Just after 7 p.m. Israeli time on December 18th the BBC News website published a report by David Gritten headlined ‘Gaza health ministry says Israeli strikes kill 110 in Jabalia’.
The last four paragraphs of that report read as follows:
“In another development on Monday, Human Rights Watch accused Israel’s military of “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”.
“Israeli forces are deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food and fuel, while wilfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival,” it alleged.
Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy called the report “a lie”.
“Israel has excess capacity to inspect more than twice as many aid trucks as are entering Gaza. We’re still pumping water into Gaza through two pipelines and have placed no restrictions on entry of food and water. Direct your anger to Hamas, which hijacks aid,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.”
The Human Rights Watch report concerned had been published earlier on the same day. Clearly Gritten and BBC News website editors made no effort whatsoever to fact check the serious allegations made by that political NGO before they chose to amplify them to its audiences worldwide.
In the week prior to that report’s publication, 1,208 trucks of supplies entered the Gaza Strip.
Since the beginning of the war initiated by Hamas on October 7 and up to the date of publication of Gritten’s report, 47,480 tons of food and 15,220 tons of water had entered the Gaza Strip.
Since the beginning of December, 56 trucks carrying fuel and 28 trucks carrying cooking gas entered the Gaza Strip.
In other words, the HRW claim that Israel is “deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food and fuel” is an outright falsehood.
As noted by COGAT:
“The volume of humanitarian aid is determined, among other factors, by the ability of humanitarian organizations within the Gaza Strip to absorb the aid.”
As for the claim that Israel is “wilfully impeding humanitarian assistance”:
In addition:
Israel’s obligations on the issue of humanitarian aid are as follows: [emphasis added]
“Under the law of armed conflict (also known as international humanitarian law), parties to an armed conflict are required to allow and facilitate access to consignments of supplies essential for the survival of the civilian population if it is not adequately provided. This obligation is subject to important conditions, including that there are no serious reasons to fear that consignments will be diverted from their civilian destination or otherwise accrue to the advantage of the enemy’s military efforts. International law does not obligate a party to a conflict to provide by itself supplies to the territory of the other party.”
The HRW claim that Israel is “apparently razing agricultural areas” appears as follows in its report:
“Satellite imagery reviewed by Human Rights Watch indicates that since the start of the Israeli military’s ground offensive on October 27, agricultural land, including orchards, greenhouses, and farmland in northern Gaza, has been razed, apparently by Israeli forces.”
HRW of course has nothing at all to say about the fact that Hamas uses such areas both for above-ground military activity (such as the launching of rockets at Israeli civilian communities) and for underground assets such as the massive tunnel recently discovered in the area of Beit Hanoun –which is one of the locations cited in HRW’s report.
While Gritten and his editors may well think that the inclusion of a quote from a Tweet put out by an Israeli spokesman in response to a Tweet by Omar Shakir of HRW is sufficient to tick the ‘impartiality’ box, that is not the case.
Despite touting itself for years as an antidote to ‘fake news’ and disinformation, the BBC already has a long history of uncritical amplification of politically motivated reports produced by Human Rights Watch. As we see, no effort whatsoever was made to fact check HRW’s entirely false claim that Israel is using “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” before the BBC rushed to spread that pernicious disinformation worldwide.
The BBC factcheck something haw haw haw guffaw guffaw, their antisemitic reporters would not know how to. As for the HRW they are unable to get their own house in order, they unfortunately belong to the cesspit of antisemitic human rights organisations who like, The Red Cross War on Want, UNWRA etc are only there to ensure the suffering of ordinary Palestinian citizens and the castigating of Israel for actually existing let alone going above and beyond when dealing with an inhumane enemy. We have seen so many pictures of food and water stockpiled in warehouses, not being given to Gaza citizens yet not one of those organisation has yet condemned Hamas. It is their Islamic ideology and brainwashing that stops them knowing right from wrong. Arab nations have previously underestimated the only Jewish Nation in the world and this time Hamas have shot themselves in the foot. Hezbollah, Houthis and Iran mind your backs you are next to suffer the destructive wrath of Hashem #defundthebbc the promoters of Jihad in the UK.