On 16th September, The BBC published an article by Yolande Knell and David Gritten, advancing allegations that Israel bore sole responsibility for the collapse of the Al-Saada building in Tel al-Hawa, southwest of Gaza City.
At least 21 people have been killed, including eight children, after a war-damaged building collapsed in the Gaza Strip overnight, rescuers and medics say.
Witnesses told the BBC that the six-storey building in Gaza City’s Tal al-Hawa area had been left tilting dangerously to one side after an Israeli strike more than a year ago. Displaced families had lived inside because they were desperate, they said.
From the outset, The BBC deploys the phrase “war-damaged” to imply Israeli culpability for the building’s collapse, while remaining vague as to when this damage allegedly occurred. Without providing verifiable data or a specified timeframe, the phrase “an Israeli strike more than a year ago” serves less to inform readers of events than to prime them to accept Israel’s guilt even before the details are presented.
The BBC goes on to point to satellite imagery of the intact Al-Saada building from 2024 to indicate that the
“area around the building was targeted in the early weeks of the war, while damage to the building first became evident in 2024.”
Whilst it is hardly implausible to suggest that damage to adjacent buildings, or strikes nearby, would affect the structural integrity of Al-Saada, these claims ultimately cannot be verified. On whose authority was Al-Saada deemed “damaged” in 2024? Why has the BBC failed to source its claim?
The same day, the Hamas-affiliated Gaza Media Office and Al-Quds Newspaper claimed that deliberate concentrated Israeli shelling on Oct. 9, 2023 of Al-Saada’s building foundations and lower floors directly contributed to its subsequent collapse. However, in a statement issued via X, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) unequivocally denied that it had struck the building in question during the war. In effect, the BBC’s reporting appears to do little more than gloss allegations from Hamas propaganda outlets with the veneer of BBC respectability, while never naming where they came from.
The same day, Sky News published an article using similar framing to predetermine Israeli guilt:
At least 21 killed and dozens trapped after war-damaged building in Gaza collapses
With much of Gaza razed to the ground by Israel’s bombardment, it’s thought that tens of thousands of Palestinians live in around 2,000 damaged buildings.
In such context the later vague claim that an Israeli strike “earlier in the war” had “partially destroyed the bombed-out building” inherits this already-established culpability without requiring its own evidence.
In an accompanying post, Sky News embedded a short segment of video footage [0.00-0.07] showing the building’s collapse, without attribution. Our own research revealed that Ahmed Kaheel is the owner of the original footage . He has routinely been photographed alongside, and has subsequently eulogised, pro-Hamas social media users and Hamas operatives who previously masqueraded as journalists, including Saleh al-Jafarawi, Hossam Shabat, Muhammad Samir Muhammad Washah and Anas al-Sharif. In separate posts, Kaheel lamented the deaths of Iranian military officials “killed by the Zionist entity” and separately filmed former Hamas leader Ismail Radwan in a closed setting. Further, Kaheel regularly platforms [see here and here] Mahmoud Bassal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza, who is a documented Hamas operative. These affiliations raise serious questions about Kaheel’s impartiality. Yet Sky News used his footage without disclosing its origin.
Sky News’ video footage vis-à-vis Kaheel’s original video footage.
The Guardian, leading with the same allegations of Israeli strikes being to blame, also embeds the very same unattributed short segment of video footage belonging to Kaheel. While the article states that the footage was obtained from Reuters, no further comment is offered, and no provenance is asserted.
Screen grab of The Guardian’s unattributed video footage.
In addition, the article also directly mentions Hamas operative Mahmoud Bassal without labelling his Hamas affiliation:
A video obtained by Reuters showed rescue workers trying to pull two people from beneath a collapsed wall. Another video circulating on social media showed Gaza’s civil defence spokesperson, Mahmoud Basal, carrying a young girl wrapped in a bloodstained scarf.
