On the evening of March 11th the residents of northern Israel found themselves under attack from Lebanon when Hizballah launched the largest missile barrage since it had chosen ten days earlier to join the hostilities in support of its Iranian regime sponsor.
“An opening salvo of 100 rockets was launched from Lebanon around 8 p.m. just as a missile from Iran targeted the central region of the country, in what Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said was a coordinated attack. More Iranian missiles targeted the north and south of the country. […]
As the Israel Defense Forces instructed residents of the north to stay close to shelters, Hezbollah continued firing rockets and drones, with sirens set off across the Galilee and in Haifa as well as in communities up to 50 kilometers from the border with Lebanon.”
The attacks from Lebanon – including UAV infiltrations – and Iran continued and expanded throughout the night.
“The [Hizballah] attack included about 200 missiles and roughly 20 UAVs. They were in the air and on their way at the very same time as Iranian ballistic missiles. Simultaneous fire from both fronts.”
Impact sites included the Galilee towns of Kafr Kanna and Bi’ina, where two people were injured.
Hizballah claimed responsibility for the attacks, announcing that it had launched what it called ‘Operation Devoured Chaff’. Israel responded with strikes on Hizballah infrastructure and rocket launchers in Lebanon, including in Beirut.
BBC News website reporting on those events commenced over an hour and a half after the first wave of Hizballah attacks on Israel on a live page that was active at the time.
The focus on Lebanon, along with confused portrayal of the sequence of events and the number of Hizballah attacks, continued at another live page which opened on the morning of March 12th.
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While three BBC journalists (one of whom is based in Jerusalem) were able to report on – and provide photographs of – events in Beirut, the first image depicting one of Hizballah’s attacks on Israel appeared over fourteen hours after they began. Notably, it did not depict the damage caused in Arab towns in the Galilee.
On the afternoon of March 12th visitors to the BBC News website found the first – and only – stand-alone reporting on the events of the previous night in an article credited to Alice Cuddy and David Gritten titled “Israel pounds Beirut suburbs and south Lebanon after Hezbollah rocket barrage”.
That report also begins by presenting the events in the BBC’s favoured ‘last-first’ style.
“The Israeli military has carried out several waves of air strikes across Lebanon, including the capital Beirut, after the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah launched about 200 rockets into northern Israel.
Many Israeli strikes were reported in the south of the country and Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold from which thousands of people have fled because of the intense bombardment over the past week.
Some strikes hit other parts of the capital, including the Corniche seafront. Lebanon’s health ministry said 12 people were killed there overnight.
Hezbollah launched the rocket barrage across the Israeli border on Wednesday evening in an apparently co-ordinated attack with Iran.”
Nearly half of Cuddy and Gritten’s 1,156-word report is given over to describing the events in Lebanon, including interviews with two eyewitnesses and three photographs. In contrast, Hizballah’s attacks on Israel are given just 188 words of coverage, together with one photograph.
While Cuddy and Gritten report that “12 people were killed…overnight” in Lebanon, they do not clarify that they included three senior figures in the IRGC’s “Imam Hussein Division” and other terror operatives.
Cuddy and Gritten’s report also includes a map and the following portrayal of a March 12th evacuation order.
“The [Israeli] military subsequently expanded a blanket evacuation order for southern Lebanon, almost doubling the size of the zone it has said residents should leave for their safety.
It now covers almost the entire area south of the Zahrani river, which flows east to west about 40km (25 miles) from the Israeli border, according to a map posted online.”
That portrayal fails to include relevant context concerning Hizballah’s launching of missiles from the area north of the Litani river. Asharq Al-Awsat, for example, reported that:
“A Lebanese security source said 95% of the rockets fired at Israel during the latest escalation overnight Wednesday originated north of the Litani.”
That context is also missing from another report by Alice Cuddy published later on March 12th under the headline “‘Follow the smoke’: BBC spends day with emergency teams as Israel strikes south Lebanon”.
As has also been seen in BBC News website coverage of Iranian regime attacks on Israeli civilians, despite the corporation having a permanent bureau in Jerusalem, audiences have seen remarkably little reporting from the sites of Hizballah attacks. That lack of coverage stands out even more when compared to the volume of reporting from other locations, particularly Lebanon.
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