21 July 2025

The BBC has Excused Every Israeli War Crime By Censoring Anything That Contradicts the Zionist Narrative - Its Time We Stopped Paying the Licence Fee

The BBC Reported that the Execution of 15 Red Crescent Medics was a ‘mistake’


Gaza - Doctors Under Attack - The Film the BBC Refused to Show

On 16 June Jonathan Greenwood, the Complaints Director responded to a complaint I had made about their coverage of the murder of 15 Medics. Greenwood added nothing new except more sophistry.  The correspondence I had with the BBC can be viewed here and below.



At the beginning of July 121 BBC journalists wrote anonymously to the BBC’s Director General, Tory Tim Davie, accusing the corporation of making

opaque editorial decisions and censorship at the BBC on the reporting of Israel/Palestine.  We believe the refusal to broadcast the documentary ‘Gaza: Medics Under Fire’ is just one in a long line of agenda driven decisions. It demonstrates, once again, that the BBC is not reporting “without fear or favour” when it comes to Israel.

 

 Why Labour REALLY Supports Genocide



The 121 BBC journalists and over 300 from the media industry wrote:

Much of the BBC’s coverage in this area is defined by anti-Palestinian racism... (it) draws into focus the role of Sir Robbie Gibb, on the BBC Board and BBC’s Editorial Standards Committee. We are concerned that an individual with close ties to the Jewish Chronicle, an outlet that has repeatedly published anti-Palestinian and often racist content, has a say in the BBC's editorial decisions in any capacity, including the decision not to broadcast ‘Gaza: Medics Under Fire’.

This conflict of interest highlights a double standard for BBC content makers who have themselves experienced censorship in the name of ‘impartiality’....  By comparison, Gibb remains in an influential post with little transparency regarding his decisions despite his ideological leanings being well known. We can no longer ask license fee payers to overlook Gibbs’ ideological allegiances.

Since October 2023 it has become increasingly clear to our audiences that the BBC’s reporting on Israel / Palestine falls short of our own editorial standards. There is a gulf between the BBC’s coverage of what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank and what our audiences can see is happening via multiple credible sources including human rights organisations, staff at the UN and journalists on the ground. ...  news in particular has failed to report the reality and the context of the war on Palestinians. All too often it has felt that the BBC has been performing PR for the Israeli government and military.  This should be a cause of great shame and concern for everyone at the BBC.

The BBC’s double standards are exposed in this excellent short film from Richard Sanders of Double Down News. When the BBC was running with the false ‘anti-Semitism’ smears against Corbyn there was no question of a ‘perception of bias’ or ‘due impartiality’. Fronted by John Ware, who became a part-owner of the rabidly anti-Palestinian Jewish Chronicle, Ware had a history of antagonism to Corbyn. The programme was a master-class  in propaganda and it has now been shown to have been a tissue of lies.

The Panorama programme Is Labour Anti-Semitic didn’t pretend to be unbiased. All the ‘witnesses’ were anonymous and from the Jewish Labour Movement. The ‘evidence’ from Izzy Lenga, that she had been subject to holocaust denial abuse had in fact been heavily edited and referred to her experiences in the student movement not the Labour Party. They were almost certainly lies anyway but the BBC decided the lies should be directed at Corbyn and the Labour Left!

Similarly the ‘evidence’ of Ben Westerman, a Labour Investigator were also a pack of lies. He was investigating Helen Marks, a Jewish Labour Party member.  He alleged that her silent witness, Rica Bird had asked him ‘where are you from? Are you from Israel?’

What Rica had actually said was ‘‘so I’m just curious about what branch are you in?” The interview was recorded so there was no doubt that Westerman was lying through his teeth but the BBC broadcast it anyway. They even submitted the programme for a BAFTA award but this propaganda program was rejected out of hand.

In Why Labour REALLY Supports Genocide the claim was also made (5.40-6.05] that

In the Labour Files we expose Jonathan Hoffman and Richard Millett... We exposed them as having links to the extreme right as having been very close to the English Defence League. Jonathan Hoffman is photographed alongside Roberta Moore, the founder of the EDL’s Jewish Division.

In fact as early as 14 August 2010 I had exposed these links in Jonathan Hoffman of the Zionist Federation and the EDL’s Roberta Moore Hold a Joint Demonstration. I am grateful to Richard Sanders for having set the record straight.


But the BBC knows no shame. It was not the first such letter. In November 2024 over 100 BBC staff and more than 200 from the media industry wrote that ‘Basic journalistic tenets have been lacking when it comes to holding Israel to account for its actions.’ It accused the corporation of providing favourable coverage toward Israel and called on the broadcaster to “recommit to fairness, accuracy, and impartiality” over its reporting on Gaza. The corporation was also criticised for failing to provide “consistently fair and accurate evidence-based journalism in its coverage of Gaza”.


The context for this is that the BBC has always been the Voice of the British Establishment. It follows the line of the British Foreign Office. On Ukraine it 100% supports NATO.  No ‘due impartiality’ there. But on the genocide in Gaza the BBC’s bias has become so obvious that its staff have protested that decisions are made above their head.

The decision not to broadcast Gaza Medics Under Attack was particularly egregious and for nakedly political reasons – showing war crimes it might have given the perception of bias. The BBC might have been seen as taking sides against the war criminals. The BBC has become an apologist for a state that is emulating the Nazis. But even the Nazis left the Jewish hospital in Berlin alone.

James O'Brien reacts to BBC's decision to pull documentary on Gaza doctors

On 23 March Israel murdered 15 Red Crescent medics and aid workers, burying them, with their crushed ambulances, in a shallow grave. It claimed that the vehicles had been approaching ‘suspiciously’ without their lights on.

Owen Jones & BBC should be ashamed

When the bodies were dug up, a video was found on the phone of Rif'at Radwan. Israel’s version of events was found to be one long lie. It was premeditated murder. Israel is incapable of telling the truth and it bars journalists from Gaza to hide the truth.

How did the BBC cover it? Raffi Berg must have faced a quandary. How to cover the story whilst painting the IDF in the best light? Of course the BBC has a lot of experience in this sort of thing. There would be no headlines along the lines of ‘Israel murders 15 medics’.

Israel admits mistakes over medic killings in Gaza | BBC News

Israel claimed it had all been a mistake. They had accidentally murdered, over a period of more than five minutes, 15 medics in the ambulances. So what headline did the BBC choose? Israel admits mistakes over medic killings in Gaza. After all its quite easy to murder 15 people by mistake. It does it all the time in Gaza.

On 15 April I filed a complaint with the BBC over their coverage and asked

Could we say that Nazi Germany exterminated 6 million Jews ‘by mistake’? Israel is busy exterminating Palestinian civilians in Gaza & yet the BBC, tied by hand & foot to the Foreign Office is determined not to let the ‘G' word pass its lips

The BBC repeated, word for word, the Israeli claim that

soldiers buried the bodies of the 15 dead workers in sand to protect them from wild animals, the official said, claiming the vehicles were moved and buried the following day to clear the road

Burying the bodies of Jews they had shot in shallow graves was a Nazi speciality. The BBC was happy to buy the Israeli lie about protecting the bodies from wild animals. If only the Nazis had thought of that one they might not have had such a bad reputation.

I asked what would the BBC do if the Russians had executed 15 Ukrainian medics. Would they have quoted the Russians ‘explanation’ that it was all a mistake? I got no answer.

The BBC’s response was that the mistake referred, not to the killings themselves but the lies they told afterwards. A distinction without a difference.

I was told that the BBC later amended the headline to “Israel changes account of Gaza medic killings”. Not ‘Israel admits lying’. Perish the thought that Israel murders anyone. I went on to say that

You deliberately and with malice aforethought chose the most favourable headline you could to gloss over Israel’s deliberate murder of 15 medics. You could have chosen headlines such as ‘Israel murders 15 Red Crescent medics’ or ‘Israel caught out lying’ over Execution of Medics but you chose the most innocuous heading that Israel had made ‘mistakes’.

I asked ‘Do you always choose the narrative a killer provides? Why crush the ambulances and not hand them and the dead bodies back to the Red Crescent if it was all an accident? I got no answer

Peter Oborne grills BBC Head of News Content Richard Burgess who is Unable to Explain the BBC's Bias

The unit believed to be responsible for the murders was Unit 504 of the Golani Brigade, a unit with a reputation for torture and murder, led by the notorious General Yehuda Vach, who Ha'aretz revealed had previously said that ‘there are no innocents in Gaza’. A battalion commander of the same brigade had earlier been filmed by Channel 4 telling troops “Anyone you encounter there is an enemy. You identify anyone, you eliminate him.” See IDF unit involved in Gaza paramedics’ killing was under command of brigade led by notorious Israeli general

In giving the most favourable coverage possible to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, to the point of genocide denial, the BBC was creating the political conditions in which genocide is acceptable. That is why the BBC never uses the word ‘Genocide’ and according to Peter Oborne has interrupted guests 100 times when they’ve tried to use the word.

The BBC actively minimises the horrors in Gaza and by refusing to contextualise Israel’s actions is therefore complicit in the Genocide. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ is another word that the BBC is shy of using.

Sky TV 'Two Hours of Terror' Israel's Murder of 15 Red Crescent Medics

I pointed out that Sky TV’s investigation into Israel’s murder of the Red Crescent workers stands in stark contrast to the BBC’s Zionist apologetics. In Sky TV’s film Sir Geoffrey Nice KC summarised at 18.23 what had happened:

This looks like a dreadful war crime. The availability of a bulldozer to bury the bodies of the 15 people and their vehicles and the change of official accounts given by Israel, all of which points to cover up.  It’s exactly what you’d expect of any crime. Evidence of crime and not the reaction of innocence but the reaction of cover up.

The BBC’s Tom Fielden told me that ‘it is not the role of BBC News to take sides, or assign motive or intent to the actions of groups or individuals.’ Strange that. When the government denies there is a genocide in Gaza, despite the almost unanimous opinion of human rights organisations, lawyers and holocaust historians, the BBC does indeed take sides. Neutrality in times of injustice means you take the side of the oppressor, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said

We should remember that even the Nazis didn’t murder Red Cross workers. Israel has indeed achieved a first. The BBC says that it’s not its job to take sides but in Ukraine it’s a different story. Russian explanations for the war are dismissed. Any and every allegation by Russia is dismissed by their ‘experts’. When it comes to October 7 though, the BBC is happy to endorse the Israeli version of events.

I suggested that ‘we should call the BBC institutionally dishonest, as well as institutionally racist when it comes to Palestinians.’ I asked:

How do you murder by mistake, over a period of five or more minutes, with hundreds of bullets, 15 ambulancemen and first aiders?  How do you crush the ambulances and bury the bodies in a shallow grave by accident?

Gaza – How to Survive a Warzone

Although the BBC suppressed first Gaza – How to Survive a Warzone and then Gaza: Medics Under Fire it had been happy to broadcast a propaganda film ‘Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again’

The final point in my complaint was about the Hannibal Doctrine, Israel’s policy of killing its own citizens in order to prevent them being captured and exchanged for Palestinian hostages. The Hannibal Directive was put into operation on the morning of October 7. Orders were given to Apache helicopters to fire on any vehicle entering Gaza even if they contained Israeli civilians. We also know that tanks fired shells into houses in Kibbutz Be’eri killing Israeli captives.

Haaretz confirms Israel killed its own people on 7 October, with Asa Winstanley

This explains the large number of civilian casualties, approximately 800, on October 7. There is much evidence, including a car cemetery with hundreds of burnt vehicles. Since Hamas fighters were only carrying light weapons, the unavoidable inference is that Israel was responsible for the majority of civilian deaths on October 7.

