Notoriously, the BBC recently reported that the Israeli army was “targeting people, including medical teams as well as Arab speakers” – a misreading, it appears, of a Reuters report that stated: “the IDF forces include medical teams and Arabic speakers”. The Spectator‘s Stephen Daisley has taken a look at the long list of the other anti-Israel ‘mistakes’ that the BBC has made in its coverage of the Gaza conflict.
After the explosion at Al Ahli hospital in Gaza, BBC correspondent Jon Donnison editorialised on air that it was “hard to see” how it could have been caused by anything “other than an Israeli air strike”. He provided no evidence to support his assertion. BBC News Deputy Chief Executive Jonathan Munro described this as a “mistake”. When an antisemitic mob stormed Dagestan airport in Russia, saying “We are here for the Jews, we came to kill them with knives and shoot at them”, the BBC described them as simply “anti-Israel” (the BBC says it later updated the piece to reference that the mob targeted Jews). When the Israelis arrested Palestinian Ahed Tamimi for incitement – she is accused of posting on social media: “We will slaughter you and you will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke, we will drink your blood and eat your skulls”; her mother denies she wrote the post – the BBC described her as “an international symbol of resistance to Israel’s occupation”. In fact, Tamimi became an international symbol because she was jailed in 2018 after admitting to the aggravated assault of an Israeli soldier and incitement to violence (the BBC does mention her crimes in the piece). When Emmanuel Macron of France told the BBC: “These babies, these ladies, these old people are bombed and killed”, the Corporation reported the allegation without quotation marks in its headline: “Macron calls on Israel to stop killing Gaza’s women and babies.” (The BBC says “Macron calls on” is sufficient for there to be no quotation marks).
While it is content to run headlines like that and describe Tamimi as a symbol of resistance to Israel’s occupation, the BBC refuses to describe Hamas as a terrorist group, saying this would compromise the objectivity of its reporting.
Worth reading in full.
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From the river to the sea, time to ditch the bbc!
It’s ‘our’ BBC like it’s ‘our’ NHS – because they think the British people are fools – and they are mostly right.
Well done the BBC for not bending to Zionist pressure.
By “pressure” I assume you mean “evidence”.
Why don’t you look at the score. Approaching 12,000 civilians, 4,000 kids, doesn’t matter though does it. I mean they’re all brown and Muslims. How many dead kids before you just maybe change your narrative and become sceptics? Maybe you want the IDF to kill them all – is that it? I don’t know, someone please tell me.
How many dead Gaza residents before you just maybe. lol, become sceptical of the pro Israeli narrative.
Look at the history since 1948 you cretins.
It’s the murder of the innocents – justified to kill exactly who?
Don’t you realise that a whole new generation of “terrorists” will arise.
Meanwhile, the Great Reset continues unabated.
Even my attention is being diverted.
By the way Mr. Rons, what’s happening in Ukraine…
I’ve said it before you downtickers – how many Gaza residents do you want murdered?
All of them it would seem.
Well, the IDF seems to be doing a pretty good job on your behalf.
Here’s a radical notion; maybe if the terrorists agreed to return the many hostages they are holding, *alive*, then Israel might just consider stopping bombing the sh*t out of Gaza. Because they aren’t going to stop until Hamas do so. But that’s 100% proof of just how much Hamas do care and consider the civilians isn’t it? The destruction and deaths are a direct result of THEIR actions. It’s all very well people demonstrating this selective outrage from many miles away in your comfortable Western bubble, completely removed from the conflict and with no skin in the game, but I’ll tell you something for nothing. If that were my family that got tortured and slaughtered in a kibbutz, or my kid that got taken and held hostage for 6 weeks now, I’d want them back come hell or high water, whatever it takes.
The fact you seem to be directing literally no anger or blame at the door of Hamas says a great deal I think. Remind me, how much notice did they give Israel before they launched their latest missile bombardment? Or does the advanced notification of an attack and warning to evacuate only work one way when you’re fighting a non-psychopathic, death-obsessed nation?
Here’s another radical idea: Maybe, if the Hamas terrorists aren’t planning to release their hostages just because IDF bombers flatten Gaza and kill loads of people there, the IDF strategy for getting those hostages released isn’t working. Or maybe, getting those hostage released isn’t really what they mean to accomplish.
I wonder how the people who post and uptick the anti-semitic anti-Israel comments found this website. Do they go searching and only do so to promote Hamas.
Yes. Fact checkers are people with small lives and small minds.
Over at DS a subscription is required in order to comment. I have suggested to TCW Headmistress the same be applied here. No action so far.
