BBC Grudgingly Admits Israel has Committed Genocide in Gaza According to UN Commission
And, in doing so, remains mealy-mouthed in its reporting
Recently I had the idea of setting up a stall in town and sitting there with the day’s papers decoding and explaining all the propaganda for anyone interested. I don’t know if it’s worth the hassle I’d get, but I genuinely believe that the UK press is significantly responsible for a lot of the ills on this strange, self-pitying isle.
The likes of The Sun, The Daily Mail and The Telegraph are fragrant in their shit-stirring manipulations, but over the last couple of years it has often been the BBC that has disgusted me the most due to its cynical use of presenting “both sides” of an issue as though they are equivalent. A good example of this is the most read article of today (16th September 2025), ‘Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, UN commission of inquiry says’.
At first I was pleased to see the BBC publish this story on the BBC News homepage, where it has clearly been garnering attention. However, I think it is still worth noting all the little ways in which David Gritten has written the article (presumably with oversight) which diminish the impact of the inquiry’s findings.
After the seemingly neutral logline and two paragraphs explaining that “there are reasonable grounds to conclude that four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law have been carried out since the start of the war with Hamas in 2023”, there follows four paragraphs of rebuttal from Israel’s foreign ministry.
Despite the Israeli governments claims of mass sexual violence having been committed by Hamas on 7th October 2023 having been widely debunked, the BBC provides Israeli’s foreign ministry the space to once again repeat these claims, as well as the assertation that the UN commission is composed of “Hamas proxies” pedalling “Hamas falsehoods”.
We also have the claim that Hamas murdered 1,200 people (repeatedly immediately after by the BBC, though as “1,200 people were killed”), without mentioning the fact that the Hannibal Directive was implemented, meaning that some of those 1,200 people would have been killed by the IDF themselves.
After this we have, “At least 64,905 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry”. As ever, “the territory’s Hamas-run health ministery” intentionally casts doubt upon the figure, implying that it is probably lower… when it actual fact, it is much, much higher due to the amount of unidentified civilian bodies buried under rubble.
The article does then briefly break down the aforementioned four out of five genocidal acts identified in the report:
The commission's latest report, external alleges that Israeli authorities and Israeli forces have committed four of the five acts of genocide defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention against a national, ethnic, racial or religious group - in this case, Palestinians in Gaza:
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the group in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births
However, it is worth noting that the article end with: “The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is meanwhile hearing a case brought by South Africa that accuses Israeli forces of genocide. Israel has called the case "wholly unfounded" and based on "biased and false claims".”
In short, the most damning part of the article is buried in the middle, while the lies spouted by the Israeli government are placed at the top and the bottom of the article.
And, remember, this comes two years into a genocide.