Last March we noted here that the BBC had completely ignored an incident which took place on the major highway Route 5, near Ariel, in which a mother and her three small daughters were involved in an accident caused by Palestinian rock throwers who attacked the vehicle travelling in front of them. 
The youngest little girl, Adele – who was only three years old at the time – was very seriously injured and is still unconscious eleven months after the attack. Recently her mother – Adva Bitton – gave evidence at the trial of those arrested for throwing the rocks which caused the accident.
“Since the attack, “our life is no life,” Bitton said. “Adele is still unconscious, it hurts me to see her confined to a wheelchair, not engaging with the world.”
“She doesn’t laugh, doesn’t eat, doesn’t do anything on her own,” she added.”
She added:
“I am not home anymore, I am not available for my three kids,” she said. “I’m supposed to be a mother but I live in Levenstein Hospital. My husband has not really been home in over 10 months. He doesn’t sleep at home at all. It’s like you have no family.”
“To see a child connected to a million pipes is very difficult. Her life has been destroyed because of rock throwing. It is difficult for me to cope with the fact that my daughter will be handicapped in every way because of such an act. It’s a daily trauma when you see your child gasping with her head hanging down and you can’t do anything.”
The IDF Spokesperson notes that:
“In 2013, Palestinians directed more than 2,400 rock throwing incidents at Israelis. Of these, 30 percent were directed at civilian vehicles. 116 civilians were injured due to these incidents.”
BBC audiences of course know nothing at all about little Adele Bitton or any of the one hundred and fifteen other people injured in the hundreds of rock-throwing attacks at Israeli motorists last year alone. They also know very little at all about the scale of daily terrorism directed at Israelis by means other than rock-throwing because BBC reporting is confined almost exclusively to incidents which result in fatalities. But as Adva Bitton’s testimony reminds us, the effects of non-fatal terror attacks can be devastating to victims and their families too.
This is clearly information which is crucial to the BBC’s mission to form “a global understanding of international issues” and to enable audiences to “participate in the global debate on significant international issues” such as the Middle East peace process and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in general. But it is information which is being consistently withheld from the people to whom the BBC is supposedly accountable.
Related Articles:
BBC claims attacks on Israelis in Judea & Samaria are “rare”
Toddler injured by stone-throwers in Jerusalem not news for the BBC
BBC continues to ignore non-fatal terror attacks
BBC manages to report on three terror attacks without mentioning the word terror
Review of the BBC’s reporting of security incidents in Judea & Samaria in January
