Previously we discussed BBC news website coverage of strikes carried out on May 13th around the European hospital in Khan Younis, including a report put out by BBC Verify the following day:
BBC NEWS WEBSITE REPORTING ON STRIKES AROUND THE EUROPEAN HOSPITAL
Together with some of the same members of the BBC Verify team, the presenter of that unhelpful report – Merlyn Thomas – decided to return to the topic and on May 22nd the BBC News website published a 13:45 minute-long filmed report titled “Investigating Israel’s strike on Gaza’s European Hospital”.
“On Tuesday 13 May, Israeli strikes on the European Hospital in Gaza killed 28 people and injured dozens, according to the Hamas-run civil defence agency.
BBC Verify analysed footage, gathered witness testimony and spoke to munitions and legal experts to examine how one of Gaza’s last functioning hospitals came under Israeli attack.
Expert analysis and verified footage point to the use of ‘bunker buster’ bombs in strikes on the hospital. Legal experts say the targeting of hospitals without warning may constitute a war crime.
The Israeli army says it was targeting a Hamas command and control centre beneath the European hospital complex, but did not provide any evidence of this.
BBC Verify’s Merlyn Thomas has more.
Verification by Emma Pengelly. Produced by Aisha Sembhi. Filmed by Lee Durant. Graphics by Mesut Ersoz and Mark Edwards.”
A significant proportion of that film recycles material from BBC Verify’s earlier report, with viewers once again told nothing about the background of the widely featured surgeon Dr Tom Potokar. The film also includes footage previously presented in a report by Fergal Keane.
The main purpose of BBC Verify’s recycling of the story however is the presentation of commentary from two legal experts. One of those experts – Sir Geoffrey Nice – had already opined in 2015 that war crimes were being committed in the Gaza Strip. The other – Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne – campaigned against UK arms exports to Israel over a year ago and in May 2024 gave a quote to the BBC concerning an incident in Jenin with which he clearly was not fully familiar.
Dr Brian L. Cox of Cornell law School has analysed the claims put forward by both of BBC Verify’s chosen legal experts in a thread which is well worth reading in full.
As noted by Dr Cox, while the main aim of Thomas and her colleagues is obviously to persuade viewers that “the targeting of hospitals without warning may constitute a war crime”, the strike in question did not in fact target the hospital itself.
“At the outset of the analysis, it should be noted that this was not an attack on a hospital. According to evidence presented in the story, the attack was directed against an underground object located under & in the vicinity of the European Hospital. Even so, a major component of legal “analysis” in video story is an assertion that this attack may have constituted a #LOAC violation because it “targeted” a hospital.”
Dr Cox’s ‘bottom line’ is as follows:
“…analysis of this BBC Verify story helps demonstrate why news media is generally not competent to “investigate” whether incidents that occur in armed conflict comply with relevant LOAC rules. The cumulative effect of thousands upon thousands of such incompetent media “investigations” in sustained combat operations such as ongoing armed conflict in Gaza & region gradually distorts prevailing public opinion by constructing the perception that lawful conduct is illegal.”
Dr Cox also notes that:
“The story then ends with journo asking a doctor who practices frequently in Gaza if he has a message to the Israeli government. His response, in a word, is, “Stop.” This concluding remark is meant to support public advocacy seeking to generate political pressure to force Israel to agree to a ceasefire. And yet, it is Hamas that continues to pose a grave security threat to Israel & continues to deliberately hide & fight among its own civilian population while still maintaining custody of hostages taken on 10/7. Instead, this story concludes with a message for Israel’s government to “stop” – and it comes at the end of a story that distorts & inverts relevant aspects of int’l law to cast blame on Israel for the way it fights Hamas rather than on Hamas as the actual culprit.”
Once again BBC Verify demonstrates how its ‘fact-checking’ and ‘anti-disinformation’ mission is in fact highly selective and agenda-driven.
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Well BBC Verify apparently analyses only actions by Israel – but no other country in the world apart from occasionally the USA.
It ignores China, North Korea, Russia, Ukraine, Arab countries etc.
Why is this – because it is a purveyor of anti Semitism!