Two days after Hizballah chose to violate the November 2024 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon by launching attacks in support of Iran, the BBC News website published a filmed report produced by a correspondent who had travelled to the northern Galilee town of Metula.
A report from that location could have informed BBC audiences about how the renewal of hostilities has affected the town in which over 60% of the homes and tens of public buildings were damaged or destroyed by rockets, drones or anti-tank missiles fired from Lebanon between October 2023 and November 2024. The BBC could have reported on the difficulties experienced by the 40% of residents who returned to the town over a year after they were evacuated from their homes, including the destroyed primary school, the lack of public services, the damaged farmlands and the tourism industry which has struggled to return to its former status as one of the main sources of income for local residents.
Instead, that March 4th report by Jon Donnison – titled “Watch: Heavy gunfire heard as BBC reports from border of Israel and Lebanon” – focused entirely on the situation in south Lebanon.
Donnison: “Here in the Israeli town of Metula, right on the border with Lebanon, you can hear what sounds like a pretty heavy gun battle going on what must be just a few kilometres away. Now, the Israeli army is trying to push Hizballah back. In the war back in 2024 they destroyed dozens of Lebanese villages, as well as Hizballah bunkers. But from what we’re hearing – we have heavy machine gun fire echoing across the valley as well as what sounds like artillery – Hizballah are still there and they’re putting up a fight.”
Six weeks later, the BBC Jerusalem bureau sent another correspondent wearing a bulletproof vest to report from practically the same spot in Metula.
The title of that report – “The Israeli town on the frontline with Hezbollah” (which also appears at another URL) – could well have led members of the BBC’s funding public to believe that this time, Nick Beake was actually going to provide some insight into what life had been like for residents of Metula who by that time had been under fire for a month and a half.
Failing to clarify that Hizballah is classified as a terrorist organisation by the UK government and many others, Beake tells viewers that: [emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]
Beake: “Well this is Metula. It’s Israel’s northern-most town. It’s right on the border, surrounded by Lebanon on one, two, three sides. And so people living here are first in the firing line when rockets are fired by Hizballah, the Iranian-backed group. There may well be this ceasefire for now between the Americans and the Iranians, but the conflict here continues.”
Beake continues with unnecessary qualification of casualty figures that he could easily have verified himself.
Beake: “The Israeli authorities are saying that twelve soldiers and two civilians have been killed by Hizballah rockets over the past six weeks. What the Israelis have been doing is carrying out a ground offensive inside Lebanon but also carrying out airstrikes as well.”
At that point, the footage switches to scenes from Lebanon, with ten seconds of the 78-second-long report from “the Israeli town on the frontline” showing a different country.
Beake: “They say that they’re trying to hit Hizballah positions. The Lebanese authorities say more than 2,000 people have been killed, among them more than 160 children.”
Beake neglects to tell viewers that the Lebanese authorities do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, that according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health the vast majority of the casualties were adult males or that the IDF estimates that some 1,700 terror operatives have been killed since March 2nd.
Failing to clarify that the Lebanese government includes ministers representing Hizballah and its ally Amal, Beake closes his report as follows:
Beake: “The Israelis are saying that this conflict, it’s got nothing to do with the ceasefire between America and Iran. Iran says absolutely it does and is threatening to hit back if the Israelis continue their action into Lebanon. Now there may be talks between the Lebanese and the Israelis but worth pointing out that the Lebanese government is distinct from Hizballah. So a lot of people living here for example, they say they want to live in peace and they don’t have any huge expectations that there will be a sudden or significant breakthrough any time soon.”
As we see, for the second time in six weeks, the BBC sent a reporter on the three-and-a-half-hour trip from its Jerusalem office to Metula without audiences hearing even one word from a single resident of that town in the resulting filmed reports.
The absence of any Israeli voices or information about challenges faced by the residents of Metula in those two online filmed reports – which will become what the BBC terms “permanent public record” – is all the more remarkable given that three days after the appearance of Beake’s filmed report, it emerged that he had actually spoken to at least two of the town’s residents during his visit.
The April 18th edition of BBC Radio 4’s “From Our Own Correspondent” – titled “Lebanon Ceasefire – An uneasy calm” – includes an item (from 06:14) described as follows:
“The ceasefire has been cautiously welcomed by some Israeli citizens too – though many are in favour of the war continuing, to defeat Hezbollah which has mounted cross-border attacks against Israel for decades. Nick Beake travelled to Israel’s northernmost town of Metula.”
In her introduction, presenter Kate Adie inaccurately tells listeners that “most of its [Metula’s] residents fled back in 2023” – they were in fact evacuated – and goes on to note that “around half of the town’s people eventually returned…”.
Although Nick Beake quotes two residents – Ronit and Yossi – his account does not provide BBC audiences with any information about the damage caused to homes, public buildings and infrastructure during either the previous round of hostilities or the latest. Listeners hear nothing about the economic difficulties facing residents who returned to the town after over a year of war.
Instead, Beake focuses mostly on the topic of Israeli opinions of the ten-day ceasefire that came into effect two days after his visit to Metula, while promoting the notion of “the proposed occupation of southern Lebanon” and the redundant “speculation he [Netanyahu] persuaded President Trump to join an attack on Iran”. He tells BBC audiences that “99% of the deaths in this latest fighting have been on the Lebanese side as a result of hundreds of Israeli air strikes” – once again without clarifying that most of those killed on “the Lebanese side” were terror operatives or mentioning Hizballah’s claim to have carried out 2,184 attacks on Israeli towns and cities since March 2nd.
As we have previously noted, despite the BBC having a permanent bureau in Jerusalem, its audiences have seen remarkably little reporting from the sites of Hizballah attacks and the Israelis affected by them have been largely ignored. As these reports from Metula show, even when the BBC did send staff to one of the places worst affected by both this round of hostilities and the previous one, those journalists still managed to adhere to the ‘invisible Israelis’ style of reporting that avoids telling audiences the whole story.
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