This week Israeli security forces announced the capture of Mu’in al Arabid, reported to be a senior Hamas internal security and intelligence chief, identified by Palestinian sources as being responsible for tracking down Palestinians accused of collaboration with Israel and accused by Israel of heavy involvement in the October 7th massacre and the subsequent movement of hostages within the Gaza strip.
The raid has been described as “daring” with conflicting reports as to the level of cooperation with Gazans opposed to Hamas.
The BBC’s Yolande Knell reported on the incident with an article on the website on the 1st September titled “Israel says Hamas security chief captured as strikes kill four during Gaza raid” an appearance on the Global News Podcast of the same day, and at least one TV appearance on Newsday on the 2nd September. Her reporting focused heavily on civilian casualties:
“Israeli air strikes carried out during the raid killed at least four Palestinians, including two children and a woman, medics said. Hamas condemned Israel’s actions as a “grave crime” and violation of their ceasefire.”
“A jeep stopped in the middle of the street and started firing indiscriminately left and right. It carried on firing at us like rain for more than 15 minutes,” Wafika al-Helou, who lives in a tent in the area, told AFP news agency. “It was terrifying.”
“The ensuing Israeli strikes “resulted in a number of people being killed and others injured, in addition to the deaths of several members of the special forces unit”, he added.”
However, there is a key issue upon which Knell is completely silent; the question as to why such a senior military figure was even present in such a densely populated civilian area in the first place. This illustrates with perfect clarity a key issue the BBC must address, and a new rule which must be added to BBC guidelines, not to protect Israelis, but to protect Palestinians, and any other population which may have the misfortune to discover that their deaths have become politically useful to one party or another in any armed conflict.
Hamas embeds itself in civilian infrastructure, this is not a contentious point, but a known fact. The issue that seems less universally accepted is why.
Civilian death is strategically valuable to Hamas. When they embed in a civilian location there are two possible outcomes, either the Israelis will not attack, or civilians will die. When those civilians die or are injured, the images of their suffering can be spread around the world, creating outrage and deepening anti-Israel sentiment. This is the Dead Baby Strategy. A grotesque grandchild of the blood libel, the Dead Baby Strategy relies on the complicity of the media to spread the images and, crucially, to never question who is responsible for the deaths. Therefore, every time a media outlet uncritically spreads the story of civilian suffering caused by Hamas embedding in civilian infrastructure without clearly labelling that strategy they are not only allowing themselves to be recruited into the propaganda strategy of an Islamist terror organisation, they are inadvertently creating an incentive to keep producing more death. Put simply, as long as the strategy works, it will continue.
This is not to say that journalists like Knell should not report on civilian death. It is to say that there must be added safeguards to BBC content to explicitly prevent the British national broadcaster ever creating an incentive for harm to civilians.
Conflict reporting has changed. Information warfare is of ever more strategic value in conflict and conflict journalism must reflect that changed reality.
Any report, like this one from Yolande Knell, where one side is known and proven to be embedded in civilian infrastructure as a matter of strategy must name that strategy. A simple formulation, like the many they employ when it comes to Israel, to say “Hamas routinely embeds in civilian areas for strategic purposes” would deal an immediate and devastating blow to the Dead Baby Strategy, making its continuation less strategically valuable.
It would be too strong to argue that the BBC can end the strategic sacrifice of Palestinians by their own leadership, but what it can do is ensure, with one sentence, that the British public can never be implicated in the death of a single Palestinian child, by virtue of their taxes funding a broadcaster that refuses to be complicit in the strategy that continues to cause those deaths.