The BBC News homepage featured an emotional clip earlier this week. BBC Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson interviewed the crying sister of a Palestinian “detainee” as she waited for him to be released by the Israeli authorities, as part of the ceasefire deal. In the video, titled “Sister’s hopes dashed in long wait for Palestinian detainee brother’s release,” Aida Abu Rob, sister of Murad Abu al-Rub, tearfully told Williamson that she didn’t know if she would even recognise her brother. “Aida has waited 20 years for her brother Murad to be released from a jail in Israel,” said a voice-over, “Dozens of prisoners emerged from Red Cross buses as fathers, brothers and sons—carried in as national heroes. But Murad wasn’t among them.”
What the BBC failed to mention in this tearjerker was the reason for Murad Abu al-Rub’s incarceration. Unlike many of the Israeli hostages released by Hamas this week, Abu al-Rub was not a civilian, kidnapped and tortured by Israel for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rather, Abu al-Rub was serving four life sentences in an Israeli prison—one for each of the Israelis killed in a terror plot he helped to orchestrate. In March 2006, Abu al-Rub was involved in planning a suicide bombing in Kedumim, West Bank. The bomber, disguised as an Orthodox Jewish hitchhiker, detonated an explosive device after he was picked up by a car containing the four Israeli victims. All passengers were killed, including the bomber.
The BBC has since released a statement admitting that, “as part of a dynamic news story that was developing quickly, we should have included in all versions the verified information we had at the time, that he was serving four life sentences.” It also added that “this was included in some versions and has been added to the video on the News website.” But given that this is nowhere near the first time that the UK’s state broadcaster has failed to do its research when it comes to the war in Gaza, it’s difficult to take this reluctant apology to heart. The BBC has previously been caught featuring the child of a Hamas official as the leading role in one of its documentaries, and regularly takes casualty and fatality figures from the Hamas-run Health Ministry at face value.
Let’s take a look at some of the other “national heroes” that were swapped for the surviving 20 Israeli hostages this week. Under the ceasefire deal facilitated by U.S. president Donald Trump, Israel released almost 2,000 Palestinian detainees, including 250 Palestinians convicted of murder and other serious crimes. Al Jazeera describes these people somewhat euphemistically as “political prisoners and forcibly disappeared people.”
Reuters interviewed Mohammad Al-Khatib, who had served 20 years in an Israeli prison for killing three Israelis. He told the outlet that he was looking forward to being reunited with his children, and that “we have always had hope, that’s why we continued to be steadfast.” Reuters also spoke to Tala Al Barghouti, daughter of Abdallah Al-Barghouti, a Hamas terrorist sentenced to 67 life terms in 2004 after he was involved in a series of suicide bombings that left dozens of Israelis dead. Her father, thankfully, was not being released as part of the deal. Al Barghouti lamented on Facebook that the ceasefire deal “sacrificed those who played the greatest role in the resistance and closed hopes of their release.”
In a Guardian article (“‘Locked up for 24 years’: release of Palestinian prisoners and detainees sparks joy and sorrow”), we hear sympathetic words from a relative of Saber Masalma, a member of Fatah who was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to cause death and placing explosive charges. The Guardian piece decries the cruelty of the fact that “Israel had restricted family visits after the October 7 attack by Hamas-led militants who killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages,” meaning that Masalma’s family had not seen him in two years. In this case, the context for why exactly Masalma was “locked up for 24 years” is crucial. But, as the Independent tells us, “while Israel views them as terrorists, many Palestinians consider the prisoners as freedom fighters resisting a decades-long Israeli military occupation.”
Among the others released this week were Raed Sheikh, a police officer and member of Fatah. Since 2000, Sheikh has been serving multiple life sentences for his role in the killing of two Israeli soldiers by a mob at a West Bank police station. Then there is Mahmoud Issa, who spent 30 years behind bars for kidnapping and murdering a 29-year-old Israeli border police guard in 1993. There are also the Shamasneh brothers, Mohammed and Abdel Jawad, who were involved in a stabbing attack that ended the lives of two Israeli teenagers, as well as other murders.
This is why, for many Israelis, the return of the hostages has been bittersweet. It has come as a huge relief that those who were kidnapped from their homes, communities, and the Nova music festival have been released at last. But it has also meant that Israel has been forced to free Palestinian criminals.
Tal Hartov is one of those Israelis with complicated feelings about the ceasefire deal. In 2010, Hartov and her friend, Kristine Luken, an American tourist, were attacked by three Palestinian men while hiking outside Jerusalem. The two women were tied up, held at gunpoint, and stabbed. Luken was killed in the attack, but Hartov—despite being the victim of 18 stab wounds, several broken ribs, punctured lungs and diaphragm, a dislocated shoulder, a broken shoulder blade, and a broken sternum—managed to survive. Hartov told AP News: “I can feel thrilled and hopeful and joyful that our hostages are coming home. But I can still feel angry, I can feel betrayed, I can feel hollow. They’re not mutually exclusive.” Members of the same terror cell were also behind the killing of Neta Sorek, an English teacher and peace activist, earlier that year.
These are the men the BBC explain are treated as “national heroes”—murderers and terrorists. It is an insult to their victims to pretend as though these criminals are deserving of the same sympathy as the Israeli hostages who were abducted purely for the ‘crime’ of being Jewish. There is a clear difference between a government imprisoning convicted killers and a terrorist army kidnapping and torturing people—including the elderly, children, and civilians. To equate these two is bad journalism at best, and morally obscene at worst.
Those Palestinian Prisoners Were No “Heroes”
Palestinians released from Israeli prisons under a Gaza ceasefire deal arrive at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 13, 2025.
Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP
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The BBC News homepage featured an emotional clip earlier this week. BBC Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson interviewed the crying sister of a Palestinian “detainee” as she waited for him to be released by the Israeli authorities, as part of the ceasefire deal. In the video, titled “Sister’s hopes dashed in long wait for Palestinian detainee brother’s release,” Aida Abu Rob, sister of Murad Abu al-Rub, tearfully told Williamson that she didn’t know if she would even recognise her brother. “Aida has waited 20 years for her brother Murad to be released from a jail in Israel,” said a voice-over, “Dozens of prisoners emerged from Red Cross buses as fathers, brothers and sons—carried in as national heroes. But Murad wasn’t among them.”
What the BBC failed to mention in this tearjerker was the reason for Murad Abu al-Rub’s incarceration. Unlike many of the Israeli hostages released by Hamas this week, Abu al-Rub was not a civilian, kidnapped and tortured by Israel for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rather, Abu al-Rub was serving four life sentences in an Israeli prison—one for each of the Israelis killed in a terror plot he helped to orchestrate. In March 2006, Abu al-Rub was involved in planning a suicide bombing in Kedumim, West Bank. The bomber, disguised as an Orthodox Jewish hitchhiker, detonated an explosive device after he was picked up by a car containing the four Israeli victims. All passengers were killed, including the bomber.
The BBC has since released a statement admitting that, “as part of a dynamic news story that was developing quickly, we should have included in all versions the verified information we had at the time, that he was serving four life sentences.” It also added that “this was included in some versions and has been added to the video on the News website.” But given that this is nowhere near the first time that the UK’s state broadcaster has failed to do its research when it comes to the war in Gaza, it’s difficult to take this reluctant apology to heart. The BBC has previously been caught featuring the child of a Hamas official as the leading role in one of its documentaries, and regularly takes casualty and fatality figures from the Hamas-run Health Ministry at face value.
Let’s take a look at some of the other “national heroes” that were swapped for the surviving 20 Israeli hostages this week. Under the ceasefire deal facilitated by U.S. president Donald Trump, Israel released almost 2,000 Palestinian detainees, including 250 Palestinians convicted of murder and other serious crimes. Al Jazeera describes these people somewhat euphemistically as “political prisoners and forcibly disappeared people.”
Reuters interviewed Mohammad Al-Khatib, who had served 20 years in an Israeli prison for killing three Israelis. He told the outlet that he was looking forward to being reunited with his children, and that “we have always had hope, that’s why we continued to be steadfast.” Reuters also spoke to Tala Al Barghouti, daughter of Abdallah Al-Barghouti, a Hamas terrorist sentenced to 67 life terms in 2004 after he was involved in a series of suicide bombings that left dozens of Israelis dead. Her father, thankfully, was not being released as part of the deal. Al Barghouti lamented on Facebook that the ceasefire deal “sacrificed those who played the greatest role in the resistance and closed hopes of their release.”
In a Guardian article (“‘Locked up for 24 years’: release of Palestinian prisoners and detainees sparks joy and sorrow”), we hear sympathetic words from a relative of Saber Masalma, a member of Fatah who was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to cause death and placing explosive charges. The Guardian piece decries the cruelty of the fact that “Israel had restricted family visits after the October 7 attack by Hamas-led militants who killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages,” meaning that Masalma’s family had not seen him in two years. In this case, the context for why exactly Masalma was “locked up for 24 years” is crucial. But, as the Independent tells us, “while Israel views them as terrorists, many Palestinians consider the prisoners as freedom fighters resisting a decades-long Israeli military occupation.”
Among the others released this week were Raed Sheikh, a police officer and member of Fatah. Since 2000, Sheikh has been serving multiple life sentences for his role in the killing of two Israeli soldiers by a mob at a West Bank police station. Then there is Mahmoud Issa, who spent 30 years behind bars for kidnapping and murdering a 29-year-old Israeli border police guard in 1993. There are also the Shamasneh brothers, Mohammed and Abdel Jawad, who were involved in a stabbing attack that ended the lives of two Israeli teenagers, as well as other murders.
This is why, for many Israelis, the return of the hostages has been bittersweet. It has come as a huge relief that those who were kidnapped from their homes, communities, and the Nova music festival have been released at last. But it has also meant that Israel has been forced to free Palestinian criminals.
Tal Hartov is one of those Israelis with complicated feelings about the ceasefire deal. In 2010, Hartov and her friend, Kristine Luken, an American tourist, were attacked by three Palestinian men while hiking outside Jerusalem. The two women were tied up, held at gunpoint, and stabbed. Luken was killed in the attack, but Hartov—despite being the victim of 18 stab wounds, several broken ribs, punctured lungs and diaphragm, a dislocated shoulder, a broken shoulder blade, and a broken sternum—managed to survive. Hartov told AP News: “I can feel thrilled and hopeful and joyful that our hostages are coming home. But I can still feel angry, I can feel betrayed, I can feel hollow. They’re not mutually exclusive.” Members of the same terror cell were also behind the killing of Neta Sorek, an English teacher and peace activist, earlier that year.
These are the men the BBC explain are treated as “national heroes”—murderers and terrorists. It is an insult to their victims to pretend as though these criminals are deserving of the same sympathy as the Israeli hostages who were abducted purely for the ‘crime’ of being Jewish. There is a clear difference between a government imprisoning convicted killers and a terrorist army kidnapping and torturing people—including the elderly, children, and civilians. To equate these two is bad journalism at best, and morally obscene at worst.
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