after a news crew filmed inside their destroyed home in southern Israel without permission. The broadcaster confirmed the agreement on Friday, saying it was “pleased to have reached an agreement in this case.”
The Horenstein family—Tzeela, Simon, and their two young children—survived the attack when a door the militants tried to blast open twisted and jammed. Days later, a BBC team including senior correspondent Jeremy Bowen entered the wrecked home, while many of the family’s friends and relatives still did not know if they were alive.
Tzeela Horenstein told Jewish News that the crew’s entry without consent felt like a second intrusion: “Not only had the militants tried to break into our home and murder us, but then the BBC crew entered again, this time with a camera as a weapon, without permission or consent.” She added that it left the family feeling “everything that was still under our control had been taken from us.”
The BBC reportedly agreed to pay the family £28,000 in compensation. Separately, the broadcaster faces a $10bn defamation lawsuit from US President Donald Trump over the editing of a 2021 speech, and its director general Tim Davie resigned in November over the matter. In October, Ofcom ruled against the BBC for failing to disclose that a boy narrating a documentary was the son of a Hamas official.
