Roundup:

One of the BBC pages she cites is this page of statistics about the Intifada. As Adloyada observes, the BBC breaks down the statistics of Israelis killed by Palestinians into civilian and military but all the Palestinians killed by Israelis are placed in one large group. Says the BBC, “There are no figures to show the proportion of Palestinians who were combatants and those who were civilians.” Why, then, are the Israeli dead so divided in the BBC figures? The fact that the Israeli dead are divided into two groups and the Palestinian dead are undivided has two effects. Firstly it means that you see a long line of icons representing Palestinian victims and mentally contrast it with the fact that none of the several lines of icons representing Israelis are remotely as long.

Secondly, pretty well everyone regards it as less bad to kill soldiers than civilians. So most readers, even those sympathetic to Israel, will discount somewhat the group representing Israeli soldiers. There is no equivalent group of Palestinian combatants to be discounted. That absence is, of course, a consequence of the fact that the Palestinian way of waging war is to wear no uniform. Given that the BBC does see fit to add a little reminder to an article about the Israeli disengagement from Gaza to the effect that that Israeli settlements there were in violation of international law I would have thought that this repeated Palestinian breach of a far more fundamental international law was also worth a mention.

An even more severe criticism is that the BBC’s statement that “There are no figures” to show the proportion of Palestinian combatants to non-combatants is not true. What the BBC means is “our source provided no figures and we did not care to look further.” Astonishingly, B’Tselem, the “Human Rights Group” (see what Adloyada says about them) who provided this data to the BBC described all Palestinians killed in the Intifada who were not wearing PA uniforms as being “civilians” – in other words even members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad killed while carrying out suicide bomb attacks were described as “civilians.”

It seems this was too much to stomach even for the BBC, hence their disingenuous statement that there were “no figures.” Of course there were figures: Adloyada links to one analysis telling a very different story to B’Tselem’s, in the Middle East Quarterly. Or the BBC could have checked out the statements made by Hamas, Al-Asqua Martyrs’ Brigade and Islamic Jihad themselves claiming responsibility for suicide bombings. Surely this task would not have been beyond the BBC, seeing as we are always being told what a world leader among news organizations it is.

UPDATE: Here is more about the statistics of the intifada, including a link to a paper by Don Radlauer of the Institute for Counter Terrorism that provides exactly the sort of figures that the BBC said were not available.