The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen has written a lengthy piece arguing that Israel has violated the laws of war in Gaza. Based on interviews with the Red Cross, the Norwegian Refugee Council and a carefully selected group of legal experts and academics, Bowen leaves readers with the impression that Israel is a serial and malign violator of international law which has possibly committed genocide against the Palestinians.
This one sided, deeply anti-Israeli diatribe is neither shocking nor surprising. It fits neatly with the corporation’s failure to examine the war with any semblance of objectivity, fairness or neutrality.
Indeed, there is one major fault in his piece which suffuses so many other media misrepresentations of the conflict, something one might call HDS: Hamas Disappearing Syndrome. There is no mention of how Hamas has embedded itself throughout Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, taken control of its economy and created food insecurity by looting and selling aid at exorbitant prices. The focus is purely on the temporary Israeli blockade.
Nor does Bowen talk about Hamas’s cynical war tactics, especially its decision to turn Gaza’s residential areas into a gigantic human shield. He does not mention the extensive tunnel system built by Hamas, one whose shafts are strategically connected to residential structures, such as schools, mosques and hospitals. He is oblivious to how Hamas has booby trapped civilian homes, entailing a vast amount of destruction by the IDF as a necessary war aim.
There is nothing in Bowen’s report about how Hamas has stored and used its weapons within civilian structures, including the firing of RPGs at Israeli troops from the steps of the Al Quds hospital, the use of Shifa hospital as a command and control centre for its fighters and the use of UN schools, including UNRWA facilities, to store caches of weapons and documents. For Bowen, it is as if Hamas has no fingerprints in Gaza at all.
Instead, he cites the numbers of Palestinians killed in the war, relying on Hamas figures that are quite remarkably deemed credible. He interviews the president of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, who describes Gaza as ‘worse than hell on earth’ and who says that Israel’s actions run counter to the Geneva Convention.
Dr. Jeremy Havardi
Leaving aside the fact that comments such as these violate the Red Cross’s neutrality, Spolijaric ought to be ashamed that her organisation has failed in its duty towards Israeli hostages, acting more like an Uber service than a credible international player.
As for the array of legal experts he summons, Bowen’s pretence at neutrality is completely shredded. There are certainly hundreds of lawyers prepared to argue that Israel has committed egregious violations of international law.
But last year, over 1,300 legal voices argued that there was no requirement for the UK government to halt arms sales to Israel or demand a ceasefire. Why did Bowen not quote any of these people? The simple truth is that he and the BBC are partisans in this struggle, both weighed down by a refusal to acknowledge Hamas’s ubiquitous role in Gaza.
Those who suffer from HDS fail to see an obvious truth: given that Hamas had spent years rigging Gaza as part of its human sacrifice policy, a war to defeat them was always going to entail immense suffering to Palestinian non-combatants and destruction to residential areas.
Civilian suffering is not a side effect of this war; it is a necessary and wholly tragic component of Hamas’s strategy. It requires an endless number of Palestinian civilian casualties, which Hamas then weaponises as part of a propaganda campaign designed to pressure Israel into ending the conflict. Winning over credulous journalists is key to this approach.
To all this, Bowen would doubtless argue that Netanyahu has been wrong to restrict journalistic access to Gaza. It is a fair point, and Israel can and should allow journalists independent entry to the war zone at their own risk. But that does not change the fact that right now, Hamas is playing Bowen like a fiddle while making the BBC an even greater laughing stock in the process.
- Dr Jeremy Havardi is the Director of the B’nai B’rith UK Bureau of International Affairs
