New Delhi: BBC press officers refused to promote We Will Dance Again, an Emmy-winning documentary about the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, according to executive producer Lucie Kon, who has alleged that she faced discrimination at the broadcaster because she is Jewish.
Kon, who worked at the BBC for more than two decades, said her experience at the corporation changed after the attacks. She alleged that colleagues questioned her impartiality when she proposed a documentary about the massacre at the Nova music festival in southern Israel, where hundreds of people were killed.
“I went from a BBC journalist who happened to be Jewish to a Jewish journalist at the BBC. It was like having Jew stamped on my forehead,” Kon told The Telegraph.
‘I was told I couldn’t look after the Nova film’
Released in 2024, We Will Dance Again documents the 7 October attack on the Nova music festival. The film won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary in 2025.
According to Kon, she was told she could not oversee the project because her Jewish identity made her partial.
“I was told I couldn’t look after the Nova film when I first pitched it because I was Jewish and that made me partial,” she said.
Kon said she subsequently raised concerns about the treatment of Jewish employees and helped establish a support group for Jewish staff.
She filed a formal grievance in January 2024, but said both her complaint and a subsequent appeal were rejected.
“I got evil Hamas, evil Zionists, like it was a song or a joke or something. It was just weird,” she said.
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BBC paid more than £400,000 following legal action
The producer alleged that she was later sidelined and eventually lost her job amid a restructuring of the BBC’s documentary commissioning team. Her employment ended in April 2026.
“For me, it almost broke me. There were some times where I was broken by it,” she told LBC.
Following legal action by Kon, the BBC agreed to pay her more than £400,000. The broadcaster said Kon had been a valued employee and maintained that antisemitism was not tolerated at the corporation.
“While we do not comment on individual staffing matters, antisemitism in any form is not tolerated at the BBC,” a BBC spokesperson said.
Kon has said she does not consider the BBC institutionally antisemitic, but believes the organisation has a problem with groupthink.
“I think that there’s a problem with groupthink at the BBC. And groupthink can be very intimidating,” she said.
(Edited by Maryam Hassan)