BBC continues to ignore Gaza Strip missile fire at Israeli civilians

Since the beginning of February, multiple missile attacks on civilian communities in southern Israel have been carried out by terrorist groups operating in the Gaza Strip.

On the morning of February 4th, as children were on their way to school just after 7 a.m., a missile landed in the Eshkol region.

On the afternoon of February 6th an attack was launched on the Ashkelon area. On the same evening another missile landed in the Ashkelon region and later that night at around 11 p.m. an incoming missile hit the Eshkol district.

On February 8th a missile hit the Sdot Negev area.

On the afternoon of February 10th a missile landed in the Hof Ashkelon area and later that night another missile hit the same region. The IDF responded by targeting terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

None of the above incidents was reported by the BBC. 

Deir el Balah area of central Gaza Strip as seen from the Eshkol region

On the morning of February 9th the IDF targeted Abdallah Kharti – a member of the Popular Resistance Committees and also a Global Jihad operative.  

“According to intelligence data, Kharti played a central role in setting up the terrorist infrastructure in Sinai, which has been firing rockets at Eilat sporadically in recent months, including the most recent rocket attack, launched on January 31, and intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-rocket battery.

In Gaza, Kharti is a member of the Popular Resistance Committees, but he apparently wears more than one hat. In Sinai, he is affiliated with the al-Qaida- inspired Ansar Beit Al-Maqdes group, which has been targeting both Israel and Egyptian security forces. [..]

The attempted strike is a reminder that Gaza is a base not only for Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorism but also for a growing al-Qaida-affiliated presence as well. According to Israeli intelligence estimates, there are hundreds of Salafi-jihadis in Gaza armed with rockets, and many move between Sinai in Gaza regularly.

Hamas has attempted to persuade these factions to refrain from endangering it by provoking an Israeli response against Gaza’s regime, but it has also signaled to the groups that they are otherwise free to attack Israel as they please.”

Notably, the BBC did not report on that incident either. 

As we see, the BBC continues its habit of selective reporting of security incidents on Israel’s southern borders, thus denying audiences information and context vital to their understanding of the region in general and specific Israeli responses to terrorist threats.

BBC Watch

Hamas in Jenin: Pictures the BBC will NOT show.

On December 18th 2013 the BBC News website published an article pertaining to a counter-terrorism operation in Jenin during which Nafe a-Sa’adi was killed when Israeli soldiers trying to make an arrest were attacked by a mob.

At the time we noted here that the BBC chose to place the term counter-terrorism in scare quotes both in the sub-heading and in the body of the report, suggesting to audiences that there was room for scepticism with regard to the nature and definition of the operation.

“A Palestinian man is killed and at least four wounded after Israeli troops launch a “counter terrorism” operation in the West Bank.”

“Israel said its forces opened fire after being attacked during “counter terrorism activity” in the camp.”

On January 26th a memorial event for Sa’adi was held in the Jenin refugee camp, with armed members of Hamas’ al Qassam brigades making a rare centre-stage appearance. Photographs from the event can be seen here and here.

BBC audiences are of course highly unlikely to be shown such photographs or to be informed of the significance of public appearances by armed members of a terrorist organisation in a Palestinian Authority controlled region which lies within walking distance of the nearest Israeli communities.  

Instead, their ability to form an understanding of the security issues facing Israel – and hence also of any preventative actions taken – is shaped by an editorial policy based upon the patchy reporting of selected incidents (more often than not those involving fatalities) in isolation from the picture as a whole, the omission of any reporting on numerous other incidents and the promotion of a narrative which plays down the existence and scale of terrorism even through choice of language and punctuation.

BBC Watch.org

BBC amplifies Hizballah propaganda yet again

Late on the night of Tuesday December 3rd a senior Hizballah operative named Hassan Lakkis (also Laqis) was allegedly shot outside his home in Beirut and later died of his wounds. By Wednesday lunchtime local time, a Lebanese Sunni group had taken responsibility for the incident. 

“The Free Sunnis of Baalbek Battalion officially claims the heroic jihadist operation of assassinating the leading member in the party of the devil [Hezbollah] Hassan Houlo al-Laqis in [Hezbollah’s] home ground,” the group wrote on twitter.

“The jihadist operation was implemented by free Sunni lions from Lebanon,” another tweet wrote.

The BBC News website’s coverage of the story began on Wednesday morning and has since undergoneextensive changes. From the first version of the article, however, one of its dominant themes was the repetition of unfounded Hizballah accusations concerning Israel’s involvement in the attack, despite the BBC clearly being aware of the absence of any evidence to support them. 

The article as it currently stands at the time of writing, together with the side box of analysis by the BBC’s Beirut correspondent Jim Muir, totals 666 words – with the words ‘Israel’ and ‘Israeli’ being used nine times. 

In the body of the article readers are told that:

“Hezbollah blamed Israel for his death but Israel has denied the accusation. […]

“The group [Hizballah] said Israel had tried to kill him several times previously.” […]

“Israel denied any involvement in the death.”

