On January 6th the BBC News website published a report about a terror attack on Route 55 earlier in the day in which three people were murdered and eight wounded.
Originally headlined ‘Three killed in Palestinian shooting attack on bus in West Bank’, that report by David Gritten was updated as more details emerged and is currently titled ‘Three Israelis killed in Palestinian shooting attack in West Bank’.
That generalised description of a terror attack carried out by specific perpetrators (two of whom were reported to be “already wanted for involvement in terror activity”) as a “Palestinian shooting attack” is repeated in the report’s opening paragraph.
“Three Israelis have been killed and eight wounded in a Palestinian shooting attack on a bus and two cars in the north of the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military and paramedics say.”
In line with BBC editorial guidelines concerning “Use of Language”, Gritten chose to place superfluous scare quotes around the word terrorists and went on to use the term “Palestinian gunmen”.
“The Israeli military said “terrorists” opened fire at the vehicles near the village of al-Funduq, located on Highway 55, and then fled the scene.
Israeli media cited military officials as saying at least two Palestinian gunmen carried out the attack and that security forces were pursuing them, setting up roadblocks and encircling several towns in the area.”
Unlike many of the BBC’s reports on terror attacks against Israelis, this one does identify the victims.
“Later, Israeli media identified the women who were killed as 70-year-old Aliza Reiss and 73-year-old Rachel Cohen.
They were both residents of the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, which is 3km (2 miles) north-east of al-Funduq on Highway 55, and were reportedly travelling in the same car when it came under fire.
Israel’s police force named the dead man as Master Sergeant Elad Yaakov Winkelstein, a police investigator from Kibbutz Ein Hanatziv in northern Israel who worked in the settlement of Ariel.”
The BBC’s report provides amplification for Hamas’ description of the murders of senior citizens as “heroic”:
“There was no immediate claim from Palestinian armed groups, although Hamas praised the attack as a “heroic response against [Israel’s] continued crimes”, including the war in Gaza.”
Readers are told that:
“Hundreds of Palestinians and dozens of Israelis have been killed in a surge in violence in the West Bank since the start of the war, which was triggered by Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023.”
As is now standard in BBC reporting, Gritten failed to clarify that the “surge in violence” in fact began long before October 2023 due to the rise in terrorism that has been encouraged and facilitated by Iranian-backed terrorist organisations for over three years. He likewise refrained from informing readers that the vast majority (around 96%) of the “hundreds of Palestinians” killed in the last fifteen months were terror operatives or rioters and that some 70% were armed.
It is of course rare for the BBC to report a terror attack against Israelis without introducing what it apparently regards as ‘balance’ and so Gritten went on to tell his readers that:
“On Sunday, the Palestinian health ministry said that two Palestinians – a 17-year-old boy and a 40-year-old man – were killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank.
The teenager was shot dead during an Israeli raid in Askar refugee camp near the city of Nablus, which is 10km (6 miles) east of al-Funduq, it said.
The Israeli military said its troops fired on people who had hurled explosives at them in the Nablus area, according to Reuters news agency. It added that “a hit was identified” and that the incident was under review.
The man was killed in the town of Meithalun, 21km north-east of al-Funduq, where the Israeli military said Border Police officers killed an armed suspect during a wider operation in which 19 other people were arrested.”
Gritten does not tell BBC audiences that “the man” – Hassan Ruba’iah (also Rabaiya) – was a First Lieutenant in the Palestinian Authority Security Forces according to that body’s spokesman or that he was also claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades terrorist group. Readers are also not informed that:
“According to Israeli security agencies, during an attempted arrest on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, Hassan Ruba’iah shot at Border Guard officers – and was killed by them. Two guns were found on his body, and a shotgun, pipe bombs, weapon parts, and 96,000 NIS in cash were found in his home. Near his house was a warehouse that was used as an explosives laboratory.”
Not for the first time we see that the BBC’s idea of a ‘balanced’ report about a terror attack against Israeli civilians is to promote false equivalence by providing an incomplete picture of the circumstances surrounding the death of a member of a Palestinian terrorist group killed during counter-terrorism operations.
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The BBC are complicit in trying to normalise terrorist attacks into just another day in Israel where Palestinians exercise ‘resistence’, which is just woke speak for terrorist attacks on unarmed innocent citizens of Israel. Demolish his house and kick out his close relatives, send them to Iran or Syria. #defundthebbc