LISA NANDY was accused of “callous indifference” to Palestinian suffering today, following her attacks on the BBC over its handling of a documentary about children living in Gaza during Israel’s genocidal military campaign.

Campaigners and media figures blasted the Culture Secretary after she demanded answers from the broadcaster’s review of the Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone programme by early next week.

The corporation has apologised and launched an internal probe into the making of the programme after removing it from the BBC iPlayer following reports that its child narrator is the son of Ayman Alyazouri, who has served as Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture.

UK Screen Industry, a group of concerned television and film professionals that co-ordinated a letter to the BBC about the documentary signed by more than 1,000 media figures, said: “If the Secretary of State wishes to publicly exercise her authority, it should be to emphasise to the BBC the urgent need to safeguard the children featured in the film, whose very lives are at risk.”‎

Artists for Palestine UK, which published the letter to the BBC, said: “Lisa Nandy is very selective in her concern. 

“Like the management of the BBC, our Culture Minister is callously indifferent to the Palestinian victims of genocidal violence.”

Former BBC journalist and newsreader Karishma Patel, who has worked on Gaza, said: “It’s the lack of child safeguarding around this film that should be under investigation.

“Child safeguarding is a key part of BBC training and to see it thrown by the wayside here,when a vulnerable Palestinian child is at risk, is deeply shocking.”

Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal said: “Rather than encouraging suppression of the voices of Palestinian children, the Culture Secretary should be demanding the documentary is restored and that the BBC’s addresses its systemic pro-Israel bias, which has led to this harmful decision and its consistent dehumanisation of Palestinians.”

BBC director-general Tim Davie told the culture, media and sport committee on Tuesday that he was “very sorry to the audience, because we don’t want to be in a position where we have flaws in the programme-making.”

A corporation spokeswoman said that it takes the “issues incredibly seriously” and that it is vital that its fact-finding review “moves quickly, but it must also be thorough and get to the answers we are seeking.”