Starvation in Gaza is so bad even the BBC is covering it – and reporting it all wrong
The BBC's role is not to keep viewers informed. It's to persuade them a clear crime against humanity by Israel is, in fact, highly complicated geopolitics they cannot hope to understand
Jonathan Cook
You can tell how bad levels of starvation now are in Gaza – as the population there begins the third month of a complete aid blockade by Israel – because last night the BBC finally dedicated a serious chunk of its main news programme, the News at Ten, to the issue.
But while upsetting footage of a skin-and-bones, five-month-old baby was shown, most of the segment was, of course, dedicated to confusing audiences – by two-sidesing Israel's genocidal programme of starving 2 million-plus Palestinian civilians.
Particularly shocking was the BBC’s failure in this extended report to mention even once the fact that Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been a fugitive for months from the International Criminal Court, which wants him on trial for crimes against humanity. Why? For using starvation as a weapon of war against the civilian population.
I have yet to see the BBC, or any other major British media outlet, append the status “wanted war crimes suspect” when mentioning Netanyahu in stories. That is all the more unconscionable on this occasion, in a story directly related to the very issue – starving a civilian population – he is charged over.
Was mention of the arrest warrant against him avoided because it might signal a little too clearly that the highest legal authorities in the world attribute starvation in Gaza directly to Israel and its government, and do not see it – as the British establishment media apparently do – as some continuing, unfortunate “humanitarian” consequence of "war".
Predictably misleading too was BBC Verify's input. It provided a timeline of Israel's intensified blockade that managed to pin the blame not on Israel, even though it is the one blocking all aid, but implicitly on Hamas.
Verify's reporter asserted that in early March Israel "blocked humanitarian aid demanding that Hamas extend a ceasefire and release the remaining hostages". He then jumped to 18 March, stating: "Israel resumes military operations."
Viewers were left – presumably intentionally – with the impression that Hamas had rejected a continuation of the ceasefire and had refused to release the last of the hostages.
None of that is true. In fact, Israel never honoured the ceasefire, continuing to attack Gaza and kill civilians throughout. But worse, Israel's supposed "extension" was actually its unilateral violation of the ceasefire by insisting on radical changes to the terms that had already been agreed, and which included Hamas releasing the hostages.
Israel broke the ceasefire precisely so it had the pretext it needed to return to starving Gaza's civilians – and the hostages whose safety it proclaims to care about – as part of its efforts to make them so desperate they are prepared to risk their lives by forcing open the short border with neighbouring Sinai sealed by Egypt.
Yesterday, an Israeli government minister once again made clear what the game plan has been from the very start. “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, said. Gaza’s population, he added, would be forced to “leave in great numbers to third countries” – in other words, Israel intends to carry out what the rest of us would call the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as it has been doing continuously for eight decades.
Jonathan Cook
The BBC's role is not to keep viewers informed. It's to persuade them a clear crime against humanity by Israel is, in fact, highly complicated geopolitics they cannot hope to understand
Jonathan Cook
You can tell how bad levels of starvation now are in Gaza – as the population there begins the third month of a complete aid blockade by Israel – because last night the BBC finally dedicated a serious chunk of its main news programme, the News at Ten, to the issue.
But while upsetting footage of a skin-and-bones, five-month-old baby was shown, most of the segment was, of course, dedicated to confusing audiences – by two-sidesing Israel's genocidal programme of starving 2 million-plus Palestinian civilians.
Particularly shocking was the BBC’s failure in this extended report to mention even once the fact that Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been a fugitive for months from the International Criminal Court, which wants him on trial for crimes against humanity. Why? For using starvation as a weapon of war against the civilian population.
I have yet to see the BBC, or any other major British media outlet, append the status “wanted war crimes suspect” when mentioning Netanyahu in stories. That is all the more unconscionable on this occasion, in a story directly related to the very issue – starving a civilian population – he is charged over.
Was mention of the arrest warrant against him avoided because it might signal a little too clearly that the highest legal authorities in the world attribute starvation in Gaza directly to Israel and its government, and do not see it – as the British establishment media apparently do – as some continuing, unfortunate “humanitarian” consequence of "war".
Predictably misleading too was BBC Verify's input. It provided a timeline of Israel's intensified blockade that managed to pin the blame not on Israel, even though it is the one blocking all aid, but implicitly on Hamas.
Verify's reporter asserted that in early March Israel "blocked humanitarian aid demanding that Hamas extend a ceasefire and release the remaining hostages". He then jumped to 18 March, stating: "Israel resumes military operations."
Viewers were left – presumably intentionally – with the impression that Hamas had rejected a continuation of the ceasefire and had refused to release the last of the hostages.
None of that is true. In fact, Israel never honoured the ceasefire, continuing to attack Gaza and kill civilians throughout. But worse, Israel's supposed "extension" was actually its unilateral violation of the ceasefire by insisting on radical changes to the terms that had already been agreed, and which included Hamas releasing the hostages.
Israel broke the ceasefire precisely so it had the pretext it needed to return to starving Gaza's civilians – and the hostages whose safety it proclaims to care about – as part of its efforts to make them so desperate they are prepared to risk their lives by forcing open the short border with neighbouring Sinai sealed by Egypt.
Yesterday, an Israeli government minister once again made clear what the game plan has been from the very start. “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, said. Gaza’s population, he added, would be forced to “leave in great numbers to third countries” – in other words, Israel intends to carry out what the rest of us would call the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as it has been doing continuously for eight decades.
Jonathan Cook