On Saturday, July 27, Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at northern Israel, hitting the Druze town of Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights. At least one of the rockets hit a soccer pitch where children were playing. Twelve children and young teenagers were killed; 44 were wounded. The BBC had a most peculiar way of headlining its report, and many were furious with yet another demonstration of BBC bias. More on this contretemps can be found here.
The BBC has been condemned for its reporting of Saturday’s deadly Hezbollah rocket attack on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights.
The BBC’s article about the attack was headlined: “Ten [now 12] dead in rocket attack on Israeli-occupied Golan.”
The headline, which was altered after a few hours, did not refer to Hezbollah, the Druze community, or that the rocket struck children playing football, while it appeared to imply a political justification for the killings.
What conceivable reason was there for the headline to mention the “Israeli-occupied Golan”? The suggestion is that Hezbollah launched its attack because Israel had “occupied” the Golan, and this was merely part of the “resistance” by Hezbollah to those Israeli “occupiers. “
The strike – which killed 12 young people aged 10-20 years old playing football in the Druze village – marks the deadliest day in Israel since October 7. The IDF has since identified the rocket fired from Lebanon as an Iranian-made weapon….
Hezbollah has denied sending any rockets toward Majdal Shams. The IDF, and the Druze villagers of Majdal Shams, know better. Shrapnel from the rocket clearly identifies it as an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket. The BBC said nothing about the identification of the rocket, nor about Hezbollah’s ridiculous claim that it had nothing to do with the rocket attack.
Note that in the headline the BBC did not mention Hezbollah, nor identify the victims; we learn only that there had been “ten [now 12] dead” in a “rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan.” Nor did it mention that all of the victims were children, Druze children. Readers are left wondering exactly who had been killed, and who had launched that attack. They might even have been misled by the headline, coming away thinking that the attack was a case of the IDF, trying to strike targets in Lebanon, but having one of its rockets falling short on Majdal Shams.
War studies lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Andrew Fox, compared the headline with another BBC story written on the same day about an IDF strike in Gaza which stated, “Israeli strike on Gaza ‘kills 30’”.
Why was it when the IDF strikes a Hamas post it “kills 30,” but the children killed at Majdal Shams, unidentified in the BBC headline, “died”?
Fox called the headlines “utterly despicable”, commenting on Twitter/X: “BBC headline does not mention that the strike in Israel was on a playground and children were killed. Nice cheeky little dig with ‘Israeli-occupied’, too. They frame the other [the Israeli attack on a school taken over by Hezbollah fighters] as if this was an ordinary school. Hamas uses schools as cover for their fighters.”
The BBC accused the IDF of attacking a school. It’s summer; school is out. The attack was not on a school, but on a school building that had been taken over by Hamas. There is a difference.
The BBC has since updated its headline to reflect the ongoing news story: “Israel hits Hezbollah targets after football pitch strike kills 12 young people.”…
Note that the BBC still can’t describe the victims properly as “children.” They are “young people.” Early 20s? Who knows?
The outrage of war studies lecturer Andrew Fox of the Royal Military Academy, comedian Sasha Baron-Cohen, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, and many others, forced to rephrase its headline to the story. Now the poisonous mention of the “Israeli-occupied” Golan was removed. But still Hezbollah is not directly named as the source of the homicidal rockets; we are left to draw our own conclusions, given that we now learn that “Israel hits Hezbollah targets after the football pitch strike kills 12 young people.” Why couldn’t the BBC have simply stated that “Israel responds after Hezbollah strikes schoolyard, killing 12 Druze children”? Or even more to the point, why not forthrightly state that “Hezbollah fires Iranian rocket at a schoolyard in Majdal Shams, killing 12 Druze children”?
The BBC has been contacted for comment.
So far, the BBC has yet to respond.
The BBC, however, was not the only offender.. The most prestigious paper in France, Le Monde, summed up its report on the Majdal Shams massacre by Hezbollah in this way:
Israel: douze morts à la suite des tirs de roquettes sur le Golan annexé. L’Etat hebreu mène des frappes contre le Hezbollah dans le Liban.
In English:
Israel: twelve rocket attacks on the annexed Golan. The Jewish state is carrying out strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
What is left out of Le Monde’s version? First, that the twelve dead were Druze children, who had been playing on a soccer pitch. Second, they were killed, so why not say it: not “douze morts” (twelve dead), but the more accurate “douze enfants tués” (twelve children killed)”? Where? “At the Druze village of Majdal Shams.” Just as the BBC thought it important to include in its headline that the attack took place on the “Israeli-occupied Golan,” so Le Monde thought it important to remind its readers that the rockets were fired on the “annexed Golan,” as if that had any bearing on the deaths of the twelve children. And why did neither the BBC nor Le Monde let their respective audiences know that the rocket that killed the Druze children was a Falaq-I rocket that been supplied to Hezbollah by Iran?
