By Adam Levick
Western media rushed to run with unsubstantiated claims of Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians – relying on ‘Gaza authorities’ and ignoring countervailing evidence
June 4, 2025 16:27
If members of the BBC’s funding public assumed that the corporation had learned something about jumping to conclusions before the facts surrounding reported incidents become clear following its finger-scorching coverage of the October 2023 Al Ahli hospital explosion, they would be wrong.
Early on the morning of June 1st the BBC News website published a report headlined “At least 15 killed in Israeli tank fire near Gaza aid centre, say medics”. It was credited to a "local Gaza journalist" and went on to quote a "doctor at the Red Cross field hospital” and “Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal”, while failing to inform readers that Hamas runs that organisation.
As the day went on, the BBC's report was updated numerous times, with the claim that the civilians were hit by "tank" fire removed, and the number of alleged casualties in its headline fluctuating from fifteen to twenty-six to thirty-one and then down to twenty-one. Its cited source of those figures changed three times from “medics” to “Hamas” and then “the Red Cross”. The fourth version told BBC audiences that, "The Israel Defence Forces said it was ‘currently unaware of injuries caused by IDF fire within the Humanitarian Aid distribution site. The matter is still under review.’”
In other words, the BBC chose to promote unsubstantiated claims before it had received any information from either the IDF or the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Some seven and a half hours after the report’s initial appearance, the BBC began quoting a British surgeon “working at Nasser hospital” amplifying the unverified Hamas claims. The BBC did not clarify to its audiences how that surgeon could state unequivocally that the incident had taken place “at the GHF aid distribution centre near Rafah” when she herself was located miles away in Khan Younis.
The same version of the report stated that “The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which runs the centre, said the reports were ‘false’ and spread by Hamas. It said it distributed 16 truckloads of food on Sunday morning ‘without incident’, saying there were ‘no injuries or fatalities.’”
"’We have heard that these fake reports have been actively fomented by Hamas. They are untrue and fabricated,’” the report quoted GHF as saying.
A version of that report published at 17:14 UTC on June 1st, headlined :“31 killed in Israeli gunfire near Gaza aid centre, Hamas-run health authorities say”, included parts of a statement put out by the IDF over an hour earlier, which stated that an initial enquiry found that its forces had not fired at Gazans while they were near or within aid points, adding that allegations against the IDF regarding fire toward Gazan residents in the area of the humanitarian aid distribution site in Gaza were "false" and "fabricated".
Despite that statement from the IDF and the information released earlier by the GHF, the BBC continued to promote a “he said-she said” account of the story.
While there are still questions over the incident on Sunday, as well as other alleged casualties at Gaza aid distribution centres which were reported over the next two days, the willingness of BBC reporters and editors to promote largely unevidenced claims by Hamas or Hamas-related officials is extremely troubling, and, in fact, isn't exclusive to the BBC.
For its part, Sky News placed their coverage of the aid distribution incident as one of the top stories on their website’s homepage, with a headline which includes the words "Death traps and bloodbaths”, incendiary language culled from a Hamas press release conspiratorially accusing Israel of luring starving Palestinian children to the aid centres in order to kill them.
On the other side of the pond, the Washington Post ran the unverified, Hamas-based narrative of an Israeli attack on civilians queuing for aid in Gaza before finally, three days later, and after the original false story had already been widely circulated, admitting that the attack "couldn't be verified".
The far more influential New York Times also promoted the proscribed terror group's unsubstantiated claims about a “massacre” at the Gaza aid centre. However, unlike the Washington Post, the US “paper of record” has published no such mea culpa. In fact, as our CAMERA colleague showed, their reports not only failed to walk back their initial coverage, but actually concealed and muddled the Israeli denial in a word salad positioning the IDF statements as a potential confirmation of sorts.
For its part, CNN, in its initial reporting of the incident, didn't even temper their blaming of Israel with qualifying language acknowledging that the IDF was only being accused of carrying out attacks on hungry civilians. The network failed to acknowledge in their June 1st story that the allegations came from Hamas-controlled entities in Gaza.
Most remarkably, none of the outlets we mentioned saw fit to report on an IDF video posted on X on Sunday evening appearing to show Palestinian gunmen in Gaza shooting at civilians reportedly going to collect aid, which is illustrative of the fact that reporters in the UK and US ignored or significantly downplayed the possibility that Hamas or other Palestinian gunmen could have been responsible for the shooting of civilians queuing in line for food.
Given that Hamas had, several days before the Sunday incident, denounced the new US-Israeli-backed aid distribution system as an “agent of the occupation”, warning Palestinian civilians who accept its assistance that they “will pay the price, and we will take the necessary measures", one would have expected Western journalists to give at least equal weight to the possibility that the terror group – and not Israel – was the party responsible for the alleged massacre.
Western media coverage of the Gaza aid shootings once again shows that far too many journalists adopt the default position of believing the worst about Israel even when unverified claims come from dubious and/or politically motivated sources – including “local journalists” – and serve Hamas’ propaganda agenda.
Adam Levick and Hadar Sela are co-editors at CAMERA UK
