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Two Girls Shot in Gaza · UK Column Radio

0:08
Good afternoon. I'm here in Studio 2 at the UK
0:11
column and I'm delighted today to be joined by Patrick
0:15
Henningson. Welcome, Patrick.
0:17
Great to be with you, Brian. Thank you.
0:19
Well, we were having a discussion a couple of days ago
0:23
about a very interesting BBCI think we've called it a mini
0:28
documentary by a lady called Stephanie Hegarty.
0:32
And it was on the deeply troubling subject of children
0:37
who had been shot in Gaza. And really the meat of the story
0:41
was that many of these children very young, some of them 2-3
0:45
years old, but up to the age of 12.
0:48
And they had clearly been shot by snipers in that they suffered
0:54
injuries to their heads and or chests.
0:57
And of course for a small child, for a small child, this is a
1:01
small target. And as we will hear, the numbers
1:05
of these children indicate that something very, very untoward
1:10
was was actually happening. Now what I found interesting
1:14
with this video documentary was that I simply found the video
1:20
introductory image at the bottom of an article on the BBC
1:25
website. There wasn't any direct text to
1:29
do with this production by Stephanie Haggerty.
1:34
I found that very strange. Nevertheless, I watched the
1:37
documentary. I found it to be very compelling
1:40
and it was only later that I discovered that there was text
1:44
that went with the documentary. But it wasn't placed under Gaza,
1:48
which would be the natural place for it to appear under the BB CS
1:52
headline News on the War in Gaza.
1:56
It was actually under World News.
1:59
And then you had to look for the subsection of the Middle East.
2:02
So I'm going to say, Patrick, that my brain said, it's almost
2:07
as if this has been pushed away to one side on the BBC website.
2:12
I don't know how you'd react to that.
2:14
Well, I think it's interesting you look at the coverage of the
2:17
BBC in particular and this, I believe this report was produced
2:21
under the banner of BBC World Service.
2:25
And I also noticed something about the reporting on BBC World
2:29
Service is slightly different than what we would call general
2:32
BBC. Same with CNNCNN World tends to
2:36
veer a little bit towards the truth in, in some of its
2:39
narratives, whereas CNN HQ in America is heavily
2:44
propagandised. Things are curated very, very
2:47
carefully. And I think I, I see some
2:50
similarities with the BBC, but the, what you say is true is
2:53
that this stuff gets compartmentalised.
2:56
It's in the BBC universe. But it I mean, I think this is
3:00
an extraordinary piece of investigative journalism and it
3:03
really should occupy, it should be, you know, the number one
3:06
national story. Major, major headline.
3:10
And yet this lady is with her team, has done this.
3:13
I think what extraordinary piece of investigation it stands.
3:18
We're going to watch it and share that with our viewers and
3:22
listeners in just a moment. But yes, should really be a
3:25
major headline with a lot of questions to be asked,
3:28
principally by the Israeli Defence Forces, but also the
3:32
Israeli government itself as to how so many children came to be
3:37
shot. And many of them in areas where
3:42
there was no actual fighting taking place.
3:45
And some of them were actually travelling on some of these safe
3:48
corridors that have been identified by the Israelis in
3:52
order to allow people in Gaza to move from one section to a safer
3:57
sectional or possibly to a location where there was food or
4:02
aid going to be provided. Yeah.
4:06
So let's have a look at the clip.
4:08
It's about 14 minutes long. I will say to the audience, it
4:12
is very harrowing. It's it's a very tragic subject.
4:17
I think it's been handled very carefully.
4:20
But I think the average person will find this a trouble,
4:23
troubling video clip. Nevertheless, if we were to
4:26
understand what's going on in Gaza, particularly around the
4:29
death of young children, we need to watch it.
4:36
A man and a small child are lying on a street in Gaza City.
4:41
In his final moments, the man reaches out to touch the child.
4:50
This video was broadcast on Qatari network Al Arabi TV in
4:54
late December 2023. The man and child had been shot
4:58
by Israeli snipers, the report claimed, but there were no
5:02
details of what exactly happened or who they were.
5:05
For months we tried to find out more about them, trolling social
5:09
media and reaching out to contacts on the ground.
5:12
A comment under a social media post named as St and a business
5:16
in the video, which helped us to geolocate it, and we could
5:20
verify independently that it was Hamid St in Gaza City.
5:24
We found a name for the man in the video, Mohammed Al
5:27
Majdalawi, and traced his death certificate as well as that of
5:31
his daughter, 2 year old Leanne. Leanne's case is just one of
5:48
over 160 reports we've compiled of children who were shot in
5:52
this war in Gaza. The incidents we looked at ran
5:55
from the beginning of the war all the way up to July this
5:57
year. Israel bans foreign media from
6:00
entering Gaza independently to report, and destruction and
6:04
displacement also make gathering details difficult.
6:09
We struggled to find Leanne's family and it wasn't until a
6:12
ceasefire earlier this year, when people could move more
6:15
freely, that we managed to reach them.
