BBC anchor Helena Humphrey certainly wasn’t the first journalist to have a strong opinion on military operations during the Israel-Hamas War, despite having no knowledge of such matters, but she may have asked former IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus the dumbest question on Sunday as she asked him why the Israeli hostage rescue operators did not warn the hostage takers they were coming.
Humphrey asked, “It is appearing to be a high civilian death toll. Would there have been a warning to those civilians then to get out on time?”
In one of the most insane interview clips yet (and that’s saying a lot in this war), a BBC reporter asks @jconricus why the IDF didn’t warn Palestinian civilians they were coming to the area for a rescue operations.
Reminder: many of the hostages have been held in homes of… pic.twitter.com/qN7fgIfV71
— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) June 9, 2024
Conricus, being more patient with Humphrey than she deserved, replied, “Well, sure, of course, we cannot anticipate Israel to be warning ahead of the raid to extract or to save hostages because then what the terrorists will do is to kill the hostages and that would defeat the purpose so, of course, we cannot expect that.”
During the operation, Hamas engaged the IDF in a firefight with gunfire, RPGs, and anti-aircraft missiles. Does the BBC and the rest of the world that claims to be outraged at this really believe Israel is morally, and perhaps legally, obligated to just sit there and take it? Israel did not choose the battlespace. If it had its way, it would fight Hamas out in the open. It would, of course, also have liked for Hamas never to have taken the hostages and murdered its people in the first place.
The BBC is hailed by many, especially those on the left, as the epitome of journalistic excellence, but it has had a rough time reporting on the war. It has had to apologize multiple times for an anti-Israel bias that comes dangerously close to anti-Semitic blood libel that predates the war, which is why the BBC is a ripe target for Israeli comedians.