‘They Don’t Want Us to See’: BBC’s Jeremy Bowen Accuses Israel of Blocking Journalists from Entering Gaza

London (Quds News Network)- Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, has accused Israel of blocking journalists from entering Gaza because of scenes “they don’t want us to see”.

Bowen said that in the last 18 months of Israeli assault, he had been granted only half a day with the Israeli forces within Gaza. He said that the lack of access was part of an attempt to “obfuscate what’s going on, and to inject this notion of doubt into information that comes out”.

He added that while Palestinian journalists were doing “fantastic work”, he and other international media colleagues wanted to contribute to reporting on the ground in Gaza. He spoke after he accepted a special fellowship award for the Society of Editors conference.

“Why don’t they let us in,” he said. “Because there’s stuff there they don’t want us to see. Beginning after those Hamas attacks on 7 October, they took us into the border communities. I was in Kfar Aza when there was still fighting going on inside it. They had only just started taking out the bodies of the dead Israelis. Why did they let us in there? Because they wanted us to see it.”

“Why don’t they let us in to Gaza? Because they don’t want us to see it. I think it’s really as simple as that. Israel took a bit of flak for that to start with, but none now, certainly not with [President] Trump. So I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

Asked about whether international media should trust Gaza casualty figures released by the Palestinian Health Ministry, Bowen said the numbers were currently “the best measure that we have” because of the inability of reporters and other bodies to verify them.

According to the Ministry, over 50,200 Palestinians have been killed since the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza on October 7, 2023, with the majority being women and children.

“I think without question, it’s the bloodiest war that they’ve had since the foundation of the Israeli state of 1948,” Bowen said. “If the place could open up, people could go through, look at the records, count the graves, exhume the skeletons from under the rubble and then they’d get a better idea. But when the doors shut, these things become very, very difficult.”

Last year, Bowen was among 50 journalists, including the BBC’s Lyse Doucet and its former presenter Mishal Husain, calling on Israel and Egypt to provide “free and unfettered access to Gaza for all foreign media”.

Critics have accused Israel of targeting journalists in the Palestinian territory to obscure the truth about its war crimes there. Since the start of the assault, at least 208 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza.