By MARK CURTIS – Declassified UK
The BBC is failing to report the various ways in which the UK government has supported Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, Declassified’s new analysis finds.
Our research into the BBC’s written outputs since October 2023 finds the corporation has mainly not reported at all the major ways the UK government has been working with Israel.
It found that the BBC has reported just four times in 15 months that the Royal Air Force (RAF) has been conducting surveillance flights over Gaza.
Only one BBC report on the subject has been written since December 2023, despite the fact that hundreds of such spy missions have been conducted, almost daily, in aid of Israeli intelligence.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) says these flights are solely to aid the rescue of hostages held by Hamas. Only one BBC online report mentions the UK may be providing targeting information to Israel or flying weapons to the country.
None of the articles otherwise raise concerns about the UK being willing to collaborate militarily with Israel at a time it is devastating Gaza.
Omitting the news
When Israel’s chief of staff, General Herzi Halevi, was allowed to attend a British military meeting in London last November, this also went unreported by the BBC in its written outputs.
Halevi’s visit was highly controversial, given he has led Israeli military operations throughout its destruction of Gaza. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant are wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
Our research also finds that the BBC has never reported that the British military has been training Israeli armed forces personnel in the UK during the Gaza war.
Last February, the MoD admitted in parliament there were six Israeli military officers posted in the UK. The Labour government has refused to provide further details.
In June last year, the New York Times reported that a British intelligence collection team had been present in Israel “throughout the war”, ostensibly assisting Israeli intelligence in collecting information related to the hostages.
This information has not been reported by the BBC.
Neither has the key background to Britain’s military support to Israel. This derives from a Roadmap agreement signed between the two countries a few months before the Hamas attacks of October 2023.
The accord committed the two states “to tackle shared threats” as part of a “close strategic partnership, with extensive defence and security cooperation”.
Another key document is a secret military accord signed by the UK and Israel in December 2020, which was mentioned on social media by Israel but which the UK government has long refused to publish.
We could find no evidence that BBC journalists have reported either of these two key documents in the corporation’s online news.