Well said! These terrorist appeasers just don’t seem to understand that the civilians in Gaza are being used as human shields and propaganda by Hamas, and the BBC are only too happy to oblige.
This is nonsense. The civilian inhabitants of Gaza are being used as hostages by Israel in order to force Hamas to release its hostages¹. Until this has happened, Israelis will keep collaterally killing² their hostages.
These are the absolutely usual conditions of warfare in this area: Armed bandits from both sides massacring and revange-massacring non-combatants in whose well-being the other side is supposed to be interested in. Which is the exact reason why none of these precivilized cutthroats deserves any support.
¹ Assuming they actually want that and they’re not – just like their opponents – just happily using an opportunity to kill some of the others.
² Ie, create conditions which will result in them dying but sufficiently remote from physically attacking them directly that the intent to kill them can be plausibly denied.
I’m assuming you live in the UK?
If so, why?
Maybe gaza is the place for you?
Why don’t you ask Hamas? They have a deliberate policy of using Palestinians as human shields.
Africans have a saying: it takes a while village to raise a child.
The whole village was in southern Israel on 07 October with the children it raised, slaughtering, butchering and burning babies.
The RAF did a good job in Germany.
I don’t condone the way we carpet bombed places like Cologne in WW2.
Jihad lover. Jew hater. No doubt you giggle when Muzzies murder rape and decapitate Christians as well. Troll
Why are any you trying pretend that there are any ‘good guys’ in this horrible, annihilistic conflict? It seems clear to me that (regardless of the religious beliefs of those concerned) the secular State of Israel has been treating those living in Gaza appallingly for decades, and that (to a large extent due to that) a hateful monster bent on vengeance has been spawned in the form of Hamas, who are comparable with ISIS.
Why is anyone from outside this hellhole scenario taking sides? Shouldn’t we be trying to diffuse the situation, before it consumes us all?
Exactly.
But, of course we are told by the Maonstream Marxist Media that ‘Gazans’ have been killed, but no one reports how many of those numbers are evil, barbaric terrorist scum killed by the IDF in the combat operation. I suspect quite a big number. Your words sound like you are supportive of the disgusting murders perpetrated by the people of Gaza on the Israelis on 7th October. The people
Of Gaza are complicit in the evil because I have seen the video of the people coming out into the streets and cheering and celebrating, and the women ululating with excitement over the murder of Jews. Horrible people.
The west and Israel is in an existential fight with Islamic morons and we need to wake up.
Come back when the figure reaches six million and we’ll talk.
“Approaching 12,000 civilians, 4,000 kids:
That is Hamas propaganda numbers without supporting evidence.
There is misinformation coming from both sides. It is called propaganda. Even DS is partial and doesn’t show any true ability to discriminate fact from fiction. All we get is opinion based on partial information and misrepresented as fact.
I agree…Hamas and ISIS are death cults, but we need to look further beyond the emotive headlines and ponder on those gas reserves under Gaza. That could help explain the destruction, because precision bombing it is not!
Not relevant even if true. If true, why are the Palestinians not rich like the Quataris?
The gas reserves have been well reported. For example: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/israel-gives-nod-gaza-marine-gas-development-wants-security-assurances-2023-06-18/
The political situation isn’t the same as Qatar.
Some of them are: the Hamas leaders living in Qatar, for example.
Also, for such a small territory, Gaza appears to have an unfeasible number of hospitals – every bomb seems to hit one.
Perhaps the policy is to store weaponry and explosives in buildings with a Potemkin hospital ward or nursery on the frontage. Maybe some of them are genuine but it’s unlikely all of them are.
Men of war have scant regard for women and children as we know from ancient Greek dramas to present- day reality.
As I noted under ‘News Roundup” this morning:
In the small hours, even the BBC World Service (funded by the Foreign Office) took a critical view of the Israeli activities, with regard to the allegation that a certain hospital was a military outfit. In effect, their journalist said that there was no evidence that there was anything there. It was accompanied by the get out clause that the IdF had not yet presented any. It gave the impression that the beeb was appearing more balanced than some other channels. I guess a real cynic might observe that they are being influenced by Lord Cameron!
What else would we expect from the FC[D]O. It has for decades been known as the department that was nice to foreigners.
I have just re-read The Last Secret – it records how the FO was “nice” towards the USSR in 1945/6/7 even though its true nature was known to all but those well paid to know.
A real cynic might observe that Cameron is in it solely to make more personal contacts overseas at the taxpayers expense. He only has a year to get it all done and was on the plane straight away.