6:18
Hello. Hello.
6:21
This is Leanne's sister Shahid. She was 12 years old and with
6:25
her mom Soraya, her teenage brother Abood, their father
6:29
Muhammad and Layan. That day, Shahid, Abood and
6:32
Soraya told us what they saw when Muhammad and Layan were
6:36
killed. The family say they were
6:39
sheltering in Gaza City when the area was bombed by the IDF and
6:43
they were ordered to evacuate. On the 9th of November 2023, at
6:48
around midday, they told us they left this school and travelled
6:52
down this street, turning left onto a Mead St.
6:55
There was no fighting at the time, they said.
7:05
As they passed this junction, Shahed says she saw a tank up
7:08
the street to her left. Shahid says she and her brother
7:25
ran back to help and realised their father had been shot.
7:29
She tried to grab Leon, who wouldn't let go of her father
7:32
before they were shot at again. They fled and never saw Muhammad
7:49
or Leon again. This image was taken before the
7:53
war, but we've obtained and analysed a satellite image taken
7:56
2 hours before the shooting. We don't have permission to
7:59
publish it, so we've recreated it.
8:01
In this animation on the satellite we can see an IDF
8:05
presence 280 metres north of the family and we can see a tank
8:10
along the same street where Shahid says she saw 1-2 hours
8:13
later. Military analyst Stuart Ray
8:16
examined the image and pointed out these tanks, armoured
8:20
vehicles and military diggers, these defensive sandbanks and
8:24
the fact this location has the tallest buildings in the
8:27
immediate area, which suggests this was an IDF fortified
8:30
position. He said that as well as tanks, a
8:33
position like this would have infantry.
8:38
There are three clips in the video we've seen of Muhammad and
8:41
Leon. The first indicates where they
8:43
likely fell. In the second, drag marks show
8:47
that the bodies have been moved to behind this building.
8:50
In the last clip, they've been placed beside each other once
8:53
again. We showed these videos to three
8:56
forensic pathologists with experience in war casualties.
9:00
Each said it's evident that Muhammad and Layan were killed
9:02
by gunfire. Professor Derek Pounder is the
9:05
former head of pathology at the University of Dundee.
9:08
Overall, it's most likely that a single gunshot has struck the
9:14
infant, passed through the infant into the man, causing him
9:18
to collapse and killing both of them.
9:22
What is it that you can see in this video, which isn't very
9:24
clear, that tells you that? There's no evidence of any blast
9:29
injury with flailing of the arms and legs.
9:32
There's not obvious large injuries to the bodies.
9:35
The video is a relatively poor quality, but we can see what a
9:39
likely blood stains to the man's left shoulder and chest area.
9:43
High velocity gunshot wounds from military rifles leave a
9:47
small entrance hole and cause devastating internal injuries.
9:52
We presented our findings to the IDF and they said IDF soldiers
9:56
operate against terrorist organisations in complex urban
10:00
environments and unintended or erroneous harm may occur in the
10:04
course of combat. They added that whenever there
10:07
is reasonable suspicion that IDF forces acted contrary to IDF
10:10
values and orders, the incident will be reviewed and handled
10:14
with the necessary seriousness. They said the details of this
10:18
case have been recorded and will be examined by the competent
10:21
authorities. In some of the cases we looked
10:25
at like Leon's children were allegedly shot while fleeing
10:28
battle zones, but many others were shot while playing outside
10:31
their tents in humanitarian zones and some in areas the IDF
10:35
themselves had marked as evacuation corridors.
10:45
In a case we first came across on social media, 6 year old Mira
10:49
Tambura was shot in the back of the chest, according to her
10:52
father, close to an Israeli checkpoint on the Salaheddin Rd,
10:56
an IDF marked evacuation route on the 18th of November 2023.
11:02
Her father rushed her to Alauda Hospital where the hospital
11:04
director told us they pronounced her dead earlier that day.
11:09
The Tambora say they were screened at this IDF checkpoint
11:12
after fleeing northern Gaza. They were just over a kilometre
11:16
down the road when Mira was shot.
11:36
In this satellite image from the day before, we can see the IDF
11:43
position at the checkpoint. This video posted a few days
11:46
earlier shows the containers and buildings we can see by
11:49
satellite. Our BBC colleague Jihad al
11:52
Mashrawi was in Gaza until February 2024 and he passed
11:57
through the checkpoint with his family two days before Mira.
12:00
And on this. Satellite.
12:20
Image We can see several of those buildings on the east of
12:24
the road, as well as these Sam barriers in the direction that
12:27
side pointed to where he believes the shock came from.
12:31
At the time Mira was shot, we found no reports of clashes with
12:35
Hamas in the vicinity of the checkpoint, which reduces the
12:38
likelihood that she was caught up in crossfire.
12:52
When we put the allegations made in this case to the IDF, they
12:56
said an allegation of harm in and of itself does not
12:59
necessarily indicate a violation of the law.
