The BBC is failing to report the various ways in which the UK government has supported Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, Declassified’s new analysis finds.
Our research into the BBC’s written outputs since October 2023 finds the corporation has mainly not reported at all the major ways the UK government has been working with Israel.
It found that the BBC has reported just four times in 15 months that the Royal Air Force (RAF) has been conducting surveillance flights over Gaza.
Only one BBC report on the subject has been written since December 2023, despite the fact that hundreds of such spy missions have been conducted, almost daily, in aid of Israeli intelligence.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) says these flights are solely to aid the rescue of hostages held by Hamas. Only one BBC online report mentions the UK may be providing targeting information to Israel or flying weapons to the country.
None of the articles otherwise raise concerns about the UK being willing to collaborate militarily with Israel at a time it is devastating Gaza.
When Israel’s chief of staff, General Herzi Halevi, was allowed to attend a British military meeting in London last November, this also went unreported by the BBC in its written outputs.
Halevi’s visit was highly controversial, given he has led Israeli military operations throughout its destruction of Gaza. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant are wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
Our research also finds that the BBC has never reported that the British military has been training Israeli armed forces personnel in the UK during the Gaza war.
Last February, the MoD admitted in parliament there were six Israeli military officers posted in the UK. The Labour government has refused to provide further details.
In June last year, the New York Times reported that a British intelligence collection team had been present in Israel “throughout the war”, ostensibly assisting Israeli intelligence in collecting information related to the hostages.
This information has not been reported by the BBC.
Neither has the key background to Britain’s military support to Israel. This derives from a Roadmap agreement signed between the two countries a few months before the Hamas attacks of October 2023.
The accord committed the two states “to tackle shared threats” as part of a “close strategic partnership, with extensive defence and security cooperation”.
Another key document is a secret military accord signed by the UK and Israel in December 2020, which was mentioned on social media by Israel but which the UK government has long refused to publish.
We could find no evidence that BBC journalists have reported either of these two key documents in the corporation’s online news.
In sharp contrast to other UK government policies concerning Israel, the BBC has published many articles mentioning British arms exports to Israel.
In these reports, the BBC has occasionally cited concerns by human rights groups and MPs about the possible use by Israel of these arms, at the same time as citing pro-Israel figures.
However, article headlines have rarely been critical of these weapons sales.
The only overtly disapproving headlines Declassified could find were: ‘Brother of aid worker killed in Gaza criticises arming Israel’ and ‘Amnesty criticises ministers for arms firms funding’.
Another headline was: ‘Foreign Office official resigned over Israel arms sales’.
By contrast, many headlines are conciliatory towards Israel. These include:
There are no headlines about the possible use of UK arms by Israel in Gaza, or any directly reflecting the repeated calls by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, to halt all UK arms exports and military assistance to Israel.
The prominent legal action against the government for arming Israel brought by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), the Global Legal Action Network and Al-Haq, has been ignored by the BBC. Declassifiedcould find no BBC written coverage of this at all.
The most prominent group challenging British arms exports, the Campaign Against Arms Trade, has been mentioned six times on the BBC website in 15 months.
Declassified has uncovered three other disturbing aspects of Britain’s arming of Israel, none of which appears to have been covered by the BBC.
These include Britain continuing to provide military equipment to Israel after announcing limited sanctions last September, and allowing UK airspace to be used to supply weapons to Israel.
Also unreported by the BBC is that the UK has been sending components for F-35 warplanes to the US, where they can be then exported to Israel.
Neither has the BBC covered the possible role of UK spy agency GCHQ or the army’s special forces, the SAS, in facilitating Israeli military operations.
These are live issues given that GCHQ operates an extensive intelligence operation on Cyprus, from where the RAF planes are flown over Gaza.
GCHQ is known to have aided past Israeli combat operations in Gaza. Yet Declassified could find no reports on the BBC website mentioning GCHQ in the context of Gaza.
Reporting on the SAS was subject by the government to a D-Notice – a voluntary gagging order not to publish ‘sensitive’ information concerning ‘national security’- in October 2023.
It followed reporting by the Mail that an SAS team was positioned on Cyprus, reportedly to help rescue British hostages held by Hamas.
Since then, it appears the entire UK national media, including the BBC, has complied with this. The BBC has no articles covering or speculating on an SAS role in Israel or Gaza.
There are other ways in which the British government is in effect colluding with Israel which have gone unreported by the BBC.
Perhaps incredibly, the BBC has not reported in its written outputs since October 2023 that the UK is engaged in negotiations with Israel to secure a free trade agreement.
Conservative and Labour ministers have since 2022 held five rounds of talkswith the Israeli government, whose economy minister, Nir Barkat, is an outspoken supporter of its attacks on Palestinians.
Jonathan Reynolds, the current trade minister pursuing the prospective new deal, is a recipient of funding from Britain’s Israel lobby.
Neither has the BBC reported on the arrests by the UK authorities of pro-Palestinian journalists in Britain.
In October last year, officers from the Metropolitan Police raided the home of Asa Winstanley, a well-known pro-Palestinian journalist with the Electronic Intifada, and seized his devices under provisions of the UK’s Terrorism Act.
This failed to concern the BBC, as has the similar use of anti-terror laws by the authorities to try to silence other pro-Palestinian voices in recent months.