By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson
MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — The revelation that a recent BBC documentary Gaza; Surviving a War Zone, depicting the lives of four teenage boys there, featured a youngster who was the son of a member of the Hamas government proved once again that Great Britain’s official media outlet cannot be assumed to be objective or even neutral.
Worse still, it now transpires that Hatem Rawagh, the Gaza-based cameraman who worked on the documentary, posted tweets supporting the Hamas massacre of Israelis on 7th October 2023. As a result of all this, questions have been asked in parliament, the BBC has apologized and is conducting an internal investigation into the event.
All this comes as no surprise to anyone who follows the foreign media. It so happens that this very morning, 26th February 2025, the day on which Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were being brought home for burial in their kibbutz, Nir Oz, I happened to catch the Sky News morning newscast on TV. The route taken to the funeral from the forensic institute in central Israel was lined by thousands of Israelis paying their last tearful respects to the mother and her two young children, captured from their home by Hamas terrorists and taken into Gaza.
The phrase used by the announcer to describe the event was that the three victims “died in captivity.” Yes, those were her exact words! Not ‘murdered’ but ‘died.’ Those words were obviously a feeble attempt to be ‘politically correct,’ and not to point a finger of blame at Hamas. How pathetic can you get?
The scene of panic-stricken Shiri Bibas holding her two red-haired infants as they were being taken captive was filmed by Hamas terrorists and shown around the world. Any sentient being would have to have a heart of stone not to feel agonized at the sight. But it seems that the evil creatures who performed and filmed those acts have abandoned all semblance of humanity, sinking to the level of depravity evinced by the Nazis, whose actions were condemned by the nations of the world.
And yet the BBC, Sky News and other media outlets prefer to withhold judgment and assume an attitude of supposed neutrality. Remaining neutral in the face of brutality, murder and pure evil is not an option for anyone with any kind of moral compass, no matter what their political opinion might be.
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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson is an author and freelance writer based in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion, Israel.