On the morning of May 13th the BBC News website published a report by Rushdi Abualouf (now apparently located in Cairo) under the headline “Gaza journalist Hassan Aslih killed in Israeli strike on hospital”.
Abualouf’s report is notable for omissions which mislead BBC audiences on two main topics. The first of those is the activities and record of “Gaza journalist Hassan Aslih” (also spelt Esliah) himself.
Referring to a strike on a tent in the grounds of the same hospital in early April, Abualouf tells his readers that:
“The Israeli military had previously accused Aslih of involvement in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel. The strike in April killed Aslih’s colleague Helmi al-Faqawi and wounded several other journalists.
At the time, Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run government media office, said Israel’s accusations against Aslih were “false” and that Aslih had no political affiliation.
“The occupation’s claim that Aslih crossed into the occupied land and took part in the 7 October incidents is part of a policy to discredit and fabricate that the occupation adopts to justify attacks on journalists and media personnel,” Thawabta told Reuters agency on 7 April.
Aslih had published dozens of photos and videos documenting the 7 October Hamas assault from inside Israeli territory.
Aslih worked for years as a freelance photojournalist with both international and local news agencies. He was widely respected in Gaza for his extensive coverage of the conflict, often documenting events from the front lines. He has more than half a million followers on Instagram, where he documents the war.”
The link provided by Abualouf leads to an April 7th post on an IDF social media account which also states that Aslih was a terrorist operative in Hamas’ Khan Yunis Brigade. Five days after the elimination of Aslih, the IDF published Hamas documentation of his membership in that brigade. As we see, Abualouf chose to promote PR messaging from Ismail al-Thawabta, despite his record of unreliability and notwithstanding Aslih’s self-documented participation in the events of October 7th 2023.
While Abualouf tells BBC audiences that Aslih had worked for international news agencies, he refrains from noting that Aslih had also previously worked for Hamas affiliated Quds TV or that Associated Press and CNN announced that they were cutting ties with him in November 2023 “after he was identified […] as having been present with Hamas militants during the heinous attack on the Jewish state”.
Abualouf’s omission of that obviously relevant information is all the more notable given that in November 2023 the BBC itself reported that:
“The [Associated Press] agency said it was no longer working with one of the journalists, Hassan Eslaiah, who was found to have been pictured with Hamas Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar.
CNN said it had no prior knowledge of the attacks, but said it also would suspend its ties with Eslaiah.”
The second topic on which Abualouf misleads BBC audiences is that of Hamas’ exploitation of hospitals for the purposes of terrorism:
“The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had attacked Nasser Hospital in a “a targeted attack on key terrorists”, but did not name Aslih.
It said the hospital was being used by Hamas to “carry out terrorist plots against Israeli forces and citizens”.
The Israeli military has repeatedly attacked what it claims are Hamas command-and-control centres based in hospitals or gunmen sheltering there. Hamas denies using hospitals in this way.” [emphasis added]
There is of course ample evidence to show that such Hamas denials are completely baseless but nevertheless, they continue to be blindly promoted by the BBC. Just last month the head of nursing at the same Nasser hospital posted that he had been threatened by a terrorist organisation.
Some eight hours after the initial publication of Abualouf’s report, two paragraphs were added:
“The aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières said on X that the strike on Nasser hospital killed one other person and injured a further 12, and called for a halt to the targeting of medical facilities.
The attack was “horrific”, said emergency coordinator Clare Manera, adding that it came at a time when healthcare workers in the strip were “struggling to treat patients with little to no supplies”.” [emphasis added]
Abualouf refrains from informing readers that the “one other person” was a senior Hamas police officer. That omission is particularly relevant given that Hamas’ Khan Younis police branch runs an “investigations department” out of Nasser hospital.
In addition to that messaging about the supposed “targeting of medical facilities” from the NGO MSF, Abualouf also promotes a 2024 statement from another body:
“The UN’s human rights office has condemned what it calls Israel’s “pattern of deadly attacks on and near hospitals in Gaza”, saying they could amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.”
As long as the BBC refrains from informing its audiences about the scale of the long-known exploitation of medical facilities by terrorists in the Gaza Strip – preferring instead to amplify baseless Hamas denials – audiences of course cannot understand the redundancy of such ‘war crimes’ claims and the BBC is complicit in the promotion of that false propaganda narrative.
Related Articles:
OMISSIONS IN BBC REPORTING ON STRIKE ON ‘TENT USED BY LOCAL MEDIA’
CAMERA OP-ED: WHEN IS A JOURNALIST NOT A RELIABLE WITNESS?
PRESS ADVISORY: ‘JOURNALIST’ HASSAN ESLAIAH WAS A HAMAS OPERATIVE WHO CELEBRATED TERROR
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE BBC’S FAILURE TO VET ‘TRUSTED LOCAL JOURNALISTS’
This has been typical of the BBC for many, many decades.
One well recollects in the late 1980s/early 1990’s hearing Mike Adams on BBC Radio 4 as well as others for the 8am morning news churning out material that just by chance missed out the operative words that would have put the material they presented as true, rather than an myth of their imagination!