Late on March 23rd (UK time) the BBC News website published a report which was presented as follows on its ‘Middle East’ page:
The original version of that report was credited to Rushdi Abualouf and Maia Davies and was headlined “Israeli strike at Gaza hospital kills Hamas official and aide”. The report opened as follows [emphasis added]:
“An Israeli air strike on a hospital in Gaza killed a senior Hamas leader and an aide on Sunday evening, a Hamas official told the BBC.
Ismail Barhoum, the head of the group’s financial affairs, was killed in the strike on Nasser Hospital, the main medical facility in Khan Younis.
He was receiving treatment at the hospital after being wounded in an air strike four days ago, the official said.”
Readers were later told that:
“Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals as hiding places for weapons and command centres, which the group denies.
Another Hamas leader, Salah al-Bardaweel, was killed by a separate Israeli air strike in Khan Younis on Sunday, an official told the BBC.
At least 30 people were killed in Khan Younis and Rafah as of Sunday morning, before the strike on the hospital in the evening, the health ministry said.”
As we see, the original version of this report was based on information provided by an unidentified “Hamas official” – most likely to Rushdi Abualouf who has in the past trumpeted his connections to the terrorist organisation’s leadership.
It was hence hardly surprising to see Abualouf promoting the Hamas version of events according to which Barhoum was “receiving treatment” at Nasser hospital at the time, along with the amplification of redundant Hamas denials concerning its exploitation of hospitals and the promotion of casualty figures provided by the “health ministry” run by that terrorist organisation.
In other words, the original version of this report was basically a Hamas press handout, with Abualouf and Davies neither fact-checking nor challenging the terrorist organisation’s claims before publication.
In the nineteen hours following its appearance, that report underwent several amendments, with the latest version – headlined “Israel kills Hamas official in strike on Gaza hospital” and now credited to Raffi Berg and Rushdi Abualouf – including the following:
“Hamas said Barhoum was being treated in Nasser Hospital for wounds suffered in an air strike four days ago.
But Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Lt Col Nadav Shoshani said that was “completely false”. He said Barhoum was in the hospital “in order to commit acts of terrorism” and had been there for weeks.”
The version currently available online also includes a footnote relating to the statement put out by the IDF spokesman some four and a half hours earlier.
In other words, the BBC published disinformation provided by Hamas – apparently without any fact-checking having taken place – which remained online for nineteen hours before an amendment was made and a footnote added.
Later versions of the report also include two sentences about a terror attack which the BBC found fit to qualify.
“Meanwhile, a 75-year-old Israeli man was killed and a 20-year-old soldier was injured in what Israeli police said was a terror attack near Haifa on Monday.
They said the assailant rammed his vehicle into a bus stop, then stabbed and opened fire at people before being shot dead by officers.”
The civilian murdered in that documented attack at HaTishbi junction near Yokneam (over 20 kms from Haifa) – Moshe Horan from Kibbutz HaZorea – was in fact 85 years old.
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