OPINION: Exposing media distortions in the wake of Jenin

It is often said that Israel faces a war of both terror and misinformation. This pattern can be seen very clearly during last week’s Israeli incursion into the Jenin refugee camp.

During ‘Operation Home and Garden’, the IDF carried out a military campaign to confront the epicentre of terror in the West Bank. Israel claimed that more than 50 attacks had been carried out by militants in Jenin since the start of 2023, many with lethal consequences.

The incursion led to the discovery and dismantling of laboratories that had been used to manufacture explosives, as well as the seizure of weapons that had been hidden inside buildings and under roads.

The IDF also killed 12 Palestinians aged between 16 and 23, all of whom were combatants, according to open-source intelligence reports. Seven of the twelve are reported to be affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, three with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, one with Hamas and another with Fatah.

From every angle, this was a legitimate act of self-defence by the Israeli forces.

Yet any Israeli military action leads to an automatic outpouring of vitriol.

BBC anchor, Anjana Gadgil, interviewed Israel’s former Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett. After being told by Bennett that the Palestinians who had been killed were all ‘militants,’ Gadgil went on to say that they were also ‘children’ and stated, as if it were a fact: ’ The Israeli forces are happy to kill children’.

To label Israeli soldiers as child killers is truly reprehensible for it conjures up an image of a trigger happy, blood thirsty military with a sadistic lust for killing the innocent. By contrast, the Israeli military takes extraordinary efforts to minimise civilian casualties during wartime.

Following a raft of complaints, the BBC issued a statement after the interview, claiming that ‘while this was a legitimate subject to examine in the interview’, the language used ‘was not phrased well and was inappropriate’.

While some of the dead were children, they were also armed with weapons and affiliated with terrorist groups. These minors are combatants in international law and are thus not the innocents portrayed by the BBC.

Of course, there is a legitimate question about why a child aged 16 has joined such a lethal cult of ‘martyrdom’, foregoing the normal life of a teenager. Whether it is by choice or by force, it is a tragic waste of young life and a symptom of Palestinian corruption.

Following a raft of complaints, the BBC issued a statement after the interview, claiming that ‘while this was a legitimate subject to examine in the interview’, the language used ‘was not phrased well and was inappropriate’.

This was a rebuke of sorts but such was the level of distortion in the interview that the BBC was offering, at best, a half-hearted apology.

A day later, Dave Brown of the Independent, well known for his 2003 depiction of Ariel Sharon as a monster eating Palestinian babies (following a painting by Goya), produced his own incendiary take on the Jenin operation.

In his cartoon, a mortally wounded Palestinian lies on the ground amid devastation, with a bullet scarred sign above him reading ‘Jenin’. Using a blood-stained finger, he scrawls onto the sign the word Ukraine, then asks the question ‘Can you see me now?’

For Dave Brown, the dead Palestinians in Jenin deserve as much sympathy as those Ukrainians who are now fighting for their lives against the Russian invaders.

Yet the two conflicts in Ukraine and the West Bank are wildly different.

Russia has illegally invaded and occupied a sovereign and independent nation and has committed unspeakable war crimes against its civilian population. The citizens of Ukraine have no desire to commit terrorist atrocities against the people of Russia and pose no threat to Moscow.

Thus, the right of Ukrainians to resist Putin’s barbarism is a simple matter of international law, and one which the West is rightly supporting in myriad ways. By contrast, the various terrorist groups in Jenin are not fighting for freedom or an independent state but seeking to destroy the State of Israel and the Jews who live within it.

The narratives being promoted within the BBC and the Independent are at variance with reality and only serve to demonise the Jewish state.

It is essential to expose their falsehood at every opportunity.