Our research found that the video footage of Mahmoud Bassal and the [unidentified] young girl in question was filmed by Kaheel and Ahmad Ibrahim. Further research indicated that Ibrahim had issued a martyrdom notice for former leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades Izz al-Din al-Haddad [AKA Abu Suhaib], and has similarly eulogised documented Hamas operatives, including Anas al-Sharif and Saleh al-Jafarawi. Meaning that The Guardian chose to run with material from two Hamas connected journalists and a prominent Hamas affiliated official without ever informing their audience of these connections.
As to the main allegation, neither the BBC, Sky News, nor the Guardian has been able to confirm which previous Israeli strike supposedly damaged the Al-Saada building and when it occurred, nor can they point to any prior supporting statement from the IDF. Even more concerning, all three outlets utterly failed to include the IDF’s denial that it struck Al-Saada altogether. While studiously ignoring the IDF however, all three articles draw uncritically from the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza, a Hamas government organisation operating under the Interior Ministry, with only the BBC informing audiences of the organisation’s affiliations.
The failures do not end there.
On 17th September, the anti-Hamas Palestinian Telegram channel al-Mankhal attributed Al-Saada’s collapse to Hamas tunnel activity directly beneath the building, rather than to prior shelling damage, noting that the structural columns and roof reportedly remained intact while only the walls collapsed. It further alleged that IDF had struck the tunnel once before, in 2021, following its targeting of Al-Qassam Brigades commander Jamal al-Zeba [AKA Jamal Muhammad Saeed Al-Zabadh/ Al-Zibdeh]. Further research confirmed that, during the Operation Guardian of Walls in May 2021, Israel struck a Hamas command bunker in western Gaza City, killing 14 Hamas operatives, including Brigade Commander Bassem Issa and the aforementioned Jamal al-Zebda.
The same day, al-Mankhal also claimed that Mahmoud Kamal Musleh Saada –bodyguard to former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh– was inside the tunnel when the building collapsed. Our research also found that a Hamas-affiliated Telegram channel made a similar claim, stating that Saada was inside the Al-Saada building at the time of collapse (Image below). Several sources, including Al Mezan and Palestinian outlet MDSR News have also confirmed Saada’s death.
Screen grab of Hamas-affiliated Telegram account @Qassam_Morsael/82174
CAMERA UK cannot independently corroborate claims from these Telegram channels, no more than Sky, the BBC or The Guardian can verify claims that Israel is culpable. But the editorial decision made by these outlets to omit opposing narratives leaves audiences with a materially misleading set of “facts” embedded within hostile framing.
Even if one concedes that the IDF’s 2021 tunnel strike targeting Jamal al-Zeba did structurally weaken the Al-Saada building, this still does not explain why none of the three outlets mention the IDF’s previous targeting of Hamas operatives, or how Hamas’ massive tunnel network allows them to embed themselves within civilian infrastructure. Nor does it explain why they fail to make any mention of Hamas’ well-documented failure to maintain proper building codes, or its looting of critical construction materials for tunnel systems and military fortifications.
Given the reported 2021 strike on a tunnel beneath the site, claims that the Al-Saada building sat above an active tunnel system, and the purported deaths of Hamas operatives inside the structure when it collapsed, it is not implausible to at least consider that Hamas could have been operating, and potentially excavating, beneath the building. Other observed instances, including video footage circulating on X, demonstrate how Hamas routinely utilises civilian infrastructure to conceal its weapons caches and tunnel shafts, and to rig improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The question for these outlets is why claims of Hamas operating a tunnel system are so readily dismissed, or omitted altogether, while allegations of Israeli strikes -despite evidence to the contrary- are so readily included.
When British media outlets make editorial decisions which prioritise the media narrative of a terrorist organisation, fail to label the origin of their evidence, fail to report IDF denials and ignore opposing narratives entirely, the reporting process becomes one of laundering a Hamas narrative through sympathetic, or at worst affiliated, Gazan journalists, washing it off with the stain remover of western journalistic credibility, and presenting it, shiny and respectable, to a non expert audience missing half the facts and already primed to assume Israeli guilt.