BBC reports on fictional counter-terrorism but not the real thing

Even when reporting on fictional Palestinian characters, the BBC won't use the word terrorist.

On January 1st Israel’s security services announced the arrests of members of a Hamas cell that was directed from the Gaza Strip.

“Israeli security forces broke up an alleged Hamas terrorist cell planning to carry out attacks in the West Bank, arresting five of its members in November, the Shin Bet security service revealed Monday.

The cell was led by Alaa Salim, a resident of the Palestinian West Bank town of Jaba, north of Jerusalem, but it received its directions from Abdallah Arar, a known Hamas terrorist living in the Gaza Strip, the Shin Bet said.

Arar, who was convicted for his involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Israeli man Sasson Nuriel in 2005, was released to the Gaza Strip from an Israeli prison six year[s] later as part of a contentious prisoner exchange to secure the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was being held hostage by Hamas. […]

When he and the other four alleged members of the cell were arrested, Salim had already received directions from Arar to carry out attacks, along with thousands of shekels in order to purchase an M-16 assault rifle, according to the Shin Bet.”

Two days later, on January 3rd, the security services announced that members of another cell had been arrested.

“The Shin Bet security service on Wednesday revealed it had uncovered an Iranian military intelligence operation in the West Bank that it said was planning to carry out terror attacks and collect intelligence for the Islamic Republic. […]

The leader of the cell was a 29-year-old computer science student named Muhammad Maharma from Hebron, but he received his directions from an Iranian operative in South Africa, the Shin Bet said.

The other two alleged members were Nour Maharma and Dia’a Sarahneh, both 22 and both also from Hebron.

According to the security service, in 2015, Muhammad Maharma was enlisted to work for Tehran by his cousin, Backer Maharma, who moved to South Africa from Hebron and allegedly started working for Iranian intelligence.

“Backer even introduced Muhammad, on a number of occasions, to Iranian officials, some of whom visited [South Africa] from Tehran in order to meet him,” the Shin Bet said.

According to the security service, its investigation found that Iran was using South Africa as a “significant front for finding, enlisting and deploying agents to Israel and the West Bank.””

While the BBC did not produce any coverage of either of those stories, it did publish an article in the ‘features’ section of the BBC News website’s Middle East page on January 6th relating to a television drama series about Israeli counter-terrorism units.

However, the only mention of the word ‘terrorist’ in Jane Corbin’s article “Fauda: The drama lifting the lid on Israeli snatch squads” comes in a direct quote.

“Lior and Avi deliberately set out to portray the brutal conflict in a new way, depicting common characteristics between both sides.

“[In Fauda] they are all-rounded characters – even if he’s an evil terrorist he’s got to love his wife and you have to show it and he has kids and you have to show it,” says Lior, “and also the good guys are doing bad things sometimes,” he adds, alluding to his compatriots.”

Throughout the rest of her article Jane Corbin employs the standard (and long-standing) BBC euphemism ‘militants’ – even when interviewing actual terrorists who, she claims, “carry out attacks on Israelis”.

“I am on the set of Fauda, the Israeli television thriller that portrays the murky world of Israeli undercover army units and Palestinian militants during the Second Intifada (Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation).”

“We wanted to show how they [militants and their families] live, their experiences, the price they’re paying for their actions,” says Lior. “For the Israeli audience we open a window for them to see how people live over there.”

“This strong Arab woman is an unusual lead character in a television drama in this region. The character faced a moral crisis when militants in her own family used her to surgically implant a bomb inside a wounded Israeli undercover soldier.”

“After our own game of cat and mouse to find Palestinian militants willing to talk, we met two heavily armed masked men in a house in Shuafat refugee camp, on the outskirts of occupied East Jerusalem. They carry out attacks on Israelis and try to outwit the undercover units hunting them down.”

As we see, the BBC has expanded its selectively applied guidance on ‘language when reporting terrorism’ to apply even to reporting on fictional Palestinian characters in a TV drama show. Can it get any more ridiculous?

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