Media coverage of Israeli attack on Beit Hanoun
(Attack was on Wednesday 9th November 2006)


Wednesday’s dawn attack on the sleeping Palestinian family in Beit Hanoun by an Israeli artillery barrage (part of operation `Autumn Clouds`) was barely reported in the mainstream media. The focus was on the US mid-term elections and the resignation of defence secretary Rumsfeld.


Thursday 9th November 2006

Rupert Murdoch’s Sun had nothing - yes, it’s easy to rubbish the currant bun as a comic but remember it ranks number one in circulation in Britain. The Edinburgh Evening News had nothing. The Times had a piece on page 35 headlined `Israel braced for revenge attacks after dawn barrage kills family`.

The BBC1 early evening news gave it all of 10 seconds or about 0.6% of the bulletin, informing us that the attack was due to a `technical failure`. The ITN early evening news did not mention it all while devoting a sizeable 1 minute 40 second report or around 6% of the programme about endangered Orang-utans in Borneo. Channel Four news was little better giving only 30 seconds out of 50 minutes which included Ehud Olmert expressing his `regret`.

ITV’s TELETEXT did briefly mention the massacre on page 318 though this page was subdivided in to a further 7 pages. BBC’s `CEEFAX` had it on page 105.

Radio 4’s `World Tonight` did report that close to 400 Palestinians have been killed in the past 4 months against 3 Israelis in its 9-minute report. This was a much more substantial report than the TV news bulletins amounting to about 20% of the programme. However, about a third of this was given to an interview with Daniel Carmon, Israel’s chargé d'affaires at the United Nations. By contrast Riad Mansour, Palestinian observer to the United Nations, got about 1 minute.

Saturday 11th November
The Independent of Saturday 11th November did devote the first two pages of the paper to Gaza though bizarrely the leader article opined that `this is an opportunity for Mr Olmert to open up new avenues to peace talks. `