On the evening of November 17th the BBC News website published a report by Mallory Moench which, after amendment, now carries the headline ‘Hezbollah media chief killed in Israeli strike in Beirut’.
That report opens with a tepid description of a terrorist organisation proscribed by the UK and many other countries as a “militant group” and continues with further references to “the group”. [emphasis added]
“Hezbollah’s media chief Mohammed Afif has been killed in an Israeli strike in central Beirut, the Lebanese militant group has confirmed.
A strike hit the headquarters of the Baath political party in the densely populated Ras al-Naba neighbourhood on Sunday, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency. […]
Afif, one of the few remaining public faces of the group, was last seen on Monday, when he gave a press conference in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the group is based.”
A particularly notable part of Moench’s report reads as follows:
“BBC Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab said the development raised concern that Israel was expanding attacks beyond Hezbollah military officials. Hezbollah is also a political party with representatives in parliament and ministers in government.
“That is really sending alarm to people, that there are no signs of de-escalating this situation or finding a solution, but rather further escalation and widening Israeli targets against Hezbollah in Lebanon,” she told BBC’s news channel.”
While Moench confines her portrayal of Afif’s job description to “media chief”, as reported by the Times of Israel:
“Afif was in charge of Hezbollah’s media relations. The IDF calls him Hezbollah’s chief propagandist and spokesperson.
He joined Hezbollah in the 1980s, and “wielded significant influence over Hezbollah’s military operations,” the IDF says in a statement.
The IDF says Afif “was in contact with senior officials and directly involved in advancing and executing Hezbollah’s terrorist activities against Israel.””
Kan 11’s Arab affairs correspondent Roi Kais reported that in recent weeks, following the elimination of Nasrallah and in light of Hizballah’s leadership shortage, Afif became involved in directing military operations against Israel and was party to the terrorist organisation’s decision making.
That, of course, is at odds with the claims made by Lina Sinjab, according to which the elimination of Mohammed Afif indicates that Israel is “expanding attacks beyond Hezbollah military officials” and “widening targets”.
There is, however, nothing surprising about the efforts of a BBC Middle East correspondent to promote the false notion of different ‘wings’ to the Hizballah terrorist organisation: the BBC has cultivated that myth (which Hizballah itself has denied) for years, most recently in its attempt to whitewash a Hizballah financial operation.
Clearly such framing does nothing to enhance BBC audiences’ understanding of the story.
Moench also tells her readers that:
“Later on Sunday, another strike in central Beirut on Mar Elias Street killed two people and wounded 13 more, the Lebanese health ministry said.
The BBC has reached out to the IDF about the second strike in central Beirut.”
Moench’s report has not been updated to clarify that the target of that second strike was Mahmoud Madi, head of operations at Hezbollah’s “Southern Front”.
Notably, Moench chose to end her report as follows:
“More than 3,400 people have been killed in Lebanon since then [October 2023 – Ed], including at least 2,600 since Israel launched a [sic] intense air campaign followed by a ground invasion in the south in late September, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Another 1.2 million people have been displaced.”
Readers are not informed that over 70% of those killed in Lebanon were males or that it is estimated that some 3,000 were Hizballah operatives, together with around 100 members of other terrorist organisations . Notably, Moench has nothing to tell her readers about the number of Israelis killed by Hizballah fire or the tens of thousands of people displaced from their homes in Israel.
BBC correspondents in Arab countries rarely report the truth – their aim is to be the mouthpiece of the host nation following its ideology come what may.
As such it is not unbiased reporting but geared not to cause an affront to the host country.
It is to be noted the lack of reports from Iraq, Syria, Saudi, Jordan, Yemen and Egypt just to not a few!