While the focus of BBC Middle East coverage has shifted to Syria in the past week or so, audiences are still seeing occasional reporting about events in the Gaza Strip. Those reports mostly promote claims that the BBC has not independently verified and which are sourced from a Hamas-run body.
On the afternoon of December 11th the BBC News website published a report by David Gritten headlined ‘Israeli strike on home in north Gaza kills 19 people, medics say’.
The report relates to an incident in Beit Lahiya and its source – once again – is the spokesman of Hamas’ civil defence agency, Mahmoud Bassal (also Basal).
“An overnight Israeli air strike in northern Gaza has killed at least 19 people, medical officials and the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency say.
Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP news agency that several missiles hit a three-storey house near Kamal Adwan hospital in the town of Beit Lahia.
Dozens of people were said to have been living there and many were still trapped under the rubble, he added. Palestinian media reported that the dead included nine children.”
Only in paragraph four do readers discover that the target of that strike was a Hamas terrorist.
“The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it had carried out a strike targeting a Hamas “terrorist” in the vicinity of Kamal Adwan but questioned the reported death toll.
“According to an initial examination, the number of casualties resulting from the strike published in the media is inaccurate and does not align with the information held by the IDF,” it said. “The IDF is continuing to examine the incident.””
Gritten’s report also promotes claims attributed to “the UN” concerning alleged attacks on an unnamed medical facility – presumably Kamal Adwan hospital:
“Attacks on hospitals in northern Gaza, which are barely functioning amid severe supply shortages, also continue to be reported.
The UN said the hospital was attacked by fire, bombs and shells on four occasions between 3 December and Saturday, resulting in the killing of seven people, including four medics and a child, and the injuring of at least three medical staff as well as patients and their companions.
The head of the World Health Organization said such attacks were “unacceptable and are depriving people in northern Gaza of the already minimal health services they had left”.”
In the report’s final paragraph, Gritten quotes a three-day-old statement from the IDF:
“The IDF said on Sunday that it had conducted a review and found that its forces had not struck in the vicinity of the hospital or damaged any of its essential equipment.”
Gritten refrained from informing his readers that some two weeks earlier the IDF had transferred patients from that hospital to other facilities and provided supplies or that such operations continue. He also had nothing to tell his readers about the relevant issue of Hamas operations in the area.
The following day, December 12th, saw the appearance of a report by Yolande Knell and George Wright under the misleading headline “Israeli strikes kill 12 guarding Gaza aid lorries, medics say”.
That report also relies on claims made by Hamas’ Mahmoud Bassal.
“At least 35 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, including 12 guarding incoming aid lorries, local medics and the Hamas-run Civil Defence authority say.
Seven guards were killed in a strike in Rafah while protecting aid lorries from violent armed theft, which UN workers say is the main obstacle to getting supplies into southern Gaza. Another attack left five guards dead in Khan Younis. […]
“The occupation once again targeted those securing the aid trucks,” Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal told the AFP news agency.
He added that around 30 people, most of them children, were also wounded in the two strikes.
The lorries were carrying flour to warehouses belonging to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), Mr Basal said.”
Later in the report readers discover just how misleading the headline to that report actually is:
“In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: “Overnight, following intelligence information indicating the presence of Hamas terrorists, the IDF conducted precise strikes on armed Hamas terrorists gathered at two different meeting points in southern Gaza.”
It added that “all of the terrorists that were eliminated were members of Hamas and planned to violently hijack humanitarian aid trucks and transfer them to Hamas”.”
In other words, the BBC News website saw no problem running a headline promoting a claim sourced from Hamas in which Hamas terrorists planning to hijack humanitarian aid were portrayed as security guards.
Knell and Wright’s report goes on to amplify additional unverified claims from Hamas’ Mahmoud Bassal:
“Separately, Israeli air strikes on two homes near Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza, and Gaza City, in the north, killed 21 more people, the Civil Defence said.
At least six children were among the 15 people killed in Nuseirat, while the bodies of six other people were found after a strike on an apartment in Gaza City, Mr Basal said.”
Readers are not provided with any information concerning the targets of those strikes.
As we see, while the BBC News website is happy to provide amplification for unverified claims from Hamas sources concerning what are portrayed as exclusively civilian casualties, it has not provided any reporting on the topic of strikes on Hamas operatives during the same week or about the rocket fire directed at Israeli civilian communities.
Another notable recent omission on the part of the BBC concerns follow up to a story it reported on November 30th concerning a strike on a Hamas terrorist who was also an employee at the World Central Kitchen (WCK).
MISSING INFORMATION AND ANONYMOUS CLAIMS IN BBC REPORT ON KHAN YOUNIS
Ten days later it was reported that the WCK had terminated the employment of around 12% of its staff in the Gaza Strip.
“A US-based charity, the World Central Kitchen, fired dozens of Palestinians working for the charity in the Gaza Strip, three workers told Reuters after Israel said at least 62 staff were linked to terror groups. […]
An Israeli security official told Reuters that Israel had demanded an investigation into staff potentially linked to the Hamas-led massacre on southern on October 7, 2023, after it said a WCK employee identified as Ahed Azmi Qdeih took part in the onslaught, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.
Qdeih was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on November 30. WCK confirmed the airstrike at the time and said it had no knowledge about an employee involved in last year’s brutal assault.
The official said an Israeli security review found that 62 WCK employees had “affiliations and direct connections” with terror groups.”
Visitors to the BBC News website have seen no follow-up reporting whatsoever on that story.
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التناول الانتقائي لموقع بي بي سي نيوز الإخباري فيما يتعلق بقطاع غزة
Knell is a liar, based in Jerusalem in Beit Safafa, she is a mouthpiece for Hamas – she readily exhibits her partiality but this does not both BBC
Yes they killed 19 Hamas fighters, give it up Knell everyone knows where your sympathies lie and everyone know your lies deserve no sympathy
#defundthebbc #journalismisdead