A-Level student Callum Johnson-Mills has gone viral after calling the BBC out for its complicity in the genocide in Palestine. The 19 year old was picking up his exam results when a BBC reporter, live on air, asked him a question. Instead, Callum responded with:
On that note, I just want to say Free Palestine, end the genocide, and the BBC is complicit.
The reporter then tried to change the subject saying:
All right, we’re here to talk about A-Level results, thank you for your thoughts.
Now, Callum has spoken to Dazed about his experiences as a politics student. Whilst the BBC may not believe that a politics student would want to talk about Palestine, Callum clearly thought otherwise.
BBC complicit on Palestine
Callum explained that as soon as he discovered the BBC would be visiting his college, he knew he had to speak out:
I thought, ‘OK, there’s no chance in hell that I am going on the BBC and I am not calling them out, because that would just be so tone-deaf and ungenuine.’
I also think it’s quite ironic, because I did politics at A-level and for the last two years I’ve been shut down every time I’ve tried to talk about Palestine, because it’s apparently ‘divisive’ and a ‘touchy subject’.
In fact, like many other students across the country, Callum was told not to speak about Palestine:
I was told I couldn’t talk about it in a lesson about protests, while the biggest Palestine protest was happening in London that same week. So it’s quite satisfying that my college asked me to go on national TV and I was able to say everything that they’ve tried to silence me about.
Immediately after Callum’s comments on Palestine, the BBC reporter tries to move the conversation along – and, Callum takes quite a dim view of this:
She also said, ‘Gaza is a whole different subject’, but I don’t think you can make that separation. You can’t escape this, no matter how hard you try, even on A-level results day. I recognise the ability for me as a teenager to take exams without fearing for my life, to pick up results without worrying about getting killed, and to be able to wake up in the morning and have breakfast.
These are things which Palestinian people have been robbed of, especially Palestinian children who have such huge academic dreams and career aspirations. A lot of them don’t even have their lives now because of Israel’s actions.
In the summer of 2024, Action Aid spoke to a number of Palestinian children who expressed a desire to be able to go to school again. Arwa said:
[I am] an 11-year-old student in the fifth grade. I lost my right of going to school as displaced people need to live there. Most schools were destroyed, burnt down or bombarded as a result of the ongoing war. I really miss my school; I miss my friends and my teachers very much.
Maryam said:
My house was bombed, and I now live in my school. I wish to go back home; I wish for the war to be over. I don’t want to live in my school. I want to learn in it. I miss my friends and my teachers…My books were burnt to ashes. My bag was torn, and my notebooks are gone…I wish to go back home. I wish to get back to learning. I want to put on my school uniform and get ready for school.
A year later, those same children are facing a famine manufactured by Israel. Once again, school is an otherworldly dream. Children from Palestine have been bombed and displaced many times over. They’ve seen their siblings and former schoolmates blown to pieces. They’ve run for their lives with their families, only to face more bombing. Callum is exactly right – he understands what it means that he can safely have his breakfast and collect his exam results, whilst others can’t.
Complicit
When asked what he’d have said if he had more time, Callum explained:
The BBC has been biased in their reporting [on Gaza] for quite some time now. One study found that when talking about Israeli fatalities, they used the word ‘murdered’ 220 times, but only once used it to describe Palestinian fatalities. I can’t even wrap my head around that, especially for a media outlet that has a royal charter to be impartial. This is a clear genocide, and I think anyone not calling it for what it is is complicit.
Callum’s principled stand shows more moral integrity and backbone than the BBC have been able to muster throughout Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Palestine. And, if anything, his college should be proud that he’s evidently learned something from his politics A-Levels.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Viral News International
This post was originally published on Canary.