Six years ago we documented the BBC’s correction of inaccurate Israeli casualty figures during the 1973 Yom Kippur War:
BBC Yom Kippur war accuracy failure perpetuated over years
However as was noted at the time, at least two other items of BBC content include the same error, stating that the number of Israeli casualties in that war was “about 6,000”.
That claim is found for example in a backgrounder titled ‘A History of Conflict’ which is undated, but appears to come from around 2005.
It also appears in another side-box of ‘context’ appended to an ‘On This Day’ feature – likewise undated, but apparently from around 2005 at the latest.
According to the Israeli Ministry of Defence archives concerning the 1974 Agranat Commission 2,689 Israeli soldiers were killed, 7,251 injured, 301 taken prisoner and 16 declared missing in action during the Yom Kippur War. The IDF website gives a figure of 2,691 soldiers killed during the three weeks of war and other sources quote figures of between “more than 2,500“, 2,569 and 2,688 Israeli casualties, with the differences probably being attributable to later deaths as a result of injuries sustained, MIAs whose status was later confirmed and prisoners of war who did not return alive. Despite the differing estimates of Israeli casualties, none of them reaches even half of the 6,000 claimed in these BBC articles.
And yet, despite having corrected one report six years ago, the BBC is apparently unperturbed by the fact that webpages it still makes available to the general public have been disseminating inaccurate information for at least fourteen years.
