BBC Uses Syrian Regime Propaganda, and Calls It ‘News’

Given the BBC’s long documented habit of basing news reports on unverified claims made by a news agency controlled by the Assad regime in Syria, it was not surprising to find that some four hours after unclaimed airstrikes in Syria on November 21, the BBC News website was already promoting a headline stating “Israeli strikes on Syria’s Palmyra kills 36, state media say.”

The original version of that report quoted an announcement put out by the Sana news agency, and a claim from an unnamed “UK-based monitoring group” that, in a version published around an hour later and credited to David Gritten, turned out to be the one-man show called The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

Gritten’s report was again updated on November 21 – some 21 hours after its original publication; the version currently available online opens by telling readers that:

At least 36 people have been killed and 50 others injured in Israeli air strikes on residential buildings and an industrial area in the central Syrian town of Palmyra, Syrian state media report.

The Sana news agency cited a military source as saying that Israeli jets attacked from the direction of the Jordanian border to the south at around 13:30 (10:30 GMT) and that the strikes causes [sic] significant material damage.

A UK-based monitoring group reported that the strikes hit a weapons depot and other locations in and around an area where families of Iran-backed militia fighters were, killing 68 Syrian and foreign fighters.

The Israeli military said it did not comment on foreign reports.

Later in the article, readers find a link to a Tweet put out by the SOHR and quotes from a report it put out:

Videos and photos posted on social media following Wednesday’s strikes appear to show three large columns of black smoke rising from the Palmyra area.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, cited its sources on the ground as saying that Israeli fighter jets struck three locations in the town.

Two were in the al-Jamiya neighbourhood, including a weapons depot near the industrial zone inhabited by families of Iran-backed fighters of Iraqi and other foreign nationalities, it said.

The third location was nearby and targeted a meeting attended by leaders of Iran-backed militias based in Palmyra and the surrounding desert as well as leaders of the Iraqi group Nujaba and Hezbollah, it added.

The SOHR initially reported that 41 people were killed, but later said the death toll had risen to 68.

It identified them as 42 Syrian members of Iran-backed militias, and 22 foreign members, mostly from Nujaba, and four Lebanese members of Hezbollah.

As noted by the Times of Israel in a report on the same topic:

SOHR, run by a single person, has regularly been accused by Syrian war analysts of false reporting and inflating casualty numbers as well as inventing them wholesale.

Remarkably, Gritten had nothing whatsoever to tell his readers about “the Iraqi group Nujaba” — despite the fact that in January 2024 he contributed to an article which includes the following:

Iran has built a wide network of allied armed groups and proxies operating in countries across the Middle East. They are all opposed to Israel and the US, and sometimes refer to themselves as the “Axis of Resistance”, though the extent of Iran’s influence over them is not clear.

The US says co-ordination is overseen by the IRGC and its overseas operations arm, the Quds Force. Both are designated by the US as terrorist organisations, as are a number of the regional armed groups, including Kataib Hezbollah.

The groups have dramatically stepped up their attacks against Israel, US forces and other linked targets since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip in October, in what they say is a demonstration of their solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Many of the at least 165 drone, rocket and missile attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria, or facilities hosting US troops, since 17 October have been claimed by an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

In response, the US says it has struck targets belonging to the IRGC and militias believed to have strong links with the force, including Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba and Asaib Ahl al-Haq.

The organization to which Gritten refers in this report as “Nujaba” is known as Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba (HaN) (Movement of the Party of God’s Noble Ones) or Harakat al-Nujaba. As reported by the ITIC:

The Nujaba Movement (Harakat al-Nujaba), or the Movement of the Noble Ones, is an Iraqi Shiite pro-Iranian militia established in 2013 by Sheikh Akram Abbas al-Kaabi, its secretary-general, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC’s) Qods Force. It is one of the largest militias in the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). It is operated by the Iranian Qods Force, which provides the funding, weapons, and training of its members. The Nujaba Movement is also supported by the Lebanese Hezbollah, with which Al-Kaabi has maintained close ties for many years. The militia adopts the ideology of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and regards Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as its supreme leader.

In 2020, the ITIC documented Nujaba’s activities in the Gaza Strip, where it maintains an office.

A WINEP profile of that US designated organization describes its chain of command as follows:

Iran. There is clear and convincing evidence that HaN is subordinate to and partly financed by the IRGC-QF. The preponderance of the evidence shows that Iran provides the group with financial assistance, military assistance, and intelligence sharing, as well as help in selecting, supporting, and supervising its leadership. HaN units in Syria are under the direct operational and administrative control of the IRGC-QF.

Partly financed by the Iraqi state. HaN operates the state-funded 12th Brigade of the PMF. Chain of command nominally runs through the Popular Mobilization Commission of the Prime Minister’s Office and up to the prime minister. In practice, HaN PMF units frequently disobey the Iraqi government chain of command while legally remaining organs of the Iraqi state.

In other words, a BBC report based entirely on unverified accounts from the Syrian regime-controlled news agency and a UK based project fails to clarify that among the “36 people” reportedly killed in a strike it attributes to Israel were operatives of an Iranian financed and operated Iraqi militia with bases in Syria and links to Hezbollah, which has threatened Israel since long before the current war.

BBC audiences would surely have found that context useful for full understanding of Gritten’s story about “Israeli air strikes.”

Hadar Sela is the co-editor of CAMERA UK — an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.

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