BBC presenter Mishal Husain has been embroiled in a major row over a live interview she did with an Israeli government spokesman.

David Mencer, who was being interviewed by Husain on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Monday, accused the veteran broadcaster of “blindly repeating what terrorist organisations … feed you”.

The former Labour Friends of Israel director said Husain should be given the “pro-Palestinian reporter of the year award”, adding: “You producing reports on this war one-sidedly, without context, ends up with attacks on Jews on the streets of Britain. It ends up with cars going up the Finchley Road saying: ‘Jews, we’re going to rape your daughters’.”

Husain had been questioning Mencer about a recent IDF strike on a school in Gaza City. The corporation interviewed Palestinian professor Dr Khamis Elessi, who told them that casualties from the blast included elderly people, women and children.

In response, the Israeli army said the school was being used as a Hamas command centre.

A BBC spokesperson said it rejected Mencer’s allegations. They said: “As the listener could hear, Mishal Husain was asking legitimate and important questions in a professional, fair and courteous manner.”

Mencer rejected the claims made by the Professor, arguing that Israel was “extremely sceptical about pseudo medical staff” who had “inflated” the number of casualties throughout the Gaza war. He claimed that 19 Hamas fighters had been “eliminated” in the strike on the school, and that “there were no women and children present”.

He added that his embattled state was fighting a “very dirty war” in Gaza. He said that Benjamin Netanyahu’s forces were winning the military conflict by “destroying Hamas”, but he conceded it was losing the media war.

He added: “You as the BBC, you do no credit to ordinary Gazans by just blindly repeating what terrorist organisations, Isis-like organisations, the information which they feed you. It simply doesn’t bear any resemblance to the truth.”

He argued that reporters were simply parroting the figures given out by the Hamas Health Ministry: “You do this subject no justice when you repeat their figures.”

During the interview, Husain noted the Israeli government’s ban on foreign journalists reporting from war-torn Gaza.

In reply, Mencer claimed that the introduction of international reporters would only complicate the IDF’s military operation. He said: “There is no shortage of news coming out of Gaza. For heaven’s sake, it’s the most reported conflict of modern time”.