13:02
That said, whenever there is reasonable suspicion that IDF
13:05
forces acted concrete IDF values and orders, the incident will be
13:09
reviewed and handled with the necessary seriousness, they
13:13
added. The details of this case have
13:15
been recorded and will be examined by the competent
13:17
authorities. Since the beginning of the war,
13:21
doctors have been raising concerns about children being
13:23
shot in Gaza. We spoke to 30 doctors and
13:27
nurses and reviewed hundreds of photos and videos, as well as
13:31
scans, medical notes and journal entries that they shared.
13:35
Some of these medics said they saw many more children with
13:37
gunshot injuries. However, as we compiled cases,
13:41
we only included those they had documented.
13:45
Professor Nizam Mahmoud is a retired NHS consultant and
13:48
transplant surgeon. He was in Gaza for a month in
13:51
August 2024. We saw a significant number of
13:57
shootings either with bullets to the head or chest, including to
14:02
children. So most of the gunshot wounds to
14:05
the head were dealt with by the neurosurgeons.
14:07
I saw some of the X rays. So a bullet literally lodged in
14:11
the brain of a three year old child.
14:13
How many cases do you think you saw of children who were shot?
14:18
I lost count during the time I was there.
14:20
I would say probably 20 plus. We also spoke to human rights
14:25
researchers working on the ground and collated and verified
14:29
media reports. Of the 168 cases we compiled, we
14:34
found 95 instances of a child shot in the head or the chest.
14:39
More than 2/3 of these children were under 12 years old.
14:43
In 59 cases, we were able to obtain an account from witnesses
14:47
of what happened, either directly or via doctors and
14:50
human rights researchers. In 57 of those, it was alleged
14:54
that the IDF shot the child, and in two that the children were
14:58
allegedly shot by Palestinians, one by celebratory gunfire, the
15:02
other in a gang conflict. For the remaining 36 cases, we
15:06
have no account of what happened.
15:08
Without access to Gaza to report, gathering details on
15:11
each incident is extremely difficult.
15:14
Children have come into our field hospital with gunshot
15:17
wounds. Across 20 months of fighting,
15:19
children have been killed and injured in their homes, whether
15:23
they're staying in tents or walking in the streets.
15:26
And the world simply cannot accept this type of warfare,
15:31
this kind of impact on children. If the world accepts it,
15:35
whatever comes next will be even worse.
15:38
While we have no proof of intent, Mira and Leon's cases
15:42
raise serious questions about how the IDF operates in Gaza.
15:46
This week, Israeli human rights group B'tselem reported on the
15:49
absence of any rules of engagement in Gaza for Israeli
15:52
forces. This video was broadcast in
15:55
April on Israeli TV. It's an IDF commander speaking
15:59
to his troops, telling them to shoot at everyone they see.
16:11
Kay was a reservist in Gaza in early 2024.
16:15
I asked if he was surprised to hear that so many children had
16:18
been shot in the head, allegedly by Israeli troops.
16:23
I'm not super surprised. I'm not sure that there exists
16:27
soldiers who would do that. Do you think there's a lack of
16:29
accountability? I would definitely say there's a
16:32
lack of accountability. Kay didn't witness very young
16:35
children being shot, but he described several incidents in
16:39
which his unit killed unarmed people, including two boys he
16:43
described as young teenagers. There's a humanitarian Rd where
16:48
Gazans can go from north to South and the general rule was
16:52
on this road. It's a safe zone and no shooting
16:55
anyone you see off the humanitarian Rd Shoot, shoot to
16:59
kill. That's what we were told our
17:01
commander qualify that. Of course, if it's a woman or a
17:05
child, don't shoot. Try to detain them.
17:07
Don't be stupid. As time went on, the stakes kept
17:12
getting higher and higher. It was just very much nothing
17:15
matters, that's it. And then ultimately, when we
17:19
lost some people in a firefight, it was just it.
17:23
Destroy everything. Kill everyone you see.
17:26
We put the soldiers allegations to the IDF and they said the IDF
17:30
remains committed to minimising harm to civilians as much as
17:33
possible. 3 experts in international law looked at our
17:37
findings. They told us they raised serious
17:40
questions over whether these shootings were a result of
17:42
recklessness, negligence or wilful attack.
17:46
Under international law, professional soldiers have the
17:49
obligation to check before they take that shot that what they're
17:55
shooting at is a legal enemy combatant and not a civilian.
17:59
So when so many children are getting shot, and especially in
18:02
the head, that tells us that something is seriously wrong.
18:15
Of the 168 cases we looked at, we know that at least 90
18:20
children died, but because of the damage to Gaza's medical
18:23
system, it's hard for us to determine how many ultimately
18:26
succumbed to their injuries. According to the Mass Run Health
18:29
Ministry, at least 50,000 children have been killed or
18:33
injured in Gaza since the beginning of this war.
18:36
The families we spoke to say they have no hope for justice
18:40
for their children. Some weren't even able to bury
18:46
their bodies. Layan and Muhammad's remains lay
18:49
on Hamid's street for days as Shahid, Abboud and Soraya fled
18:53
from danger in the chaos of this brutal war.