“These automatic accusations are an innate reflex with Hezbollah,” Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said. “They don’t need evidence, they don’t need facts. They just blame anything on Israel.” […]

“Hezbollah fought a destructive 34-day war with Israel in 2006. The group said that one of Lakkis’s sons had been killed in that conflict.”

In his sidebox of analysis Muir writes:

“One of his colleagues, Ghaleb Awali, was killed by a car bomb in southern Beirut in 2004, an incident which Hezbollah also blamed on Israel.” […]

“Israel usually does not comment on assassinations in which it is believed to have had a hand, such as the killing of another senior Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh in a bomb explosion in Damascus in 2008. But on this occasion it adamantly denied killing Hassan Lakkis, in what appears to have been a fairly clumsy operation by whoever did it.”

In a filmed report broadcast on BBC television news and also placed on the BBC News website, Muir repeated the Hizballah line.

“But of course Hizballah itself has been very quick to blame Israel for this killing – something the Israelis have denied. Now normally, if they have had a hand in something, or it’s believed they have, they keep quiet – they say absolutely nothing.”

So busy is the BBC repeating and promoting the baseless propaganda of a terrorist organization, that exploration of the possibility that the assassination might have been carried out by any actor which is not Israel is reduced to one vague sentence in Muir’s analysis, which was repeated in the body of the main article’s earlier versions – including the decidedly curious use of the term “unlikely target”.

“But Lakkis might be an unlikely target for Sunni militants angered by Hezbollah’s role in Syria.”

Likewise, the terrorist organisation’s role in the Syrian civil war is also downplayed, both in the article itself and in Muir’s sidebox.

“Iran is a major backer of Hezbollah, which has sent fighters to Syria to back the government of Bashar al-Assad.”

“Lakkis’s death comes in the context of repeated attacks on Hezbollah’s heartland in Beirut’s southern suburbs which are seen as connected to the movement’s involvement alongside Syrian government forces in their struggle with mainly Sunni rebels.”

Notably, the article fails to make clear to readers Hizballah’s designation as a terrorist organization which is operational worldwide, describing it thus:

“Hezbollah – or the Party of God – is a powerful political and military organisation in Lebanon made up mainly of Shia Muslims.

It emerged with financial backing from Iran in the early 1980s and began a struggle to drive Israeli troops from Lebanon.”

As Michael Totten has noted:

“And yet Hezbollah is still often described, by itself and by its Western apologists, as an indigenous Lebanese “resistance” movement in a twilight struggle against the Jewish state. It is, in fact, a multinational terror operation with Iran as its funder and controller.”

The BBC article also states that:

“Little is known publicly about Lakkis, but he was reputedly close to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and an expert in weapons manufacturing.”

As is documented in Matthew Levitt’s recently published book, Lakkis was previously also responsible for Hizballah’s procurement of arms and military equipment.

“In 2001, Mohammad Dbouk was indicted in U.S. federal court under Operation Smokescreen. According to U.S. investigators, Dbouk is an Iranian-trained Hezbollah operative and “an intelligence specialist and propagandist [who] was dispatched to Canada by Hezbollah for the express purpose of obtaining surveillance equipment.” According to information collected by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) during its investigation into Mohammad Dbouk’s activities in Canada, first in Montreal and then in Vancouver, Dbouk was acting under the direction of Hezbollah’s then chief of procurement, the aforementioned Haj Hassan Hilu Laqis, who was based in Lebanon.” [emphasis added]

Just a couple of weeks ago the BBC was amplifying Iranian propaganda on the subject of the terror attack on the Iranian embassy in Beirut – see here and here.  In this article (as well as in a separate one) it now adds Hizballah propaganda to its cocktail of unfounded accusations surrounding that incident.

“The news comes a day after Hassan Nasrallah said Saudi Arabia was behind last month’s bombings outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut.”

The BBC clearly has a problem knowing how to relate to the streams of all too predictable propaganda regularly produced by regimes and terrorist organisations in the Middle East. Its current practice of uncritical repetition and amplification of baseless rumour, conspiracy theories and propaganda is clearly incompatible with its obligation to “build a global understanding of international issues” and its self-declared aspiration to “remain the standard-setter for international journalism”.

The BBC’s remit is to help audiences look beyond the propaganda and rhetoric they can just as easily view on websites and television stations run by Hizballah or the Iranian and Syrian regimes rather than giving it inappropriate credence through uncritical repetition and amplification on its own website and television news

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BBC amplification of organised anti-Israel delegitimising campaign

A headline appearing on the Middle East page of the BBC News website on November 30th informed readers that “Bedouins hold Israel ‘day of rage’”, with the sub-header reading:

“Bedouin Arabs living in Israel have been protesting in the Negev Desert and towns and cities over government plans to resettle them.”

Below that headline (and also at the bottom of the article itself) appeared a link to a ‘related story’ produced in January 2013 by Newsnight’s Tim Whewell which was discussed here.

The link in the headline leads to an article titled “Israel: Negev Bedouins’ ‘day of rage’ over resettlement plan“. 

