David Hermanis a freelance journalist. He has written for the Guardian, the New Statesman, Prospect and Standpoint, The Article, among others. Reposted with permission from The Article.

Since the brutal Hamas attack on 7 October there have been two main problems with British TV news coverage of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

First, the problem of bias.

-In terms of the tone of interviews, UN and aid agency spokesmen/women are given a soft ride, while their Israeli counterparts are constantly interrupted and interviewed aggressively.

-Then there is the selection of interviewees: in news reports and studio discussions Israelis are often outnumbered by Palestinian Arabs and spokesmen/women for relief organisations.

-Another problem is the use of fake footage shot by Palestinian Arab (presumably Hamas) crews. There is a lack of scrutiny of what’s known as “Pallywood” (Palestinian Arabs made up to look severely wounded, Palestinians pretending to be dead until a moving hand or foot gives them away, the same Palestinian actor appearing as a grieving bystander outside a hospital, except that he has also appeared in a dozen or so other guises over the past eight weeks).

-There was the assumption that Israel was responsible for the missile attack on the Al-Ahli hospital (known as “the Al-Ahli Hospital Explosion” at Human Rights Watch).

-Then there are statements by reporters which are just disgraceful, such as this by Dominic Waghorn at Sky News: “They [Israeli hostages who had just been released] were held in reasonable conditions [sic], reportedly, though those held above ground lived with the fear of being killed in Israel’s bombardment” — not, apparently, in fear of being killed in cold blood by Hamas terrorists, which many hostages have been.

Second, but less well documented, are questions that have gone unasked by British news reporters and presenters, often because they go against the received wisdom of the British media. Here are a number of such questions:

We are constantly told there is no electric power in Gaza. Yet why do reporters not ask why Palestinian Arabs seem to have no problem charging their phones to take photos, such as when celebrating the return of Palestinian prisoners from Israel captivity?

Why have fatality figures issued by the Palestinian Health Authority (also known as Hamas) been used without any scrutiny or any attempt to find out the real figures? According to @Aizenberg55 from @HonestReporting the figures for women and children have been “grossly inflated”. He writes, “It is immediately obvious that Hamas does not report ANY combatant deaths & the numbers amazingly seem to indicate that IDF bombs & bullets disproportionately hit women, children & elderly. The IDF CANNOT seem to hit too many fighting age men.” He later writes, “On Nov 7 Hamas reported 10,328 total fatalities vs 10,022 prior day or +306. New fatalities of women & children +302. Which means ONLY FOUR men of any age were killed that day!”

So why are these figures uncritically used by British TV news programmes? How inaccurate are these fatality figures, especially when you deduct the deaths of Hamas fighters?

UN and UN-related spokesmen and women are treated as neutral observers and are interviewed in disproportionate numbers even though the UN, UNWRA under Kenenth Roth and other related organisations have a long history of hostility towards Israel. One striking instance has been the reluctance of UN Women to condemn Hamas for the number of brutal rapes on 7 October or indeed openly discuss the rape of so many Israeli women which has only been widely condemned recently by the British media.

Why has there been a refusal to even acknowledge, let alone address, serious allegations that suggest some UNWRA workers might be complicit in Hamas war crimes or well documented footage showing that UNWRA supplies have been appropriated by Hamas terrorists?

How much scrutiny has there been of UNICEF-run schools in Gaza and their propagation of anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda?

Gaza has received enormous sums of humanitarian aid from the EU, the UK and UN organizations over the past years, but when has BBC News or Sky News ever presented a proper audit of the sums given to Gaza or accounted for what happened to these vast sums? We know that a few Hamas leaders have received billions of pounds (also unexamined by our news reporters). A job for Ros Atkins at BBC News?

Why has there been so little coverage of antisemitic attacks in Britain and America, of the increase in antisemitic incidents in both countries and antisemitic statements by (for example) Irish politicians?

On social media there have been numerous clips of British-based imams giving violent and disturbing sermons in mosques, but I have never seen any of these on British TV news programmes. Why are they not considered worth showing?

