{"id":306380,"date":"2025-04-07T06:40:30","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T06:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=306380"},"modified":"2025-04-08T07:05:48","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T07:05:48","slug":"the-graver-israels-atrocities-in-gaza-the-quieter-the-bbc-grows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=306380","title":{"rendered":"The graver Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, the quieter the BBC grows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Cook \u2013 Middle East Eye April 4, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The BBC\u2019s news verification service, Verify, digitally reconstructed<\/a> a residential tower block in Mandalay earlier this week to show how it had collapsed in a huge earthquake on 28 March in Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia largely cut off<\/a> from the outside world.<\/p>\n

The broadcaster painstakingly pieced together damage to other parts of the city using a combination of phone videos, satellite imagery and Nasa heat detection images.<\/p>\n

Verify dedicated much time and effort to this task for a simple reason: to expose as patently false the claims made by the ruling military junta that only 2,000 people were killed by Myanmar\u2019s 7.7-magnitude earthquake.<\/p>\n

The West sees the country\u2019s generals as an official enemy, and the BBC wanted to show that the junta\u2019s account of events could not be trusted. Myanmar\u2019s rulers have an interest in undercounting the dead to protect the regime\u2019s image.<\/p>\n

The BBC\u2019s determined effort to strip away these lies contrasted strongly with its coverage – or rather, lack of it – of another important story this week.<\/p>\n

Israel<\/a> has been caught in another horrifying war crime. Late last month, it executed 15 Palestinian<\/a> first responders and then secretly buried them<\/a> in a mass grave, along with their crushed vehicles.<\/p>\n

Israel is an official western ally, one that the United States<\/a>, Britain<\/a> and the rest of Europe have been arming and assisting in a spate of crimes against humanity being investigated by the world\u2019s highest court. Fourteen months ago, the International Court of Justice ruled<\/a>\u00a0it was \u201cplausible\u201d that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, is a fugitive from its sister court, the International Criminal Court. Judges there want to try him for crimes against humanity<\/a>, including starving the 2.3 million people of Gaza by withholding food, water and aid.<\/p>\n

Israel is known to have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them women and children<\/a>, in its 18-month carpet bombing of the enclave. But there are likely to be far more deaths that have gone unreported.<\/p>\n

This is because Israel has destroyed all of Gaza\u2019s health and administrative bodies that could do the counting, and because it has created unmarked \u201ckill zones\u201d<\/a> across much of the enclave, making it all but impossible for first responders to reach swaths of territory to locate the dead.<\/p>\n

The latest crime scene in Gaza is shockingly illustrative of how Israel murders civilians, targets medics and covers up its crimes – and of how western media collude in downplaying such atrocities, helping Israel to ensure that the extent of the death toll in Gaza will never be properly known.<\/p>\n

Struck ‘one by one’<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>

The Palestinian emergency vehicles were all clearly marked with flaching lights.<\/p><\/div>\n

Last Sunday, United Nations officials were finally allowed by Israel to reach the site in southern Gaza where the Palestinian emergency crews had gone missing a week earlier, on 23 March. The bodies of 15<\/a> Palestinians were unearthed<\/a> in a mass grave; another is still missing.<\/p>\n

All were wearing their uniforms, and some had their hands or legs zip-tied, according<\/a> to eyewitnesses. Some had been shot in the head or chest. Their vehicles had been crushed before they were buried.<\/p>\n

Two of the emergency workers were killed<\/a> by Israeli fire while trying to aid people injured in an earlier air strike on Rafah. The other 13 were part of a convoy sent to retrieve the bodies of their colleagues, with the UN saying Israel had struck their ambulances \u201cone by one\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More details emerged during the week, with the doctor who examined five of the bodies reporting that all but one – which had been too badly mutilated by feral animals to assess – were shot from close range with multiple bullets.\u00a0Ahmad Dhaher, a forensic consultant working at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, said<\/a>: \u201cThe bullets were aimed at one person\u2019s head, another at their heart, and a third person had been shot with six or seven bullets in the torso.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bashar Murad, the Red Crescent\u2019s director of health programmes, observed<\/a> that one of the paramedics in the convoy was in contact with the ambulance station when Israeli forces started shooting: \u201cDuring the call, we heard the sound of Israeli soldiers arriving at the location, speaking in Hebrew. The conversation was about gathering the [Palestinian] team, with statements like: \u2018Gather them at the wall and bring some restraints to tie them.\u2019 This indicated that a large number of the medical staff were still alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in Palestine, reported<\/a> that, on the journey to recover the bodies, he and his team witnessed Israeli soldiers firing on civilians fleeing the area. He saw a Palestinian woman shot in the back of the head and a young man who tried to retrieve her body shot, too.<\/p>\n

