June 22nd saw the appearance of a BBC News website report which currently goes under the headline “Israel recovers bodies of three hostages from Gaza”. The same report – credited to Thomas Mackintosh – also appears on the BBC Arabic website, where it is presented with its original title.
Mackintosh’s inconsistently spelled report tells BBC audiences that:[emphasis added]
“The bodies of three Israeli hostages have been recovered from the Gaza Strip, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said.
He confirmed that Yonatan Samrano, Ofra Kedar and Staff Sgt Shai Levinson’s remains were retrieved on Saturday in a military operation. […]
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have recovered the bodies of eight hostages from Gaza so far this month.”
He goes on:
“Ms Keidar was 71 when she was killed at a kibbutz and her body taken into Gaza.
Staff Sgt Levinson “engaged and fought terrorists on the morning of 7 October and fell in combat,” the IDF said. He was 19 at the time of his death.”
Notably, Mackintosh refrains from informing readers by whom the bodies of Ofra Keidar and Shai Levinson were “taken into Gaza” and has nothing whatsoever to tell audiences about the circumstances of the abduction of Yonatan Samerano’s body:
“Earlier on Sunday, Mr Samerano‘s father announced that his son’s body had been recovered by the Israeli army.
Posting on Instagram Kobi Samerano wrote: “Yesterday was Yonati’s Hebrew birthday. On his 23rd birthday, on the very day he was born, our Yonati was rescued in a heroic operation by the brave soldiers of the IDF and the Shin Bet.””
That omission is particularly relevant in light of the BBC’s repeated promotion of UNRWA’s narrative concerning the participation of some of its employees in the October 7th massacre because, as reported by the Times of Israel and others:
“One of Samerano’s captors was an employee of UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees. He was one of 12 people employed by the agency who “actively participated” in the Hamas-led onslaught, then-defense minister Yoav Gallant revealed to the public in February 2024.”
The video released in February 2024 shows UNRWA social worker Faisal Ali Mussalem al-Naami and another infiltrator abducting Yonatan Samerano’s body.
“In the surveillance camera footage, a white SUV can be seen driving into Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the communities hit hardest on October 7. The vehicle stops in front of three bodies lying on the street and sidewalk beside an overturned picnic cooler.
One man exits the car with a rifle. The driver, who is dressed in black and identified as al-Naami, follows.
Together they carry one of the men lying in the street by the arms and legs and stuff him into the back of the SUV.
The two then briefly look through scattered belongings before reversing out of the kibbutz and driving off.”
Clearly that omission deprives BBC audiences of information relevant to their understanding of the background to the story.
Mackintosh goes on to quote a statement put out by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum which includes a reference to “the remaining 50 hostages”. Nevertheless, in the final paragraph of his report, he tells BBC audiences that:
“Some 54 of those captured during the attack by Hamas remain in captivity, including 31 the Israeli military says are dead.”
In fact:
“Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 50 hostages, including 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023.
They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in 2014 in Gaza.”
CAMERA UK has submitted a complaint to the BBC concerning both the English and Arabic versions of the report.
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