BBC changes headline on Israel rape story after backlash

The BBC has climbed down and amended an appalling headline about the rape of Palestinian abductees by gangs of Israeli troops and guards – but without acknowledging the amendment in accordance with usual journalistic practice.

The broadcaster had published an article about the arrest of Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, who had admitted authorising the leak of video footage exposing the brutal rape. However, the BBC framed its headline to suggest that the leak, rather than the repeated raping of Palestinian detainees, was the scandal:

BBC called out

The BBC was called out by Chris Doyle, a director at the Council for British and Arab Understanding (CAABU), who wrote on X:

Dear @BBCNews – the scandal is not the leak of the video – it is the contents of the video.

The BBC subsequently – and quietly – amended its headline about Tomer-Yerushalmi. The latter also appeared to have tried to fake her suicide and disappear. However, rather than describing the rape as the scandal, it deleted the word ‘scandal’ completely – and didn’t even mention the rape, instead using the less explicit term ‘abuse’:

‘Abuse’, of course, is nowhere near as explicit a term to describe what actually happened: the repeated anal rape of a bound man with blunt objects, leaving him severely injured and psychologically traumatised. But the BBC didn’t bother to note the amendment anywhere in its article.

Both versions of the article appeared in the Middle East section of the BBC News website. The editor of the Middle East section of the BBC News website is Raffi Berg. Berg has been described as a “Mossad [Israel’s foreign intelligence agency] collaborator” and accused of being the “tip of the iceberg” of a broadcaster that is:

packed to the rafters with Zionists who will frame the reporting on Gaza to centre Israeli interests.

Berg, who once posted a photo of himself with a letter from wanted Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu on the wall behind him, has held private meetings in London with an accused Israeli war criminal and once:

boasted about being indirectly employed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) while working for the US Foreign Broadcast Information Service.

“One day, I was taken to one side and told, ‘you may or may not know that we are part of the CIA, but don’t go telling people’”, Berg recounted. “I was absolutely thrilled”, he continued.

The BBC has been under intense pressure over its coverage of Israel and Palestine.

Featured image via the Canary