Do the terrible images of devastation of Gaza City show all or only parts of the city? I have not yet seen any footage of the luxury apartment buildings by the sea. Have they also been indiscriminately bombed or is it just particular neighbourhoods that have been singled out? Is it at all possible that the bombing is not as indiscriminate as it seems or is that out of the question? If it is out of the question, why has the issue not been clearly addressed? How does it compare with the destruction of Homs in Syria or of Mosul in Iraq?

From the beginning of the invasion of Gaza, Israeli spokesmen and women claimed that underneath hospitals in Gaza City were tunnels to shield Hamas terrorists and their supplies. Why were these claims greeted with such scepticism by the British news reporters and presenters? When the conventional wisdom was that Hamas tunnels would be booby-trapped and difficult to clear, why did British TV news reporters question why it was taking so long to explore the tunnels to prove they were being used by Hamas?

Criticisms by senior US politicians of excessive bombing by Israeli forces are often quoted, but why are they never put in the context of next year’s elections when the pro-Palestinian youth vote and the Muslim vote could be crucial in a close election?

Why have reporters treated Palestinian Arab hospital doctors as credible witnesses, when all the evidence suggests that there is no civil society in Gaza, that senior executives like hospital directors could not be appointed without the approval of Hamas and that doctors and their families must live in fear of intimidation from Hamas?

For some weeks BBC News used a Palestinian Arab reporter to report from Gaza, Rushdi Abualouf, who made much of having lived all his life in Gaza yet never mentioned whether Palestinians he interviewed might feel intimidated by Hamas. Didn’t any BBC News editors think this might be a possibility? And why is he still reporting for BBC News, when he and his family are now in Istanbul for their own safety?

When news programmes repeatedly mentioned that medical, food and fuel supplies were running low in Gaza, why did they never ask why these supplies didn’t seem to actually run out? And why haven’t reporters or presenters ever asked why Hamas hadn’t stockpiled such supplies when they were planning their 7 October attack, knowing full well that it would provoke the retaliation that did indeed happen?

This was just one of many instances of how the Hamas government were complicit in the suffering of Palestinian civilians, another issue barely raised by Jeremy Bowen, Dominic Waghorn and their fellow reporters. During the ceasefire when Palestinian Gazans were released by Israel in exchange for hostages held by Hamas, why were we so rarely told of the crimes they had allegedly committed, so that we could assess the seriousness (or not) of their crimes?

Qatar was widely praised for its role in ceasefire negotiations and the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, but why did news programmes not hold Qatar to account for hosting Hamas leaders in such luxury while they were preparing their attack on 7 October?

Egypt borders Gaza. Why has there been so little analysis of conditions in Gaza when it was under Egyptian rule and why were Egyptian diplomats and politicians not interviewed about their government’s failure to take in refugees from Gaza or do more to deliver essential supplies by road or by sea?

Why was the BBC’s director-general not interviewed about the BBC’s decision not to call Hamas a terrorist organisation when everyone knows that’s exactly what it is? And why, when the Defence Secretary Grant Shapps criticised the BBC’s bizarre decision on the Today programme, was he treated so disdainfully by the presenter Mishal Husain?

Finally, why was there so little dissent over this issue on the BBC? Instead, leading reporters such as John Simpson and Jeremy Bowen rushed to defend the decision, thereby doing irreparable damage to their reputations.

Why has there been so little coverage of the response in the Arab world to what has been happening in Gaza — in particular, among the countries which have signed the Abraham Accords? And why has there been so little coverage of the response to the war in Gaza on the 'West Bank' or by Hezbollah?

There has been some thoughtful analysis of the decision to freeze the assets of supporters of Putin’s regime following the brutal invasion of Ukraine. It is widely known that the leaders of Hamas have billions of dollars squirrelled away — mostly embezzled from Western aid. If so, why has there been so little (if any) coverage of the question why there have apparently been no attempts to freeze their assets? France’s decision to freeze the assets of the Hamas leader Sinwar is the first I have heard of this issue.

At least one Hamas official is believed to be living in London. Has the British Government taken any action to freeze their assets? If not, why not?

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