Tuesday, January 15, 2008

BBC now even attributes Hamas murders to Israel

Today Hamas claimed responsibility for the killing of a foreign volunteer in a western Negev kibbutz. The Jerusalem Post reports that 20-year-old Carlos Andres Muscara Chavez from Quito, Ecuador, was working in a potato field in Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, when he was shot by a Palestinian sniper.

But if you read the BBC report about this murder of an innocent civilian, you will be led to believe that it was the Israelis who killed him. In the report here the headline says "Israeli Gaza City raid kills 16" and the first paragraph reports:

  • "At least 16 Palestinians, including at least 13 militants, have died in an Israeli raid in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, reports say. Medical sources and witnesses said the deaths came after Israeli tanks pushed into eastern suburbs of Gaza City. A farm worker in southern Israel was also killed by sniper fire from Gaza. "

Since the report only refers to the "Israeli raid" (and of course says nothing about the barrage of rockets into Israel that preceded the raid and which injured a woman and 7-year-old child) the implication is that the sniper must have been Israeli. In common with BBC reporting on Israel, as analysed by Honest Reporting, today's story again uses explict headlines involving "Israelis kill Palestinians" but when Palestinians kill Israelis the prepetrators (and often even the victims) are never mentioned explicitly. The BBC today have managed to provide both examples of the bias identified by Honest Reporting in the same story.



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