The BBC, Unfair to Israel Yet Again

The group inside the BBC known as “BBC Verify” was founded in 2023, after years of complaints about BBC bias, especially in the anti-Israel animus its reporters and editors so often displayed. BBC Verify, the BBC self-satisfiedly tells the world, consists of 60 experts in fact-checking and in ferreting out “disinformation.” It is supposed to go over every news item before it is put on the air, to check for accuracy, and to make sure that all relevant information has been given. But when it comes to the latest Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the BBC manages to insidiously convey the notion that every time someone in Gaza dies, the IDF is responsible. It isn’t true.

More on this can be found here: “‘BBC Verify’ doesn’t verify anything that exonerates Israel,” BBC, March 19, 2025:

From BBC Verify:

The UN says that one of its workers has been killed and others injured after a compound in Gaza was damaged on Wednesday, adding that the circumstances of the incident remain unclear.

The Palestinian territory’s Hamas-run health ministry blamed an Israeli strike and said five critically injured foreign workers had arrived in hospital. Israel’s military denied striking the UN compound in Deir al-Balah.

The UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) said an “explosive ordnance was dropped or fired” at the building, which was in an “isolated” location.

It added there was no confirmation on the nature of the incident or the type of artillery used.

UNOPS executive director Jorge Moreira da Silva described the incident as “not an accident” and added that “UN personnel and its premises must be protected by all sides”.

How does Jorge Moreira da Silva know that the explosion was “not an accident”? Couldn’t it have been a case of a crew of deminers having made a wrong move and accidentally caused the mine they were trying to deactivate to explode? And how do we know these men were professional de-miners? Here’s how: they were wearing blue flak jackets, and shirt with the logo UNMAS, which stands for United Nations Mine Action Service, right on their chests. Nothing could be more obvious, or more necessary to be included in the story than the fact of their being de-mining experts who, as sometimes happens with those in such a perilous occupation, make mistakes, and pay for it with an explosion.. But the BBC chose not to mention that they all belonged to the UN’s de-mining agency. For that information would allow audiences to figure out that it was not an Israeli airstrike, but the accidental setting-off of a mine planted by Hamas, that had been responsible for wounding four UN personnel and killing many more.

Footage verified by the BBC showed injured people – two still wearing blue UN flak jackets – arriving at a hospital in an ambulance and a UN car.

While the BBC briefly mentioned Israel’s denial, it does not go beyond that, quoting multiple UN sources as saying that it was definitely artillery or another purposeful strike that could only have come from Israel.

What the BBC didn’t think was worth mentioning was that all of the UN workers – one of whom died – were members of the UN Mine Action Service, information that had been available to the BBC three hours before publication.

You can see their logos on their shirts.

When Israel denies striking an area, they aren’t known to lie. If they struck it they would say that there was a legitimate target or that there was an accident, but they wouldn’t deny it.

In this case, the IDF said, “Contrary to reports, the IDF did not attack a UN compound in Deir al-Balah. The IDF calls on media outlets to exercise caution with unverified reports.”…

Israel has a long record of telling the truth. If it has struck a certain building, or a certain area, where things have gone awry, it owns up. If it lacks sufficient information at the time it is asked to comment, and has to check with IDF soldiers on the ground, it says it is “looking into the matter,” and once it is sure of what happened, it promptly conveys its conclusion. The IDF explains who or what was the intended target, and if something went wrong with the strike, it takes responsibility. But in this case, the IDF was certain that it had made no strikes on or near the UN compound in Deir al-Balah. The BBC mentioned the IDF’s response almost in passing, and said nothing about the thousands of IEDs — Improvised Explosive Devices — that Hamas used to plant on roads and inside buildings where it knew the IDF soldiers might enter looking for Hamas terrorists, and their movement could set off the explosives.

All of five of the UN workers — the four who were wounded and the one who died — were wearing shirts and flak jackets with the letters “UNMAS” prominently displayed on the front. They were all, that is, members of the United Nations Mine Action Service, who were entrusted with “demining” areas of Gaza. What mines were those? The ones that Hamas had left in houses, schools, mosques and other sites it had booby-trapped, that would have killed Israeli troops when they entered those places. The BBC failed to identify those “UN workers” as members of the de-mining agency, and that the IEDs that these UN workers were trying to deactivate when one accidentally went off were not laid by Israel but by Hamas.. Why did the BBC not think it important to identify those people as members of UNMAS, which took no guesswork, for the UNMAS logo was right on their shirts and jackets?