The Endless Gullibility of the BBC

CAMERA-UK’s report on the BBC’s coverage of an Israeli attack on a building in southern Lebanon is here: “BBC Eye Lebanon investigation promotes ‘spiteful enemy’ narrative,” by Hadar Sela, CAMERA UK, January 26, 2025:

The BBC’s investigation provides no explanation for the fact that six men it describes as being “linked to Hezbollah’s military wing” were present in the same seventeen-apartment building on the same day. Instead, Al-Maghafi and her colleagues focus audience attentions on the semantics of Hizballah’s selectively and intermittently issued announcements:

“Hezbollah memorial photos for the six men use the label “Mujahid”, meaning “fighter”. Senior figures, by contrast, are referred to as “Qaid”, meaning “commander” – and we found no such labels used by the group to describe those killed.”

Readers eventually – in the report’s thirty-ninth paragraph – discover that the husband of one of the women interviewed by the BBC was a Hizballah operative:

“One of the Hezbollah fighters we identified was Batoul’s husband, Mohammed Fares. Batoul told us that her husband, like many other men in southern Lebanon, was a reservist for the group, though she added that he had never been paid by Hezbollah, held a formal rank, or participated in combat.”

If Mohammed Fares was a “reservist” for Hezbollah, that makes him a member of the group, even if he had not yet taken part in combat or been paid. And how many others killed in that strike on the building with 17 apartments were Hezbollah reservists, or members of the “political wing,” whom the BBC investigators had failed to identify because of their own gullibility? We have seen the same sort of gullibility displayed by Western media companies, who have again and again discovered that their “trusted” journalists in Gaza were not merely sympathizers with Hamas, but were actual members of the terror group.

An October 2024 report by the WSJ on that incident opens:

“For years, a helpful, middle-aged man lived in the basement apartment of a seven-story residential building on a hillside. Some neighbors in Ain el-Delb said they knew that he was connected to Hezbollah, the militant group. But they said they didn’t think he was important enough to be an Israeli target.”

The WSJ report goes on to quote “Hizballah members familiar with the situation” as saying that the man was “head of the group’s logistics committee in the southern city of Sidon: a role with civic and security responsibilities” and “they said his rank placed him in the low to middle level of the organisation”.

A report published by The Times in October 2024 told readers about a woman visiting the graves of some of those killed days earlier in the strike on the building in Ain el-Delb:

“She sat down heavily at the edge of the cemetery and screamed at the loss of her daughter and granddaughter: “My daughter, my daughter. My child.”

A Hezbollah functionary who had been showing us around the area went over to her and started to offer his condolences.

“You get out of here,” she snapped. “This is all your fault, all you people’s fault. Get out, I don’t want you here. I don’t want to talk to you.””…

That’s the kind of telling rebuff of Hezbollah by a grief-stricken mother that is missing from the BBC report. It wouldn’t be welcome at the network, which spends more time berating Israel than it does criticizing the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah.

“The IDF has estimated that Israeli forces killed some 3,000 Hezbollah operatives. Around 100 members of other terror groups have also been reported killed in Lebanon.”…

If we accept the IDF estimates — the IDF has a well-deserved reputation for telling the truth — then of the 3,960 people killed in Lebanon by Israeli forces up to November 2024, 3,000 of them were members of Hezbollah, and 100 members of other terror groups, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. That would mean that only 860 civilians had been killed in Lebanon. That figure is never provided by the BBC — why not? Instead, it wants its audience to keep in mind only one figure: the 3,960 people killed in Lebanon who, it seems we are supposed to believe, were all civilians. Those terrible “spiteful Zionists” who massacre children and women — how can anyone decent possibly support those “war criminals” committing “genocide” in both Gaza and Lebanon?

“The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told the BBC that the building was a Hezbollah command centre. We investigate this claim, finding evidence that six of the men killed that day were affiliated with the group, but no proof which suggests there were Hezbollah commanders in the building.”

What kind of “proof” is needed that those six men were “commanders” in Hezbollah? And is the IDF only supposed to target those of a high rank, or would middle, or even low-ranked terrorists, be sufficient to justify an attack?

If there were at least six Hezbollah members in the building at the same time, doesn’t that suggest that  that the building likely contained a command-and-control center? That does not mean that high-ranking Hezbollah commanders had to be present at all times for it to be judged a suitable target. The people who compiled this report for the BBC still have yet to explain how they concluded which people, among the 73 dead, were Hezbollah members, and who, in their view, could not possibly have been. Nor do they explain how they decided what rank those Hezbollah members held in the organization. Strange, isn’t it, that they do not reveal how they made both kinds of decisions?

As for me, I have faith in the IDF. When, very rarely, it attacks a target in error, it is quick to own up. When, as here, it reiterates that an apartment building it struck contained a Hezbollah command-and-control center, I take them at their word. What about you?