Jerusalem’s light rail. Photo: Wikipedia.

Despite at least one BBC News producer being aware of the incident, the corporation chose not to report a narrowly averted terror attack against travelers on the Jerusalem light rail system last month.

Police in downtown Jerusalem on Sunday morning arrested a Palestinian man who was found to be carrying explosives and knives in his backpack.

The suspect, identified as a West Bank resident, was detained near the light rail stop on Jaffa Road after he raised the suspicions of a security guard.

Police said the man was standing “behind the stop, with a bag in his hand.” When the guard asked to examine the contents of the bag, he noticed a bomb and called police.

Over the past 10 months, the BBC has promoted a standard “explanation” for Palestinian terrorism that funnels audience attentions towards the subject of “the occupation.” As has been noted here throughout that time, that selective framing removes from view issues such as official Palestinian Authority incitement and glorification of terrorism and downplays or erases the often relevant factor of religious ideology.

The investigation into the thwarted attack on users of the Jerusalem light rail system revealed the would-be bomber’s motive.

On July 15, Ali Abu Hassan entered Israel through a valley outside of the eastern Tsur Baher neighborhood, with the intention of carrying out an attack in the capital as a form of “revenge for visits by tourists and Israeli Jews to the Temple Mount,” police said in a statement.

He was armed with three pipe bombs he had linked together into one large explosive and had covered with nails and screws dipped in rat poison. “In his bag there were also two knives and a cellphone,” police said Tuesday.

Since last autumn, the BBC has consistently avoided informing its audiences about Temple Mount related incitement propagated by even the highest Palestinian Authority officials.

“The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours… and they have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem.” [Official PA TV, Sept. 16, 2015 and official website of PA Chairman Abbas, Sept. 16, 2015]

That BBC policy, however, goes back further than the particular wave of terror that began last autumn, with the corporation long having refrained from providing its audiences with any meaningful reporting on the religious ideology that lies behind the frequently seen violent opposition to visits by non-Muslims at a site of significance to all three Abrahamic religions.

As long as the self-styled “standard-setter for international journalism” continues to employ that policy of self-censorship, this is obviously one “international issue” on which BBC audiences will continue to be sold short.