{"id":6231,"date":"2025-05-07T12:59:33","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T10:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6231"},"modified":"2025-05-07T13:12:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T11:12:31","slug":"starvation-gaza-bbc-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2025-05-07\/starvation-gaza-bbc-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Starvation in Gaza is so bad even the BBC is covering it \u2013 and reporting it all wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The BBC’s role is not to keep viewers informed. It’s to persuade them a clear crime against humanity by Israel is, in fact, highly complicated geopolitics they cannot hope to understand<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

You can tell how bad levels of starvation now are in Gaza \u2013 as the population there begins the third month of a complete aid blockade by Israel \u2013 because last night the BBC finally dedicated a serious chunk of its main news programme, the News at Ten, to the issue.<\/p>\n

But while upsetting footage of a skin-and-bones, five-month-old baby was shown, most of the segment was, of course, dedicated to confusing audiences \u2013 by two-sidesing Israel’s genocidal programme of starving 2 million-plus Palestinian civilians.<\/p>\n

Particularly shocking was the BBC\u2019s failure in this extended report to mention even once the fact that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been a fugitive for months from the International Criminal Court, which wants him on trial for crimes against humanity. Why? For using starvation as a weapon of war against the civilian population.<\/p>\n

I have yet to see the BBC, or any other major British media outlet, append the status \u201cwanted war crimes suspect\u201d when mentioning Netanyahu in stories. That is all the more unconscionable on this occasion, in a story directly related to the very issue \u2013 starving a civilian population \u2013 he is charged over.<\/p>\n

Was mention of the arrest warrant against him avoided because it might signal a little too clearly that the highest legal authorities in the world attribute starvation in Gaza directly to Israel and its government, and do not see it \u2013 as the British establishment media apparently do \u2013 as some continuing, unfortunate \u201chumanitarian\u201d consequence of “war”.<\/p>\n

Predictably misleading too was BBC Verify’s input. It provided a timeline of Israel’s intensified blockade that managed to pin the blame not on Israel, even though it is the one blocking all aid, but implicitly on Hamas.<\/p>\n

Verify’s reporter asserted that in early March Israel “blocked humanitarian aid demanding that Hamas extend a ceasefire and release the remaining hostages”. He then jumped to 18 March, stating: “Israel resumed military operations.”<\/p>\n\"\"\n

Viewers were left \u2013 presumably intentionally \u2013 with the impression that Hamas had rejected a continuation of the ceasefire and had refused to release the last of the hostages.<\/p>\n

None of that is true. In fact, Israel never honoured the ceasefire, continuing to attack Gaza and kill civilians throughout. But worse, Israel’s supposed “extension” was actually its unilateral violation of the ceasefire by insisting on radical changes to the terms that had already been agreed, and which included Hamas releasing the hostages.<\/p>\n

Israel broke the ceasefire precisely so it had the pretext it needed to return to starving Gaza’s civilians \u2013 and the hostages whose safety it proclaims to care about \u2013 as part of its efforts to make them so desperate they are prepared to risk their lives by forcing open the short border with neighbouring Sinai sealed by Egypt.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, an Israeli government minister once again made clear what the game plan has been from the very start. \u201cGaza will be entirely destroyed,\u201d Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, said. Gaza\u2019s population, he added, would be forced to \u201cleave in great numbers to third countries\u201d \u2013 in other words, Israel intends to carry out what the rest of us would call the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as it has been doing continuously for eight decades.<\/p>\n

\n

Simply astonishing. We’ve had 19 months of Israeli government ministers and military commanders telling us they are destroying Gaza. They’ve destroyed Gaza. And yet western politicians and media still refuse to call it a genocide.<\/p>\n

Watch Israel’s lips: IT’S A GENOCIDE. pic.twitter.com\/gDIZHW5nNo<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 7, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n