BBC News conceals Fatah linked group’s role in terror attack

As readers are no doubt aware, on the evening of October 1st two Israelis were murdered in a shooting attack. Eitam and Na’ama Henkin were travelling together with their four small children near the village of Beit Furik when terrorists opened fire from a passing vehicle.

“The Israeli family came under fire when they slowed down before making a turn. At that moment, a Palestinian vehicle accelerated toward the family. Two attackers opened fire on the family with a handgun and a rifle.

Both parents were struck multiple times in their upper bodies, paramedics said. They were pronounced dead at the scene.

“It was a very difficult scene,” said MDA paramedic Boaz Malka, one of the first to arrive. “We saw a vehicle in the middle of the road, and a man in his 30s lying next to it with wounds in his upper torso. Inside the car sat a woman in her 30s, also with severe wounds to her upper torso. They were without any signs of life, and unfortunately we were forced to pronounce them dead at the scene.”

According to investigators, Naama Henkin was killed immediately. Eitam, despite suffering from multiple bullet wounds, stepped out of the vehicle and opened one of the car’s back doors, telling his children to flee the scene. He then collapsed on the road and died.”

BBC News website reporting on the attack was added to an existing article originally titled “Israel ‘prepared to resume peace talks’ with Palestinians” which dealt with the topic of the Israeli prime minister’s speech at the UN. Following the attack, the article’s headline was changed to read “Israeli couple shot dead in West Bank” and was amended a further three times.

Only in the fifth version of the article, updated on the morning of October 2nd, were the couple identified and the BBC managed to get Eitam Henkin’s first name wrong.

Pigua Henkin family names

The three later versions of the report noted Hamas’ response to the attack.

“The Palestinian militant organisation Hamas, which is dominant in Gaza, said “we bless the killing of settlers in the West Bank”.

Spokesman Husam Badran said: “We call on our people in the West Bank to carry out more quality operations like the [one] today.

“This is the only solution which is supported by the masses of our people everywhere.””

However, the BBC has not updated the report to inform audiences of the fact that responsibility for the terror attack was claimed by a group connected to the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party.Pigua Henkin family main

“The Abdel Qader al-Husseini Brigades, a group affiliated with Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, announced on Friday that its men on Thursday night opened fire on the car of Eitam and Naama Henkin, a couple in their 30s, while they were driving home with their four children, aged four months to nine. […]

Fatah, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is the largest faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the governing body in West Bank areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

“With Allah’s help and in keeping with our right for resistance and our duty to sacred jihad, our forces on Thursday night carried out a necessary action in which they fired on a car of occupying settlers that left the settlement of Itamar, built on Palestinian lands in the south of the city of Hebron. They fired on the car and killed the settler and his partner.””

That information is of course crucial to audience understanding of this story and its wider context but rather than clarifying to readers that the party dominating the Palestinian Authority is affiliated with active terrorist groups, the BBC instead offered audiences ‘context’ which not only downplays the significance of Temple Mount for Jews but fails yet again to inform them about the employment of that site in Palestinian Authority produced incitement.

“Tensions have been particularly high in recent weeks over the long-running issue of access to the al-Aqsa mosque compound in East Jerusalem.

Al-Aqsa is one of Islam’s holiest sites and is in the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif site also revered by Jews.”

The BBC cannot claim to be meeting its remit of building “a global understanding of international issues” as long as it continues to conceal the role played by the Palestinian Authority in inciting violence and executing terror attacks on Israeli civilians. 

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