18:57
And until we contacted them over a year later, they had no idea
19:02
that this video existed. Well, Patrick, that does take
19:11
some watching, doesn't it? Because it's got a very soft
19:14
feel to the style of the documentary.
19:17
It hasn't got any of the sort of razzmatazz that the BBC often
19:22
likes to bring into its documentary style.
19:24
So it's very a very soft measured, calculated, it leads
19:30
you through the story, but the facts speak from themselves.
19:34
So they investigated 160 cases overall where children have been
19:39
shot. In 95, those 160 cases, the
19:44
children have actually been shot in the head and all the chest.
19:49
So that's very direct targeting of, as I've said, often small
19:53
children. And in 57 of the cases, they
19:56
actually had witnesses who were prepared to say yes, they were
20:01
shot by the Israeli Defence Forces.
20:05
As opposed to some of the cases where people were able to admit
20:10
that there was fighting going on.
20:11
So it's possible mistakes were made.
20:15
And I think in at least one case it might have been possibly two
20:18
children were shot as a result of celebratory gunfire.
20:23
So people have been firing off randomly in celebration of some
20:28
success on the battlefield and that they'd been a casualty as a
20:32
result. But this is a very large number
20:35
of children and I think, I think this is where the the story for
20:39
me got extremely interesting. Yeah, there's no denying it.
20:45
There should be no doubt at all that what the this this
20:47
investigative piece shows. There's a systemic trend here
20:51
that's undeniable, and that is the systematic targeting of
20:55
children with head shots, you know, to children playing
20:59
outside their tents in areas that they were driven to by the
21:03
IDF. So there's no doubt that if they
21:07
don't explicitly come out and make these conclusions, but it's
21:11
evident in the way that evidence is presented.
21:14
So I would I would be led to believe here that the people
21:16
producing this report, including Stephanie Haggardi and her team,
21:22
are coming to the same conclusions.
21:23
We are, of course, we're just more we, we can be more
21:26
forthright in how we're and more outspoken about how we're sort
21:30
of, you know, saying what, what it is.
21:32
But you know, you remember the Syria coverage, remember back in
21:36
all the outrage from some of these images with the White
21:39
Helmets and little Omron, the dusty boy in the back of the
21:43
ambulance. And that was front and centre on
21:45
every tabloid. I remember going out to the news
21:47
stands in in the UK and look, Daily Mail, Guardian, Times, all
21:52
running the same image of the dusty boy.
21:55
And this just galvanised public opinion that we must get rid of
21:58
Bashar al Assad because he's just so inherently evil and
22:02
Assad must go, let's get behind the war effort.
22:05
This is the type of report where you should have that type of
22:10
public reaction. This should be a game changer.
22:12
So what I'm looking at, Brian Ear's it, it hasn't been
22:16
elevated to that degree. We can, of course, you know,
22:19
discuss why. I think we both know why.
22:22
But so there's unlikely there's going to be any policy change as
22:26
a result of this excellent piece of journalism.
22:30
And that's the problem because especially coming from the bbci
22:34
mean, when does the BBC ever do anything that would pushes the
22:39
government foreign policy back in the other direction and
22:43
causes a, a a change of heart in Westminster?
22:46
Very rare. But this, this report could do
22:49
that. I certainly can't see anything
22:51
wrong with it. I mean, look, it's pretty,
22:54
pretty clear what the conclusions are.
22:57
Yeah, it's it's very measured in the way that it it goes through,
23:01
through the information. And they stress that they did
23:04
their utmost to actually get corroboration of the incidents.
23:09
And this is this is the point about witnesses coming forward.
23:12
Now you might say, well, OK, in a emotional battlefield
23:18
environment, some people might come forward and accuse the IDF
23:22
of doing things. But but the numbers here, 95
23:28
cases out of that 160, and we've already got 160 cases of
23:33
children being shot. And this can't possibly be
23:38
accidental. And the younger the child, the
23:41
smaller the target. And for a small child to be hit
23:44
in the head, somebody's got to be taking a very, very carefully
23:49
aimed shot. And that's going to be a, a
23:51
sniper's rifle. I, I was also interested in the
23:55
documentary that the BBC was able to use its investigatory
24:01
powers to get into Gaza to identify who the family was.
24:05
And the little girl in the first instant was called Leanne.
24:09
She was two years old and her father was Mohamed al Majid
24:14
Alwawi. And he ends up shot.
24:19
Whether he was shot and the little girl who he was clutching
24:23
to his chest was hit as a result of that shot or the shot went
24:27
through the little girl, it's not clear.
24:29
But they end up on the street there and that tragic video
24:34
footage where he's obviously severely wounded and he reaches
24:39
out with his right hand to try and stroke that little girl.