As the Guardian noted, quoting Ha'aretz

Another message given to Israel’s Gaza division at 11.22am, about five hours after the attack began, ordered: “Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza.”

A southern command source told the paper: “Everyone knew by then that such vehicles could be carrying kidnapped civilians or soldiers … Everyone knew what it meant to not let any vehicles return to Gaza.”

Not once has the BBC mentioned the Hannibal Doctrine even though it is indispensable to understanding October 7. The BBC did not reply to my question about this. Clearly the BBC wanted to paint October 7 as one long atrocity rather than one in which Israel was culpable.

On 14 July the BBC published an Editorial Review into “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone”. Its Executive Summary began by saying that

“Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone” is an important record of the impact of the Israel-Gaza war on some of those most affected by it. Everyone within Gaza involved in making this Programme was operating inside an active warzone, risking their lives in doing so. This is necessary context for those reading this report.

Although it found that

the failure to disclose... the information about the Narrator’s father’s position as Deputy Minister of Agriculture in the Hamas-run government in Gaza was a breach of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines,

It found that ‘this is the only breach of the Editorial Guidelines I have identified in connection with the Programme.’ It went on to state that:

Having said this, I do not consider that anything in the Narrator’s scripted contribution to the Programme breached the BBC’s standards on due impartiality. I have also not seen or heard any evidence to support a suggestion that the Narrator’s father or family influenced the content of the Programme in any way.

Most people would say that the failure to mention the Narrator’s father’s position was a minor omission at worst.


 

How did the BBC misreport the Editorial Review it had itself commissioned? ‘BBC Gaza documentary narrated by Hamas official's son breached accuracy guideline, review finds’ There was no evidence that the Narrator’s father was a Hamas official.

The Report said that the father was ‘Deputy Minister of Agriculture in the Hamas-run government in Gaza’ a very different thing. It quoted the Production Company as saying that ‘the father’s position was a civilian or technocratic one, as opposed to a political or military position in Hamas and that ‘the Narrator’s father was not taking the precautions expected of someone who held a political or military position within Hamas.’

The Report also said that the

Production Company was also under the impression, whether rightly or wrongly, that there was a clear distinction between officials and ministers working for the Gazan civil government, and Hamas and that they ‘understood that Gazans themselves separate the civil government in Gaza from Hamas.

The BBC news report failed to mention or quote Peter Johnston’s view that the film did not breach the BBC’s standards on due impartiality. The BBC News report did not consider this of any importance. The BBC cannot even be trusted to report its own report.

On 27 June Ha'aretz ran an article 'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans. The article quoted an officer serving at a distribution center:

Working with a civilian population when your only means of interaction is opening fire – that's highly problematic, to say the least. It's neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snipers and mortar shells.

The officer recounted how

Once the mortars stopped firing, and we saw people starting to approach. So we resumed fire to make it clear they weren't allowed to. In the end, one of the shells landed on a group of people.

In other cases, he said,

We fired machine guns from tanks and threw grenades. There was one incident where a group of civilians was hit while advancing under the cover of fog.

Ha'aretz described how the name of Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, commander of the IDF's Division 252 repeatedly came up.

Haaretz previously reported how Vach turned the Netzarim corridor into a deadly route, endangered soldiers on the ground, and was suspected of ordering the destruction of a hospital in Gaza without authorization.

Now, an officer in the division says Vach decided to disperse gatherings of Palestinians waiting for UN aid trucks by opening fire. "This is Vach's policy," the officer said, "but many of the commanders and soldiers accepted it without question. [The Palestinians] are not supposed to be there, so the idea is to make sure they clear out, even if they're just there for food."

A tank driver described how

lately, firing shells has just become standard practice. Every time we fire, there are casualties and deaths, and when someone asks why a shell is necessary, there's never a good answer. Sometimes, merely asking the question annoys the commanders.

