The BBC’s David Gritten has committed another journalistic travesty. “BBC News Reports an ‘Attack on a Car,'” by Hadar Sela, CAMERA, August 23, 2023:
On the afternoon of August 21st the BBC News website published a report by David Gritten about a fatal terror attack which had taken place on the morning of the same day near the Beit Hagai junction.
This was the attack in which schoolteacher Batsheva Nigri was murdered.
The headline and photo caption tell readers of an “attack on a car” even though the targets of that terror attack were obviously people rather than the vehicle in which they were traveling.
Headline: ‘Israeli woman shot dead in attack on car in southern West Bank’
Photo caption: “The car was hit by gunfire from a passing vehicle was [sic] it drove along a highway”
The BBC’s wording focuses on the car as the target: “attack on car” and “the car was hit by gunfire.” But the car was not being targeted; it was the people inside the car who were targeted by the Palestinian killer, who shot and killed a 42-year-old woman. The BBC could easily have reported that “an Israeli woman, Batsheva Nigri, being driven near Hebron, was hit by gunfire from a Palestinian in a passing vehicle.” Why didn’t it?
Despite telling readers that “Two dozen bullets were reportedly fired from a passing vehicle” the BBC’s report predictably does not describe the incident as terrorism. The sole mention of the word terror comes in a quote added to the report some four and a half hours after its initial publication.
“Later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the scene and said Israel was “in the midst of a terror attack” that was “encouraged, guided, funded by Iran and its satellite states”.”
Readers were given no further information on the topic of Iran’s contributions to the current wave of terrorism: a topic repeatedly avoided by BBC journalists.
Iran’s fingerprints are now all over the West Bank attacks. After first having supplied money and weapons to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, in the last few years Tehran has also been supplying both Hamas and the PIJ in Judea and Samaria with similar support, trying to establish another front for a future Iranian-led assault on the Jewish state. Many articles about Iranian weapons and money being smuggled into Judea and Samaria to terror groups have appeared. But nothing about Iran’s increased role in the West Bank has been broadcast by the BBC. Why not?
Using a “said to be” qualification which was known to be unnecessary by the time the report was published, Gritten tells his readers that:
“The woman has been named as Batsheva Nigri. A girl who was also in the car, said to be her daughter, was unharmed. […]…
Why did the BBC journalist, Gritten, describe the young girl in the car as “said to be her [Batsheva Nigri’s] daughter? Was there ever any doubt? Or was David Gritten suggesting he may not fully accept the Israeli version of events, including the report that Nigri was murdered in front of her daughter, which only increases our sympathy both for the Israeli victim and for her newly-bereft daughter?
Gritten allowed Hamas to make its case, justifying the killing of Nigri as a “natural response” to settlement expansion. Why give Hamas space to justify, however ludicrously, the terrorist attack? And why is Hamas, widely recognized by many countries, including the U.K. and the U.S., as a terror group, nonetheless called a “militant group” by the BBC’s David Gritten?
The later versions of the report do not inform BBC audiences that Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack or that Hamas later also took credit for murdering the unarmed nursery teacher and trying to kill two additional civilians.
Surely it would have greatly added to our understanding of Palestinian terrorists if the BBC had included in its report the grotesque attempts by different terror groups to “claim credit” for the murder of Batsehva Nigri, and the attempt to kill the other two civilians in the car — Aryah Gotliv and the 12-year-old daughter of Nigri. Imagine the moral squalor both groups exhibit in “vying for credit” for such an atrocity. So Gritten kept those rival claims out of his report. Now that Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade and Hamas have each claimed responsibility for the murder of Batsheva Nigri; can Palestinian Islamic Jihad be far behind? And when it does, the BBC will be sure not to report it.
In the later part of his report Gritten promotes redundant equivalence between Palestinian terror attacks on civilians and casualties during counter-terrorism operations.
“Meanwhile, the Palestinian health ministry said six Palestinians were shot and wounded by Israeli forces in the village of Beita, in the northern West Bank. One person who was hit in the head was in a critical condition in hospital, it added.
A video circulated online appeared to show a man being shot in the back of the head while he runs away from Israeli troops.”…
Gritten did not bother to clarify that the incident is under investigation or that during the IDF counter-terrorism activity in Beita, Palestinians instigated a riot….
The BBC reports on the shooting of six Palestinians, but not on the context: the Palestinians had been engaged in rioting in the village of Beita, throwing rocks and cinder blocks (which could easily kil la man) at IDF troops who had arrived to arrest a wanted terrorist. The troops felt their lives were in danger, and so they shot, but only to wound, the Palestinians threatening them. Gritten does not make those circumstances clear. Nor did he let his audience know that the IDF is now investigating itself — that is, the shooting of a Palestinian in the head.