Why do you think he wants to increase foreign aid? To make himself more popular with foreign despots.
Oh I don’t know…. a useless entity dominated in large swathes by Muslims?
Hamas is a Muzzie terror organisation, part of the endless Jihad against non Moslems. Just the sort of thing the Muzzie infiltrated unbritish bullcrap Corp enjoys supporting.
Well I’ve no idea how accurate this latest survey ( 37 pages ) of Palestinian people is, given that there’s a war going on and all, but I’ll just drop it here anyway. It’s a small sample size and was just compiled days ago.
Note: 83% of respondents are in support of what Hamas did on the 7th Oct ( table 27 )
89% said their conviction of coexisting with Israel has decreased. ( table 18 )
You can read the rest for yourselves, it’s pretty much what you’d expect.
https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20Opinion%20Poll%20-%20Gaza%20War%202023%20-%20Tables%20of%20Results.pdf
Yes indeed.
Not surprising at all given what Israel has been doing to them since 1948.
And Hamas began in 1987. I wonder why.
And on the topic of the bent AF BBC, I’ll bet you side with Jeremy Bowen here that the huge stash of firearms the IDF found at the Al-Shifa hospital is totally normal practice in Gaza? Or perhaps you think it was all planted there by the IDF? ( see pic in comments section ).
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1725540425140707558
Where does it say huge?
And where are the command bunkers under the hospital which were the reason the Israelis used for attacking hospitals?
So where are Hamas then?
Do they actually exist?
Only cowards cover their faces and don’t wear uniforms, then scuttle down holes at night, only to emerge, sting, and run away again! Grow some balls and fight face to face with the military opponent not women and kids!
You don’t see running battles along the Palestinian border do you?
I was querying the use of huge cache used to describe 3 guns and as for Hamas they are clearly not under the hospital else we would be hearing all about it, but beyond that I have no idea. Why would I?
And as for the lack of uniforms, tell me any group that claims to be a resistance force which wears uniforms; as arguments go that is really scraping the barrel.
I don’t know if the BBC has an anti-Israel bias or not as I stopped listening to BBC radio and watching television over twenty years ago.I do remember around that time that there were two studies conducted by media departments at Berlin and Glasgow which analysed news organisations around the time of the second Iraq invasion and these studies concluded that the BBC was more pro-war than even the likes of Fox News. My impression generally is that news providers even the big ones who you mnight think woukld protect their prestige have become more and more slack in checking things. They don’t seem to care anymore. Something gets said, gets repeated, taken as gospel and then a few hours or a few days later it is found to be untrue. No shamefacedness though just an attitude of who gives a monkey’s. If they did care about integrity then checking would just happen unconsciously. The Israel-Palestine issue is interesting one when looked at in the light of the neoliberal consensus.
I’ve personally tracked the BBC bias against Israel for 25 years. Many complaints, some went very high, all without exception brushed off.
It doesn’t make mistakes. This is a deliberate policy, led by Jeremy Bowen who hates Israel with a vengeance. Jon Donnison, Orla Guerin, many others work hard to demonise and misrepresent Israel.
Try looking for anything positive on its website. If you do, offset these by a factor of hundreds of reports that demean the only Middle Eastern democracy.
Tactics include moral equivalence, giving Hamas huge respect whilst adding ‘Israel says’ to undermine the statements of its government. Another is to totally suppress what Hamas and the PA say in Arabic, never mentioning for example their charters calling for the eradication of Israel and the Jews. Nor will you ever see a report on the PA’s ‘pay for slay’ pensions paid to terrorists and families.
Two hours after the body of a 65yrs old kidnap victim was found last evening, the world’s best funded news agency had nothing on its ME website save pieces to describe the devastation in Gaza.
I could go on, but its vital to understand this is no ‘mistake’. It’s deliberate, intentional, systematic.
Literally every day, the BBC, either in English or Arabic incites hatred against Israel. I hold this incitement played a major part in everything we’re seeing at the moment.
Go to camera.org for forensic analysis.
Yes more evidence of that here. The BBC presenter didn’t even interject or challenge the Hamas scum on what he had the damn nerve to say and how he referred to the hostages;
”The BBC continues to be a station for Hamas propaganda dissemination. BBC Arabic served as a platform for Hamas Political Bureau member Musa Abu Marzouq to tell the Arabic-speaking world that the 239 Israeli hostages in Gaza, including babies, toddlers, teens, and elderly who were brutally kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on October 7, are actually “guests” of Hamas.
