BBC promotes context-free report on injured Gazans

The BBC promotes a context-free story previously told on anti-Israel websites.

October 13th 2017 saw the appearance of a filmed report titled “Gaza amputees explain their unique friendship” on the BBC News website’s Middle East page. A slightly different version of the same video was also posted on the BBC Arabic website the following day.

“After suffering injuries in Israeli air strikes, Mansour and Adly formed a special friendship.”

The subtitles to the video tell BBC audiences:

“My name is Mansour Gurn. I’m 24. My name is Adly Obaid. I’m 25.

Mansour lost his leg in August 2011 after an Israeli airstrike. Adly lost his leg 7 months later in March 2012 in a similar attack.”

Seeing as the video is uncredited it is unclear how the BBC came across this story or why it decided to produce a filmed report at this particular time. However, this is not the first time that the two friends from the Shuja’iya district of Gaza have told their story to various outlets.

The Hamas-linked UK-based outlet ‘MEMO‘ promoted the story in February 2016, naming the men as Adli Obeid and Mansour Al-Qurm and stating that Obeid (Obaid) was injured in March 2011.

In January 2017 a similar article appeared on the anti-Israel website ‘Electronic Intifada’ but there the friends are named as Adli Ibeid and Mansour al Qirim. That article likewise states that Ibeid/Obaid was injured in March 2011 – a year before the date given in the BBC report.

In July 2017 a Chinese news agency produced written and filmed reports on the same story and there too readers were told that Adli Obeid (as he is named) was injured in 2011 rather than 2012 – five months before his friend.

No background information concerning the circumstances of either incident is provided to BBC audiences. Viewers hence remain unaware of the fact that what the video describes simply as “an Israeli airstrike” in August 2011 came during a period in which (as the BBC reported at the time) a major terror attack in southern Israel was followed by hundreds of missile attacks by terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip on cities including Be’er Sheva, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ofakim and Yavne. 

In March 2011, what is described by the BBC as “a similar attack” also took place during a surge in missile attacks against Israeli civilian communities and the airstrikes were – as the BBC also reported at the time – intended to target the terrorists firing those projectiles from urban areas in the Gaza Strip.

None of that relevant background information is however included in this BBC report promoting a  context-free story of Palestinian suffering caused by unexplained Israeli airstrikes.

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