Since 7 October 2023, Israel has waged a brutal war on Gaza. On conservative estimates, the country has killed at least 65,000 people and injured over 160,000 since then, reducing much of the 140 square-mile strip to a moonscape of rubble. In September, a UN commission found that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
At the heart of Israel’s actions are two key military strategies – the Dahiya doctrine and the Hannibal directive. Understanding these strategies is key to understanding Israel’s ongoing war on the occupied Palestinian territory, but you may not have even heard of them. That’s because for all the BBC’s coverage of the so-called Israel-Gaza war over the last two years, it’s failed to mention them.
In its June report on BBC bias, the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) called this a “military doctrine blackout”, and described the BBC’s omission of key historical and contemporary context as “systemic” and having “acquired an institutional quality”. …..more
