Uh oh. The BBC has come under fire once again after listeners took umbrage with Radio 4’s news reporting this morning. News came today that the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an Israeli attack after a strike hit a building in Iran – just hours after Israel claimed to have killed a senior Hezbollah militant in Lebanon. Iran has vowed to get revenge for Haniyeh’s death as fears about escalation in the Middle East grow, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has insisted: ‘This is something we were not aware of or involved in’.
Yet despite Haniyeh’s longstanding involvement and senior position in the Hamas terror group, the BBC’s Today programme chose to report that:
Ismail Haniyeh had been overseeing talks on a new ceasefire and hostage release deal. Despite his tough rhetoric he was generally seen by analysts as moderate and pragmatic compared to the more hardline Gaza-based leaders.
It echoed language used by Reuters and Sky News on the matter – but that hasn’t stopped it ruffling feathers. The impartial Beeb might have made more of the fact that not only did Haniyeh become a key target for Israel after the 7 October attack, but that he himself insisted that there was a ‘need’ for deaths in Gaza to ‘ignite…the spirit of revolution’ amongst Hamas fighters. In the same rant, made last October, the militant leader went on to add:
The blood [spilled] in the Gaza Strip…will defeat this occupier, will defeat this enemy… As I said, and I repeat every time, the blood of the children, women, and elderly – I do not say that it shouts out to you, but rather we need this blood so that it will ignite within us the spirit of revolution, so that it will arouse within us persistence, so that it will arouse within us defiance and [a forward] advance.
Is this what ‘tough’ talk and ‘moderate’ passes for these days?!
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