The Israel Security Agency’s report on terror attacks (Hebrew) during December 2017 shows that throughout the month a total of 249 incidents took place: 178 in Judea & Samaria, fifty-six in Jerusalem and fifteen in the Gaza Strip/Sinai sector.
In Judea & Samaria and Jerusalem the agency recorded 216 attacks with petrol bombs, twelve attacks using explosive devices, four shooting attacks and two stabbing attacks. Also recorded were twelve separate incidents of missile fire from the Gaza Strip (with a total of 19 projectiles launched) and three petrol bomb attacks in the same sector.
The BBC News website reported on missile attacks launched from the Gaza Strip on December 8th and December 13th but the additional attacks throughout the month did not receive specific coverage.
For the first time this year, BBC reports Gaza rocket attacks on Israeli civilians
Correction secured to inaccurate BBC News website claim about Gaza attacks
BBC News reverts to ignoring Gaza missile fire
A stabbing attack in Jerusalem on December 10th in which a security guard was critically wounded received just 21 words of coverage in an article on another topic. A stabbing attack on December 15th in which a policeman was wounded was covered in a BBC report on that day.
Additional attacks – including a shooting attack on a bus near Mevo Dotan on December 5th, a petrol bomb attack near Tubas on December 6th and a shooting attack on a bus near Ofra on December 10th – did not receive any BBC News website coverage.
In all, the BBC News website covered 1.6% of the terror attacks that occurred during December 2017.
Throughout the whole of 2017 the BBC News website reported a total of fourteen incidents – i.e. 0.92% of the terror attacks which actually took place. Only three of the twenty-one separate incidents of rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula which took place during 2017 received coverage on the BBC’s English language website. In contrast to the previous year – during which all the Israeli and foreign national fatalities resulting from terror attacks were covered – in 2017 the BBC News website reported 89% of the total fatalities with two fatal attacks in January and October ignored.
With the BBC News website having covered less than one percent of the terror attacks against Israelis throughout 2017 (in contrast to 2.8% in 2016 and 3.2% in 2015) and with none of those reports, or any other, having clarified the all-important context of the scale of attacks as a whole, it is obvious that BBC audiences are not being adequately provided with the information required for them to “engage fully with issues across […] the world” as defined in the BBC’s public purposes remit.
The absence of that information is important because it means that audiences are unable to properly understand Israeli counter-terrorism measures such as the anti-terrorist fence or checkpoints. It also means that when Israel is obliged to respond to rising terrorism (as seen for example in the summer of 2014), audiences and BBC journalists alike are unable to put events into their appropriate context and thus arrive at uninformed and inaccurate conclusions.
Related Articles:
BBC News coverage of terrorism in Israel – November 2017
Jerusalem terror attack gets 21 words of BBC coverage