Marzouq further used the BBC platform to claim that Hamas is treating them “as we treat our sons, our children, and our wives,” and even stated that Hamas “wants to release them” – if only Israel agrees to “a ceasefire.”
In the face of these outrageous propaganda lies, the BBC reporter remained silent: He did not challenge how Abu Marzouq could call them “guests,” he did not challenge how ripping people from their homes and kidnapping them is how they “treat our sons, our children, and our wives”, and did not challenge the lie “we want to release them.” BBC chose to be a willing amplifier and mouthpiece for Hamas lies and propaganda.
In fact, the Israeli hostages have been held in captivity for over a month and the Red Cross has not even been granted access to them. BBC Arabic’s willingness to be a propaganda service for murderers and rapists is a stain on the entire BBC.”
https://palwatch.org/page/34757
These are not mistakes.
Some years ago Jeremy Bowen was subject to very mild censure for his blatant ati-Israel repoeting. Whether he is an anti-semite or just anti-Israel we never discovered but his attitudes remain strong in the BBC.
BBC typically reports as fact what a HAMAS news release said while anything from Israel is “according to Israel / IDF ”
The BBC is anti-British, anti-western, anti-Israel an pro-anyone else.
You can just watch the Proms to know how anti – British the BBC is.
From what I gather the BBC is very much the champion of the Anglo-Americans in the Russia-Ukraine situation. Israel is obviously an ally and the most important strategic location in the world for the Anglo-Americans for obvious reasons. I wonder why the BBC possesses such a bias against Israel. Have they been taken over by Woke zombies? Is it a habit of neoliberal types to pretend allegiance to the establishment whilst trying to undermine it from within?
No 40 dead babies
No baked babies
No beheaded babies
No children in cages
No eyes gouged
No raped women
No ripped breasts
No paraded captives
No tortured captives
No mutilating dead bodies
No pregnant women cut open
No mass rapes with broken pelvises
No Israel did not found Shifa hospital
No Biden did not see pictures of dead babies
No October 7 was not “unprovoked”
No Pro-Palestine are not “pro-Hamas” rallies
No 8 yr old Emily Hand was not found dead
No “Global Day of Jihad”
No planned cyanide attacks
No all-female Israeli unit killing 100 Hamas
No Hamas coming thru US border
No Hamas headquarters under hospitals
No Hamas hostages in hospital basements
No Hamas tunnels under Rantisi hospital
No Hamas tunnels under Shaikh Hamad Hospital
No Hamas charter published in 2017 is anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish
No small blasts do not prove Israel did not bomb Baptist hospital
No “misfired” rocket was destroyed by Iron Dome before the Baptist hospital bombing
No “misfired” rocket can’t be both fired from cemetery and southwest of Baptist hospital
No “misfired” rocket trajectory does not align with IDF version of events at Baptist hospital
Exposed crisis actor Eli Beer
Fake baby crib photo
Fake blood splatter photo
Fake booby-trapped school bags
Fake Al Jazeera journalist twitter account
Fake audio tapes released by IDF
Fake AI-generated images of Hamas leaders
Fake “official Al Qaeda material” on dead Hamas fighters
Fake antisemitism controversy over Greta’s toy octopus
Fake antisemitism allegations on Palestine campus activists
False grandstanding evacuation orders
False subtitles for Palestine protest chants
Fake Mein Kempf book in Gaza children living rooms
Fake ‘terrorist shift list’ by mistranslating an Arabic calendar
False labeled a Gaza 4-year-old toddler martyred in airstrike as a doll
False crisis actor accusation by using old pictures of West Bank raid survivor
False crisis actor accusation by using old pictures of Thai children in ghost costumes
False crisis actor accusation by using old pictures of Al-Azhar university students protesting
Yes, many Israeli civilians were killed by crossfire at festival
Yes, many Israeli civilians were killed by Israeli tanks/helicopters at kibbutz
Yes, many Israeli civilians said Hamas was kind to them during attacks and as captives
Yes, Israel exaggerated its death toll for October 7
There’s virtually nothing in that list of spittle that can be proven. Basically nothing. You’ve just swallowed Hamas, pro-Palestine propaganda, hook line and sinker. Much of what you’ve said can’t be disproved either of course. What almost everyone is doing in this conflict is working with blind faith; the propaganda from both sides is through the roof. Your posts, however, I find disturbing – the total belief you have in militants that have indiscriminately killed innocent civilians is, to be frank, sick. Your passion is so strong that you really should go fight with your beloved Hamas. I’m sure they’d welcome you with open arms – obviously in one of those tunnels that you know are diverted carefully around any civilian areas. If not, a job at the BBC awaits you.
