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Who is Tala Halawa? BBC journalist slammed for 'Hitler Was Better' tweet from 2014, Internet says 'sack her'

'These tweets predate the individual's employment with the BBC but we are nevertheless taking this very seriously and are investigating,' said a BBC spokesperson

Less than a week after the BBC had to issue a serious apology for unethical journalism from former reporter Martin Bashir, another journalist employed by the organization is under social media fire for allegedly anti-Semitic tweets from 2014. Identified as Tala Halawa, the BBC journalist had tweeted '#HitlerWasRight in an anti-Israeli Defense Forces tweet, which has now been unearthed by a Twitter account, thus causing an internal investigation into the matter.

A screenshot of Halawa's since-deleted tweet was shared by the account Honest Reporting who claim they promote "fairness and accuracy in media coverage of Israel." The account shared the screenshots with the caption "Halawa directly influences and creates news content watched by many millions around the world. In what world can someone like this work for a professional news outlet?" A BBC spokesperson has since shared with Daily Mail Online: "These tweets predate the individual's employment with the BBC but we are nevertheless taking this very seriously and are investigating."

Who is Tala Halawa?

According to her Twitter bio, Halawa is a BBC journalist located in Ramallah, Palestine. The Palestine Specialist for BBC Monitoring has recently been covering the Gaza conflict where she has already done a piece covering Bella Hadid's stand on the conflict going on in the region. In a Twitter post dated July 20, 2014, Halawa had written "Israel is more Nazi than Hitler" and asked the Israeli Defence Force to "go to hell" along with the hashtag "#PrayForGaza" and "#HitlerWasRight" in the tweet.

Halawa had also previously tweeted "ur media is produced by ur zionist government in order 2 produce ignorant people", "#Zionists can't get enough of our blood", and "they're are crying the holocaust every single moment but they're practicing it every single moment as well," shared the Honest Reporting account. Halawa's LinkedIn which also seems to have been deactivated currently, described her as a "Script writer and presenter in Birzeit University Radio broadcasting channel." Her Twitter account has also been deactivated in the wake of the internal investigation.

Halawa slammed by social media

Ever since the Honest Reporting account brought back Halawa's old tweets, there's been hellfire from social media users tweeting and calling out both Halawa and her employer, the BBC, for her past tweets. "How shocking is this. A BBC employee, Tala Halawa working on the West Bank, tweeted 'Hitler was right' about the Jews. She then locked her account so none of us could see what other anti-semitic filth she had hidden away. How many more Jew haters do the BBC employ on our money?" asked a user. Another wrote: "If @TalaHalawa is still employed by @BBCWorld by tomorrow morning then we’ll know exactly where we stand, if we don’t already."

Others noted, "Even with the bias and misreporting from @BBCNews, I don't think anyone can condone using a 'journalist' who believes 'Hitler was right'." Some even slammed "Here's woke BBC journalist Tala Halawa saying "Hitler was right". Fuck me. This is the kind of balanced reporting you get from an unaccountable, systemically woke organisation. My Jewish friends are very worried right now. I'm not paying my licence fee for this sh*te." Others took a dig at the media giant tweeting "BBC ‘journalist’ tweets support of Hitler, claiming he was ‘right’. It’s not the first time I’ve heard disgusting suggestions such as these. So many secret racists crawling out of the woodwork. Shame on you." One user said, "Sack her, she’s disgusting"