The BBC has taken great care to dehumanise a Palestinian writer who was murdered by Israel by calling him “controversial”. The BBC takes its obligation to report in a neutral manner (that doesn’t upset the Israeli government or its supporters in the British government) very seriously.

If they ever failed to do this, the licence fee would be scrapped quicker than you can say ceasefire. This is why the BBC spent half the article attacking the character of Refaat Alareer, rather than the people who murdered him. In fact, they didn’t even say who murdered Refaat, which is rather lazy journalism when you think about it, so let me set the record straight…

Renowned poet, Refaat Alareer, who was known as “the voice of Gaza” and was beloved by his students, was killed by Israel in a surgical airstrike that targeted the apartment where he was staying. The airstrike killed Refaat, his brother, his sister and four of her children, but left the apartment building intact. Israel says this proves it always minimises civilian casualties, apart from all the times it doesn’t bother to.

In the spirit of minimising civilians, Israel destroyed the university at which Refaat taught, claiming it was the Hamas command centre that was also under Al-Shifa hospital. They destroyed every other university in Gaza just to be safe and explained they consider these actions “proportionate”. However, others have suggested that killing four children to get revenge on their uncle for getting likes on Twitter might be a war crime. Perhaps we need a Question Time debate to figure this one out.

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