You’ve clearly bought the Israeli propaganda.
If absolute proof isn’t available – which it couldn’t be so close to that day, and probably never will be – we can assess the evidence and decide what is most likely.
It seems to me most likely that Israel allowed the incursion to happen, less likely but entirely possible that they were involved in planning it.
Why: as on 9/11, lots reasons.
Justification for a Final Solution to the Palestinian problem.
Access to natural resources and a route for a new canal.
Getting Netanyahu out of his holes.
Probably others that I haven’t seen mentioned..
Israeli deaths: the arguments that most were military and the majority of civilians were killed by the Israeli response, some deliberately, seems to me more plausible than the “evil Mussies killing indiscriminately” narrative.
But, hey, I didn’t fall for 9/11, the fake pandemic, the necessity of mass jabbings with experimental gunk, the climate emergency, diversity being a strength, etc, etc.
I am a 68 year old UK citizen and a libertarian “old socialist” and have been an independent geopolitical analyst for the past 40+ years in the UK.
I am well read on modern world history and current affairs and obtain my information from a variety of “trusted” sources.
I compare this information to the lies, propaganda and omissions from Western governments and their Zionist “presstitutes” in the main stream media to formulate a well informed opinion.
Consequently, it is clear that Palestinians are justified in the actions they take against the foreign occupying forces of Zionist Israelis for the past 75 years.
They can’t help themselves.
I still chuckle about the fact check (not the beeb, I think) regarding the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, which ‘debunked’ the notion of plant shaped explosives when the original claim talked about planting shaped charges.
If only people of 60% European ancestry whose non-European ancestors moved to what is now Italy 2,000 years ago for economic reasons hadn’t decided that they were entitled to a homeland in an area which already had an indigenous population and then proceeded to spend the next 75 years treating those indigenes appallingly badly.
All of this is ultimately a reflection on the audience and readership. If they believed that they had a highly literate and politically astute audience who were in the know about things in the world then they wouldn’t have the brass neck to come out with all of their crap. The best way to summarise this tendency of totalitarianism is to just bear in mind that it is geared to the lowest common denominator. That is simply the most effective method. The consequence of this is that if you aren’t as thick as pig filth then you are likely to be facing a long and painful endurance battle with stupidity for the rest of yor life.
They want you to get all anxious. Maybe listen to something that brings you back to earth. Medieval Christian music or John Denver it doesn’t matter. Like you’re sitting around a campfire hoping that people can make the best of things. That’s the real spirit. You can complain about what you see via the news but the real spirit is something much more human. The moment that you make a connection, even if it is only with six people is the moment that everyting changes. That is the real enemy, what they want to try to hide.
Pro-Palestinians accuse the BBC of Israeli bias.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2023-11-02/bbc-october-7/
This situation is the opening into a new world. Obviously the death toll will be in the hundreds of thousands when its finished simply because of disease and inadequate resources. That is already written into the projecion for the next three months and it can’t be stopped. We saw a lot of genocides in the twentieth century. Perhaps this one will be different. I have looked at the reaction of Democratic Party members in the US and they are reacting very strongly. Netanyahu is right in saying that this situation will shape things for decades to come.Will such a high death toll go unnoticed and unacknowldeged? No I would say that things are in motion now which are largely being kept quiet, the action the the north, there is no way to put htis one back in the bag. It is a difficult situation for the Brits given the Russian border with Iran. In a sense this represents the one that we have been waiting for for all of our lives the answer to the big question mark.
The question is: why does a publicly funded news organisation seemingly report in a way that promotes their own agenda?
Limiting to criticism in one area detracts from the scale of the problem.
If someone takes hundreds of hostages then it isn’t rocket science that they are setting a trap and asking you to commit as many atrocities as possible. That requires an intelligent and dextrous response and you just give them exactly what they want. Israel used to pride itself on its intelligence. Hamas are very well aware of Netanyahu’s woes and it all just fits into their plan perfectly. I find this lack of guile disgusting on every level as if it isn’t even worth bothering to try and help people anymore. This isn’t rocket science or high level stuff.
It doesn’t matter. Try and get a few adults in the room, You won’t be able to do so. Stop acting like some baby who needs a dummy. We know the truth about this situation and we know how it will be delivered.
Close down the vile, leftist monolith. Let them live on subscription alone. Communists and Mohamidans.
Why the f@#k are they still allowed to broadcast?
BBC? What’s that?