RSS
Like Other Media Outlets, the BBC Completely Distorts Gaza ‘Casualty’ Counts
An Israeli military convoy moves inside the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as seen from Israel, June 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
On the afternoon of Friday, November 8, the BBC News website published a report by Mallory Moench under the following dramatic headline:
The sensationalist nature of that headline becomes evident already in the first paragraph, as readers discover that its 70% claim relates only to verified deaths during an six month period of the war. [emphasis added]
The UN’s Human Rights Office has condemned the high number of civilians killed in the war in Gaza, saying its analysis shows close to 70% of verified victims over a six-month period were women and children.
Readers later discover that the uncredited UN report released on the same day relates to less than 19% of the 43,300 “Gaza war dead” claimed by the Hamas terrorist organization which started the war.
The UN agency said it verified the details of 8,119 people killed in Gaza from November 2023 to April 2024.
Its analysis found around 44% of verified victims were children and 26% women. The ages most represented among the dead were five to nine-year-olds.
Failing to clarify that Hamas deliberately fails to distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties for propaganda purposes, Moench tells readers that:
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the UN sees as reliable, has reported a death toll of more than 43,300 people over the past 13 months. Many more bodies are believed to remain under the rubble of bombarded buildings.
The link in that paragraph leads to a BBC report from August 2024 which was previously discussed in our previous analysis here.
Nowhere in her report does Moench refer to the fact that IDF data shows that some 17,000 Hamas operatives and members of other terror groups have been killed by the IDF in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7 2023.
Nor does she have anything to tell her readers about the relevant issue of the exploitation of child soldiers by Gaza Strip-based terrorist organizations.
In paragraph two, Moench notes that the UN report states that “some deaths may have been the result of errant projectiles by Palestinian armed groups,” and in paragraph 17 of her 24-paragraph article she makes another vague reference to the relevant issue of shortfall missiles fired by Palestinian terrorist organizations, such as the one fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad which caused the explosion at al Ahli hospital in October 2023, after which Hamas claimed 471 deaths.
“The UN said Palestinian armed groups have waged war from densely-populated areas and indiscriminately used projectiles, likely contributing to the death toll…” [emphasis added]
Moench does not, however, clarify that the UN’s report makes no effort to distinguish between deaths caused by Israeli strikes and those resulting from “indiscriminately used projectiles” — meaning that the latter are included in its 70% claim.
Although she fails to provide her readers with any context concerning the long-standing anti-Israel bias of UN Human Rights bodies and officials, Moench provides plenty of uncritical amplification of their claims.
The report said it found “unprecedented” levels of international law violations, raising concerns about “war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes”.
The report said the data indicates “an apparent indifference to the death of civilians and the impact of the means and methods of warfare”.
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said in a statement that “this unprecedented level of killing, and injury of civilians is a direct consequence of the failure to comply with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law”.
He cited the laws of distinction, which requires warring parties to distinguish between combatants and civilians, proportionality, which prohibits attacks where harm to civilians outweighs military advantage, and precautions in attacks.
Türk called for a “due reckoning with respect to the allegations of serious violations of international law”.
In addition, Moench fails to comply with BBC editorial guidelines on impartiality by informing readers of the “affiliations, funding and particular viewpoints” of the representative of a political NGO with a long history of anti-Israel activity whose entirely predictable statements she uncritically quotes.
Jan Egeland, the head of aid organisation Norwegian Refugee Council, told the BBC on Friday that he saw “devastation, despair, beyond belief” on a recent visit to Gaza.
“There is hardly a building that is not damaged. And large areas looked like Stalingrad after the Second World War. You cannot fathom how intense this indiscriminate bombing has been on this trapped population,” he said.
“It’s evident that it is first and foremost children and women who are paying a price for this senseless war,” he added. [emphasis added]
Not only does the BBC’s sensationalist, tabloid-style headline to this report mislead and misinform BBC audiences, but the article itself fails to do little other than provide context-free and entirely uncritical amplification of claims from less than objective sources.
Moench makes no effort whatsoever to address the UN report’s many problematic aspects. As observed by Mark Zlochin:
This is what @UNHumanRights themselves say about their “verification methodology”:
“That a large proportion of the fatalities verified by OHCHR were killed in residential buildings or similar housing is also partly explained by OHCHR’s verification methodology, which requires at least three independent sources, and the challenges in collecting and verifying information of killings in other circumstances.”
In other words, their “methodology” makes it much more likely to leave out fatalities that were not killed “in residential buildings or similar housing” and/or those that could not be confirmed by at least three independent sources.
