Mick Hartley

The latest from David Collier:

Yesterday, the BBC ran another story about a ‘massacre’ in Gaza. We have now seen it countless times – Hamas propaganda make an empty claim – and the BBC rush to promote it.

The latest headline covered both Gaza and Lebanon.

‘Israeli strikes on north Lebanon and Gaza kill dozens, officials and rescuers say’.

The only named Gazan based source for the claims in the BBC article was a Dr Fadel Naim, director of the Al-Ahly hopsital….

The report from the good doctor is grim. Of the 17 bodies his facility received ‘nine’ were women – thus strongly implying this was a random attack that killed women – not terrorists.

But is there any reason the BBC should not have reproduced the claim of Fadel Naim? Did the BBC do the slightest bit of due diligence on this witness, before sharing his lies to the world?

The answer is no. They could not have checked at all.

Unusually for Gazan based witnesses these days, Fadel Naim does not hide his social media behind confusing variations of his name. Search for a ‘Fadel Naim’ in Gaza on Facebook and you quickly find his account.

When you search his account to see what he was posting on October 7 2023 – it quickly becomes apparent this is not the type of person any of us would recognise as a doctor. His timeline is full of open support for the October 7 atrocities…

If the BBC journalists had even bothered to look – they would have seen that this man openly supports terrorism and should not be trusted. In the end, it is left to people like me to do their job for them.

Perhaps Collier is being too generous here. It's entirely plausible that they're fully aware of the politics of this Fadel Naim, but either don't care or are in sympathy with his views.

From scanning the photos on his own public timeline, it soon becomes apparent that this doctor is no idle supporter of terrorism. This is an image from his daughter’s wedding. The top table at the event included not just Fadel Naim, the BBC ‘witness’ – but also Ismail Haniyeh – the (then) leader of Hamas in Gaza…

We can conclude that this doctor is closely aligned to the top Hamas leadership – and no western media organisation should be relying on him as a witness. It is kind of obvious anyway. A basic truth completely ignored by western media is that Hamas control Gaza – so if a person has ‘made it in Gaza’ – (for example becoming a director at a hospital) – it is a near certainty that his family is aligned with Hamas.

Senior BBC reporter Jeremy Bowen has stated that Hamas are a “good” source of information on Gaza casualty figures. It's possible that the noble and worthy BBC reporters find it impossible to believe that people could be so downright rotten and unscrupulous as to lie in the service of their cause – which suggests they should choose another profession. Either that, or they're biased.