“If it's meant to be a warning shot, and we see them running back to Gaza, why shoot at them?” he asked.

Earlier this week, soldiers from Division 252 opened fire at an intersection where civilians were waiting for aid trucks. A commander on the ground gave the order to fire directly at the center of the junction, resulting in the deaths of eight civilians, including teenagers. The incident was brought to the attention of Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor, but so far, aside from a preliminary review, he has taken no action and has not demanded an explanation from Vach regarding the high number of fatalities in his sector.

“I was at a similar event. From what we heard, more than ten people were killed there,” said another senior reserve officer commanding forces in the area. “When we asked why they opened fire, we were told it was an order from above and that the civilians had posed a threat to the troops. I can say with certainty that the people were not close to the forces and did not endanger them... killing innocent people – it's been normalized. We were constantly told there are no noncombatants in Gaza, and apparently that message sank in among the troops."...

“My greatest fear is that the shooting and harm to civilians in Gaza aren't the result of operational necessity or poor judgment, but rather the product of an ideology held by field commanders...”

And what is this ideology? Zionism, the ideology of Jewish supremacism.  A senior officer described how

"They talk about using artillery on a junction full of civilians as if it's normal," said a military source who attended the meeting. "An entire conversation about whether it's right or wrong to use artillery, without even asking why that weapon was needed in the first place. What concerns everyone is whether it'll hurt our legitimacy to keep operating in Gaza. The moral aspect is practically nonexistent. No one stops to ask why dozens of civilians looking for food are being killed every day."

The article quoted military sources as saying that

Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor typically conducts only preliminary inquiries, relying mostly on the accounts of field commanders. He has not taken disciplinary action against officers whose soldiers harmed civilians, despite clear violations of IDF orders and the laws of war.

How did the BBC cover this? A must read report is BBC ON GAZA-ISRAEL: ONE STORY, DOUBLE STANDARDS by the Centre for Media Monitoring. Below are some of its comments:

Nearly a week after Haaretz’s devastating report, the BBC cited a single security contractor, who the GHF described as a ‘disgruntled former contractor’...

The report concluded by noting:

‘Earlier this week more than 170 charities and other NGOs called for the GHF to be shut down. The organisations, including Oxfam and Save the Children, say Israeli forces and armed groups “routinely” open fire on Palestinians seeking aid....

The BBC’s evidence – and this, presumably, is not accidental – is not remotely comparable to Haaretz’s testimony of serving Israeli soldiers, including senior officers, who have blown the whistle on the deliberate killing of unarmed civilians posing no threat.

In a separate piece, the BBC’s Helen Sullivan did mention the article:

‘According to a report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday, unnamed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers said they were ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians near aid distribution sites to drive them away.’

‘Ordered to shoot at’? In fact, Haaretz reported that Israeli soldiers were routinely killing and wounding large numbers of unarmed civilians offering no threat. In what journalistic universe is Sullivan’s description an accurate representation of the Haaretz report?

It was significant that the BBC immediately followed mention of the Haaretz report with this:

‘Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly rejected the report, calling the allegations “malicious falsehoods”.’

Another report by the BBC’s Ione Wells commented of the Israeli army:

‘However it denied any allegations of deliberate fire at civilians, such as those raised in a report by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday.

‘That report quoted unnamed IDF soldiers who said they were ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians near aid distribution sites, to drive them away or disperse them.’

Again, the same carefully chosen words that contain the tiniest, least damning fraction of truth from Haaretz’s utterly damning report.

Lucy Williamson, Helen Sullivan and Ione Wells and their editors will have been keenly aware of the precise details of the Haaretz report. Selecting a few of the most shocking quotes from the most credible whistleblowers, as we have done here, would have been the natural course of action for independent, impartial journalists writing on exactly the same issue. So why didn’t Williamson, Sullivan and Wells and their editors do so?

