BBC documentary - children of Gaza

[SmokeRingsOfMyMind]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/feb/17/gaza-how-to-survive-a-warzone-review-these-incredible-children-offer-a-sliver-of-hope

Did anyone see this last night? Heartbreaking and enraging in equal measure.

Absolutely

💯 agree on all points

I was disappointed to see that the documentary has been permanently removed as I feel it's increadibly important to hear the voices of these children but I don't think the BBC had a choice here really.

I have been increadibly saddened with this thread. The attacks and accusations for anybody with empathy for innocent Palestianians has been horrible.

AnxiousRose I suggest you read Scirocco's excellent post.

I did, I've read every post on this thread.

This lack of due diligence and false representation of key people in the documentary is bound to affect future requests for license fee money. There will have to be a full investigation which will cost millions and the upshot will be that less money will be available to make programmes about Gaza.
The BBC has seriously messed up over this and it will damage its reputation all around the world. Paying money into the bank account of the young narrator was so foolish. It will also mean that any future attempts to make programmes about the lives of civilians in Gaza runs the risk of being dismissed as unreliable. I said up thread that the BBC was the fourth most trusted news source in the USA. Keir Starmer was asked about the serious flaws in this documentary at the live news broadcast in Washington tonight. He will be so angry with the BBC and it will suggest to all the Americans watching that the BBC is unreliable in its reporting from Gaza.

Sorry, I meant to write, the money paid went into the bank account of the sister of the young narrator. Many will believe that BBC money ended up in the pocket of Hamas.

Because it did. You think women actually have bank accounts in Gaza? Apparently only 1% of women do. Maybe female family members of terrorists do though. We know they get special privileges compared to the rest of the population, like any authoritarian regime.

BREAKING | At least six babies have died from the cold in Gaza as Israel continues to block critical aid, including the 60,000 mobile homes and 200,000 tents promised under the ceasefire deal. A severe shortage of basic supplies--tents, blankets, and heating devices-has left families exposed to freezing temperatures, with nearly the entire population displaced by relentless U.S.-
Israeli bombardment.
Hospitals are now reporting a surge in cases of severe cold exposure. In Gaza City, nine children were brought in suffering from hypothermia. Five have already died-three within hours of arrival and two earlier this morning.
Another child brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis has also died

But yeah the documentary is the thing to be concerned about 🙄

Data from 2021 showed over 25% of women in Palestine had bank accounts (compared with around 41% of men), and the Bank of Palestine had programmes running over the past decade to boost women's use of bank accounts and their financial independence, so 1% isn't consistent with the data from the World Bank Gender Data Portal or UN Women or the Bank of Palestine.

Paying a bank account with a woman's or girl's name on it could have been an attempt to find a loophole in itself, but in real life the likelihood is that both parents would have access to that money. And it's not like his wife won't have known he was a government minister.

That is incorrect.

Israel never annexed Gaza. It never tried to own the land or absorb it into Israel.

Egypt illegally occupied it from 1948 after capturing the territory in the Arab/Israeli war (started by the Arabs). An act of aggression.

Israel OCCUPIED it from 1967 after capturing it in the six day war in 1967 (started by the Arabs), then tried to give it back in 1979 as part of the Camp David Accords but Egypt refused to take it back. The Arab League didn’t do much about declaring it a Palestinian State from 1945 -1967. Under international law in 1967, territory temporarily captured in a defensive war is not an illegal occupation. The occupying entity cannot withdraw until a peace agreement is in place with the relevant previous government but there wasn’t one as Egypt illegally occupied Gaza up until 1967 and the Ottoman Empire and Mandate for Palestine was long gone. Israel relinquished Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005 removing all Jewish settlements and graves of their dead.

Not one Jewish person lives in Gaza but 2 million Arabs live in Israel. What do you make of that?

Gaza was never a sovereign State before 1948 as the Arabs declined to make it one when they had the offer in 1947 and started a war with Israel, on the day it declared itself a state ad it was legally entitled to, instead.

