Beware our mainstream media! In the last Gaza war of 2014, BBC’s Jeremy Bowen denied on TV Hamas’s use of human shields, writing for New Statesman magazine, “… my impression of Hamas is different from Netanyahu’s. I saw no evidence during my week in Gaza of Israel’s accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields…”1 These are weasel words of a man who is an Arabic speaker and alleged expert in Middle Eastern affairs.
My record of those days tells a different story. Yet in the current crisis, only a few days ago, ITV’s reporter Robert Moore reflected on the rare access he was given to the complex network of tunnels used by Hamas. Clearly impressed, he also mentioned the storage of weapons and explosives there2, yet utterly failed to point out that much of the tunnel network lies beneath residential areas, with their entrances within buildings. Omission is equally faulty and misleading.
It’s important to note that by no means all of Gaza is urban land. Many Israeli airstrikes are on Gaza City, where Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad concentrate much of their military infrastructure and from which many of their rockets against Israel are fired. According to Wikipedia, the extent of Gaza City is some 17 square miles. Based on this, the total built-up area in the Gaza Strip seems to be about 50 square miles, or 36% of the whole land.
One has to ask, what responsible armed force chooses to embed itself among civilians in this way?
Beit Hanoun in the north and Khan Younis in the south are also used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Justice fighters. Roughly 90 square miles of open land remain. The population of Gaza City is estimated at 650,000, some 31% of the Strip population. One has to ask, what responsible armed force chooses to embed itself among civilians in this way? And why do our media fail to sufficiently draw attention to it?
Lies and misinformation
On July 17th 2014, the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, said that Israeli accusations of Hamas fighters using civilians as human shields were “completely false…. Hamas fighters are sacrificing themselves and are acting as shields to protect their people, not to subject them to death.”3 Yet only a few days earlier, when interviewed on TV about people going onto rooftops to deter IDF strikes, the Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said:
“This attests the character of our noble, Jihad-fighting people, who defend their rights and their homes with their bare chests and their blood. The policy of people confronting the Israeli warplanes with their bare chests in order to protect their homes has proven effective against the occupation. Hamas calls upon our people to adopt this policy, in order to protect the Palestinian homes.”4
The 2014 poster from Gaza at the top of this article, with its Arabic caption, ‘A Strong People’, clearly illustrates the policy.
Mis-using children
Regarding the tragedy of children caught up in the conflict, whilst devastating, it’s important to realise the Islamist context. In 2014, UNICEF reported, “Children are used as messengers and couriers, and in some cases as fighters and suicide bombers in attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians. All the main political groups involve children in this way, including Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”5
Women in Palestine play a great role in raising their children and encouraging them to wage jihad for the sake of Allah.
In 2018, Fathi Hamad, Hamas’s Interior Minister, declared: “For the Palestinian people death has become an industry at which women excel and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields”6 More chillingly, prior to the 2014 war, Umm Osama, the wife of Khalil al-Hayyah (Hamas Legislative Council Member for Gaza City), extolled qualities of the ideal mother on TV. 7 She says, “Women in Palestine play a great role in raising their children and encouraging them to wage jihad for the sake of Allah. This is absolutely the most glorious thing a woman can do. When a man goes to wage jihad, she does not say “Don’t go” or try to stop him. She encourages and supports him…..”.
Military embedded in civilian areas
aerial photographs GazaClear documentary evidence exists of the Palestinian practice of embedding its military in densely-packed civilian areas. On July 28th 2014, three Palestinian rockets were launched towards Israel intended for Ashkelon. Two misfired and hit respectively Shati refugee camp and al-Shifa hospital, as the aerial photographs on the right show:
Reporting for Radio Popolare, Milan, Gabriele Barbati tweeted on July 29th: “Out of Gaza far from Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children y’day in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris”. The following photo on the left is also from that period in 2014.
Hamas rocket cache in mosqueThree days later France24 TV reported “This is a rocket. This is a rocket. Rockets were just shot from right here where we are standing. I’m not going to stay here. …. about 100 metres behind me - a blue UN flag floating above this building. This is another accusation that has been made by the Israeli government and Israeli forces - this rocket launching site is right next to a UN facility.”
Widely-experienced Colonel Richard Kemp CBE (British Army 1977 – 2006; Commander in Afghanistan, 2003), writing for the Gatestone Institute, commented:
“With few exceptions, reporters, commentators and analysts unquestioningly accept the casualty statistics given by Gaza's Hamas-controlled medical authorities, who ascribe all deaths to the IDF. Is anyone in Gaza dying of natural causes? Mass executions of 'collaborators,' and civilians killed by malfunctioning Hamas rockets, are all attributed to IDF fire. Storing and firing weapons within densely populated areas, compelling civilians to stay put when warned to leave, luring Israeli forces to attack and kill their own people, the Palestinian body count is vital to Hamas's propaganda war that aims to bring international pressure on Israel and incite anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic hatred around the world.”
Most recently, on Tuesday of this week, an Israeli news outlet reported the killing of a top Hamas commander, Aymal Nofal, in a precision airstrike.11 His location? Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp! As of Wednesday morning (18th Oct), there is no sign of reports of this fact in our British TV media, although it did appear in The Telegraph online news on Tuesday.12
These relatively few examples are sufficient to explode the myth of BBC’s impartial professionalism. One wonders how its ‘embedded’ reporters can be unaware of these crucial contextual truths and why such details rarely reach the vast majority of UK citizens. It appears that none of our mainstream media are up to the job.
Footnotes:
1. Jeremy Bowen (BBC), New Statesman 22 July 2014.
2. Hamas' secret weapon is an astonishing network of tunnels | ITV News 15 Oct 2023 (accessed 17 Oct).
3. Adnan Abu Amer Al-Monitor 17 July 2014.
4. Al-Aqsa TV, 8 July 2014.
5. UNICEF: Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, 2014.
6. Al-Aqsa TV, 29 Feb 2018.
7. Al-Aqsa TV, 02 Dec 2012.
8. Al-Monitor, Palestine Pulse, 19 June 2014
9. Dr Speckhard is now Director for the Study of Violent Extremism, McLean, Va, USA. Her ‘LinkedIn’ profile says, ‘She has provided expert consultation to the US, European & other governments as well as the U.S. Dept of Defence regarding programs for prevention and rehabilitation of individuals committed to political violence and militant jihad.’ She is author of ‘Homegrown Hate, Talking to Terrorists
10. Richard Kemp, ‘Gaza's Civilian Casualties: The Truth Is Very Different’, Gatestone Institute, 3rd August 2014
11. https://israfan.com/2023/10/17/a-beacon-amidst-turmoil-israels-resolute-defense-against-terror/ 17 Oct 2023 (accessed 18 Oct).
12. Hamas chief Ayman Nofal killed in Gaza airstrike (telegraph.co.uk) 16 Oct.2023 (accessed 18 Oct).
NB Translations from Arabic were provided by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and Middle East Monitoring and Reporting Institute (MEMRI).