Any fair observer would have to conclude that the BBC felt obliged to respond to the Haaretz confessions by discussing the subject but chose to do so in a way that did the least possible damage to the reputation of a key ally of the British government. And yet we are talking about the BBC reporting on an Israeli government that is committing the first livestreamed genocide.

Below are some of its most damning Key Findings:

1.                FOR THE BBC, PALESTINIANS DEATHS ARE LESS NEWSWORTHY

1.             Despite Gaza enduring 34x more deaths than Israel since the start of the war, the BBC ran an almost equal number of articles profiling personal and humanising stories about specific Israeli or Palestinian victims (279 for Palestinians vs. 201 for Israelis).

2.            BBC article headlines mentioned Palestinian casualties just two times more than Israeli casualties, despite 34x more Gazan deaths.

3.            The BBC gave Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage across articles, and 19 times more across TV/radio, when measured on a per-fatality basis in proportion to the 34:1 Gazan-Israeli death toll.

4.            Delegitimising casualty numbers: the BBC attached the ‘Hamas-run’ qualifier (i.e., ‘Hamas-run health ministry’) to Palestinian casualty figures in 1,155 articles... thereby undermining Gazan casualties and Palestinian suffering, more generally.

2.                THE BBC DEPLOYS A HIERARCHY OF LANGUAGE FOR ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS

The BBC’s use of language appears systematic and varies according to the identity of victims and perpetrators. Linguistic patterns... betray the BBC’s commitment to impartiality by constructing a moral universe where Israeli suffering is inherently more tragic, more deliberate, and more worthy of human empathy than Palestinian deaths.

 ‘Massacre’ applied to attacks against Israelis: The word ‘massacre(d)’ was applied almost 18 times more frequently to Israeli victims than Palestinian victims in BBC articles. Meanwhile, it appeared in article headlines five times – all exclusively for attacks on Israelis. Despite numerous mass casualty attacks against Palestinians, the term never appeared in headlines describing Palestinian deaths.

More emotive language for Israeli victims: BBC articles used emotive terms (‘atrocities’, ‘slaughter’, ‘barbaric’, ‘deadly’, ‘brutal’) almost four times as much when describing Israeli victims. In TV/radio, 70% of all emotive terms used by BBC correspondents and presenters referred to Israeli victims of attacks.

Israelis are ‘butchered’, Palestinians simply ‘die’: The words ‘butchered’, ‘butcher’, ‘butchering’ were used exclusively for Israeli victims by BBC correspondents and presenters. Similarly, ‘murder(ed)’ was referenced 220 times for actions against Israelis and just once for Palestinians.

Masking the perpetrator: When reporting attacks on Palestinians, the BBC consistently obscured Israeli responsibility through passive language in headlines (e.g., ‘Air strike on Gaza school kills at least 15 people’ rather than identifying Israel as the perpetrator)

3.                INTERVIEWEES WITH INDEPENDENT OR PALESTINIAN PERSPECTIVES ARE NOT TREATED FAIRLY AT THE BBC

Palestinian perspectives face significant barriers to being heard on BBC platforms. These patterns represent a serious departure from the BBC’s stated commitment to impartiality, which requires giving ‘due weight to events, opinion and the main strands of argument’ across its output.

Disparity in platforming voices: The BBC interviewed significantly fewer Palestinians than Israelis (1,085 v 2,350) on TV and radio.

 ‘Israeli self-defence’: BBC presenters shared the Israeli perspective 11 times more frequently than the Palestinian perspective (2,340 v 217), even when interviewing neutral third parties like humanitarian organisations.

Uneven application of the “do you condemn” test: While the BBC pressed a total of 38 interviewees to condemn Hamas’s 7 October attacks, equivalent questioning to condemn Israel’s actions took place zero times, despite Israel’s actions resulting in tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths.