Concealing slaughter<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The difficulty for Israel with the discovery of the mass grave was that it could not easily fall back on any of the usual mendacious rationalisations for war crimes that it has fed the western media over the past year and a half, and which those outlets have been only too happy to regurgitate.<\/p>\n

Since Israel unilaterally broke a US-backed ceasefire agreement with Hamas last month, its carpet bombing of the enclave has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians<\/a>, taking the official death toll<\/a> to more than 50,000. But Israel and its apologists, including western governments and media, always have a ready excuse at hand to mask the slaughter.<\/p>\n

Israel disputes the casualty figures, saying they are inflated by Gaza\u2019s health ministry, even though its figures in previous wars have always been highly reliable. It says most of those killed were Hamas \u201cterrorists\u201d, and most of the slain women and children were used by Hamas as \u201chuman shields\u201d.<\/p>\n

Israel has also destroyed Gaza\u2019s hospitals, shot up large numbers of ambulances, killed hundreds of medical personnel and disappeared others into torture chambers<\/a>,\u00a0while denying the entry of medical supplies.<\/p>\n

Israel implies that all of the 36 hospitals in Gaza<\/a> it has targeted are Hamas-run \u201ccommand and control centres\u201d; that many of the doctors and nurses working in them are really covert Hamas operatives; and that Gaza\u2019s ambulances are being used to transport Hamas fighters.<\/p>\n

Even if these claims were vaguely plausible, the western media seems unwilling to ask the most obvious of questions: why would Hamas continue to use Gaza\u2019s hospitals and ambulances when Israel made clear from the outset of its 18-month genocidal killing rampage that it was going to treat them as targets?<\/p>\n

Even if Hamas fighters did not care about protecting the health sector, which their parents, siblings, children, and relatives desperately need to survive Israel\u2019s carpet bombing, why would they make themselves so easy to locate?<\/p>\n

Hamas has plenty of other places to hide in Gaza. Most of the enclave\u2019s buildings are wrecked concrete structures, ideal for waging guerrilla warfare.<\/p>\n

Israeli cover-up<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Even the usual excuses, as preposterous as they are, simply won\u2019t wash in the case of Israel\u2019s latest atrocity – which is why it initially tried to black out the story.<\/p>\n

Given that it has banned all western journalists from entering Gaza, killed unprecedented numbers of local journalists, and formally outlawed the UN refugee agency Unrwa<\/a>, it might have hoped its crime would go undiscovered.<\/p>\n

But as news of the atrocity started to appear on social media last week, and the mass grave was unearthed on Sunday, Israel was forced to concoct a cover story.<\/p>\n

It claimed the convoy<\/a> of five ambulances, a fire engine, and a UN vehicle were \u201cadvancing suspiciously\u201d towards Israeli soldiers. It also insinuated, without a shred of evidence, that the vehicles had been harbouring Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters.<\/p>\n

Once again, we were supposed to accept not only an improbable Israeli claim but an entirely nonsensical one. Why would Hamas fighters choose to become sitting ducks by hiding in the diminishing number of emergency vehicles still operating in Gaza?<\/p>\n

Why would they approach an Israeli military position out in the open, where they were easy prey, rather than fighting their enemy from the shadows, like other guerrilla armies – using Gaza\u2019s extensive concrete ruins and their underground tunnels as cover?<\/p>\n

If the ambulance crews were killed in the middle of a firefight, why were some victims exhumed with their hands tied? How is it possible that they were all killed in a gun battle when the soldiers could be heard calling for the survivors to be zip-tied?<\/p>\n

And if Israel was really the wronged party, why did it seek to hide the bodies and the crushed vehicles under sand?<\/p>\n

‘Deeply disturbed’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

All available evidence indicates that Israel killed all or most of the emergency crews in cold blood – a grave war crime.<\/p>\n

