BBC Bias in Gaza

The BBC’s Yolande Knell is reporting from Gaza. But she isn’t reporting everything.

She begins by referring to an incident involving Palestinian casualties:

Seven Palestinian civilians including children were killed here in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. They’d been trying to protect this house from an Israeli air raid.

But that’s all you’ll get by way of relevant context. Even the New York Times reports that the house was one of a number targeted by Israel of Hamas members involved in rocket firing or other military activities. What’s more, the IDF actually telephoned a warning to the house’s occupants before carrying out the air strike, as well as firing a flare at the roof to give a further warning.

While Yolande Knell talks of the victims as simply protecting the house from an Israeli air raid, she also fails to note that the casualties willingly went up to the roof, despite the Israeli warnings, to act as human shields for Hamas.

Having set the scene of Palestinian suffering, we then find Knell reporting from the funeral of so-called Palestinian “militants”:

Just a few hours ago, the three men, all Hamas militants, were driving along a street in Gaza City. Now, they’re being carried into the graveyard. They were killed in an Israeli air strike. And just look at the crowds that have turned out to pay their respects.

Knell then refers to a video of Israel “targeting Gaza.” Israel is not targeting Gaza, which would imply the indiscriminate targeting of the area’s entire population. Israel is targeting Hamas terrorists and the terror infrastructure.

Just for good measure the report ends:

But with many longer-range rockets fired from Gaza into Israel tonight, the cycle of violence continues.

HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams said:

Typically for the BBC, Yolande Knell’s report succeeds in sanitizing terrorists through omission of vital context, while imbuing Israelis with a particular malevolence. As for a “cycle of violence,” this is further proof that the BBC is either unwilling or incapable of making correct moral judgments when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians. The BBC needs to understand that there was a starting point to the violence taking place and the Palestinians are the party responsible for starting it.