On October 15th the BBC published a report on its website accusing the IDF of lack of transparency and alleged an unwillingness to investigate war crimes. The article suggested through its framing a lack of accountability within the IDF as a whole, and devoted considerable word count to details of allegations made against the collective noun of “Israeli Soldiers”.
The articles failures stand alone, however they become most interesting when we compare it with recent BBC reporting on the British military, an organisation not without its own allegations of a lack of transparency and accountability. When we do so we discover that the BBC is entirely capable of following its own rigorous standards while still holding the institution to account, and invites the question as to why those standards appear to sail out of the window when the military being reported on is Israeli.
Two major scandals have dogged the British military in recent years, and the BBC has had a major role in the investigation of both. Their reporting establishes a solid baseline for a corporation that is more than capable of investigating wrongdoing, identifying both victims and potential perpetrators as well as broken systems while still understanding operational constraints, military processes, and in some cases enormous time frames, all without ever characterising all soldiers as a monolith, collectively guilty under the collective noun “the British Army”.
The BBC reported in August on distressing details of abuse of female teenage recruits at the Army Foundation College Harrogate, where recruits aged 16 to 19 receive their training.
“A total of 176 complaints of inappropriate sexual behaviour at the college were made between January 2018 and June 2025, according to Ministry of Defence (MoD) data.
Thirty-two allegations were against permanent staff and 144 against junior soldiers.”
The article goes on to tell the personal stories of several young girls at AFC Harrogate in considerable detail, without flinching from what they experienced. But even when reporting the inadequate army response, the article still never demands the publication of all investigations, nor does it create a frame of collective culpability, even at its most accusatory:
“A 2021 review by MPs reported cases of rape, sexual exploitation of under 18s, and women being drugged before being assaulted. The review – colloquially known as the Atherton report after the lead, former MP Sarah Atherton – concluded that women were being “denied justice” by a “woefully inadequate” military complaints process.
Five years on, there are “still very, very serious concerns, as the experiences of these girls [at AFC] indicate”, says Emma Norton, a solicitor at the Centre for Military Justice, which provides legal support to former armed forces personnel.”
Five years after the Atherton report, there’s no mention of any individual public investigations published, and still the failure is specific; the army complaints process is inadequate. The army itself is not collectively responsible.
Perhaps even more relevant is the long-standing BBC involvement in allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq by British armed forces, particularly the SAS.
In May, an astonishingly specific article was published titled: “SAS troops accused of war crimes not referred to police over morale fears, inquiry hears”. The article sets out very carefully the details of an enquiry into incidents that took place between 2010 and 2013, a summary of which had just been published after a hearing that took place two years prior:
“The testimony came from closed-door evidence to the Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan.
The inquiry is investigating allegations that the SAS committed war crimes on operations between 2010 and 2013, including the killing of children and civilians. The latest batch of testimony was heard in 2024 but only released in summarised form by the inquiry on Friday.”
The allegations the article refers to are serious:
“The concerns arose from a combination of whistleblower testimony and troubling reports coming back from Afghanistan, which showed a significant number of operations on which someone already detained and handcuffed had subsequently been shot dead by the SAS, as well as operations on which there were more people killed than weapons claimed to have been found at the scene.”
And yet the BBC can identify that it is a specific operational unit being investigated, that specific individuals are responsible for specific failures, and it does not comment on the lack of published details in an investigation into crimes allegedly committed over 15 years ago. Most relevant of all, at no time is the reader invited to believe that the entire British army is committing war crimes with impunity, within a military establishment with no care for the law.
Contrast this with the BBC Verify investigation published on 15 October, under the headline “Hundreds of IDF investigations into killings still have no public outcome, BBC Verify finds.”
The investigation identified 300 incidents in which the Israel Defense Forces had reportedly killed or injured people and subsequently indicated that it was examining what happened. BBC Verify found publicly available outcomes on the IDF’s website for just 28 of those incidents, with another 18 cases of uncertain status.
The remaining 254 became the centrepiece of a report questioning the transparency and credibility of Israel’s military investigative system.
But what, precisely, had BBC Verify established?
Its methodology involved searching BBC and Reuters reports for incidents in which the IDF had said it was investigating, reviewing, checking or examining allegations of harm. Researchers then searched the IDF’s website for published conclusions.
In other words, these were not 254 established war crimes. Nor were they necessarily 254 criminal investigations. They were incidents in which the IDF had acknowledged conducting some form of examination, for which BBC Verify could not locate a publicly disclosed outcome.
That distinction is fundamental. Civilian casualties do not automatically establish unlawful conduct, an operational review is not necessarily a criminal investigation, and the absence of published findings is not evidence that no investigation has taken place.
Indeed, BBC Verify’s own report acknowledges that the IDF had completed approximately 150 fact-finding reviews and transferred them to military prosecutors for examination. Astonishingly, the broadcaster could not establish whether any of these overlapped with its dataset of 254 cases without publicly identified outcomes. If all 150 were among those cases, nearly 60% would already have completed the initial fact-finding stage. If none were, the picture would be entirely different. BBC Verify simply does not know. The BBC is entirely unable to say how much investigative work has actually been completed in the very cases it has chosen to scrutinise.
The report also includes explanations from military legal experts about the substantial difficulties of investigating incidents in active combat zones, as well as the legitimate need to protect operational intelligence, rules of engagement and confidential investigative material. But these explanations do little to alter the article’s overarching narrative, which places the absence of public outcomes as evidence for accusations that Israel deliberately prolongs investigations and fails to provide accountability.
The BBC understands perfectly well that allegations of military wrongdoing must be distinguished from findings of criminal conduct. It understands that operational circumstances complicate investigations, that legal processes can take years, and that even grave allegations involving particular units or commanding officers do not automatically establish the collective guilt of an entire armed force.
Its own reporting demonstrates all of this.
The question, then, is why a broadcaster capable of such careful, rigorous and specific reporting on allegations against British forces appears willing to draw considerably broader implications from substantially narrower findings when the military under scrutiny is Israeli.
The BBC does not lack the journalistic expertise to make these distinctions. Its reporting on the British Army proves that. What requires explanation is why those standards appear to be applied so inconsistently.