But as the story broke on Monday, the BBC\u2019s News at Ten gave over its schedule to a bin strike by workers in Birmingham; fears about the influence of social media prompted by a Netflix drama, Adolescence<\/em>; bad weather on a Greek island; the return to Earth of stranded Nasa astronauts; and Britain\u2019s fourth political party claiming it would do well in next month\u2019s local elections.<\/p>\n

All of that pushed out any mention of Israel\u2019s latest war crime in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Presumably under pressure from its ordinary journalists – who are known to be in near-revolt over the state broadcaster\u2019s persistent failure to cover Israeli atrocities<\/a> in Gaza – the next day\u2019s half-hour evening news belatedly dedicated 30 seconds to the item, near the end of the running order.<\/p>\n

The perfunctory report immediately undercut the UN\u2019s statement that it was \u201cdeeply disturbed\u201d by the deaths, with the newsreader announcing that Israel claimed nine \u201cterrorists\u201d<\/a> were \u201camong those killed\u201d.<\/p>\n

Where was the BBC Verify team in this instance? Too busy scouring Google maps of Myanmar, it would seem.<\/p>\n

If ever there was a region where its forensic, open-source skills could be usefully deployed, it is Gaza. After all, Israel keeps out foreign journalists, and it has killed Palestinian journalists in greater numbers<\/a> than all of the West\u2019s major wars of the past 150 years combined.<\/p>\n

This was the perfect opportunity for BBC Verify to do a real investigation, piecing together an atrocity Israel was so keen to conceal. It was a chance for the BBC to do actual journalism about Gaza.<\/p>\n

Why was it necessary for the BBC to contest the narrative of an earthquake in a repressive Southeast Asian country whose rulers are opposed by the West but not contest the narrative of a major atrocity committed by a western ally?<\/p>\n

Missing in action<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This is not the first time that BBC Verify has been missing in action at a crucial moment in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Back in January 2024, Israeli soldiers shot up a car containing a six-year-old girl, Hind Rajab<\/a>, and her relatives as they tried to flee an Israeli attack on Gaza City. All were killed, but before Hind died, she could be heard desperately pleading with emergency services for help. Two paramedics who tried to rescue her were also killed. It took two weeks for other emergency crews to reach the bodies.<\/p>\n

It was certainly possible for BBC Verify to have done a forensic study of the incident – because another group did precisely that. Forensic Architecture, a research team based at the University of London, used available images of the scene to reconstruct the events.<\/p>\n

It found that the Israeli military had fired 335 bullets<\/a> into the small car carrying Hind and her family. In an audio recording before she was killed, Hind\u2019s cousin<\/a> could be heard telling emergency services that an Israeli tank was near them.<\/p>\n

The sound of the gunfire, most likely from the tank\u2019s machine gun, indicates it was some 13 metres away – close enough<\/a> for the crew to have seen the children inside.<\/p>\n

Not only did BBC Verify ignore the story, but the BBC also failed to report it until the bodies were recovered. As has happened so often before, the BBC dared not do any reporting until Israel was forced to confirm the incident because of physical evidence.<\/p>\n

We know from a BBC journalist-turned-whistleblower, Karishma Patel, that she pushed editors to run the story as the recordings of Hind pleading for help first surfaced, but she was overruled<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When the BBC very belatedly covered Hind\u2019s horrific killing online, in typical fashion, it did so in a way that minimised any pushback from Israel. Its headline, \u201cHind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help\u201d, managed to remove<\/a> Israel from the story.<\/p>\n

Evidence buried<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A clear pattern thus emerges. The BBC also tried to bury the massacre of the 15 Palestinian first responders – keeping it off its website\u2019s main page<\/a> – just as Israel had tried to bury the evidence of its crime in Gaza\u2019s sand.<\/p>\n

The story\u2019s first headline was: \u201cRed Cross outraged over killing of eight medics in Gaza\u201d. Once again, Israel was removed from the crime scene.<\/p>\n

Only later, amid massive backlash on social media and as the story refused to go away, did the BBC change the headline<\/a> to attribute the killings to \u201cIsraeli forces\u201d.<\/p>\n

But subsequent stories have been keen to highlight the self-serving Israeli claim that its soldiers were entitled to execute the paramedics because the presence of emergency vehicles at the scene of much death and destruction was \u201csuspicious\u201d.<\/p>\n