The article opens:

“Bedouin Arabs living in Israel have been protesting in the Negev Desert and towns and cities over government plans to resettle them.”

So, in two headlines, a sub-header and an introductory sentence, readers have already been informed four times before they begin to read the article itself that the participants in (and by implication, the organisers of) the protests which took place on November 30th were Bedouin.

There is no doubt that some Bedouin were present at some of those demonstrations. However, at no point does the BBC’s report inform readers of the broader background to those protests, which are part of a much wider delegitimisation campaign – initiated, led and coordinated by non-Bedouin actors – which has been going on for some time. 

Details of that coordinated campaign have been published by NGO Monitor in a report titled NGOS AND THE NEGEV BEDOUIN ISSUE IN THE CONTEXT OF POLITICAL WARFARE. Further information on the propaganda surrounding the issue can be read in this article by Ben Dror Yemini. 

The distinctly jaded term ‘Days of Rage’ has been used to conscript supporters to similar protests on several occasions in the past. Among those making up the conglomerate of anti-Israel activists promoting these regular demonstrations are the International Solidarity Movement (which is linked of course to the same people who organized the failed flotilla publicity stunts), the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), the ‘Stop the Wall’ organization (which was also involved in the ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ publicity stunt), the Communist Party of Israel and the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee (the leader of which also took part in the organization of the ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ and in the 2010 flotilla). As can be seen in the logo appearing on this campaign poster promoted on the blog of veteran anti-Israel campaigner Abir Kopty, advertising material for the campaign has been produced by non-Bedouin organisations such as the Haifa-based Baladna. 

Promotion of the November 30th ‘Day of Rage’ events outside Israel has also been carried out by known anti-Israel campaigners such as Yael Kahn (no stranger to the BBC), Ben White writing on the Hamas-linked MEMO site and of course the flotilla-participating, Hamas-supporting Palestine Solidarity Campaign. 

Hence, the BBC’s portrayal of these demonstrations as spontaneous protests initiated by Bedouin living in the Negev is – at best – a very partial representation of the facts. However, it can also be viewed as aiding and abetting a political campaign which now exploits the Bedouin issue for a much wider and older agenda of delegitimisation and that perception is reinforced by the fact that the BBC article links to an organised campaigning letter signed (at the click of a mouse on the PSC website) by a collection of known anti-Israel campaigners and former ‘celebs’ and published – naturally – in the Guardian. 

Beyond a few token sentences clearly designed to ‘tick the impartial box’, the BBC report makes no effort to inform readers of the actual substance of the proposed Prawer-Begin Plan. Neither does it make it clear that the majority of Negev Bedouin have already taken advantage of the incentives on offer to them and now live in planned communities where all the facilities and services can be provided. In fact, readers of this BBC article would take away the exact opposite impression.

“Before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, groups of Bedouin Arabs lived a semi-nomadic life in the Negev but in modern times many have settled in what are known as “unrecognised villages”.

Because they have no formal planning status, they have no access to government services including supplies of electricity and running water. Some are no more than collections of flimsy shacks made from corrugated iron.”

Here is what one Bedouin has to say about the Israeli government’s plan to improve the living conditions and economic status of the Negev Bedouin:

The BBC article also promotes the myth of “Jewish settlements” often advanced by anti-Israel campaigners:

“However, the Bedouin and their supporters see the resettlement move as a smokescreen for a programme to cut the historic links between the Arab communities and their land, and to replace them with new Jewish settlements.”

The BBC News website editors would do well to heed their own Key Terms guide on the use of the word “Jewish” in this case.

“Jewish 

Be careful over whether you mean ‘Israeli’ or ‘Jewish’: the latter might imply that the story is about race or religion, rather than the actions of the state or its citizens.”

As it stands, the implication in the BBC report is that only Jews will be able to live in any “Jewish settlements” to be constructed in the Negev – an assertion which is patently untrue as Ben Dror Yemini notes.

“Any Bedouin who wishes to buy land there is invited to do so and is entitled to do so. Of course, that would cost money. In Meitar, for example, Bedouins from the surrounding area decided to buy plots of land. No one stopped them.”

Not only does this BBC article fail to meet basic editorial demands of accuracy and impartiality; it also seriously damages the BBC’s standing and reputation by displaying the extent of its self-conscription to the ranks of an organized political campaign which goes far beyond the issue of the Negev Bedouin. 

Compare and contrast: BBC reporting on cross-border missile fire

On November 21st cross-border mortar fire hit an uninhabited desert area in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province. The attack was claimed by an Iranian-backed militia operating in Iraq. A report on the incidentappeared on the BBC news website’s Middle East page on the same day.

On November 19th cross-border mortar fire hit the Eshkol region of Israel’s Western Negev – home to over 12,000 residents of 31 different communities. The attack was carried out from the Gaza Strip, in which several Iranian-backed terrorist organisations operate, and the IDF later responded by targeting several terror sites.

We would like to be able to show readers the BBC’s report on that incident of cross-border missile fire – but there isn’t one.

BBC Watch