“What the eye does not see, the heart can not feel” is a proverb well known to malefactors. Today, most Americans have not seen what is truly taking place in Gaza. This is by design – Israeli design.
More than a year ago a report in Foreign Policy stated that on Israeli television “you are unlikely to see the suffering and death or even the faces of Palestinian civilians”, and that the “coverage could be leading to a perception gap about the war in Gaza.”
But not only does Israel not want its citizens to see what is happening in Gaza, Israel does not want the world to see. From the beginning of the war Israel has excluded all foreign journalists from Gaza, an unprecedented action according to the head of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
In April 2024, Israel authorized the Prime Minister to shut down any foreign channel considered a “threat to national security”, and in May Al Jazeera was shut down and its equipment seized. Reporters Without Borders criticized Israel for “using every possible method to try to silence Al Jazeera for its coverage of the reality of the fate of Palestinians”.
In July 2024 the Foreign Press Association blasted Israel for imposing an “information blackout” on Gaza which “raises questions about what Israel doesn’t want international journalists to see”.
Of course, there were Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Israel has tried to silence them as well – by killing them. More journalists have been killed in Gaza in a shorter period of time than in any other conflict in modern history. At least 160 media workers have been killed according to the CPJ, and “at least 11 journalists and two media workers were directly targeted by Israeli forces in killings which CPJ classifies as murders.” The targeting of civilian journalists constitutes a war crime under international law.
An analysis of the coverage of the war in Gaza by The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times during the first six weeks of the conflict (Oct 7 to Nov 24) done by the news organization, The Intercept, showed a consistent bias against Palestinians. “Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre,’ and ‘horrific’ were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians”. It also found glaring disparities in the reporting of the killing of children which was extensive in the Ukraine war and far less in Gaza.
A report in The Nation in October 2024 found similar biases against Palestinians by the two cable news outlets CNN and MSNBC as well as similar disparities between reporting on the war in Ukraine versus the war in Gaza.
In December 2024 a report in The Nation found that NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos, CBS’s Face the Nation, and CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, with the exception of one interview, covered the war in Gaza for “12 months without speaking to a single Palestinian or Palestinian American.” In contrast, the show featured Israeli guests 20 times including Benjamin Netanyahu 5 times.
This bias is not limited to US media outlets. In November 2024 more than 100 staff accused the BBC of pro-Israel bias in reporting on the war in Gaza.
Nor is this bias of recent origin. The Washington Post in May 2021 ran the following article: “Facebook’s AI treats Palestinian activists like it treats American Black activists. It blocks them.” In June 2021 almost 200 Facebook employees signed a letter protesting the regular disappearance of Palestinian voices from the platform.
Not only does Israel seek to silence criticism in the media but also in the halls of government. In the 2024 election the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliated super PACs vowed to spend more than $100 million on more than 80% of the races in the Senate and House. In December 2024 Israel’s Foreign Ministry budget for 2025 proposed to increase its spending to promote Israel’s image abroad by 20 times to $150 million.
Of course, Israel has a well-rehearsed response to those who would seek to hold it accountable for its actions. It is to use the tactic called DARVO: deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender. Israel denies the allegation, attacks it as antisemitic, and alleges that in reality Israel is the only victim.
Voltaire once said, “We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth.” The responsibility of the media to both the living and the dead in Gaza is to shine a light on what others seek to hide, not to be complicit in its concealment.
Michael C. Monson holds degrees in both law and non-western history, has traveled extensively in more than forty countries on five continents, and is a freelance writer published in Reason, The Freeman, The New Individualist and various newspapers.