24:43
Very poignant moment. But the BBC takes that footage
24:48
and he's able to pin down the location and he's able to then
24:52
show that Israeli units were along one of the side streets
24:58
that the family crossed and there was a tank and there were
25:01
troops. And then they actually used a
25:05
military analyst to say, well, this made sense because they
25:08
were high rise buildings and therefore we could expect
25:11
Israeli units to be there. And we then came to that very
25:16
interesting little bit where they were overlaying satellite
25:21
images and suddenly she says we weren't given permission to use
25:25
this footage. What would you make of that?
25:28
That was very odd because so this would have been, if my
25:31
understanding of this incident is correct, this would have been
25:35
late December 2023. So, you know, like, say, in the
25:39
early phases of the, what's it called a genocide in Gaza?
25:44
And So what would be so sensitive to 18 months later
25:50
that it you couldn't get clearance to show the footage
25:53
which they had to then go recreate using digital imagery
25:56
is just because there's 22 possibilities here. 1 is that
26:01
the Israelis were doing something they shouldn't have
26:03
been doing. And then what you would remarked
26:05
in our discussions before is that was the presence of any
26:08
Western assets and possibly military assets there.
26:12
Third option on that bit of censorship is that that got
26:17
spiked at the desk at the BBC's Middle East desk by some kind of
26:22
operative plant like Raffy Berg, who is the head of the Middle
26:27
East desk as a former CIA propagandist and who has been
26:32
the subject of complaints by his cohort at the BBC for ultra bias
26:38
editorial decisions in favour of Israel.
26:41
So it was one of those possibly in my mind anyway, one of those
26:45
3 possibilities, but it doesn't make any sense 18 months after.
26:51
So I, I'm, I'm, I'm more interested like yourself, Brian,
26:56
in that because behind that decision to not allow that
27:01
footage to be seen in its raw form, there's some answers there
27:05
behind that, yeah. Is it because the work that
27:08
Steph, Stephanie and her team did started to show the powers
27:14
that be, whether that's the IDF or the Israeli government or the
27:18
higher level of the BBC, that if they continued to investigate in
27:23
this very careful, detailed way, using all of the available
27:29
information, which would include satellite overlay surveillance
27:35
footage from some of the drones, that it would actually be
27:39
possible to deconstruct a lot of what had taken place in the
27:43
violence? So it's it's the stack of cards
27:46
or the the domino. They don't want this one to fall
27:49
because if this case falls, then all the rest of the incidents
27:53
come up to the surface. And maybe something which which
27:57
supports that line of thinking is the fact that later in that
28:01
little video, they discussed what the policy was, what the
28:07
rules of engagement for the Israeli troops were.
28:11
And the statement is actually they didn't seem to have any.
28:15
And then of course they used the clip of the Israeli, the IDF
28:19
commander simply saying to the to the Israeli soldiers you
28:24
shoot. So if that is true, that IDF
28:30
troops are not even using rules, proper rules of engagement,
28:33
which certainly NATO forces even in Afghanistan or Iraq would
28:39
have been using a basic rule of engagement as to who they shoot
28:44
at and who they don't. Well, it's, it kind of, it kind
28:48
of makes sense, Brian, because this is a country that is an
28:53
occupying power, you see, and they don't have, Israel's the
28:58
only country in the world that doesn't have declared borders or
29:00
constitution. And why is that?
29:03
Well, because if they had a constitution, they'd have to
29:06
basically uphold it to. And if they had borders, they
29:09
wouldn't be able to expand and they wouldn't be able to get
29:11
away with an illegal occupation running an apartheid system,
29:15
obviously. So they'd probably fall short on
29:18
the rules of engagement. They did, however, have that
29:19
nice excuse, he said. In the course of our operations,
29:24
sometimes unfortunate things happen.
29:27
And let let us assure you this is being looked at by the by
29:30
competent authorities if anything goes against IDF
29:34
values. Yes, that was, we're laughing.
29:38
It's a very dark subject. Bit of black humour here.
29:41
Yeah, I mean, that was, that was a pretty outrageous statement.
29:44
Our values, well, what are your values?
29:47
Are those values written down? I suspect not.
29:50
Yeah. So they basically gave the
29:51
collateral damage caveat, you know, completely devoid of the
29:57
context of the occupation. And that's an important point.
30:01
That's a point that's often glossed over by Western media.
30:06
And that's part of the framing of this whole issue.
30:10
And this conflict and this genocide is how it's framed.
30:13
It's framed as a war. Like these are two countries
30:17
fighting each other. It's not, it's an occupation.
30:20
And they're also, and this is this gets right down to the nub
30:24
of the issue, Brian here. When we're talking about the the
30:27
the US and the British and the European policy with regards to
30:33
the proscription of terrorist groups like Hamas, for instance,
30:38
or any of these Palestinian resistance groups, is that that
30:42
that that's done outside of the international law.
30:45
And the international law and the UN Charter is very clear
30:49
that countries under occupation have a right to defend
30:52
themselves and that armed liberation struggles fall under
30:55
a basic human right globally. And that would be the case for
30:59
us if we were under occupation, you know, military occupation or
31:05
in America or in Canada or Mexico or anywhere else.
