Back in May we noted the BBC’s repeated promotion – including by its fact checking department, BBC Verify – of the false notion that prior to October 7th 2023, an average of 500 trucks a day carrying food supplies had entered the Gaza Strip:
BBC VERIFY ONCE AGAIN PROMOTES ‘500 TRUCKS’ MISINFORMATION
As we pointed out at the time, in fact – as clarified by COGAT and supported by UN data – on average, only 70 of the 500 trucks a day which entered the Gaza Strip before October 7th were carrying food.
In June we secured corrections to two additional BBC reports making that same false claim, noting that “hopefully this correction will prevent any additional promotion of that false claim in future BBC reporting”. That, however, was not to be.
On July 29th the BBC News website published a filmed ‘explainer’ by Paul Adams titled “Watch: How did Gaza get to the brink of starvation?”.
In the synopsis to that report (which was also embedded into some written reports), not only is the number of trucks elevated by 30% but no effort is made to clarify that only around 70 of them on average were carrying food supplies. [emphasis in bold added, emphasis in italics in the original]
“Before Hamas’s 7 October attack, around 650 lorries a day brought aid into Gaza.
But now, more than 100 international aid organisations and human rights groups have warned of mass starvation in Gaza.
Israel has insisted there are no restrictions on aid deliveries and that there is “no starvation”.
However, it has announced in recent days measures aimed at helping the UN and its partners collect aid from crossings and distribute it within Gaza, including daily “tactical pauses” in military operations in three areas and designated corridors.
The BBC’s diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams explains how the people of Gaza have reached a point of starvation.”
In the report itself, Adams tells BBC audiences that:
Adams: “Aid has been a way of life there [Gaza Strip] for more than seventy years. Before the latest war, 80% of the 2.2 million people who live there already relied on it.”
Notably, Adams has nothing to tell BBC audiences about the political background to the insistence on keeping Gazan Palestinians in refugee status – and therefore as recipients of aid – despite their having lived under Palestinian rule for twenty years since Israel’s 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip before continuing:
Adams: “650 lorries a day crossed into Gaza – a mixture of aid and commercial goods.”
As we see, in a report specifically claiming to ‘explain’ the issue of “mass starvation”, Adams refrained from providing BBC audiences with relevant information concerning the actual amount of food supplies entering the Gaza Strip prior to the Hamas invasion and massacres of October 7th 2023.
Adams’ report does however provide one useful piece of information:
Adams: “But then, in January, a ceasefire began. Israeli hostages were released and the UN was able to flood Gaza with aid. But Hamas took control of some of the newly arrived goods. That’s not just an Israeli allegation: our sources inside Gaza have confirmed it.”
By contrast, BBC articles published in the days prior to the appearance of Adams’ report present an entirely different picture. For example:
“Gaza air drops ‘a grotesque distraction’, aid agencies warn” Joe Inwood, July 27, 2025
“Hamas denies it has been stealing aid from collection points. A recent USAID report said there was no evidence of systematic looting.”
“Gaza experiencing ‘real starvation’, Trump says” David Gritten and Graeme Baker, July 28, 2025
“Hamas has denied stealing aid, and on Sunday the New York Times cited senior Israeli military officials as saying that the military had never found proof that the armed group had systematically stolen aid from the UN. Reuters news agency also reported last week that US government analysis found no evidence of systematic theft by Hamas of US-funded aid.”
If the BBC has “sources inside Gaza” who have confirmed that Hamas has been stealing food supplies, one must wonder why the corporation continues – as has been the case for months on end – to promote Hamas denials and why BBC audiences have seen no stand-alone reporting whatsoever on that topic.
