This isn’t the first time the BBC has jumped to a conclusion informed by the most uncharitable assumptions about Israel.
“And now, an apology from the BBC.” The network’s viewers could by now probably guess where the British Broadcasting Company presenter’s confession was going. The BBC had reported that “medical teams and Arab speakers were being targeted” by Israel when, in fact, the precise opposite was the case. Funny story: It turns out that the BBC accidentally “misquoted a Reuters report” in which the Israel Defense Forces revealed that they were embedding Arabic speakers and medical professionals with the forces tasked with clearing out the Hamas-occupied Al-Shifa Hospital, not summarily murdering them. Honest mistake, really. Could happen to anyone.
Initially, the “Beeb” erroneously reported that the IDF was “targeting people, including medical teams, as well as Arab speakers.” The reporter who related Israel’s unapologetic intention to commit war crimes was shocked by the revelation — shocked, but utterly credulous, nonetheless. Nor was it a slip of the tongue. The anchor repeated the (literally) unbelievable claim to underscore the audacity of the point Israel was supposedly trying to make.
The reality on the ground in Gaza bears no semblance to the narrative the BBC retailed. Not only are Israeli forces not simply executing antiseptic airstrikes on the notorious Hamas command-and-control node beneath the sprawling Al-Shifa hospital complex — which would be justified not just by the laws of armed conflict but by America’s example. Instead, Israel is exposing its infantry to excessive danger by committing its forces to an operation designed to clear the hospital room by room while simultaneously, under fire, maintaining the ongoing medical services the facility is providing to Gaza’s civilians.
But how was the BBC supposed to know that this extraordinary feat was actually underway? It’s not like there is audio of phone calls that took place between senior officers with Israel’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration and Al-Shifa hospital staff coordinating the complex handoff of medical support to the facility. It isn’t as though Israel offered to provide the hospital with fuel to ensure that there were no interruptions to its power supply — overtures Hamas confirmed but rejected because they were too paltry in “quantity.” It is not as though there is video of IDF soldiers introducing medical aid and equipment to the hospital complex. Who could say whether Israel was providing care to Gaza’s civilians or gunning them down in cold blood? We all know that Israel is executing some kind of genocide in the Gaza Strip. Maybe they’re just really bad at it.
This isn’t the first time the BBC has jumped to a conclusion informed by the most uncharitable assumptions about Israel. The network confessed that it was “wrong to speculate” about who was responsible for the October 18 blast near the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said had produced catastrophic damage to the facility within minutes of the explosion. It turns out that there was no catastrophic damage, and Israel was not responsible for the attack. Rather, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket fell short and exploded in a parking lot outside the facility — something that no one could have foreseen unless they had some passing familiarity with the conflicts that so often erupt out of Gaza, in which short-round events are extremely common.
Indeed, within hours of the October 7 massacre, a lecturer at Gaza’s Islamic University was compelled to apologize after he compared Hamas’s slaughter of Israeli civilians to Jewish revolts against the Nazis. “This is exactly like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” Refaat Alareer told the BBC’s viewers. “This is the Gaza ghetto uprising against 100 years of European and Zionist colonialism and occupation.” Sure, a flawed analogy — one that confuses two of history’s most bloodthirsty death cults, both of which were committed to killing Jews because they are Jews, with the Jews who object to their own murder. But who are we to judge? Fog of war and all that.
Not all of the BBC’s mistakes in this war have erred in the same direction, but just because most of them have doesn’t establish a pattern of negligent bias that can only be informed by deep-seated prejudices. We can’t know what sentiments lurk in the hearts and minds of the network’s executives, reporters, writers, and presenters. We can only judge the evidence in front of our eyes, which is why we must reserve that judgment. If we didn’t, the conclusions we might draw about the culture within the BBC would be just as ugly as the anti-Israel preconceptions that appear to inform the network’s coverage of the war in Gaza. Even if that determination would be informed by more substantiating evidence than that which seems to inform the BBC’s verdicts, no one wants to be accused of being judgmental.