On the evening of July 15th the BBC promoted a BBC News website report on social media.
That report was written by David Gritten and is likewise headlined “Israeli strike on central Gaza school reportedly kills 22”.
Gritten opens with an account of events provided by the terrorist organisation which began the current conflict and is in fact the reason behind the strike carried out the previous day on that UNRWA-run school. [emphasis added]
“At least 22 Palestinians were killed and 100 wounded in a strike on Sunday on a UN-run school in central Gaza being used as a shelter by displaced people, the Hamas-run health ministry says.”
In typical BBC ‘he said – she said’ style and using superfluous punctuation, Gritten then tells readers that:
“The Israeli military said it had targeted a number of Hamas “terrorists” operating from Abu Oraiban School in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp.”
Gritten’s report goes on to promote unverified accounts of the story from unnamed sources:
“Witnesses told BBC Arabic there were no armed fighters there and that children were among the casualties. […]
Thousands were reportedly sheltering at Abu Oraiban School, which is run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), when it was it struck on Sunday afternoon.
A displaced woman told BBC Arabic that she had been lighting a fire to cook in a corridor when a nearby room was hit.
“As soon as the explosion occurred the walls of the room collapsed on us,” she said. “I saw a little boy whose leg was bleeding and a dismembered corpse which people covered with blankets. I also saw a little boy lying in a pool of blood, with his whole face bleeding.”
She added: “I quickly ran out of the school. I found my aunt at the school gate, hugging her burnt young son. When I left the school, I saw many injured people lying on the ground and bodies torn to pieces.”
Another resident said his family had been living at the school for six months because UN facilities were supposed to be safe.
“There are no armed men and no reason to strike schools this way,” he added. “The dead and injured people are mainly women and children staying at this school.”
Video footage filmed by a freelance cameraman working for BBC Arabic later on Sunday showed hundreds of people walking past the rubble of a destroyed structure in one corner of the school compound. A heavily damaged staircase could also be seen through two large holes in a wall of the adjoining three-storey school building.”
In line with what has become standard BBC practice, Gritten fails to identify that “freelance cameraman working for BBC Arabic”, meaning that audiences cannot know whether or not he is one of the many ‘journalists’ in the Gaza Strip with connections to terrorist organisations or their media arms. Of course if the BBC is confident that BBC Arabic’s freelance cameraman is a reputable and reliable source of accurate and impartial information, it should have no concerns about identifying him.
Gritten chooses to amplify Hamas denials concerning its use of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip as human shields, despite the ample evidence to the contrary.
“The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Hamas fighters had used the school as “a hideout and operational infrastructure” from which attacks against its troops were directed and carried out.
“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken in order to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions and additional intelligence,” it added.
The IDF also accused Hamas of systematically violating international law by exploiting civilians and civilian structures as “human shields” – an accusation the group has denied.”
He also chooses to provide a platform for the Hamas terrorist organisation’s baseless propaganda:
“Hamas condemned the Israeli strike as what it called an “extension of the genocide” against displaced Palestinians.”
The point of Gritten’s report is to advance a narrative concerning attacks on schools.
“It was the fifth attack on or near to schools in eight days. […]
The IDF has acknowledged carrying out five strikes on or near to schools sheltering displaced people since 6 July. It has said they targeted Hamas politicians, police officers and fighters using them as bases.
Last Tuesday, hospital officials said at least 29 people had been killed in an Israeli strike on a camp for displaced people outside a school in the town of Abasan al-Kabira, near the southern city of Khan Younis.
A total of 20 people, including a senior Hamas government official, were reportedly killed in three earlier strikes at two other Unrwa-run schools in Nuseirat and a church-run school in Gaza City.”
The same narrative was evident in a report by Barbara Plett Usher published on the evening of July 16th under the headline “50 reportedly killed in latest Israeli strikes in Gaza”.
In that report quoting the health ministry run by Hamas about a strike on terrorists from the same organisation operating out of UNRWA’s Al-Razi School in Nuseirat and a separate strike on a Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander, readers find the same superfluous punctuation as used by Gritten:
“The IDF statement said it had struck “terrorists” who were operating in the school and directing attacks on its troops in Gaza.”
Readers also find the same promotion of Hamas denials concerning its use of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip as human shields, despite the ample evidence to the contrary.
“The IDF accused Hamas of exploiting civilian buildings and using civilians as human shields, which the group has denied.”
Plett Usher also echoes Gritten’s previous framing on the topic of schools:
“This is the sixth school across Gaza that Israel has hit in 10 days, attacks that UN officials have strongly condemned.”
The IDF has indeed carried out strikes on or near several UNRWA-run schools (and others) both since and before July 6th and has also carried out operations at other UNRWA facilities. The reason for that is Hamas’ exploitation of civilian infrastructure – including UNRWA buildings – for the purposes of terror.
However, rather than approaching the UN and UNRWA to ask why they have repeatedly failed to alert the displaced people sheltering at those schools to the dangers arising from the presence of terrorists and why they have not only serially failed to condemn Hamas’ systematic and growing exploitation of their infrastructure but actively avoided the issue, the BBC’s journalists prefer to provide a platform for Hamas blatant disinformation in the form of denials of its long-practiced use of human shields.
Citing a previous BBC report, Seth Frantzman at the Jerusalem Post noted earlier this month that:
“Hamas knows that when it hides at schools, any airstrike on the site can be used for propaganda.
On July 6 for example, the BBC reported that “at least 16 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a UN-run school in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials have said. Dozens more have been injured.”
The IDF said in response that it had struck a UN-run school in Nuseirat. “Earlier today, based on the IDF’s and the Israel Securities Authority’s (ISA) intelligence, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) struck several terrorists operating in structures located in the area of UNRWA’s Al-Jaouni school in the central Gaza Strip,” the IDF said.
Hamas knows that in this case, it is likely that it may win the propaganda war because most reports will state that the IDF struck a “school” rather than a Hamas site.”
Sadly for members of the BBC’s funding public seeking accurate and impartial information about events in the Gaza Strip, the BBC’s coverage displays precisely that method of reporting. BBC audiences are repeatedly seeing reporting that promotes unverified Hamas claims concerning casualties resulting from strikes on civilian infrastructure exploited by Hamas and to top it off, Hamas denials of that exploitation.
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BBC REPORTS ON STRIKE ON HAMAS LEADERS IGNORE THE ISSUE OF HUMAN SHIELDS
The BBC dont employ Jewish reporters in Israel – why????
The last one was Michael Elkins who was an American broadcaster and journalist who worked for the American network, CBS, for the magazine Newsweek and then for 17 years with the BBC. He was the first to report Israel’s destruction of Arab air forces on the opening day of the Six-Day War in 1967.
That was 57 years ago! Are they afraid they will favour Israel over the Arabs in their reporting so they use bigoted non-Jews!