The BBC is facing criticism after inviting Swedish activist Andreas Malm onto the Today programme, despite his previous description of the October 7 Hamas attack as a “beautiful act of liberation”.
The 49-year-old climate academic has described Hamas as “heroic” and referred to the group’s actions simply as “armed resistance”.
He has also called the 2023 attack in Israel—during which 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage—the largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust, “highly deplorable but not incomprehensible”.
However, those remarks received limited attention when Malm appeared on the flagship BBC radio programme to discuss being refused entry to the UK.
Malm had been scheduled to speak alongside the co-founder of proscribed terror group Palestine Action.
Immigration officials blocked his entry, saying that his presence “may not be considered to be conducive to the public good”.
The academic used his radio appearance to describe the decision as “scandalous” and call on the government to reverse it.
He said: “I am deeply dismayed at this sudden ban on travelling to the UK.
Swedish activist Andreas Malm, 49, refers to Hamas as “heroic” and simply “armed resistance”
The BBC headquarters at New Broadcasting House. The broadcaster is under fire after Malm was invited onto the Today programme
“I have been going to the UK for decades—this is where I conducted archival research for my PhD dissertation, lectured at dozens of universities and attended even more conferences.”
Taking aim at the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham, he added: “One was under the impression that the Burnham government had slightly more respect for the basic notions of freedom of expression and other democratic rights.
“I appeal for this decision to be overturned.”
But host Sean Farrington challenged him only once over his inflammatory comments about Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups in connection with the mass killing and rape of civilians.
In an hour-long lecture in Stockholm, delivered two months after the attack, Malm said: “I think that a few decades from now, when we look back at what happened on the 7th of October… we will see the mass killing of civilians as the ugly, deplorable, lamentable, tragic dimensions of a fundamentally beautiful liberation struggle.”
Despite the terror group livestreaming the atrocity using GoPro cameras, he also claimed that there was no “conclusive proof that Hamas actually ordered its fighters to kill civilians”.
He also attempted to justify the scenes at Israel’s Nova music festival, where Palestinian terrorists sexually assaulted men and women, killed 344 civilians and abducted 44 others.
Malm also said the 2023 massacre in Israel was “highly deplorable but not incomprehensible”
He said: “I think that if you live in a concentration camp and are completely unable to leave it—
“Then finally you have this paraglider and manage, for the first time, to fly out of the concentration camp and land among people who are dancing…
“You would probably, in that moment, express the anger you have inside you through some unplanned destructive violence against civilians.”
Malm’s exclusion from the UK comes amid intense controversy over the proscription of Palestine Action. Author Sally Rooney has withdrawn her books from sale in the UK because of her support for the group.
The organisation was proscribed after activists broke into an RAF base and sprayed military aircraft with red paint. Critics have argued that the decision wrongly conflated protest with terrorism.
During the interview, BBC presenter Farrington asked only one question about Malm’s views on Hamas. He said: “You’ve called the October 7 attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage during a Hamas-led assault on villages and a music festival, fundamentally an act of liberation. It could be because of that, couldn’t it?”
After Malm replied that he had travelled to the UK many times since expressing those views, the interviewer moved on.
Alex Hearn, of Labour Against Antisemitism, said: “Malm has repeatedly voiced support for Hamas’s actions on October 7. Barring him from entering the UK was the correct decision. It is therefore all the more troubling that the BBC gave him a platform on Radio 4’s Today programme, where his views went largely unchallenged. It is also not the first time extremist voices have been given airtime by the broadcaster funded by our licence fee with little scrutiny.”
Malm told the Mail: “I stand by everything I have said and written about October 7 and the Palestinian resistance.
“I have received no indication that these statements and positions—set out in a book available in any good British bookshop—are the reason for this travel ban.”
He added that, if he had been banned because of his statements, it raised the question of why those who “describe the genocide in Gaza as ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’” were not also barred.
A BBC spokesman said: “This was clearly put to Professor Malm towards the beginning of the interview.”
