In late December we noted that a BBC News website report about a multi-scene terror attack in Israel concluded by telling readers that:
“Attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians have surged in the West Bank in recent years, according to the United Nations, with more than a thousand killed since the Hamas attacks on Israel of 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 abducted into Gaza.
More than 70,600 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.”
OMISSION AND MISINFORMATION IN BBC REPORT ON TERROR ATTACK
As we noted at the time:
“The phrasing of that first paragraph clearly misleads readers by suggesting that “Israeli settlers” are responsible for the deaths of “more than a thousand” Palestinians in the past 26 months. In fact, the vast majority were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire with Israeli security forces, rioters who clashed with troops or terrorists carrying out attacks.
Readers are told nothing about the rise in terrorism in the area that the BBC chooses to call the West Bank in recent years or the numbers of Israelis killed in that region. The INSS recorded 11,219 terror attacks between 7/10/2023 and 25/12/2025 as well as 2,317 attacks thwarted in 2024 and 2025. 77 Israelis (45 civilians and 32 members of the security forces) were killed during that time.
Similarly, although this report’s final line uses allegedly up-to-date casualty figures supplied by the terrorist organisation that began the war, the BBC once again has nothing to tell its audiences about the number of Israeli casualties in the Gaza Strip since October 7th 2023.”
CAMERA UK submitted a complaint highlighting those issues on December 27th 2025. A member of the public informed us of a similar complaint that he sent on the same day.
On January 3rd 2026 our reader informed us that he had received a response stating that the report had been amended and a footnote added.
Despite having already made that correction, on January 4th BBC Complaints informed us that it would take more time to address our complaint.
On January 5th we received a response which includes the following:
“You wrote in about this passage in the above report:
Attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians have surged in the West Bank in recent years, according to the United Nations, with more than a thousand killed since the Hamas attacks on Israel of 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 abducted into Gaza.
We agree that the way the passage was written meant it might have been misinterpreted as saying that settlers had killed over a thousand Palestinians.
We have therefore rewritten the passage to say:
Attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians have surged in the West Bank in recent years, according to the United Nations. It says more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory – the vast majority shot by the IDF – since the Hamas-led attack on Israel of 7 October 2023. More than 30 of the deaths have involved attacks by settlers, the UN says.
In the Hamas-led attack on Israel, about 1,200 people were killed and 251 abducted into Gaza.
More than 70,600 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
We have also added a note to the end of the report which reads:
Clarification 2 January: When referring to how attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians have surged in the West Bank in recent years, this article originally referred to UN figures in a way which could be taken to suggest that more than one thousand Palestinians had been killed by settlers since the 7 October attacks. This paragraph has been amended to make clear that the vast majority of these people were shot by the IDF but more than 30 of the deaths have involved attacks by settlers, according to the UN.
Thank you for drawing this to our attention. We always welcome the opportunity to review our content and make changes to improve it.”
As we see, the BBC’s correction still avoids the crucial issues of armed Palestinians and terror attacks. Even the UN report to which the article links clarifies that of “the 968 Palestinians killed by ISF almost half (449) were unarmed” – i.e. 53.62% were armed at the time of their deaths – and that “Seventy-nine Palestinians were killed in attacks and alleged attacks against Israelis, and 247 during exchange of fire with ISF following ISF incursions into Palestinian towns and villages”.
Had it wished to do so, the BBC could of course have corrected those omissions at the same time. CAMERA UK has submitted a Stage 1b complaint.