On Saturday, an Israeli man and his son were shot dead by a suspected Palestinian gunman at a car wash near the northern village of Huwara.
Why did the BBC call the “gunman” merely “suspected”? He was seen shooting his two victims and then running away; there was nothing merely “suspected” about him. And why was he not identified as a “terrorist”? It’s a word the BBC almost never uses when reporting on Palestinian killers; part of a virtual BBC Style Manual directs reporters to “never call a Palestinian a ‘terrorist’; that prejudges a complicated situation.” What the BBC should have written is this: “An Israeli man and his son were shot dead by a Palestinian terrorist at a car wash…”
On Friday, Israeli forces shot a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in the head in occupied East Jerusalem, leaving him seriously wounded. Police alleged he had tried to throw a petrol bomb during a raid in the Silwan area.
Many Palestinian teenagers have engaged in terror attacks, including those resulting in the murder of Israelis; some have been as young as 15. So what? Should the IDF soldiers first determine the age — how? — of someone who has just tried to kill them, before shooting to stop them? At that age, many males are full grown physically and mentally; their youth ought not be used to exculpate them. The boy apparently was in the process of heaving a petrol bomb at IDF soldiers when he was shot. The BBC’s use of the word “alleged” casts doubt on the police claim: he is merely “alleged” to have tried to throw a petrol bomb at the soldiers. That’s just like the Israelis, isn’t it, to come up with a phony excuse — that so-called “petrol bomb” — for shooting an innocent young boy.
Elsewhere that day, video showed an apparently unarmed Palestinian man said to suffer from mental health problems being shot in the leg by Israeli troops during a protest near Israel’s separation barrier in Qalqilya.”…
Gritten’s assertion that the wounded man was “said to suffer from mental health problems” appears to be based on claims from Palestinian sources….
The Palestinians frequently claim that someone shot by the Israelis “has mental health problems”; we are meant both to feel sorry for him and to conclude that he was not capable of causing serious harm. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the merciless Israelis fired at his leg, to halt his advance toward them, instead of recognizing that there was something wrong with him mentally, and furthermore, he was unarmed (but did the soldiers know?) .
The incident in Qalqilya – which is also under investigation – was reported by the Times of Israel:
“The Israel Defense Forces said the incident occurred on Friday afternoon amid a riot in the West Bank barrier area, during which several suspects attempted to damage the fence, hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at forces, and set tires on fire.
The military said forces used riot dispersal means and live fire in the air to disperse the suspects from the security barrier.”
Riot dispersal means include tear gas and stun grenades; the only live fire from the IDF were shots fired into the air to scare rioters into dispersing, not to hit anyone. And those rioters, remember, were hellbent on extreme violence — the stones and Molotov cocktails they hurled at the IDF soldiers could easily have killed someone. It was only after the Palestinians let loose with their weapons that they were shot. The IDF deliberately tried not to seriously harm, but only to immobilize, them, by aiming for their legs..
In the final paragraph of his report, Gritten tells readers that:
“There have been dozens of Israeli army raids into Palestinian cities this year as well as violence by Israeli settlers targeting Palestinian homes and Palestinian attacks on Israelis.”
Gritten first describes these “raids” — the word itself sounds so sinister — into “Palestinian cities” by the IDF, and he then mentions the “violence by Israeli settlers targeting Palestinian homes.” Only at the very end of his sentence, almost as an afterthought, does he mention “Palestinian attacks on Israelis.” But the upsurge in violence in the West Bank, the killings of dozens of Israeli civilians so far this year, already more than in all of 2022, is surely the main story: it is those killings that have prompted the IDF counter-terrorism operations. Gritten ought to have reported that “there has been an upsurge in Palestinian terror attacks — more Israelis have been killed so far in 2023 than in all of 2022. This has led to frequent counter-terrorism operations, particularly in those hotbeds of Palestinian violence, Jenin and Nablus. The killings of the father and son at a carwash in Huwara, and of an Israeli schoolteacher being driven near Hebron, are only the latest examples of Palestinian terror. The Israelis expect that despite their counter-terrorism operations, there will be many more.”
VictorMc says
When I read these articles regarding the truly appalling BBC I am always reminded of Aeschylus appx. 2500 years ago.
“The first casualty of war is the truth”
EVERY media oik should learn this by heart and NEVER forget it.