Nearly a decade ago, in July 2016, we discussed a BBC World Service radio report on the topic of the tenth anniversary of the Second Lebanon War which focused on the question of “what’s changed in the decade since the conflict?”. As we noted at the time:
“One answer to the question of what has changed in the last ten years is that Hizballah now possesses an Iranian supplied missile arsenal which is far bigger than the one it had in July 2006 and which threatens many more Israeli civilians. Another answer is that the UN Security Council resolution of August 2006 (1701) which was supposed to prevent (under UNIFIL supervision) Hizballah’s rearmament, its positioning of missiles in southern Lebanon, the resulting use of the population of that region as human shields and to bring an end to Hizballah’s presence south of the Litani river, has shown itself to have resoundingly failed.”
WHY BBC AUDIENCES WON’T UNDERSTAND THE NEXT ISRAEL-HIZBALLAH CONFLICT – PART ONE
As regular readers will be aware, in the decade since then the BBC has repeatedly avoided the issue of UN SC resolution 1701 and the failure of the UN’s UNIFIL forces to implement that and previous UN SC resolutions.
That context is obviously crucial to full audience understanding of the events that the BBC is now reporting a decade later, as is additional background such as Hizballah’s decision to attack Israel on the day after the October 7th atrocities, the failure of the Lebanese government to fully enforce the terms of the November 2024 ceasefire agreement which brought that round of hostilities to an end and Hizballah’s decision to join the current war by attacking Israel on March 2nd 2026.
However, none of that essential background appears in a filmed report published on the BBC News website on the evening of March 22nd in which Beirut bureau correspondent Hugo Bachega purports to explain to BBC audiences “Why is Israel targeting Lebanon’s bridges?”.
Despite the fact that it was Hizballah that chose to open the Lebanese front in the current war just days after it began, Bachega begins his report by telling BBC audiences that: [emphasis in bold added, emphasis in italics in the original]
Bachega: “This marks an escalation of Israel’s attacks in its war against Hizballah in Lebanon. The Israeli authorities are saying that the group has been using those bridges to send reinforcements to the south of the country.”
While Bachega provides no evidence of having fact checked the allegations regarding Hizballah’s use of the bridges crossing the Litani river for military purposes and fails to mention the relevant warnings that were issued days earlier, he next purports to inform BBC audiences of “the reality”.
Bachega: “The reality is that these are civilian bridges, critical infrastructure, belonging to the state and used by its civilian population. And the fear here is that this could be part of a strategy by Israel to cut off southern Lebanon from the rest of the country ahead of a possible large-scale ground invasion. And there’s also the fear that many of the families who’ve been forced to flee their homes will never be able to return.”
Bachega fails to clarify that civilian infrastructure used for military purposes can lose protection and become a military target before going on to present his chosen framing of the story:
Bachega: “So we’ve seen something similar in Gaza: a policy to destroy pretty much everything. Destroy infrastructure, to limit the return of residents and to create a so-called military buffer zone.”
Bachega of course provides no evidence to support his claim of the existence of “a policy to destroy pretty much everything” and fails to note the relevant context of the exploitation of infrastructure by terrorist organisations both in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Neither does he have anything to tell his viewers about why a buffer zone might be considered necessary for the protection of civilians living close to territories that harbour terrorists committed to Israel’s destruction.
He closes his filmed report with amplification of the “collective punishment” canard but has nothing to tell viewers about the Lebanese government’s failure to fully implement either the ceasefire agreement that should have prevented Hizballah from being able to attack Israel on March 2nd or the declarations it has made since then.
Bachega: “Now reflecting those concerns, the Lebanese president Joseph Aoun issues a very strong statement. He said that Israel’s attacks were a violation of the country’s sovereignty. He also said they were part of a policy of collective punishment against civilians and that what Israel was trying to do was to occupy Lebanese territory.”
The “collective punishment” canard is also promoted by Bachega in a written article published on the same evening under the headline “Israel to expand ground and air attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon”.
As in his filmed report, Bachega refrains from informing readers of that article that Hizballah is a designated terrorist organisation, instead describing it as “the Lebanese armed group” and “an Iranian-backed militia and political party”.
Bachega tells his readers that: [emphasis added]
“Israel has intensified its campaign against Hezbollah […] after the group fired rockets into Israel earlier this month amid the war between the US and Israel against Iran.”
He fails to clarify that attacks using rockets and UAV’s have continued since “earlier this month”, with 865 attack waves and over 2,500 missile and drone launches having been recorded.
With nothing to tell BBC audiences about the damage and injuries caused in Israeli communities by those attacks, he continues:
“Since then, more than 1,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the Lebanese health ministry, including at least 118 children and 40 health workers.”
Bachega fails to clarify that those casualty figures do not differentiate between civilians and terror operatives (estimated at around 600 as of March 23rd) or that the Lebanese health ministry is headed by a minister representing Hizballah.
Notably, Bachega’s descriptions of both the October 2025 Gaza Strip ceasefire and the November 2024 Lebanon ceasefire fail to note many the breaches of those agreements by either Hamas or Hizballah.
“Israel’s military campaign in response killed more than 71,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry. And the Israeli military has continued to carry out attacks there despite a ceasefire that came into force five months ago.
The latest escalation in the decades-long conflict between Hezbollah and Israel started when the group fired rockets into Israel in retaliation for the killing of the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and in response to near-daily Israeli attacks on Lebanon despite a ceasefire that had been agreed on November 2024.”
As was the case in an audio ‘explainer’ of Hizballah aired days earlier on BBC World Service radio, Bachega misleads BBC audiences with regard to the origins of Hizballah.
“Lebanon’s government has vowed to disarm Hezbollah, which was created in the 1980s in response to Israel’s occupation of Lebanon during the 15-year Lebanese civil war. But, so far, the group has refused to discuss the future of its weapons.”
Clearly neither of these two reports by Hugo Bachega provide BBC audiences with the full range of information and background needed to understand either current or future events in Lebanon. Accurate portrayal of Hizballah as a terrorist organisation and clarification of the role it has played in pushing Lebanon to repeated crisis points, along with information concerning the failure of UNIFIL and the LAF to implement the UN resolutions which attempted to address the issues decades ago – and the Lebanese government’s lack of success in meeting the terms of the November 2024 ceasefire agreement – are an essential part of the story that the BBC once again fails to provide.
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