On February 2nd the BBC News website published an article headlined “‘I don’t know how he survived’, says freed Israeli hostage’s niece”. Credited to Mallory Moench and Alice Cuddy, that report is based on an interview with the niece of Gadi Mozes who had been released on January 30th, together with two female Israeli hostages and five Thai citizens held by Hamas, in the third phase of the ceasefire deal.
The report begins by telling readers that:
“While held hostage by Hamas for 15 months in Gaza, 80-year-old Gadi Moses ate mainly a piece of bread and an olive twice a day, his niece Efrat Machikawa says.
“I have no idea how he survived,” she tells the BBC. “He lost so much weight.”
He was given a small bowl of water to wash himself every five days and had to ask to use the toilet, she said. He moved frequently and was mostly alone, with Ms Machikawa saying “loneliness is another form of torture”.”
Later in that report, readers find a quote from the niece of another hostage who had been released on February 1st:
“Two former hostages’ family members told the BBC they came back thinner.
“We’re all very, very excited to have Keith back home, but very worried to see the state that he came back to us in,” Tal Wax, the niece of 65-year-old American-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel, who was released on Saturday, said.
“Although we can see that he is able to walk and talk we see that he has lost a lot of weight,” she said.”
Prior to that quote, however, readers find the following paragraph:
“Now, as hostages return from more than a year in captivity, details of their conditions are emerging. Accounts of limited food, with no fresh vegetables, are similar to conditions reported by Gazans during the war.”
In other words, Moench and Cuddy chose to promote false equivalence between the deliberate malnourishment suffered by the hostages held by terrorists and the “conditions reported by Gazans”. Additionally – by means of that link to a March 2024 report by Joel Gunter – they advance the notion that “enhanced Israeli security checks on delivery trucks” were to blame for the “limited food” received by the hostages. In other words, if the released hostages “came back thinner”, that – according to Moench and Cuddy – is Israel’s fault.
The fifth phase of hostage releases took place on February 8th. Viewers of televised BBC reports on that story saw the following:
As readers may recall, ten days earlier the BBC had refused to correct a similar portrayal of convicted terrorists as ‘hostages’:
BBC REFUSES TO CORRECT PORTRAYAL OF PALESTINIAN INMATES AS ‘HOSTAGES’
Late on February 8th (UK time) the BBC News website published a report by Joe Inwood which was presented on its ‘Middle East’ page as follows:
Titled “What will anger at sight of gaunt hostages mean for a fragile ceasefire?”, that report tells readers that:
“In previous exchanges, Hamas have also sought to give the impression that they had taken good care of those they had kidnapped.
It was not possible this time.
All three men looked gaunt and sunken-eyed. As their images were broadcast into Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, the mood changed from one of celebration to anguish.”
However, Inwood clearly could not bring himself to leave it at that and so later in his report readers find the following:
“But it is not only Hamas who have come under fierce criticism for the condition of the people they have been releasing.
Shortly after the three hostages were freed, 183 Palestinians – some serving long sentences for their part in the killings of Israelis, others held without charge – left Israeli jails.
One of those being released was Jamal al-Tawil, the former mayor of al-Bireh. He has spent nearly two decades in and out of Israeli prisons, in part over allegations that he helped plot suicide bombings. Recently he had been on hunger strike to protest against his detention without charge.
His daughter, who was herself recently released from prison, claimed that he was beaten in the final moments before his release. He had to be carried from the bus to the hospital while connected to a ventilator.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, seven of those being released from Israeli jails needed hospital treatment following their imprisonment.
There have been numerous reports since 7 October 2023, accusing the Israeli authorities of abusing Palestinian prisoners.”
Inwood refrained from informing BBC audiences of the relevant fact that Jamal al-Tawil is a senior member of the Hamas terrorist organisation who was arrested in June 2021 or that he has a long record of choosing to go on hunger strike during previous detentions. Tawil’s involvement in recruiting the perpetrators of a suicide bombing at the Ben Yehuda mall in Jerusalem in December 2001, in which 11 Israelis were killed and 170 wounded, is not adequately clarified and neither is his role as founder of the terror funding Al Aslah Association in El Bireh.
Neither did Inwood bother to note that Tawil’s daughter – who was showcased by the BBC’s Jon Donnison just last month – also has links to Hamas. He likewise failed to tell readers that the quoted statement from the Palestinian Red Crescent followed claims made by the political NGO called the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.
Notwithstanding the disturbing images of emaciated Israeli hostages being sadistically paraded and harassed during the recent releases, the BBC has clearly chosen to self-conscript to the promotion of a cynical propaganda narrative of false equivalence between the hostages kidnapped by terrorists during the unprecedented massacre on October 7th 2023 and Palestinian security prisoners jailed for terror offences.
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