BBC diminishes evidence of terrorist links
This morning, the IDF announced that it had fired on a boat of armed militants in diving suits off the Gazan coast, claiming that it had done so in order to prevent an impending terrorist attack.
Shortly after the story broke, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – viewed by the EU and US as a terrorist organisation - announced that the men who had been killed belonged to its organisation, supporting the IDF’s contention that the group were involved in a hostile action against Israel.
The BBC News website, however, did not mention that the organisation has admitted that those killed were members until the ninth paragraph of its article. Instead, it’s headline, ‘Israel navy kills four Palestinian ‘militants’ off Gaza’, suggested that the Palestinians were only militants in the eyes of the Israelis, while the headline on the World page simply stated that the ‘Israeli navy kills four off Gaza’.
While the article was updated several times, so that the opening paragraphs included multiple references to the Israeli military claiming that the boat’s crew had been preparing a terrorist attack, the admission from the al-Aqsas Martyrs Brigade only came much later in the article, after the subjects of Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla, and its control of the Gazan sea had been raised.
This downplaying of the official link between the boat and the militant organisation was strengthened by the clip that opened the article. The 1.28 minute report by Jon Donnison contained no visual or verbal references to the alleged militancy of the Palestinians killed. Instead, Donnison opened by stating that ‘the Israeli navy have fired upon a boat carrying people in diving gear – they say they hit the small boat, and killed those on board.’
No mention was made of the fact that the Palestinians were from the al-Aqsa Martyrs brigade, or that Israel was claiming it had thwarted a terrorist attack. Instead the report described how the killings came while the world’s attention was fixed on the Israeli navy, and how the local Gazans were used to the navy firing on their fishing boats.
This meant that a reader could view the video clip and read the start of the article before being informed that a local paramilitary organisation had already accepted that the Palestinians were indeed members, adding credibility to Israel’s claims.