On June 3rd the BBC News website published a report by Tom Bennett titled “At least 27 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire near aid centre, Gaza authorities say”.
One of those “Gaza authorities” is named as follows: [emphasis added]
“At least 27 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire as they attempted to collect aid near a distribution site in Gaza, local officials say.
Civilians were fired upon by tanks, quadcopter drones, and helicopters near the al-Alam roundabout, about 1km (0.6 miles) from the aid site, a spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency, Mahmoud Basal, said.”
Another is identified in a later paragraph:
“Following Tuesday morning’s incident, the director of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Atef Al-Hout, described 24 dead and 37 wounded arriving with gunshot injuries, saying Israeli forces had opened fire on “crowds of civilians waiting for aid in western Rafah.””
Later on the same day, the BBC News website published a report by Sean Seddon titled “IDF says roads to Gaza aid centres are ‘combat zones’ as sites close for day” which includes quotes from the same two sources.
“In the wake of Tuesday’s incident, the director of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Atef Al-Hout, said the injured were arriving with gunshot wounds after Israeli forces had opened fire on “crowds of civilians waiting for aid in western Rafa”. [sic]
Hamas-run Civil Defence Agency spokesman Mahmoud Basal said civilians were fired upon by tanks, quadcopter drones and helicopters near an aid site.”
So who are the two sources whose claims concerning alleged incidents at aid distribution sites were uncritically amplified by the BBC?
Readers may recall that in March 2024 the BBC’s Alice Cuddy, together with three colleagues from BBC Verify, produced a report about alleged mistreatment of “Gaza medics” at the Nasser hospital the previous month. That report also quoted Atef Al-Hout:
“Footage secretly filmed in the hospital on 16 February, the day the medics were detained, was shared with the BBC.
It shows a row of men stripped to their underwear in front of the hospital’s emergency building, kneeling with their hands behind their heads. Medical robes are lying in front of some of them.
“Anybody who tried to move his head or make any movement got hit,” the hospital’s general manager, Dr Atef Al-Hout, told the BBC. “They left them for around two hours in this shameful position.””
AN OVERVIEW OF BBC NEWS’ SECOND NASSER HOSPITAL BINGE
As was noted here at the time, Al-Hout already had a record of supporting terrorism on social media. The Daily Mail later reported that:
“The hospital’s general manager Atef Al-Hout (also misspelled on the BBC caption) – who told the BBC that Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers detained medics and forced them to kneel with their hands behind their heads for hours – shared his colleagues’ admiration of Hamas.
‘Jerusalem and Gaza are in the camp of resistance. May Allah guide your missiles,’ he wrote in 2021 after a Hamas rocket blitz on Israel.”
The hospital managed by Al-Hout was reported by the BBC in June 2024 to have been one of the places in which Israeli hostages were held.
“When they got into the city, Ms Sagi said, they were taken to a hospital – which she believes was southern Gaza’s main hospital, Nasser – and told: “You are staying here.” […]
Testimony from a number of other released hostages places 10 hostages in total at Nasser hospital, one of whom remains in captivity.
When asked by the BBC to comment on Ms Sagi’s allegations, the hospital’s director, Dr Atef al-Hoot, denied that any hostages were kept there and said it only provided humanitarian services.
The Israeli military has previously said its troops detained “about 200 terrorists who were in the hospital” during a raid on Nasser hospital in February, and that they found ammunition as well as unused medicines intended for Israeli hostages.
Hamas has denied Israeli claims that its fighters have been operating inside Nasser and other hospitals across Gaza.”
A May 2024 recording of the questioning of a Palestinian detainee who had taken part in the October 7th atrocities showed that the hospital managed by Al-Hout was indeed used by Hamas.
Nevertheless, over a year on, the BBC continues to unquestioningly promote claims made by the man managing a hospital that functions as a Hamas asset, using patients as human shields.
The Gaza Civil Defense agency spokesman Mahmoud Basal – also spelt Mahmoud Bassal in some BBC reports – has been quoted and promoted in numerous items of BBC content. In 2022, he was described by a Hamas-affiliated media outlet as holding the rank of major.
As CAMERA UK has repeatedly pointed out, the Gaza Civil Defense agency is run by Hamas – specifically its ministry of the interior – but that fact has not always been made clear in BBC reporting.
On the morning of June 8th documents exposing Bassal’s links to Hamas were made public by the IDF. As reported by the Times of Israel:
“The Israel Defense Forces published intelligence documents on Sunday, captured during operations in Gaza, that it said prove that the spokesperson for the Civil Defense Agency in the Strip is an “active terrorist” in Hamas and a member of the terror group’s military wing.
Mahmoud Basal “has served as a spokesperson for the Civil Defense for a long time and exploits his position to spread false and unverified information to international media outlets, falsely attributing war crimes to Israel and presenting distorted data,” the military said in a statement. […]
The documents recovered by the IDF in Gaza show that Basal “is a terrorist in the Hamas terror group, and as part of his role, he serves the purposes of psychological warfare and propaganda,” according to the military.
The documents appeared to show Basal listed on a roster of operatives for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing.”
Those documents show that Bassal joined Hamas in January 2005 and is a member of the Gaza City Brigade’s Zeitoun Battalion.
The BBC had quoted Bassal once again in a report by Barbara Plett-Usher and Dearbail Jordan which was published the day before those documents were made public.
“Six Palestinians have been killed and several others wounded by Israeli gunfire in the latest deadly incident close to an aid distribution centre in southern Gaza, the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency says.
People had gathered to collect food supplies on Saturday morning when the shooting started, a spokesman for the agency said. Reports quoting an eyewitness said the Israelis opened fire when people tried to advance towards the site. […]
Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said at least 15 people had also been killed by Israeli air strikes on a residential home in Gaza city, with reports that some of the casualties remained trapped in the rubble.”
Some four hours after the documents showing that the Gaza Civil Defence spokesman is an active Hamas member had been made public on June 8th, another BBC report by Sebastain Usher and André Rhoden-Paul nevertheless quoted that organisation and linked to the previous article quoting Bassal:
“On Saturday, six Palestinians were killed and several others were wounded by Israeli gunfire, the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said.”
As these two examples show, sources used by the BBC as the basis for reports on events in the Gaza Strip – in this case alleged incidents at aid distribution sites – are clearly not sufficiently vetted, with the result being that audiences are getting ‘news’ directly from ‘officials’ who are members of – or covering for – the proscribed terrorist organisation that started the war twenty months ago.
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