A story that falls outside BBC framing of Israel and Palestinians

Follow-up to a story reported by the BBC in 2016 gets no coverage.

In July 2016 the BBC – as usual – reported both the murder of an Israeli in a drive-by shooting attack and the later operation to apprehend the Hamas-linked operatives who carried out that attack without using the words terror, terrorism or terrorist.

The BBC News website’s report on the attack told readers that:

“…an Israeli man was killed and his wife and two children wounded after their car was fired on near the Jewish settlement of Otniel. […]

The victims of Friday’s attack were members of the same family. Local media named the dead man as 48-year-old Michael “Miki” Mark, a father-of-10.”

BBC audiences were not however told that – as later documented by “local media” – the wounded members of the family were given first aid by a Palestinian resident of the Hebron area and his wife.

“In the moments after the Friday drive-by shooting attack that killed Rabbi Miki Mark outside the West Bank city of Hebron, a local Palestinian couple helped the surviving members of his family escape the overturned vehicle and administered first aid until first responders arrived at the scene. […]

After he managed to pry one of the doors open, the man, who wasn’t named in the report, said he pulled 14-year-old Tehila from the wrecked car.

He said his wife, who is a medical doctor, worked to stanch the bleeding from the teen’s abdominal wound while he called an ambulance to the scene.”

The man’s actions resulted in his being sacked from his job. Shots were fired and Molotov cocktails thrown at his house. The harassment and death threats he endured due to having helped Israelis wounded in a terror attack led him to seek refuge in Israel. This week he and his family were granted residency.

“Interior Minister Aryeh Deri on Tuesday awarded Israeli residency to a Palestinian man who saved the children of a West Bank rabbi in the aftermath of the deadly terror attack in which the father was killed. […]

The Palestinian man, who has not been named, received a temporary visa to live and work in Israel after receiving death threats in his hometown near the West Bank city of Hebron.

However, the visa was not renewed in August 2018 and for the last year he was unable to work, becoming homeless and living in limbo in Israel.

After his plight was revealed recently in a Channel 12 report, and following a campaign by several Israelis, including settler leaders, he was awarded Israeli residency on Tuesday, along with his wife and son.

While presenting him his identity documents, Deri praised him for his “selfless, noble” actions and said he would now be able to begin a new life in Israel.

The residency entitles him to a work permit and social benefits, Deri said.”

The story of a Palestinian man who was persecuted by Palestinians for helping Israelis in a medical emergency finding refuge in Israel of course clashes with the BBC’s standard narrative and so – despite it having featured heavily in the “local media” this week – audiences have seen no reporting on the topic. 

Related Articles:

Another hole in the BBC’s Middle East narrative laid bare

The missing word in the BBC’s report on the capture of a Hamas terror cell

 

 

 

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