Below are two social media posts put out by COGAT on July 12th and July 13th.

Six days later, on July 19th, BBC audiences found the following claim in a report titled “Dozens killed by Israeli gunfire near aid sites in south Gaza, Hamas-run ministry says” which is credited to Emir Nader and Tom McArthur: [emphasis added]

“The UN also said this week that the number of acutely malnourished children has doubled since Israel began restricting food entering the territory in March. Despite the creation of the GHF significant amounts of aid, including baby formula, is still being blocked at the border.”

Apparently McArthur (based in London) and Nader (who appears to be on one of his occasional trips to Jerusalem) are not aware of the fact that while humanitarian aid did not enter the Gaza Strip between March 2nd and May 19th 2025, supplies were resumed two months before they wrote those words, with well over 23,000 tons of food having been delivered in the first half of July alone.

That perhaps also explains the inclusion in Nader and McArthur’s report of an undated graphic credited to the IPC:

BBC audiences are not told that the last IPC report on the Gaza Strip was published on June 6th following a ‘snapshot’ published on May 12th  – both of which were based on data gathered before the renewal of supplies of humanitarian aid two months ago. The overview to both those reports states:

“Nineteen months into the conflict, the Gaza Strip is still confronted with a critical risk of Famine. Over 60 days have passed since all humanitarian aid and commercial supplies were blocked from entering the territory. Goods indispensable for people’s survival are either depleted or expected to run out in the coming weeks. The entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity, with half a million people (one in five) facing starvation.”

In other words, Nader and McArthur promote data which no longer reflects the situation on the ground. They continue their report with claims from an unidentified source:

“On Friday, the director of one field hospital said in a statement that they had an unprecedented influx of patients suffering from severe exhaustion, emaciation and acute malnutrition.

So far, 69 children have died from malnutrition during the increasing humanitarian crisis, according to the Hamas government media office.”

Eight days prior to the appearance of Nader and McArthur’s article, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics released a report stating that the number of deaths from malnutrition between October 7th 2023 and July 11th 2025 was 66. The PCBS numbers do not take into account pre-existing medical conditions. As noted by Salo Aizenberg:

“According to IPC, Phase 5 famine means 2/10,000 dying daily. Phase 4 Emergency, 1/10,000 daily. That would mean well over 70,000 starvation deaths by now in Gaza. After 21 months, the number is under 100.”

The main topic of Nader and McArthur’s article is incidents that were alleged to have taken place on July 19th in the regions of Rafah and Khan Younis. On the topic of the location of the alleged incidents, the two BBC journalists open their report by telling readers that:

“At least 32 Palestinians seeking food have been killed by Israeli gunfire near two aid distribution points close to Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Dozens were also injured near the two sites run by the controversial US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), it said.”

However, they continue with a paragraph quoting the GHF which contradicts those Hamas claims:

“The GHF said there were no incidents “at or near” their sites, but that there had been “Israel Defense Forces (IDF) activity” hours before their sites were due to open.”

Later in their report, Nader and McArthur state:

“The IDF told the BBC that in the latest incident, troops fired warning shots to prevent “suspects” approaching them, saying the incident happened before the aid sites opened.”

Reporting on the same story, the Times of Israel noted the following in relation to the alleged incident in the Rafah area:

“The Israel Defense Forces said it was aware of reports of casualties after troops fired warning shots and that overnight, Palestinians had approached Israeli forces in the Rafah area, “in a way that threatened the forces.”

“Troops operated to prevent the suspects from approaching them, called for them to distance themselves, and after they did not comply, the troops fired warning shots,” the IDF said.

According to the army, the incident took place a kilometer away from the closest aid site and during the night, when it was not open for Palestinians to collect aid packages.”

Regarding the second alleged incident in the Khan Younis district, the ToI reported that:

“Most of Saturday’s deaths occurred as Palestinians massed in the Teina area, around three kilometers (2 miles) away from a GHF aid distribution center east of the city of Khan Younis.”

In addition to basing their report on unverified claims made by the ministry of health run by the same terrorist organisation that started the war (while describing its supplied casualty figures as “reliable”), Nader and McArthur chose to promote obviously unauthenticated claims made by an “eyewitness”.

“One eyewitness told the Reuters news agency that the Israeli gunfire seemed “targeted to kill”. […]

Mohammed Al-Khalidi, speaking to Reuters, pointed the finger at the Israeli army for the attack.

He said he was part of a group of Palestinians who had been told the GHF aid distribution centre was open, but when they arrived tanks began moving towards them and opened fire.

“It wasn’t shots that were to scare us or to organize us, it was shots that were targeted to kill us, if they wanted to organize us they would have, but they meant to kill us.””

The BBC’s excuse for amplifying those unsubstantiated, second-hand allegations from a source whose reliability is unclear, along with additional claims from the notoriously partisan “UN human rights office”, is by now entirely predictable:

“Israel does not allow international news organisations, including the BBC, to send journalists into the territory.”

Over the past twenty-one months, that excuse has become the BBC’s standard ‘get out of jail free card’ for not conducting fact checks before promoting claims from Hamas sources such as its ministry of health or government press office. Without adequate fact-checking and verification having been carried out, the ‘journalism’ produced by the BBC amounts to nothing more than the provision of a stage for a proscribed terrorist organisation.

Related Articles:

CROSS-PLATFORM PROMOTION OF UN DISINFORMATION BY THE BBC

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