Arabs terrorize an Orthodox Jewish man in Jerusalem. Photo: Screenshot.

A pair of BBC journalists who downplayed an assault on two Haredi Jews Sunday quickly reneged on their initial comments after viewing footage of the incident.

The BBC’s Paul Danahar, who is Middle East Bureau Chief for the news organization, downplayed news that nine Arabs  had been arrested for attacking the Haredi men on January 12th by tweeting “which i saw Haredi youths doing to everyone else to.” Later, upon viewing footage of the assault, Danahar backpedaled on his statement, tweeting, “Just been looking into this snowball attack story. Ha’aretz story underplays it. It was nasty attack.”

Also Sunday another member of the BBC’s Jerusalem bureau downplayed the same incident after reading the Ha’aretz article reporting on the arrest. Wyre Davies, a correspondent for the network, tweeted, “Several Arab youths arrested for throwing snowballs in #Jerusalem last week (but targeting moving cars was commonplace).”

After viewing the same footage as Danahar, Davies retracted his earlier statement by tweeting, “Re earlier tweet re Arab youths arrested for throwing snowballs. Online video shows it was a nasty gang assault on 2 Jews. No excuses.”

The incident took place after a rare snowstorm in Jerusalem.

Here’s the video.