The BBC helped kill Anas al-Sharif. Its reporting will kill more journalists
By JONATHAN COOK
The media are legitimising the murder of journalists by Israel – and they are doing it because they are racist propagandists for a system of western colonial control in the Middle East
How is it possible for a BBC reporter to have made the following obscene observation in his segment on Israel’s murder at the weekend of Al-Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif: “There’s the question of proportionality. Is it justified to kill five journalists when you were only targeting one?”
Unpacking the depraved journalistic assumptions behind this short “question” is no small task.
Let us note first, in passing, the entirely false assumption here that Israel wished only to kill one journalist, Al-Sharif. All the evidence is that, in killing more than 200 Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past two years and by excluding all western journalists from the enclave, Israel has been seeking to ensure its genocidal crimes go unreported. It is systematically killing those best placed to serve as witnesses.
The all-too-obvious reason Israel wiped out the entire al-Jazeera press team at this moment is that the Israeli army is about to invade Gaza City and commit yet more such atrocities.
But let us dig a little deeper. If you aren’t deeply shocked by the BBC, a so-called public broadcaster, thinking it suitable to air the comment above – all the more so after Israel has killed more journalists in Gaza than in all major western wars over the past 150 years – consider this.
Imagine that Israel finally allows western journalists into Gaza after blocking their entry for nearly two years. A team of five familiar BBC faces covering the region set up shop in Gaza and work out of an improvised studio inside the enclave.
Then news breaks that that their studio has been hit by an Israeli strike, and all five killed: Jeremy Bowen, Lyse Doucet, Yollande Knell, Lucy Williamson and Jon Donnison.
Israel doesn’t claim the strike was a mistake, but celebrates the killings. It says it has secret evidence that one of them – let’s say Jon Donnison, who made the observation above – was secretly recruited by Hamas’ military wing while in the enclave.
Can we imagine the BBC or any other western news organisation framing the segment in the following terms: “There’s the question of proportionality. Is it justified to kill five journalists when you were only targeting one?”
We all know the answer. The coverage would rightly proceed from the fact that Israel had killed five journalists, the latest in a procession of such media workers, in violation of international law.
The tone would be one of utter indignation. The framing, again rightly, would assume there could be no possible justification for such an attack on civilians. Israel’s claim that Donnison was working at the time in a military capacity for Hamas would be dismissed with complete contempt – unless Israel could produce firm evidence.
Racist double standard
If you find yourself in any way recoiling from this comparison – how can the killing of Jon Donnison be equated with killing Al-Sharif? – can I gently suggest that the power of Israeli and western propaganda has been working its magic on you.
Israel’s assertion that the award-winning reporter Al-Sharif was really a Hamas commander while doing a sideline in journalism for Al-Jazeera is no less preposterous than the claim that Donnison might be doing the same.
For one thing, reporting a genocide as Al-Sharif has been doing – especially when hundreds of your colleagues have been picked off by Israel one by one – is more than a full-time job. It is a way of life.
Doubtless, though I have less knowledge of such matters, it is the same serving as the commander of a Hamas cell.
An army of Israeli drones are spying on the enclave 24 hours a day from Gaza’s skies. Someone identified by Israel as a Hamas commander, or even a lowly official, would be under constant surveillance, and forced to move in the shadows, living underground as much of the time as possible.
Similarly, every Palestinian’s phone in Gaza is tapped by Unit 8200 and their calls stored on Microsoft servers.
The idea that Al-Sharif could throw in a few hours a day running a guerrilla operation under these conditions, while popping up on camera every few minutes to report on the latest slaughter in Gaza is so insane no one – least of all a major news organisation like the BBC – should be dignifying it with an ounce of credibility.
After all, if Israel had really identified Al-Sharif as a Hamas commander, it would have mountains of intel gathered by its surveillance machine. Instead, it has produced a few flimsy items of “evidence” that even I could rustle up in minutes using ChatGPT.
Again, no one should be citing this as evidence, any more than they would do if it were Donnison being smeared. Doing so legitimises the murder of journalists by Israel. That is exactly what the BBC and the rest of the western media are doing – and they are doing it because the journalists being killed are Palestinian. They are doing it because they are racist propagandists for a system of western colonial control in the Middle East.
But, you counter. Isn’t it a fact that Al Sharif had worked in the period before 7 October 2023 in the press department of Hamas?
And the answer, if true, is: so bloody what? Hamas was the governing administration of Gaza. It ran the enclave’s public services, schools, hospitals. Its press officers were there to communicate public policy.
Donnison, Bowen, Doucet, Knell and Williamson work for the British state broadcaster. They work for a state currently breaking the most basic precepts of international law by arming and spying on behalf of another state actively engaged in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Does that make them legitimate targets for Hamas to kill if they report in Gaza?
If your answer is “No”, then stop peddling a depraved, racist double standard.
Outrageous narrative
Israel has been pushing at an open door in Britain and other western capitals in advancing the idea that anyone who is connected in any way with the administration in Gaza is therefore tainted by terrorism and a legitimate target. In practice, that means much of its professional classes.
Israel has systematically murdered, jailed and tortured medical workers in Gaza as “Hamas operatives” on the grounds that the enclave’s hospitals were run by Hamas. It has attacked and destroyed all Gaza’s hospitals on the same grounds.
The idea that Israel could destroy Gaza’s hospitals initially shocked observers. But western media like the BBC quickly normalised these crimes against humanity, even as the people of Gaza were left with no medical services in the midst of a saturation bombing campaign by Israel and a mass starvation policy.
Israel has been doing the same with Gaza’s journalists: implying that any connection with the governing party, however tenuous, justifies murdering them. And western journalists like those at the BBC are going along with this outrageous narrative.
The British government, for which journalists like Donnison work, is setting the agenda that BBC journalists, as state stenographers, are following.
1 mai
Why I wrote an expert report against the UK classing Hamas as a terror group.
My latest article here:
An amendment in 2021 to Britain’s Terrorism Act of 2000 means that Hamas’ military, political and administrative wings were for the first time treated as indistinguishable. They all supposedly engage in terrorism. For that reason, showing any kind of support, even expressing an opinion, for anything or anyone connected, however tenuously, to Hamas can get you locked up in the UK for up to 14 years.
Britain has replicated as domestic policy the obscene logic that Israel has used to destroy Gaza’s hospitals, murder its doctors and kill its journalists.
It has now expanded that warped logic to outlaw the direct-action group Palestine Action as a terrorist group comparable to al-Qaeda, and is threatening anyone in Britain who expresses support for Palestine Action’s efforts to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza as a supporter of terrorism.
In short, the British government and a servile BBC that regurgitates its positions have the blood of Al-Sharif and Gaza’s other journalists directly on their hands. They helped kill him. And in reporting his murder, they are ensuring more journalists in Gaza will be murdered in the days, weeks and months to come.
[Many thanks to Matthew Alford for the audio reading of this article.]
Palestine.
