Why the Media Ignores Palestinian Terrorism — and Downplays the Death of Israeli Civilians
The BBC logo is seen at the entrance at Broadcasting House, the BBC headquarters in central London. Photo by Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images/Sipa USA.
Early on the afternoon of December 12, the BBC News website published an article about a terror attack that had taken place late on the previous night.
Titled “Israeli boy killed in Palestinian gun attack on bus in West Bank,” that report by David Gritten gives a reasonable account of the incident in 138 words — albeit without any mention whatsoever of the terms “terrorism,” “terror,” or “terrorist.”
However, the BBC was apparently of the opinion that it could not just provide readers with a report about a terror attack on a bus in which a 12-year-old Israeli boy was murdered, and so the article continues as follows:
Meanwhile, the Palestinian health ministry said a Palestinian man was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya on Wednesday morning.
Palestinian news agency Wafa cited local sources as saying that Israeli troops opened fire at a car in which Mohammed Brahma, 25, was travelling, and then took away his body.
The Wafa news agency and other Palestinian media outlets did indeed report that incident, but unsurprisingly, neither they nor Gritten bothered to clarify that it was a counter-terrorism operation aimed at thwarting an imminent terror attack — or that Mohammad Abdul Karim Khaled Brahma, from Tubas, was reportedly armed at the time.
In other words, Gritten’s report promotes false equivalence — “meanwhile” — between the murder of a young boy in a terror attack, and the elimination of a terrorist planning a different attack.
The report closes with an unnecessary qualification regarding the aim of counter-terrorism operations in Judea and Samaria:
There has been a surge in violence in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed as Israeli forces have intensified their raids, saying they are trying to stem Palestinian attacks that have killed Israelis in the West Bank and Israel. [emphasis added]
As recently reported by the Israeli media:
The IDF said it had killed at least 787 Palestinian terror operatives in the West Bank since the October 7, 2023, onslaught. Some 70% of them were armed with a gun, according to the military.
In all, some 820 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank during that time, with 4% of them being civilians who were not gunmen or rioters who clashed with troops, or terrorists carrying out attacks, the IDF said.
As we see, the result of the BBC’s editorial policy regarding “use of language” is that while the corporation’s audiences are told that “[h]undreds of Palestinians have been killed,” they are not informed that 96% of them were terror operatives or participating in acts of violence at the time.
Once again one must ask how the BBC’s refusal to name terrorism — supposedly in order to avoid “the use of language that carries value judgements” — serves its obligation to inform audiences by means of accurate and impartial reporting.
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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