As readers may recall, the ‘Palestinian Center for Human Rights’ (PCHR) was the source of baseless claims concerning ‘war crimes’ which appeared in BBC content less than 24 hours after the beginning of the summer 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas. The group’s director was interviewed by the BBC on several occasions during that conflict and, as has been noted here previously, the PCHR is one of several NGOs uncritically quoted and promoted by the BBC despite being active in the lawfare campaign against Israel.
Moreover, the PCHR was one of the sources used by UNOCHA for the compilation of casualty figures and civilian/combatant ratios in the Gaza Strip during the 2014 conflict. Those figures were unquestioningly quoted, promoted – and even defended – by the BBC without any independent verification having taken place and are still being cited to this day in its content.
On March 12th 2018 the PCHR put out a statement calling upon “the international community, including the High Contracting Parties to the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to intervene to stop all Israeli violations against fishermen and allow them to fish freely in the Gaza Sea”. The reason for that statement was the arrests of a number of fishermen near Rafah – described by the PCHR as “Israeli ongoing attacks against Palestinian fishermen”.
On April 4th the background to that story was made public.
“Security forces arrested a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group off the Gaza coast suspected of planning to sink an Israeli naval patrol boat and kidnap any survivors last month, Israel revealed on Wednesday. […]
This plot was foiled on the night of March 12, when the navy’s 916th Patrol Squadron stopped a Palestinian boat that had left the designated Gaza fishing zone. […]
The crew was brought into Israeli custody for questioning, including Amin Saadi Muhammad Jumma’a, 24, a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad who told interrogators that he had received instructions from his commanders to prepare to carry out the attack on Israeli Navy ships, according to the Shin Bet and IDF. […]
Jumma’a, a resident of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, told interrogators that the plan was for one boat to act as a diversion by leaving the fishing zone so that a navy ship would approach it.
“A second boat would attack the ship, firing a Kornet (anti-tank) missile at it, with the intention of causing injury and death to the soldiers on board,” the statement said
A third boat would then arrive on the scene and take the wounded soldiers hostage and steal the bodies of those killed, the security forces said.”
Unsurprisingly, BBC audiences have to date seen no reporting at all on that attack planned by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad – which is also among the organisers of the ‘Great Return March’.
Whether or not this latest example of the PCHR’s cynical and politicised distortion of events will do anything to convince the BBC that it is not a reliable and unbiased source of information worthy of unquestioning promotion by a corporation committed to accurate and impartial reporting of course remains to be seen.
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