BBC News describes Henkin family attackers as “alleged militants”

On October 5th the Israeli security services announced the arrest of the terrorist cell responsible for the murders of Eitam and Na’ama Henkin four days previously.

“The Shin Bet named the cell leader as Ragheb Ahmad Muhammad Aliwi, a previously jailed Hamas fighter from Nablus, who recruited the other four terrorists, instructed them how to carry out attacks and provided them with their weapons.

The other four were named as Yahia Muhammad Naif Abdullah Hajj Hamad, who carried out the shooting itself; Samir Zahir Ibrahim Kusah, the driver of the car who is linked to previous terror attacks; Karem Lufti Fatahi Razek, the gunman who was wounded by gunfire from one of his fellow cell members during the attack; and Zir Ziad Jamal Amar, who cleared the way for the car to carry out the attack.

All four are Hamas activists from Nablus.

Razek was arrested in a hospital in Nablus by an undercover police unit. The other suspects were arrested at their homes and other locations.

The Abdel Qader al-Husseini Brigades, a group affiliated with Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, had claimed on Friday that it carried out the terror attack. In fact, said the Shin Bet, Hamas was to blame. It was not clear whether the killing was organized higher up the Hamas hierarchy.”

The next day, the security services also recovered the weapon used in the attack.

Despite having covered the terror attack on the Henkin family (without actually naming it as such, of course), the BBC News website did not produce any stand-alone follow-up reporting on the subject of the arrests and the only brief mention of them came in an article titled “Palestinian youths killed in West Bank clashes” which appeared on the website’s Middle East page on October 5th.

Although the terrorists had admitted their involvement in the shooting attack (as well as two previous ones which fortunately did not result in fatalities) by the time the public announcement concerning their arrest was made, and although Hamas welcomed the announcement and again praised the attack, the language used by the BBC in its brief mention of the arrests curiously suggests to readers that the men might not after all be “Hamas militants”.

terror cell Henkin murders

Commenting on the arrests, Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon said:

“”Hamas is trying all of the time to carry out terror attacks in various forms. The main orchestration, funding, and training comes, generally, from [Hamas’s] Gaza headquarters, which oversees West Bank attacks, and through Salah Arouri, who runs the organization’s terror activities from his base in Istanbul. It would be appropriate for the free world not to sweep this reality under the rug,” the defense minister added.”

As regular readers know, the BBC has abstained for more than a year from reporting on Hamas’ efforts – including those orchestrated by Saleh al Arouri from Turkey – to increase its terror activity in Judea & Samaria.

If BBC audiences are to fully understand the background to the current wave of terror in Israel; that is a part of the story the BBC must begin to tell.

 

 

 

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