On September 6th the BBC News website published a report by Lucy Williamson “in Jenin” and Raffi Berg “in London” headlined “Israeli forces pull out of Jenin after major operation”.
Relating to the recent counter-terrorism operations in northern Samaria, that report opens by telling readers that: [emphasis added]
“Israeli forces have withdrawn from Jenin city and its refugee camp in the occupied West Bank after a major nine-day operation there.
The area – a stronghold of militants and with a civilian population of about 60,000 – was targeted in one of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) biggest actions in the West Bank for years. The IDF said it was acting against terrorism.”
With the BBC unable to tell its audiences that the targets of counter-terrorism operations are terrorists due to its absurd editorial guidelines on “use of language”, readers then find armed and active terrorists portrayed as “members” of “armed groups”.
“At least 36 Palestinians were killed – 21 from Jenin governorate – the Palestinian health ministry says.
Most of the dead have been claimed by armed groups as members, but the ministry says children are also among those killed. An Israeli soldier was also killed during fighting in Jenin.”
Williamson’s contribution to the report includes the following:
“Following the Israeli withdrawal from Jenin refugee camp, residents are emerging into the streets for the first time since the IDF began its assault on 27 August.
Many, stunned and exhausted, slowly assessed the damage – the new layers of destruction mapping this operation onto the camp.
Khalid abu Sabeer lives in a basement apartment next to the mosque. The entire floor of his home, he said, was blown out by a powerful explosion.
The Israeli army was interested in a cave beneath the building, he said, that had been there for decades, empty.
The IDF asked him to leave before blowing it up – and his home along with it.”
Only sixteen paragraphs later do readers (who may or may not have made the connection) find the following:
“In a statement, the Israeli military said that in the Jenin area “14 terrorists [had] been eliminated, over 30 suspects [had] been apprehended, [and] approximately 30 explosives planted under roads were dismantled” during the operation.
It said it had also dismantled what it called “numerous terror infrastructure sites… including an underground weapons storage facility located beneath a mosque, and a lab used to manufacture explosives” and had removed “large quantities of weapons”.”
Readers also discover that either Williamson or another BBC reporter apparently attended the funerals of a terrorist.
“At the funeral of Mohammed Zubeidi, one of five militants killed in an Israeli air strike on a car in Tubas on Thursday, a Palestinian fighter spoke defiantly.
“When you see the Israelis kill your brother, kill this or that person, how do you – in your heart – stay sitting and looking at all of this?” he said to the BBC.
“People are afraid that they’re coming to destroy their homes, or arrest them, but so what? Let them arrest everyone – my brother has been arrested for two years. So what?”
The IDF said Zubeidi was “a significant terrorist from the Jenin area”.
He was also the son of Zakaria Zubeidi, the imprisoned former commander in Jenin of the Fatah movement’s armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.”
Readers are not informed that Mohammed Zubeidi had taken part in shooting attacks on Israeli communities. Neither are they told why his father – a former employee of the Palestinian Authority – is imprisoned or that he was the planner of a 2002 terror attack in Beit Shean in which six Israeli civilians were murdered.
The report also states:
“The Palestinian health ministry says three Palestinians have also been killed in the southern governorate of Hebron over the past nine days.
The Israeli military said one of them carried out a shooting attack that killed three Israeli police officers near Tarqumiyah on Sunday.”
BBC audiences are not told that the perpetrator of the September 1st fatal shooting attack near Tarqumiyah – Muhannad al-Aswad – was claimed by Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Neither are they told that the two other Palestinians “killed in the southern governate of Hebron” were the perpetrators of car bombings and were members of the terrorist organisation Hamas.
Williamson and Berg’s report ends by telling BBC audiences that:
“There has been a spike in violence in the West Bank since Hamas’s attack and the ensuing war in Gaza.
More than 600 Palestinians have been killed as Israeli forces have intensified their raids, the Palestinian health ministry says. Israel says it is trying to stem deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Israel.”
Once again we see the BBC promoting the misleading notion of “a spike in violence” since October 2023. As Raffi Berg should know because he wrote a backgrounder on the topic eight months earlier in February 2023, the rise in violence facilitated and encouraged by Iran and its terrorist proxies began long before that.
Additionally, Williamson and Berg fail to inform their readers that the majority of the “600 Palestinians” killed during the past eleven months were terrorists, perpetrators of attacks or males engaged in violence at the time and that it is Palestinian terrorism that is the reason for the counter-terrorism operations and ensuing fatalities, rather than the other way round, as they imply.
Related Articles:
REVIEWING BBC PRESENTATION OF THE ‘WHY?’ BEHIND A COUNTER-TERRORISM OPERATION