31:09
So, but in this case, we don't seem to recognise that.
31:13
But it's so important in how the story's framed.
31:16
Because of the story's framed a certain way, it gets distorted
31:19
very quickly. And then what journalists are
31:23
reporting on doesn't correspond to the reality on the ground for
31:26
the people who are experiencing it.
31:28
This is the number one disconnect that we get with our
31:32
mainstream media. Yeah.
31:34
And so it it, it focuses in that that concept that you just let's
31:39
set out that focuses us back in on actually how effective this
31:44
little 14 minute documentary was.
31:47
Because she didn't get distracted by any wider issues.
31:51
She just stayed on the case of the children being shot and they
31:56
took their evidence from the which is the word the.
32:01
Oh, the path Forensic. Pathologist.
32:03
Sorry, friend. Yeah.
32:05
And of course, they, they, they took information from the
32:10
forensic pathologist at university level who said, well,
32:15
there's no signs of blast injury, so destroyed limbs or
32:20
major wounds on the body. So even though he called, he
32:26
commented on the fact that the quality of the film footage in
32:30
in some of the shots was relatively poor in his opinion.
32:34
Yeah, there was no doubt these these children have been shot.
32:38
And then, of course, there were many actual factual photographs
32:43
and scans from inside hospital environments where there was no
32:47
doubt that these were gunshot injuries.
32:51
So her documentary stayed absolutely focused on the facts.
32:56
And then by the end, I'm starting to wonder, well, OK,
33:00
where has this information gone? And that little documentary clip
33:05
didn't really cover that. But when you read the script
33:09
that goes with it, which as I say, we found on the BBC World
33:13
News Middle East subsection page, then there was a little
33:19
bit of comments that this information had gone on to hire
33:24
agencies. UNI think was one of those.
33:29
But I'm very curious, where's the result?
33:32
Where where's been commenting the BBC or the newspapers about
33:37
the fact that we've got this clear track record of very young
33:41
children sniped, killed by snipers deliberately, Where's
33:46
the push back? Doesn't appear to be any.
33:49
I mean, how many? Let's just take this out of the
33:51
Gaza context. If this was happening in
33:54
Ukraine, how many of these headshots or fatalities of
34:00
children being shot would would raise one's eyebrows to the
34:05
point where it's a a thing, it's a controversy, it's worthy of
34:09
headlines. I I thought about this, Patrick,
34:12
and my brain says 10 because you could probably say around all of
34:17
the conflict areas, there's always going to be the chance
34:20
civilians get caught up in a firefight.
34:22
And then there's the accidental shot, which kills a very small
34:26
job, but you get above 10 and I'm thinking there's something
34:30
happening here, but the time you're up to 57, there's a bit
34:34
of a pattern. Get up to 100.
34:37
Yeah, they've got a major problem.
34:39
This is just the known cases that they had access to the
34:43
data. If you consider the fact that
34:45
and, and their data they're gathering here with the BBC is
34:49
from late December 2023 till July of this year, so just this
34:54
past month. So that means that there's a lot
34:58
of potential information and data that's been destroyed
35:01
because of a lot of the healthcare institutions in the
35:04
Gaza Ministry of Health has been wiped out.
35:07
That same Ministry of Health that the West like to call Hamas
35:09
run Gaza Ministry of Health, the the records, keeping everything.
35:14
This is one of the things that's come out in the UN reports is
35:17
they don't have the infrastructure anymore to keep
35:20
track of of fatalities. So a lot of the stuff that could
35:24
be at least investigated at the, you know, ICU level, the first
35:29
state, let the first responder level a certain amount of
35:32
documentation with regards to the cases you're dealing with,
35:35
whether it's a shooting or whatever the a lot of the stuffs
35:38
are missing. So what do you think the true
35:40
number is just considering the scale of the desert devastation
35:44
and the amount of reporting? And and this too, clearly we
35:46
have a trend here out of these 160 cases with 9095 head shots
35:52
of children or chest shots, you know, really precise, we're
35:58
talking potentially in the hundreds, possibly upwards of
36:03
1000 maybe. If I got it right, if I remember
36:07
correctly, the figure for the overall deaths with of of
36:10
children in Gaza, which even the BBC accepts because it's
36:14
mentioned in the text with the documentaries 50,000 right?
36:19
So if we are now looking at this number of children killed by
36:24
deliberate sniping, out of those 50,000 children, how many are we
36:28
looking at? Can you get a bigger war crime
36:30
than this? I mean, in terms of the, you
36:33
know, Hall of Fame of, of war crimes or Hall of infamous war
36:40
crimes, I don't think you can get much higher than this.
36:43
So, and the other thing is that the, the way they're
36:45
investigating this was done remotely by Zoom.
36:48
They did a very good job at pinpointing the location in this
36:52
case. But imagine if there were
36:55
Western journalists on the ground, right?
36:58
And so in it. But they're not, and This is
37:01
why. And the BBC, well, no, let's
37:04
give credit to this lady in the text, if she had a handwriting.