You know, like those that were killed in face-to-face combat with IDF, for example.
It also makes their analysis heavily biased towards the relatively rare mass-casualties events that are much more likely to be witnessed by several independent witnesses and leaves out many of the precision strikes with low or no collateral damage.”
As also noted by Mark Zlochin, the actual demographic breakdown of all casualties claimed by the Hamas health ministry — not just the 19% in particular circumstances during a particular time period — shows that the biggest age categories are men aged 25-29 and 30-34.
The BBC was not the only media outlet to run such a misleading headline: The Guardian and Voice of America did the same, with the latter having later been amended thanks to CAMERA.
CAMERA UK has submitted a complaint to the BBC requesting the amendment of this report’s inaccurate and misleading headline.
Hadar Sela is the co-editor of CAMERA UK — an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Like Other Media Outlets, the BBC Completely Distorts Gaza ‘Casualty’ Counts first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
As Gaza War Continues, Hamas Calls for Global Protests While Israel Marks Breakthroughs in Medical Innovation
A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect
As the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas calls for global protests amid stalled Gaza ceasefire talks, Israel has broken new ground despite the ongoing conflict, achieving a major medical breakthrough in synthetic human kidney development.
The contrast illustrates a stark contrast between the priorities of Hamas, an international designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, and Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East that has long been a leader in tech and medical innovation.
On Wednesday, Hamas urged worldwide protests in support of Palestinians, calling on the international community “to denounce Israel’s genocidal war and starvation policy in Gaza.”
“We call for continuing and escalating the popular pressure in all cities and squares on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday … through rallies, demonstrations and sit-ins outside the embassies of the Israeli regime and its allies, particularly in the US,” the statement read.
The Palestinian terrorist group also called to expose what it described as “the terrorism of the Zio-Nazi occupation against defenseless civilians.”
Hamas’s latest move against Israel comes amid stalled indirect negotiations over a proposed 60-day ceasefire and hostage release deal, which collapsed last month after the group vowed it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established — rejecting a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza.
In its statement, Hamas demanded the opening of all border crossings to allow immediate aid into the war-torn enclave and urged a global condemnation of “the international community’s inaction on the Israeli crimes.”
Amid mounting international pressure to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel announced new measures to facilitate the delivery of aid, including temporary pauses in fighting in certain areas and the creation of protected routes for aid convoys.
Israeli officials have previously accused Hamas of diverting aid for terrorist activities and selling supplies at inflated prices to civilians, while also blaming the United Nations and other foreign organizations for enabling this diversion.
Hamas’s statement also emphasized that the “global resistance movement must continue until Israeli aggression on Gaza ends and the siege on the coastal strip is lifted.”
Meanwhile, as Israel faces escalating hostilities and the heavy toll of war, the Jewish state continues to push the boundaries of innovation and resilience, achieving new medical breakthroughs while confronting ongoing challenges.
In a major medical breakthrough, scientists at Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University have successfully grown a synthetic 3D miniature human kidney in a lab using specialized stem cells derived from kidney tissue — one of the most promising advances in regenerative medicine.
Dr. Dror Harats, chairman of Sheba’s Research Authority, described this achievement as a reflection of Israel’s leading role in global medical innovation.
“Despite growing efforts to isolate Israel from international science, breakthroughs like this prove our impact is both lasting and essential,” he said.
In a landmark study, a team from Sheba’s Safra Children’s Hospital and Tel Aviv University’s Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine created synthetic kidney organs that matured and remained stable for 34 weeks — the longest-lasting and most refined kidney organoids developed to date.
Nearly a decade ago, the research team became the first to successfully isolate human kidney tissue stem cells — the cells responsible for the organ’s development and growth.
Previous attempts to grow kidneys in a lab using general-purpose stem cells were short-lived, typically lasting only a few weeks and often producing unwanted cell types that compromised research accuracy.
However, this Israeli research team used stem cells taken directly from kidney tissue — cells that naturally develop into kidney parts — allowing them to create a much purer and more stable model with key features found in real kidneys.
This medical breakthrough could have far-reaching implications, redefining the current understanding of kidney diseases and advancing the development of innovative treatments.
Researchers believe the model could help assess how medications impact fetal kidneys during pregnancy and move science closer to repairing or replacing damaged kidney tissue with lab-grown cells.
The discovery came days after researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and international partners discovered a way to boost the immune system’s cancer-fighting ability by reprogramming how T cells, which are white blood cells critical to the immune system, produce energy.
The researchers explained in a study published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications that disabling a protein known as Ant2 in T cells greatly enhances their effectiveness against tumors.
