Israel attacked another hospital in Gaza on 23 March, just days after Israeli media outlet Haaretz said the apartheid state had “committed the largest child massacre in its history” in the occupied Palestinian territory. In recent days, Israel also flattened “Gaza’s only specialised cancer hospital”. Unmoved by these horrors, however, the BBC continues to normalise Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians with dispassionate propaganda.
US surgeon Dr Feroze Sidhwa, who has been volunteering in the Nasser hospital and has criticised Israel’s recent destruction of the Gaza ceasefire, described how Israel had killed a teenage patient of his in the 23 March strike. He added that “The male surgical ward is destroyed. It does not exist any more. It will have to be completely rebuilt.” Some commentators have suggested that Israel may be trying to intimidate Sidhwa and other US doctors in the hospital, who have been outspoken in the media.
The BBC took a different approach to reporting on the Israeli attack.
BBC propaganda on behalf of Israeli war criminals
Amid the Israeli onslaught on Gaza since October 2023, the BBC has shown itself to be an expert at omitting key information and context while focusing people’s attention on Hamas to distract from Israel’s crimes.
Media critic Assal Rad said the broadcaster’s latest piece of propaganda sounded “like an Israeli press release“. And Richard Sanders, director of the powerful and comprehensive documentary Investigating war crimes in Gaza, stressed that:
The BBC continues to soften the most grotesque war crimes for the Israelis.
Its report on 23 March:
- Led with a headline focusing not on Israel targeting a hospital but on the assassination of a Hamas civilian official in the attack. The BBC knows that Westerners have been conditioned to think ‘terrorist’ when hearing the name Hamas, but as Sanders pointed out, “this is a civilian official killed in hospital while receiving treatment”.
- Mentioned Hamas 12 times, and Israel just 11 times, despite Israel carrying out the attack. One way to focus attention on Hamas, for example, was to say it was the “Hamas-run health ministry” that described the damage. Considering that no one was questioning Israel’s responsibility for the attack or the damage it caused, there was no other reason for using this phrase other than to keep Hamas at the forefront of the reader’s mind.
- Said “the hospital department that was hit was evacuated after a large portion was destroyed”. Again, we know it was Israel that hit the hospital and destroyed a portion of it, so we can consider the use of the passive voice (“was hit” and “was destroyed”) as a tool for taking the focus away from Israel’s decision to attack a hospital.
- Repeated Israel’s propaganda claim that Hamas uses hospitals “as hiding places for weapons and command centres” without the important context that no one has actually verified this allegation. It’s not just that Hamas denies doing this. Because international experts who have long criticised the absence of evidence for Israel’s assertion and its prevention of independent verification. And that is key context that any respectable media outlet would include.
A masterclass in selective context
The BBC‘s article also demonstrated perfectly how selective context works. Because it:
- Gave Israel a very favourable portrayal in terms of both its destruction of the ceasefire and its genocide of tens of thousands of Palestinians, including 17,492 children. As Sanders pointed out, “you would have no idea from BBC reporting the Israelis continually violated the ceasefire even before the atrocities of the last few days”, in which Israel murdered almost 200 children.
- Stated that it was Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023 that “triggered” Israel’s genocide. Here, it carefully stated that it was “mainly civilians” who died on that day. The BBC doesn’t give us any clue as to why Hamas might have launched that attack, however, or what it sought to achieve. There’s no mention, for example, of how Israeli occupiers spent many years turning Gaza into “the world’s largest open-air prison”, isolating its highly concentrated population with a brutal blockade.
- When it came to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, meanwhile, the BBC suggested Israel simply “responded” to 7 October with an attempt “to destroy Hamas”. It failed to mention that Israel destroyed pretty much the whole of Gaza, without achieving its aim of ‘destroying Hamas’. And then, to top it off, it placed doubt on Israel’s murder of thousands of children and other civilians by saying Israel’s offensive “has killed more than 50,000 people, the Hamas-run health ministry said”. So not only did it avoid saying “mainly civilians” as it did regarding 7 October (despite the UN confirming that most have been women and children), but it unnecessarily reminded us that Hamas governs Gaza, just to plant the seed of doubt about whether Israel really has killed all of those people.
ATTACKING HOSPITALS IS NOT NORMAL
Journalist Mehdi Hasan has pointed out that no one is even debating whether Israel attacks hospitals anymore. Because it’s so obvious. He said:
Now it’s just the norm & Israel doesn’t even pretend it isn’t constantly attacking Gaza hospitals
And Assal Rad sees a direct connection between mainstream media coverage of Israel’s attacks and the normalisation of attacking hospitals. As she stressed:
They’re trying so hard to normalize attacking hospitals.
They’re trying so hard to normalize attacking hospitals. pic.twitter.com/E3Akv7jKjp
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) March 24, 2025
The fact that we have regularly seen and heard about the horrors of Israel destroying medical infrastructure and equipment doesn’t make it normal. The UN says:
Attacks on schools and hospitals during conflict is one of the six grave violations identified and condemned by the UN Security Council.
It adds:
Under international humanitarian law, both schools and hospitals are protected civilian objects, and therefore benefit from the humanitarian principles of distinction and proportionality.
The law does allow an exception if it’s clear that an enemy is using such an institution as a base for fighting. But it’s absolutely not clear in Gaza. Because the only force claiming, without verifiable evidence, that hospitals are a legitimate target is a settler-colonial apartheid state that numerous genocide experts have long accused of committing genocide in Gaza. And because it’s an occupying power, it doesn’t even have the legal right to attack the population living under its occupation.
The BBC, however, continues to manipulate readers to think Israel’s actions are somehow normal or justifiable.
If you wish to make a complaint to the BBC, you can do so here.
Featured image via the Canary