37:07
The text, of course, that's stated because Israel does not
37:11
allow foreign journalists into the Gaza area.
37:15
Yeah, Jeremy Bowen. Who Jeremy?
37:18
And we all know Jeremy Bowen is. I've got my criticisms of a lot
37:22
of Jeremy Bowen's reporting. He's complaining that his
37:25
reporting is totally controlled by the Israelis.
37:28
This is a top end BBC journalist, BBC supposed to have
37:31
access to everything, right? This is a preeminent global
37:34
media institution. But he's left to stay on the
37:37
periphery of northern Gaza because he says, quote, they
37:40
won't allow us in, says Jeremy Bowen.
37:43
So he's got to be in a building looking over a big wall, through
37:47
the barbed wire fence, looking at explosions and things with
37:50
his team and binoculars and telephoto lenses and that's it.
37:54
And they wouldn't accept this from any other country if this
37:57
was Russia. Yeah, say.
38:01
Or any or. Any other country, it's
38:03
immediately pinned on them that this is outrageous, that
38:06
independent Free Press and media are prevented from seeing what
38:12
is actually happening in the war zone, and yet the BBC is just
38:16
rolled over to this sort of behaviour.
38:19
And and we're bringing we're bringing this conversation back
38:21
to press freedom now because this is really what it's all
38:24
about. Great piece of investigative
38:26
journalism by Stephanie Hagardi and her team at BBC World
38:32
Service. There's no doubt about Chicha.
38:34
Win an award for it, I would say, but but the reason did you
38:39
know if there were hundreds of Western journalists I'm talking
38:44
this is the point Jonathan Cook made award winning British
38:47
journalist who lived in the West Bank is now back in the UK and
38:50
we covered this on the UK column news recently.
38:54
Jonathan Cook made this point is that with me?
38:56
Remember the Al Jazeera journalist have been killed in
38:58
the last week. OK, all that's a whole team
39:01
wiped out. There's almost no Al Jazeera
39:03
journalist left in Gaza. Imagine if that was ABBC team
39:07
and it was Jeremy Bowen, Lisa Doucette, and all of these other
39:13
frontline household names, household names in Britain, and
39:17
they were just done by the Israelis in one shot like that
39:21
outside of a hospital, right? What would the public reaction
39:25
be in Britain? I mean, it would be a firestorm.
39:30
Yeah, a complete fronted people be.
39:33
Absolutely horrified. And of course, the BBC would be
39:37
running the story on the hour, every hour, every day for the
39:43
next 2-3 weeks. But how did the BBC react to the
39:46
Aljazeera reporters being killed?
39:48
They their journalists said well, this is a question of
39:51
proportionality. Is it right to kill 5 Aljazeera
39:55
staff when you're only really targeting 1?
39:57
That was particularly well. OK.
40:01
This is this is where we're at. So that was vicious.
40:04
I see major internal problems with an organisation like the
40:07
BBC to have views like this coming out of, you know, major
40:14
reporting on a major world historical event and that they
40:18
are somehow ambiguous or confused about what is the moral
40:21
and ethical way and the right way to be looking at the story.
40:25
And, and, and so that that's like we say, we, we, we give
40:29
credit where there's good work. Well, absolutely, but.
40:33
Where, where there's, where there's something that is
40:35
absolutely wrong and, and you know, borderline evil, then we
40:40
criticise and it doesn't matter if it's within the same
40:43
organisation. So again, I I'm not against all
40:47
the individuals working in all of these institutions, but I I
40:51
have a problem with the institution itself.
40:53
Yeah, and I think that's absolutely true, Patrick,
40:56
because it is clear that the BBC does run a system of bias and
41:01
censorship on many issues. But it's become very well, it's
41:06
become ever more clear that wherever Israel is concerned,
41:10
the BBC simply won't grip the metal and actually report what's
41:15
really going on in an independent, moral way, which it
41:20
should. And then I find it particularly
41:24
disturbing that where you get journalists, and there have been
41:27
quite a few of them who've expressed concerns about
41:31
censorship inside the BBC, people are either getting shut
41:35
down in a very deliberate way or the BBC is doing what they've
41:40
done to this woman, which is to take our excellent work and
41:44
slide it across so that it's hidden, you know, in in the long
41:48
grass of the wider BBC reporting.
41:51
The fact that that key article is not on the Gaza section of
41:57
the BBC, that cannot be an accident.
41:59
We're not pinned to the front of our website.
42:02
It is an excellent piece of journalism.
42:04
I mean, this is the type of thing that people would rally
42:06
around, an organisation that would be really promoting it.
42:11
There's an organisation, I don't know if you've heard of this
42:13
organisation, Brian Centre for Media Monitoring.
42:16
They did a little. Surgeons A vague bell that.
42:19
They want. Well they did a little survey of
42:20
BBC reporting on Gaza and some of the results are very
42:24
interesting. They looked at 35,000 pieces of
42:26
media produced by this organisation since the last in
42:32
2023 and 2024. So over A2 year period nearly.