4.                HISTORY STARTS ON 7 OCTOBER 2023 AT THE BBC

The systematic omission of key historical and contemporary context has acquired an institutional quality at the BBC. Whilst the attacks of 7 October 2023 which led to the killing of over 1,200 Israelis has rightly been condemned, the context given around the attack has been small, if not non-existent, thereby reinforcing the Israeli government’s narrative of self-defence.

7 October as the ‘starting point’: The 7 October attacks were referenced in at least 40% of the BBC’s online coverage. Yet only 0.5% of articles referenced any historical or contemporary context, namely: Israel’s occupation and violence against Palestinians in the months, years and decades before 7 October, as documented by many organisations, such as the UN and Amnesty International.

History erased from reporting: The BBC only mentioned ‘occupation’ 14 times in news articles when providing context to 7 October (0.3% of articles); ‘blockade’ 3 times (0.08%), and ‘settlements’ just once (0.03%) – while across TV/radio, ‘occupation’ appeared in only 33 clips (0.3%), ‘blockade’ in 20 (0.2%), and ‘settlements’ in 8 (0.07%).

Strategic contextual omission: Despite being essential context for understanding the 7 October attack, Palestinian fatalities of Israeli violence (pre-7 October) appeared in just 1 article (0.03%), references to international law violations in just 1 article (0.03%), and Palestinian expulsions-from-homes in just 1 article (0.03%).

Apartheid reality obscured: Despite numerous human rights organisations identifying Israel’s policies as apartheid, only 2% of articles mentioned the term, thereby concealing a crucial framework through which to understand the structural nature of Israel’s current war on Gaza and Palestine more generally.

Military doctrine blackout: In its coverage of Gaza, the BBC completely omitted Israeli military doctrines like the Dahiya Doctrine (deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure) and the Hannibal Directive (risking hostages’ lives to prevent captures), despite these being essential for understanding Israeli operations.

5.                THE BBC SUPPRESSES OR MINIMISES ALLEGATIONS OF GENOCIDE

The BBC’s approach to allegations of genocide against the Palestinians represents perhaps the most profound and egregious failure in its coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Our research has found a systematic pattern of the BBC suppressing claims about a ‘plausible genocide’ and failing to properly investigate and report on Israeli actions contributing to these claims.


6.                ILLEGALLY HELD ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS ARE REPRESENTED DIFFERENTLY BY THE BBC

The BBC has established a clear double standard in how it portrays forcibly detained individuals. No Palestinian detainees are referenced as ‘hostages’, other than one reference by a presenter in 2025, which was swiftly retracted.

Contrasting terminology: Israelis taken by Hamas and other groups into Gaza were consistently described as ‘hostages’ whilst Palestinians detained by Israel, even those held without charge, were labelled as ‘prisoners’, thereby implying criminality and reinforcing Israeli government narratives.

Extreme disparity in coverage of detainees: Despite a significantly larger number of Palestinians being detained over a longer period of time (10,000 v 251, a ratio of 40:1), including many more children, Israeli hostages were mentioned 5.3 times more than Palestinian detainees (1238 vs 231).

Concealing administrative detention: Only six BBC articles referenced ‘administrative detention’, Israel’s practice of holding Palestinians without charge, despite it affecting thousands, including hundreds of children. .

Contrasting human experiences: During the January 2025 hostage exchanges, 70% of articles focused on Israeli hostages despite 90 Palestinians being released compared to just three Israelis. BBC TV/radio ran emotionally engaging and humanising stories about Israeli hostages returning home, while Palestinian detainees remained nameless, with coverage focusing on procedural aspects rather than personal narratives.


“Decisions are being made out of fear” BBC and the Gaza double standard | The Listening Post 

7.                THE BBC UNDERREPORTS ATTACKS ON PRESS FREEDOM IN GAZA

The BBC’s coverage of Palestinian journalist casualties represents a quantifiable failure to report on attacks on journalists in Palestine compared to other conflict zones.

Attacks on Palestinian journalists: The BBC reported the deaths of just 6% of the 176 journalists killed by the IDF.

