On the evening of April 10th the BBC News website published a report about the release of a convicted terrorist whom it chose to present as a “teen attacker”.
Credited to the BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Yolande Knell, that report – titled “Palestinian teen attacker freed after nine years in Israeli prison” – opens with links to two BBC reports dating from October 2015 and a politicised portrayal of Jerusalem’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighbourhood which echoes the corporation’s original reporting nearly ten years ago. [emphasis added]
“A Palestinian man jailed by Israel for an attack when he was 13 has been released after nearly a decade in prison.
Ahmed Manasra, who is now 23, became a symbol of a wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence that began in 2015.
Surveillance footage showed him and his 15-year-old cousin, Hassan, brandishing large kitchen knives in a Jewish settlement in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem. Hassan wounded a 13-year-old Israeli boy and an Israeli man before he was shot dead by police.”
Knell goes on to promote messaging from the NGO ‘Amnesty International’, without informing her readers of that organisation’s record of anti-Israel bias.
“Manasra’s case has long been a focus of human rights groups. Amnesty International said he endured “shocking ill-treatment”, including nearly two years of solitary confinement, causing him to develop serious mental illness.”
Knell tells her readers that:
“Israelis saw the young age of Manasra and his cousin at the time of the attack as evidence that they had been indoctrinated by propaganda.”
The BBC’s then Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, interviewed the other teenage terrorist’s father in October 2015 and produced a report blaming “hopelessness and hatred” on “the military occupation of the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem”. Bowen however failed to tell BBC audiences that Ahmed Manasra had said at the time that “he was motivated to carry out the attack by the Palestinian claim that Israel has been trying to change the status quo on the volatile Temple Mount in Jerusalem.”
EXPLAINING AWAY TERROR BBC BOWEN STYLE – PART ONE
EXPLAINING AWAY TERROR BBC BOWEN STYLE – PART TWO
Knell goes on:
“Later, Manasra was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in jail.”
In fact, Manasra was originally sentenced to twelve years in prison for attempted murder but in 2017 Israel’s Supreme Court reduced his sentence by two and a half years.
Knell continues:
“After the stabbings, Manasra fled the scene and was hit by a car. A graphic video widely shared on social media showed him as he lay bleeding profusely on the street and an Israeli bystander jeered and heckled.
This footage provoked outrage in the Arab world and many assumed the boy was dead. However, days later Israeli authorities published a photo of him being treated in hospital.”
Knell refrains from informing BBC audiences that one of those who claimed at the time that Manasra had been killed was the president of the Palestinian Authority and that the BBC chose to amplify Mahmoud Abbas’ inflammatory and inaccurate claims.
BBC NEWS AMPLIFICATION FOR ABBAS’ LIES AND INCITEMENT ABOUT ‘DEAD’ TERRORIST
Knell later quotes Amnesty International once again, along with another NGO, Adalah. Once again she fails to provide BBC audiences with any relevant information concerning that organisation’s “affiliations, funding and particular viewpoints”, as required by BBC editorial guidelines.
“Amnesty International and the Israeli NGO, Adalah, accuse the Israeli authorities of breaches of international law throughout Manasra’s case.
They point to his interrogation at age 13 – without a guardian or lawyer present.
Leaked video showed Israeli security staff shouting and insulting him as he became visibly distressed.
“Manasra’s rights were systematically stripped since his imprisonment. He has only been allowed to see his immediate family through a glass wall, without any physical contact,” Adalah said in a statement.
“He has been completely denied the right to education and stripped of other basic rights. His right to dignity was violated, including through two years spent in solitary confinement, and his right to health was disregarded due to ongoing medical neglect by the Israel Prison Service.”
The prisons service says that all detainees are held in accordance with international law and that any allegations of abuse are investigated.”
Interestingly, Knell has absolutely nothing to tell BBC audiences about the stories of the two victims of the attack perpetrated by Manasra and his cousin – one of whom was twelve years old at the time.
“When Naor, almost 13, got to nearby Mount Scopus [hospital] he was assumed dead by the ambulance team and bystanders. His family received condolences. The public relations team at the hospital got numerous requests from the press to confirm his death. But at Mount Scopus, the Hadassah team recognized signs of life. “His pulse was 20-30, and we couldn’t take his blood pressure,” said Dr. Yoachim Shiffman, Head of Anaesthesiology at Mount Scopus.
“At first we didn’t see the source of bleeding. We turned him over, and blood began spurting from his subclavian artery. I put in my fingers to stop it.” For 15 minutes, the senior anaesthesiologist kept his fingers deep in the artery. The team ramped up the blood pressure with medicine and blood products, and packed the knife wound. Shiffman’s friend and medical school classmate Achmed Eid was on his way. He was ready for surgery. Chief operating nurse Ruven Gelfond, who ran Israel’s successful operating rooms in Haiti was in charge. Naor was still alive.”
Given that Knell chose to base her report primarily on statements put out by the inadequately presented political NGOs Amnesty International and Adalah, her decision to completely ignore the part of the story pertaining to the victims of the terror attack perpetrated by the subject of her report is entirely unsurprising.
Related Articles:
BBC PORTRAYAL OF PISGAT ZE’EV TERROR ATTACK FOCUSES ON POLITICISED GEOGRAPHY
NO FOLLOW-UP TO A STORY THE BBC PREVIOUSLY FEATURED IN FOUR REPORTS
The blatant bias shown here makes my blood boil.