By John Pickard
As the old saying goes, the first casualty of war is Truth and it is patently clear that in this war, the majority of Western politicians and mainstream media having adopted a stance that is largely uncritical of the Israeli government; they are not prepared to look facts in the face.
Nevertheless, the horrific bombardment of Gaza and the thousands of casualties it is causing, cannot be completely hidden from public view and the scenes of carnage in that narrow strip of land have brought millions onto the streets in protests around the world.
There are a hundred and one ways in which the bias of the media has expressed itself, but it is chiefly reflected in the primacy given to the Hamas attack in the entire reportage. It is true that Hamas committed an atrocity in murdering 1,400 Israels, mostly civilians, on October 7 but it is only in a very narrow sense that the event be considered to be the ‘trigger’ for the war.
What is actually more important is that the Hamas assault has a context – the occupation of Palestinian land, the denial of Palestinian national or political rights and specifically the forced imprisonment of two and a half million Gazans in a narrow stretch of land, without an economy, without free movement and without hope. Even the General Secretary of the United Nations has referred to the context. And it is precisely that context, the real cause and background to the war, that Western politicians and media do not want to discuss.
Since October 7, the Hamas atrocity has been eclipsed by a greater one, in scale and ferocity, through the collective punishment of the population of Gaza. Yet here we are, three and a half weeks on, and still TV and radio interviewers frame every question to an interviewee in terms of support or opposition to Hamas and the right of Israel to ‘defend itself’ from Hamas.
Even Lyse Doucet, a celebrated BBC foreign correspondent, does the same. While the Jordanian Foreign Minister wanted to talk in a TV interview about the need for a cease-fire and humanitarian aid for Gaza, every question Doucet threw at him was about Hamas.
The ‘Israel-Hamas’ War and the ‘Israel-Gaza’ War
The Daily Mail, the Financial Times, the Telegraph, Sky News, France 24, and even the Guardian have separate news sections on their websites for the “Israel-Hamas” War. On the other hand, Al Jazeera refers, and much more accurately given the balance of casualties, to the “Israel-Gaza” War. This subtle difference is important, because Israel, the most powerful military state in the region, is waging a war on the people of Gaza, whatever the official Israeli press statements claim.
According to a review of the mainstream Western press in Al Jazeera, “While the BBC has used words such as “massacre”, “slaughter” and “atrocities” when describing Hamas’s attack on Israel, it has refrained from describing Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in a similarly negative way, according to an email that staff at the network sent to Director-General Tim Davie, the UK’s Times reported.”
The Israeli government is well aware that they are in a propaganda war, and there is a strong suspicion that they are targeting reporters who may not be favourable to their narrative of the war. Last year, the Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was shot dead by an Israeli sniper near Jenin on the West Bank, although the IDF at first denied responsibility. She had been clearly wearing a ‘Press’ vest and helmet at the time.
Al Jazeera journalist targeted by IDF sniper
In the bombing Gaza last week, the Israelis killed the entire family of the head of the Al Jazeera Gaza office. A day later, a group of journalists near the border in South Lebanon, again clearly identified as press, were killed in what was described by Reuters as targeted fire. As of October 27, Al Jazeera reports, 25 Palestinian journalists have been killed, as well as four Israelis and a Lebanese – and naming them all, lest someone accuses it of exaggerating. It is clear from these deaths and previous incidents going back years that the IDF target Palestinian journalists.
While it is in the interests of the Palestinian population to broadcast news of their plight to the whole world, the Israeli government is anxious to minimise the press coverage of the carnage in Gaza. They have been assisted in that endeavour by the US government. Every press release by the IDF is repeated uncritically by Biden and the US media, whether it is about the bombing of the Al Ahli hospital or the general conduct of the war.
The Guardian reported that when he was visiting Qatar, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, asked the Qatari government – the owners of Al Jazeera – to “turn it down.” The call for the Qataris to “moderate” Al Jazeera’s reporting, the Guardian journalist noted, is an expression of the “US administration’s concern over the network reflects the high impact its coverage has on public opinion in the Arab world”. Al Jazeera is not the only broadcaster with reporters still on the ground in Gaza, but it probably has the most, therefore “enabling it to report on the destructive impact of Israel’s heavy bombardment.”
Gaza health ministry issues lists of names of the dead
Whatever the Israeli press office says is repeated by Joe Biden. Whatever Biden says is repeated a thousand times in the US and Western Press. Biden has also publicly questioned the accuracy of the casualty figures coming out of Gaza – something again repeated uncritically in the US media. What was not repeated was that the Health Ministry of Gaza – and again, the press is never tired of repeating that it is a ‘Hamas-controlled’ ministry, to cast doubt on its honesty – issue lists of names of the dead, not just numbers.
Even the UN representatives in Gaza have said that they believe the health ministry figures, which have been accurate in previous wars. Besides which, given the number of collapsed and devastated buildings, many of the dead still lay buried and undetencted, so the official figure likely to be an under-estimate.
In preparing their ground assault on Gaza, the Israeli government blocked all internet and mobile phone communications for several days. That blackout made it impossible for humanitarian and medical agencies to function at all, or for family members to keep in contact, all in the midst of a horrific bombardment.
As this article is being posted, we have learnt that the family of another Al Jazeera correspondent has been ‘advised’ to move – although there is nowhere safe to move to – and it is clear that Al Jazeera reports are becoming an irritant to the Israeli government’s propaganda war. As the ground war continues, we can expect that other measures of ‘electronic’ warfare may be brought to bear and that attempts will be made to limit the broadcasting of news and coverage out of Gaza. But it will not stop the tide of opionion globally moving relentlessly against Israel.
The mainstream media do their best to minimise or ignore altogethe the huge world-wide wave of protests over the bombing of Gaza, including one that shut down New York’s Grand Central Station, but those protests will continue as long as the bombing goes on, and they may yet produce political upheavals that Israel had not allowed for.
[Top picture from social media, showing march in support of Gaza in Manchester]