42:36
So looking at their analysis, 33 times more coverage of the
42:41
Israeli perspective than the Palestinian perspective, 33X
42:46
more, 18 times more using the word massacre when referencing
42:52
Israeli deaths as opposed to Palestinian deaths where they're
42:57
killed or died. And using the word butcher
43:00
exclusively to describe Israeli victims were butchered by Hamas.
43:07
Then Palestinians who have been killed over the duration of this
43:11
conflict, and then four times more using the term atrocities
43:15
and slaughter and and murder, have used murder once for
43:21
Palestinians than they do for Israel.
43:24
So they're normally atrocities and slaughter.
43:27
They attribute that to Israeli victims.
43:29
They used murder once, I think, for the Palestinian victim.
43:33
And so I mean, list goes on and on.
43:35
And I can't, I can't help but wonder, Brian, what the
43:37
influence of organisations like Bicom, for instance, a known
43:42
Israeli lobbying organisation that specifically targets media
43:48
and you've been following. And the Conservative Party, of
43:50
course, if I remember correctly. And the Conservatives, but
43:53
you've been following these organisations for a long time.
43:55
Yeah. So, you know, now they've all
43:57
been activated in a, in a much bigger way.
44:00
So it's, it the numbers don't lie on the bias.
44:04
It's, it's, there's not even a defence.
44:07
For it. And if you are biassed enough to
44:09
not only bias your reporting when people are being killed in
44:14
their hundreds of thousands, that's one thing.
44:17
But if you if you're going to bias your reporting to actually
44:20
covering up the deliberate killing of children by sniper
44:24
fire, then the BBC is no longer credible in my opinion.
44:33
Yeah. There should be, I mean just
44:35
just on this story alone, the, the whole Gaza story, the last
44:40
1820 will be on two years pretty soon, two months to be 24
44:44
months. There should be mass
44:46
resignations at the BBC for this.
44:49
And I know there are good journalists and, and people of
44:51
conscience that work there who either have resigned probably or
44:55
left quietly or would like to or just can't understand the fact
45:00
that they're, you know, part of this propaganda campaign, which
45:06
is really what it is. Because if it's because of the
45:09
way it's the bias is constructed, the propaganda
45:11
that's done on behalf of Israel, this prevents a political impact
45:15
from occurring as a result of what's happening on the ground.
45:18
And it also means that there's no sanctions and no embargo of
45:21
Israel, because that's the final that's.
45:23
The no push to stop violence itself.
45:26
Or stops supplying arms to Israel.
45:30
So we've been talking about this from day one of this conflict.
45:35
And only recently I think we've had some belated statements from
45:39
the Prime Minister, David Lammy. All this, this outrage must not
45:43
stand anymore. They've gone too far.
45:45
We need to wind this back. And you know, if they don't, if
45:48
they don't stop bombing the Palestinians, we might just
45:51
recognise A Palestinian state. So watch it.
45:55
Israel going to discipline you. You know, I mean, it's kind of
45:58
ridiculous at this point, but but the BBC is in such a
46:04
position, aren't they? They have the resources, they
46:06
have the journalists, they have the people, they have the
46:08
access. They could absolutely if they
46:11
wanted to. If they were able to, they could
46:14
turn public opinion on a dime. On this issue and they could
46:18
stop the violence. This is the key thing.
46:21
And you could I'm saying stop the violence as a result, sorry,
46:25
and not achieve peace because peace requires a whole set of
46:30
diplomacy. But the minimum the BBC could do
46:33
if they really told the story was to stop the violence, in my
46:36
opinion. Patrick going to say thank you
46:40
very much for joining me. We we had this discussion.
46:44
I thought it was worth us sharing it with the audience.
46:47
And I'd like to end by saying that a very long ago, an hour
46:52
ago, I actually sent Steph, Stephanie Haggerty an email to
46:57
say how taken I was with a documentary, what an excellent,
47:02
very poignant documentary, but also to ask what was the what
47:08
was the result? What agencies have taken up that
47:11
research and what is it achieved now?
47:14
I've I sent her a very polite, measured email.
47:18
I've praised her for the work she's done.
47:21
I've asked whether she will speak to me personally in order
47:24
to tell tell us a bit more about what she did and what the result
47:29
has been. Will I get a reply?
47:31
I hope so, but I'm not entirely sure I will because the BBC
47:36
always seems to be very shy of talking to new media
47:40
journalists. You've experienced that,
47:42
Patrick, I know. But at least we did reach out to
47:45
her. And I think we should end by
47:48
saying to the audience that it's very important to give praise
47:53
and credit to people where they've done the right thing.
47:57
It's not right to label everybody as bad because they're
48:00
ABBC journalists, because this is another example where we've
48:04
seen a journalist inside the BBC brave enough to speak up and and
48:10
also produce some very challenging work.
48:13
So we're going to say it. Well done, Stephanie.
48:17
Thanks for joining me, Patrick. My pleasure, Brian.
48:20
Thank you.