On the evening of Monday October 27th it was announced that Hamas was going to hand over the remains of an unidentified hostage, which it claimed to have retrieved earlier the same day. Those remains arrived at Israel’s National Institute for Forensic Medicine around midnight local time.
Early the next morning, reports emerged according to which Hamas had staged the retrieval of the body.
“Hamas allegedly staged the finding of the body, which it says is a deceased hostage, yesterday, according to eyewitness accounts of IDF reservists.
Channel 12 news and Army Radio both cite reservists stationed in eastern Gaza City as saying that Hamas operatives carried out digging works in the area, before bringing out a body from a nearby building and placing it in the hole.
Hamas then covered the body in dirt and called the Red Cross to watch them “uncover” it, they say.”
By around nine o’clock local time on October 28th, it was clear that the remains transferred the previous night did not belong to any of the thirteen deceased hostages still held by terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip despite the ceasefire agreement that came into effect on October 10th stipulating that all hostages – living and dead – would be returned to Israel within 72 hours.
At around 1 p.m. it was announced that the remains handed over the night before belonged to Ofer Tzarfati who was kidnapped on October 7th 2023 and whose body had been bought back to Israel in December of that year.
A couple of hours later, drone footage showing Hamas staging of the retrieval of a body in Shejaiya was made public.
“On Monday afternoon, Hamas brought the remains of Tzarfati out of a building and placed them in a large hole it had dug in the ground in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City. It then covered the body bag in dirt and pretended to uncover it for the first time in front of the Red Cross.
The entire incident was filmed by a military drone. The full footage was published by the IDF later on Tuesday, after Tzarfati’s family was notified by military representatives that additional remains of his body were returned by Hamas.”
Just before 5 p.m. local time, news broke of an attack against Israeli troops operating behind the ‘yellow line’ in Rafah and early the following morning (October 29th) it was announced that a reservist soldier had been killed. Around an hour and a half after news of that attack broke, it was reported that the IDF had been instructed to carry out strikes in response to that ceasefire violation.
At that point, the BBC News website decided to open a live page titled “Israel launches strikes on Gaza after Netanyahu orders ‘powerful’ attacks” with the first entry reading as follows:
The second entry on that live page informed BBC audiences of news that had already been known for several hours.
The fourth entry includes the first mention of Hamas’ staging of the body retrieval that had been reported half a day earlier.
In a later entry, a BBC journalist located in Jerusalem considered it necessary to post the following guesswork:
On the evening of October 27th, the BBC News website had published a report by David Gritten under the headline “Israel allows Hamas member into IDF-held Gaza to search for hostages”. Four later versions of that report related to the transfer of the remains carried out that night, with the last version – titled “Israel receives body Hamas says belongs to Gaza hostage” – appearing around 23:30 local time.
Only sixteen hours later, on the afternoon of October 28th, was that report updated to inform readers that – as had been known since around 9 a.m. – the remains did not belong to any of the hostages still held in the Gaza Strip. Only three hours after that – at around 18:30 local time – were BBC audiences told about Hamas’ staging of the body retrieval, but without the publicly available footage being included in the report.
“Later, the IDF released footage from a drone filmed that it said showed Hamas operatives “removing body remains from a structure that had been prepared in advance and burying them nearby” on Monday.
“Shortly afterwards,” it added, the operatives “summoned representatives of the Red Cross and staged a false display of discovering a deceased hostage’s body.”
Hamas issued a statement rejecting what it called Israel’s “baseless allegations”.
It accused Israel of preventing the entry into Gaza of the heavy machinery needed to accelerate and complete the search for the hostages’ bodies.
“[Israel] is seeking to fabricate false pretexts in preparation for taking new aggressive steps against our people, in a flagrant violation of the ceasefire agreement,” it added.”
Notably, that report makes no mention of the attack on IDF soldiers in Rafah that had taken place before its latest version was published.
In the early hours (local time) of October 29th, the BBC News website published a report by David Gritten and Rushdi Abualouf which was originally headlined “Israel strikes Gaza after accusing Hamas of ceasefire violations” and told readers that:
“Israel has carried out air strikes in Gaza, in response to what Israeli officials said were violations of the US-brokered ceasefire agreement.
Defence Minister Israel Katz accused Hamas of attacking Israeli soldiers in Gaza on Tuesday, and breaching the terms on returning the bodies of deceased hostages.
The Palestinian armed group claimed it had “no connection” to the attack and insisted it was committed to the ceasefire deal.”
In the hours that followed that report was amended multiple times, with its fourth version reporting that a soldier had been killed in the attack in Rafah. The headline to that report currently tells BBC audiences that “Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 104, health ministry says, after Hamas accused of killing soldier”.
“At least 104 Palestinians were killed in a wave of Israeli strikes in Gaza on Tuesday night, the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry says.
The Israeli military said it struck “dozens of terror targets and terrorists” in response to violations by Hamas of the US-brokered ceasefire deal.
Israel’s defence minister accused Hamas of an attack in Gaza that killed an Israeli soldier, and of breaching the terms on returning deceased hostages’ bodies. Hamas said it had “no connection” to the attack and was committed to the deal.”
That report also did not show BBC audiences the footage of Hamas’ theatrics. Neither was it updated to inform readers that at least 25 of those killed in the “Israeli strikes” were Hamas terrorists.
As can clearly be seen, the BBC News website only began to tell its audiences about Hamas’ staging of the supposed discovery of a hostage’s body and the attack on IDF troops operating in an area under Israeli control according to the ceasefire agreement after Israel responded to those violations.