“By disabling Ant2, we triggered a complete shift in how T cells produce and use energy,” Prof. Michael Berger of Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine, who co-led the study with doctorate student Omri Yosef, told the Tazpit Press Service. “This reprogramming made them significantly better at recognizing and killing cancer cells.”
RSS
Netherlands to Push EU to Suspend Israel Trade Deal but Won’t Recognize Palestinian State ‘At This Time’
Netherlands Foreign Affairs Minister Caspar Veldkamp addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on April 1, 2025. Photo: ANI Photo/Sanjay Sharma via Reuters Connect
The Netherlands is spearheading efforts to suspend the European Union-Israel trade agreement amid rising EU criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, while simultaneously refusing to recognize a Palestinian state, contrasting with other member states as international pressure mounts.
On Thursday, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp announced that the Netherlands will push the EU to suspend the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement — a pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with the Jewish state.
This latest anti-Israel initiative follows a recent EU-commissioned report accusing Israel of committing “indiscriminate attacks … starvation … torture … [and] apartheid” against Palestinians in Gaza during its military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
Following calls from a majority of EU member states for a formal investigation, this report built on Belgium’s recent decision to review Israel’s compliance with the trade agreement, a process initiated by the Netherlands and led by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.
According to the report, “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under the 25-year-old EU-Israel Association Agreement.
While the document acknowledges the reality of violence by Hamas, it states that this issue lies outside its scope — failing to address the Palestinian terrorist group’s role in sparking the current war with its bloody rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israeli officials have slammed the report as factually incorrect and morally flawed, noting that Hamas embeds its military infrastructure within civilian targets and Israel’s army takes extensive precautions to try and avoid civilian casualties.
In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Gaza on Thursday, Veldkamp also announced that the government would not recognize a Palestinian state for now — a position that stands in sharp contrast to the recent moves by several other EU member states to extend recognition.
“The Netherlands is not planning to recognize a Palestinian state at this time,” the Dutch diplomat said.
“This war has ceased to be a just war and is now leading to the erosion of Israel’s own security and identity,” he continued.
This latest decision goes against the position of several EU member states, including France, which has committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood in September.
The United Kingdom has likewise indicated it will do so unless Israel acts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and agrees to a ceasefire.
For its part, Germany said it was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term, and Italy argued that recognition must occur simultaneously with the recognition of Israel by the new entity.
Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia all recognized a Palestinian state last year.
Israel has been facing growing pressure from several EU member states seeking to undermine its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
On Thursday, European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera strongly condemned Israel’s actions in the war-torn enclave, describing the situation as a “grave violation of human dignity.”
“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera told Politico. “If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning.”
Until now, the European Commission has refrained from accusing Israel of genocide, but Ribera’s comments mark one of the strongest European condemnations since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
She also called on the EU to take decisive action by considering the suspension of its trade agreement with Israel and the implementation of sanctions, while emphasizing that such measures would require unanimous approval from all member states.
RSS
Graduate Student Unions Promoting Antisemitism, Reform Group Says
Students listen to a speech at a protest encampment at Stanford University in Stanford, California US, on April 26, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
Higher-education-based unions controlled by United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) are rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionist discrimination, according to a new letter imploring the US Congress’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce to address the matter.
“Tracing its roots to communism in the 1930s, the UE is a radical, pro-Hamas labor union that has a long history of antisemitism,” the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), one of the US’s leading labor reform groups, wrote on July 30 in a message obtained by The Algemeiner. “The UE openly supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to cripple and destroy Israel economically. Today, the UE furthers its antisemitic agenda by unionizing graduate students on college campuses and using its exclusive representation powers to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The hostile environment includes demanding compulsory dues to fund the UE’s abhorrent activities.”
NRTW went on to describe a litany of alleged injustices to which UE members subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University. At MIT, the letter said, “union officers” aided a riotous group which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the BDS movement. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”
The situation requires federal oversight and intervention, NRTW said, including Congress’s possibly clarifying that student-employees are not traditional employees and are therefore afforded protections under sections of the Civil Rights Act which apply to the campus.
“These continuing patterns of antisemitism are illegal, immoral, and must be stopped,” the letter continued. “We encourage you to do all that is in your power to investigate and help bring an end to the UE and its affiliates’ nonstop harassment and intimidation of Jewish students … The Trump administration can also use tools available to it under Title VI and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against colleges who work with unions to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.”
July’s letter is not the first time NRTW has publicized alleged antisemitic abuse in unions representing higher education employees.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.