Before 1948 it was part of the Mandate for Palestine (geographical region) for the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, controlled and administered by the British who captured it in 1919 when it was part of the Ottoman Empire ruled by the Turks for the four previous centuries.

If you want to go back in history, 1919 was not that far behind 1948, so if anyone had a legitimate claim to the land, it’s probably the Turks but they’re pretty quiet. Wonder why?

Facts matter.

Apologies my above post was in response to this one by @Polka83.

This is horrific but temps in Gaza have been nowhere near freezing even at night, even with wind chill factor. You can easily google the last two weeks temperatures.

How on earth could a baby get frostbite as stated in another report? Something very wrong here and I sincerely hope these babies weren’t sacrificed as ‘martyrs’ as that is too terrible to contemplate but not out of the scope of Palestinian terrorists who strangle kidnapped babies to death and mutilate their bodies.

Just like the NICU babies who were apparently completely abandoned by every single staff member and their parents in the Gazan hospital for two weeks, whose decaying bodies just happened to be stumbled upon by a journalist after being directed there by locals who were aware of the bodies but left them there with no dignity. No health care professional or parent would totally desert babies in a war zone, without even checking they were safe and evacuated, even if directed to by the opposing force. Just think about that for a second. The hospital was not even bombed anyway as clearly seen in the video footage where it was intact.

Why are the Palestinians not calling on their government to surrender and release the Israeli hostages immediately, and why not for the past 16 months, so this evil can end and their government can be held accountable for the death and destruction it has caused to the Palestinian people?

Responding to this. Can’t quote posts apparently.

Our national broadcaster transmitting manipulated footage and presenting it as fact and sending licence fee payer money to a proscribed terrorist group who murder babies is something to be concerned about, yes. Why do you think it isn’t @Everexpanding ?

Thanks for sharing @Everexpanding it is increadibly important now more than ever to continue to share the terrible suffering in Gaza.
Here is the link to the BBC article discussing this

https://bbc.com/news/articles/c62k676gk34o

@phoenixresurrected is right though, this doesn't make sense.

Temperatures are dropping to 11C overnight, 17C in the day. That isn't dangerously cold.

From a quick Google
Hypothermia can develop with prolonged exposure to temperatures under 10°C, or after prolonged immersion in cold water of temperatures of less than 20°C

Presumably a newborn baby would succumb more quickly. But who wouldn't wrap a young baby up and hold them within their own clothing, to give them body warmth? That's the instinctive thing for anyone to do.

What's going on?

If you read the information in the BBC article I shared above you will see that according to meteorological websites, the night-time temperature in Gaza has regularly fallen below 10C (50F) over the past two weeks.

But unfortunately it is no surprise that the attemps to discredit any information which is sympathetic to Gazans continue.

But it doesn't make sense. Even slightly under 10C isn't dangerously cold. Why haven't the babies been cared for in the totally natural way that babies have always been cared for: by holding them against an adult's body warmth?

You can't say that it's just trying to discredit information coming out of Gaza, when what is being said simply doesn't make sense.

Then you should understand that the
BBC production team destroyed an important opportunity to shine a light on the plight of ordinary Palestinian children.
It was a shocking error of judgment.

Absolutely agree

It isn’t possible or safe to sleep attached to a baby .
Babies ( like old people) are much more vulnerable to extremes of temperature.
I can completely understand why newborn or sick babies are at great risk in an environment where clean water, adequate food and warm shelter are scarce.

All of this makes it all the more appalling that the BBC messed up an important opportunity to expose what is happening to ordinary Gazans ( and to show how Hamas, as well as the Israeli bombing campaign contributed to their suffering )

But dipping below 10C overnight isn't very cold.

Temperatures aren't reaching 10C in the daytime in the UK just now. Babies aren't getting hypothermia going outside for a few hours.

And in the daytime, temperatures in Gaza are going up to 17C, and there are plenty of adults to warm the child.

(And of course they would still be cuddling the baby at night. People still do here, despite advice and central heating)

It is if you're a tiny baby living in a tent ffs