Here is how the Le Monde headline to its report on the incident ought to have read:
“Iran-made Hezbollah rocket kills twelve Druze children, wounds 44, in attack on soccer pitch in Majdal Shams.” That contains the most important and leaves out that which is irrelevant. C’est pas difficile, Le Monde editors. Not hard at all, BBC reporters at Bush House. Don’t get your knickers in a twist, but please try harder. Don’t disappoint us yet again.
rick says
Let us not forget which nation is chiefly responsible for the quagmire and impasse that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become. That’s right, the appointed administrator of the Palestine Mandate following WW I – England. It was England who gave away 75% of the Mandate to their WW I tribal ally who were fleeing from Arabia after a Yemenite tribe the Saud drove them from that land. No problem for England which simply gave the Hashemites that Mandate land which they were forbidden to do under Mandate rules. That land which became Trans-Jordan was mostly Arab or if you prefer Palestinian and would have been the logical place for the state of Arab Palestine. Some accuse Jews of being “outsiders’ but how can the Jewish people be an outsider to their ancestral land of Israel? Jews in the worldwide Diaspora pray nightly to Jerusalem “If I forget thee, let my right hand lose its cunning”. The only real outsider in the region is the Hashemites from Arabia. A better refuge for them would have been London.
Scotsman48 says
Correction… What you wrote is England when in FACT it is Britain as England is merely a PART of Britain as I have no doubt you would not mention Texas while speaking about America.
somehistory says
If they don’t wish to name hezbollah as the murderers of small children, they could just write *mozlums* or adherents of islam.
Too many mozlums work in the media….bbc is full of them. Rampant lying and downplay are all to protect the scummy dross of mankind and its hangers-on.
somehistory says
Three little girls were murdered in the knife attack in the U.K.
Recent video re: reports the murderer is mozlum
“Vigil for children killed in Southport, UK, ‘hijacked’ by rioters”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/vigil-for-children-killed-in-southport-uk-hijacked-by-rioters/vi-BB1qXCM0?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=f2a893d4836c4ac9b8b04c196ac77cde&ei=102
Jack Reynolds says
The 17-year old who killed the Children was from a Rwandan family and unlikely o be Muslim.
.
Average IQ score for RWANDA is 69.9.
.
Rick Gordon says
I’m disappointed by BBC every day. I don’t understand how they can be trusted as a news source in the U.K., US or elsewhere.
Cato the Elder says
The BBC is just a loose agglutination of butt-pirates. Who cares what they think?
Joe says
The BooByC employs Maggots & Pea-Doze, & should be dismantled… Not fit for purpose…
Tony Rice says
At one time the B B C was respected and relied upon by persons all around the world for truthful information. No longer , sad to say. Too many non indig brits now employed, whose loyalties lay elsewhere. Whites pushed aside, in and outside the Corporation.
James Lincoln says
Tony Rice says,
“At one time the B B C was respected and relied upon by persons all around the world for truthful information.”
Yes, that was true 50 or 60 years ago.
OLD GUY says
How sad that the NEWS media around the world has fallen victim to the same thing as the BBC. Sensationalism and political ideology of the Corporation base and its advertisers ideologies drive how the news is reported or not. It’s all about sales and profits.
carpediadem says
The main areas of bigotry come from actual UK Anglican types employed there. It is historically anti Israel,reflecting the views of the proArab Foreign Office.
They cling to their colonial past and as Britain gave Jewish land to Arabs in the mandate, the BBC and similar organs continue their dispossession of Jews via the airwaves.
CalvinsLutheran says
Do we expect anything other than that from Eurabia? Europe the Supreme Colonizer is now colonized. France has yet to rebuild her former ravaged colonies. The UK the same. I indeed am a Europhile but Divine Providence is not a Europhiliac as am I. Arabs colonized Africa, Great Britain and France colonized the Arabs, Islam is returning the favors…..All have been anti-Semitic and THAT never ends well. The US could avoid a lot but it will not acknowledge its’ own moral shortcomings…..I suppose we’re all due some Divine Retribution huh?
Gamaliel says
People who says Israel annexed and occupied the Golan don’t know the history of the Golan. Israelites lived in the Golan during Biblical times along with the Geshurites. After Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian annexations, the region was conquered by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. The Jews regained control of the Golan during the Hasmonean dynasty, then the Roman Empire conquered the Golan. Afterwards, the Byzantine-aligned Ghassanid kingdom ruled the Golan from the 3rd century AD, until the region was annexed by the Rashidun Caliphate during the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 7th century. The Umayyad Caliphate, Abbasid Caliphate, Fatimid Caliphate and the Mamluk Sultanate succeeded one another in control of the Golan, before the region was conquered and occupied by the Ottoman Empire In the 16th century. The area later became part of the French Mandate in Syria When the mandate terminated in 1946, it became part of the newly independent Syrian Arab Republic, spanning about 1,800 km2 (690 sq mi). The point is the Muslims conquered occupied and annexed the Golan and that it was part of Israel before that. Another important point is that Syria while occupying the Golan shelled the Israeli communities below it. If you use land to attack another country you lose any right to that land, in the case of Syria they didn’t have the right to that land to begin with. Israel did regain control of the Golan during the Six Day War but that was justified and it is rightfully theirs because 1) it was theirs before the Muslims conquered it and 2) the Muslims used it to shell Israeli communities..
Scotsman48 says
Israel is mentioned in the Koran, Palestine isnt.
I have seen people in various corners of the World watching or listening to the BBC in their own language as it was always known as a fair and balanced news source and I have heard people in those various countries tell me, as a Brit, how glad they were that the BBC existed but now methinks most Brits living in Blighty dont believe the BS of the BBC..
let us not forget who it was that protected Jimmy Saville for decades as they knew all the awful things he was up too.
British Bullshit Coverup.