Comparing attacks on journalists in Ukraine: Meanwhile, 62% of the journalists killed in the Russia-Ukraine war (and listed by the Committee to Protect Journalists) were reported by the BBC.

Failure to hold Israel accountable for press freedom violations: The BBC routinely obscures Israeli responsibility for journalist deaths through passive language and fails to fact-check demonstrably false Israeli claims about press freedom, applying weaker scrutiny than it would to similar violations by other nations.

8.                THE BBC IS MORE WILLING TO COVER THE FULL FACTS IN UKRAINE THAN GAZA

When comparing BBC coverage of Gaza with its reporting on Ukraine, we found significant disparities in attribution, language, and moral framing.

As Jonathan Cook said in Why BBC editors must one day stand trial for colluding in Israel's genocide

The hardest thing to prove in genocide is intent. And yet the reason Israel’s violence in Gaza is so clearly genocidal is that every senior official from the prime minister down has repeatedly told us that genocide is their intent. The decision not to inform audiences of these public statements is not journalism. It is pro-Israel disinformation and genocide denial.

When the dust settles on the rubble in Gaza it is likely that the number of deaths is not 60,000 that Gaza’s Health Ministry has put out but nearer 400,000.  The number of deaths in war includes indirect deaths and in Gaza these are likely to be far higher owing to Israel’s deliberate policy of starvation and inducing famine.


Israel's Exterminationist Consensus

The Media Monitoring Key Facts ignored one other key fact. The failure of the BBC publicise the existence of an exterminationist consensus in Israel itself and the extent of Israeli racism towards Palestinians.

Two nice Jewish boys podcast dream of pressing a button to annihilate seven million Palestinians

 

Israel’s Exterminationist Mentality

The evidence of Genocidal Intention is everywhere in Israel, from car bumper stickers saying ‘Finish them’ to the public broadcast Kan showing ‘The Friendship Song’ calling for the annihilation of the population of Gaza to their oldest podcasters ‘Two Nice Jewish Boys’ saying that they would like to press a button to erase all Palestinians. The Pennsylvania State University poll says that 47% of Israeli Jews want to exterminate every Palestinian climbing to over 60% when including those who say Amalek is relevant today. There is Elad Barashi, a well known TV producer calling for a 'Gaza holocaust’ and gas chambers to be set up. The BBC consistently ignores that Israel is a typical settler colonial state which has moved from ethnic cleansing to genocide. This above all proves the propaganda nature of the BBC.

Israeli school children sing the Friendship Song calling for the annihilation of everyone in Gaza

From the very start of Israel’s attack on Gaza the BBC has been determined to ensure that it acted as the voice of the British Foreign Office covering for the government’s complicity in the genocide. It constantly refers to Gaza’s Health Ministry as ‘Hamas run’ in order to sow doubt about its casualty figures, when it is universally accepted that its figures are on the conservative side. Not once has it referred to Israeli propagandists as Netanyahu appointed or plain fascists.

The BBC has acted to reinforce Israel’s atrocity propaganda about rapes on October 7 which have been used to justify the genocide. It hasn’t once mentioned that Israel’s Southern District Prosecutor, Moran Gaz, has admitted that no women have come forward to say they were raped, despite an intensive search.

There is one simple thing we can all do and that is to stop paying a license fee that funds the BBC’s Propaganda for Israel and its employment of Raffi Berg, their Zionist gatekeeper-in-chief. See

Tony Greenstein
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2 comments:

  1. Jack T25 July 2025 at 11:40

    The BBC is laughing at us, they don't care that we know they are protecting Israel and the Zionists. Their spin is still in full swing, even now they are referring to the deliberate starvation of Palestinians as malnutrition!

    ReplyDelete
  2. John C26 July 2025 at 09:13

    Future historians will read your this blog and ask how did people not know? How did Israel get away with it? Or should that be future archaeologists? I fear the time it is going to take.

    ReplyDelete

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