BBC ‘portrayed Palestinian gunmen killed in clashes as innocent civilians’

Palestinian gunmen killed in Gaza and the West Bank have been repeatedly portrayed as innocent civilians by the BBC, it has been claimed.

The broadcaster has been accused of failing to inform viewers that many of the Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers were fighters with terror groups such as Hamas.

Research by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera) has highlighted numerous broadcast reports and online stories by BBC Arabic, which it claims failed to reveal the full circumstances surrounding the death of more than 30 Palestinians.

Camera says that, in nearly 30 separate reports, BBC Arabic failed to give any indication that the dead Palestinians had been combatants in the conflict with Israel or were members of terror groups such as Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad.

This came despite Palestinian media sources referring to “armed confrontations” and “exchanges of fire” when referring to the deaths, and in some cases militant groups describing the casualties as their fighters.

The BBC has rejected Camera’s complaints, maintaining that its reporting is accurate and that its Arabic service is a vital source of impartial news in a region dominated by partisan media.

Cases examined by Camera, which lobbies for a fair representation of Israel in the conflict, include a report from last October last year about the death of five men “killed by Israeli fire” in Jenin and Yata. It says this failed to include reports from Palestinian sources indicating that three of them were gunmen.

In another case highlighted by the organisation, BBC Arabic reported on the deaths of a woman’s four sons in May but failed to indicate that they were linked to Hamas.

Before the report was broadcast, two of the men had been buried wrapped in Hamas flags, while three had also been claimed by the terror group on social media and Al Jazeera TV to be their “martyrs”.

Researchers found that, during an 18-month period after August last year, there were 18 items in which BBC Arabic failed to report cases of Jewish civilians falling victim to Arab violence, or wrongly described the Jewish fatalities as “soldiers”, “armed forces” or “gunmen” and referred to the attacks that killed them as “resistance operations”.

These included a report in October this year in which BBC Arabic described all 24 Israeli fatalities in the West Bank since the Oct 7 Hamas attacks as “soldiers”, when more than a third were civilians.

Camera also claims BBC Arabic downplayed the targeting of Israeli civilians during another 19 items, in some cases describing civilian hostages taken by Hamas as “prisoners of war” and Jewish fatalities as “settlers” – despite them living inside Israel’s internationally recognised territory.

A spokesman for Camera told The Telegraph: “A common pro-Hamas motto on Arabic-speaking social media reads: ‘The Palestinian is a civilian even if they take up arms, and the Israeli is a coloniser even if they rest on the beach’.

“Regrettably, it seems that BBC Arabic has been repeatedly using a page from the same playbook when it covers conflict-related fatalities in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

“Of particular concern is the way its reporters selectively quote Palestinian terrorist organisations, deeming them a worthy source only insofar as they discuss Palestinian civilians and not when mourning their own gunmen. This leads to the absurdity whereby even when Hamas, the PIJ and Israel alike agree that a certain fatality was a combatant, the BBC opts not to mention this.

“The other side of the coin is of course collectively mislabeling unarmed Jewish civilians who were killed in attacks as though they were ‘soldiers’, ‘militants’ or part of ‘forces’.”

A BBC spokesman said: “BBC News Arabic is committed to covering this challenging and polarising conflict impartially. The complaint by Camera on the May 15 report was assessed by the BBC’s executive complaints unit and was not upheld, while the Camera complaint on coverage of a report from Oct 4 is under consideration.

“The BBC takes all complaints seriously, and we have a robust complaints process in place.”