{"id":1443,"date":"2025-06-26T15:36:02","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T15:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/06\/26\/israels-media-amplifies-war-rhetoric-ignores-gazas-suffering\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T15:36:02","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T15:36:02","slug":"israels-media-amplifies-war-rhetoric-ignores-gazas-suffering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/06\/26\/israels-media-amplifies-war-rhetoric-ignores-gazas-suffering\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel\u2019s media amplifies war rhetoric, ignores Gaza\u2019s suffering"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Last Thursday, just days after he had ordered strikes upon Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood outside Beersheba\u2019s Soroka Hospital and spoke of his outrage<\/a> that the building had been hit in an Iranian counterstrike.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re targeting civilians because they\u2019re a criminal regime. They\u2019re the arch-terrorists of the world,\u201d he said of the Iranian government.<\/p>\n

Similar accusations were levelled by other Israeli leaders, including the president, Isaac Herzog, and opposition leader Yair Lapid, during the conflict with Iran, which ended with a ceasefire brokered by United States President Donald Trump on Monday.<\/p>\n

However, what was missing from these leaders was an acknowledgement that Israel itself has attacked almost every hospital in Gaza<\/a>, where more than 56,000 people have been killed, or that the Strip\u2019s healthcare system has been pushed to near total collapse.<\/p>\n

It was an omission noticeable in much of the Israeli press reporting on the Beersheba hospital attack, with few mentions of the parallels between it and Israel\u2019s own attacks on hospitals in Gaza. Instead, much of the Israeli media has supported these attacks, either seeking to downplay them, or justifying them by regularly claiming that Hamas command centres lie under the hospitals, an accusation Israel has never been able to prove<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Palestinians
Israel\u2019s siege upon Gaza, supported by much of its media, has pushed the population to the brink of famine [File: Omar Al-Qattaa\/AFP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Weaponising suffering<\/h2>\n

According to analysts who spoke to Al Jazeera, a media ecosystem exists in Israel that, with a few exceptions, both amplifies its leaders\u2019 calls for war while simultaneously reinforcing their claims of victimhood, all while shielding the Israeli public from seeing the suffering Israeli forces are inflicting on Gaza and the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n

One Israeli journalist, Haaretz\u2019s media correspondent Ido David Cohen, wrote this month<\/a> that \u201creporters and editors at Israel\u2019s major news outlets have admitted more than once, especially in private conversations, that their employers haven\u2019t allowed them to present the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the suffering of the population there\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Israeli media \u2026 sees its job as not to educate, it\u2019s to shape and mould a public that is ready to support war and aggression,\u201d journalist Orly Noy told Al Jazeera from West Jerusalem. \u201cIt genuinely sees itself as having a special role in this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen [interviews with] people who lived near areas where Iranian missiles had hit,\u201d Noy added. \u201cThey were given a lot of space to talk and explain the impact, but as soon as they started to criticise the war, they were shut down, quite rudely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last September, a complaint brought by three Israeli civil society organisations against Channel 14, one of Israel\u2019s most watched television networks, cited 265 quotes from hosts they claimed encouraged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide. Among them, concerning Gaza, were the phrases \u201cit really needs to be total annihilation\u201d and \u201cthere are no innocents.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few months earlier, in April, the channel was again criticised within the Israeli media, this time for a live counter labelled \u201cthe terrorists we eliminated\u201d, which made no distinction between civilians and fighters killed, the media monitoring magazine 7th Eye pointed out.<\/a><\/p>\n

Analysts and observers described how Israel\u2019s media and politicians have weaponised the horrors of the past suffering of the Jewish people and have moulded it into a narrative of victimhood that can be aimed at any geopolitical opponent that circumstances allow \u2013 with Iran looming large among them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt isn\u2019t just this war,\u201d Noy, an editor with the Hebrew-language Local Call website, said. \u201cThe Israeli media is in the business of justifying every war, of telling people that this war is essential for their very existence. It\u2019s an ecosystem. Whatever the authority is, it is absolutely right. There is no margin for doubt, with no room for criticism from the inside. To see it, you have to be on the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world has allowed Israel to act as some kind of crazy bully to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants,\u201d Noy added. \u201cThey can send their troops into Syria and Lebanon, never mind Gaza, with impunity. Israel is fine. Israel is bulletproof. And why wouldn\u2019t they think that? The world allows it, then people are shocked when Iran strikes back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Israeli media largely serves as a tool to manufacture consent for Israel\u2019s actions against the Palestinians and in neighbouring countries, while shielding the Israeli public from the suffering its victims endure.<\/p>\n

Exceptions do exist. Israeli titles such as Noy\u2019s Local Call and +972 Magazine often feature coverage highly critical of Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, and have conducted in-depth investigations into Israel\u2019s actions, uncovering scandals that are only reported on months later by the international media. Joint reporting from Local Call and +972 Magazine has revealed that the Israeli military was using an AI system<\/a> to generate bombing target lists based on predicted civilian casualties. Another report found that the Israeli military had falsely declared entire Gaza neighbourhoods as evacuated<\/a>, which then led to the bombing of civilian homes in areas that were still inhabited.<\/p>\n

A more famous example is the liberal daily Haaretz, which regularly criticises Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza. Haaretz has faced a government boycott<\/a> over its coverage of the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not new,\u201d Dina Matar, professor of political communication and Arab media at SOAS University of London, said. \u201cIsraeli media has long been pushing the idea that they [Israel] are the victims while calling for actions that will allow them to present greater victimhood [such as attacking Iran]. They often use emotive language to describe a strike on an Israeli hospital that they\u2019ll never use to describe an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

Take Israeli media coverage of the siege of northern Gaza\u2019s last remaining functioning healthcare facility, the Kamal Adwan Hospital, in December.<\/p>\n

While descriptions of the attacks on the hospital from United Nations special rapporteurs spoke of their \u201chorror\u201d<\/a> at the strikes, those in the Israeli press, in outlets such as Ynet<\/a> or The Times of Israel,<\/a> instead focused almost exclusively upon the Israeli military\u2019s claims of the numbers of \u201cterrorists\u201d seized.<\/p>\n

Among those seized from the hospital were medical staff, including the director of Kamal Adwan, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, who has since been tortured in an Israeli military prison<\/a>, his lawyer previously told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Israeli coverage of the Soroka Hospital attack in Beersheba almost universally framed the hit as a \u201cdirect strike\u201d and foregrounded the experience of the evacuated patients and healthcare workers.<\/p>\n

\"Palestinian
Palestinian children react as they receive food cooked by a charity kitchen in Gaza City, June 21, 2025 [Mahmoud Issa\/Reuters]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In this environment, Matar said, Netanyahu\u2019s representation of Israel as home to a \u201csubjugated people\u201d reinforced a view that Israelis have long been encouraged to hold of themselves, even amid the decades-long occupation of Palestinian land.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one questions what Netanyahu is saying because the implications of his speech make sense as part of this larger historical narrative; one that doesn\u2019t allow for any other [narrative], such as the Nakba<\/a> or the suffering in Gaza,\u201d the academic said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Thursday, just days after he had ordered strikes upon Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood outside Beersheba\u2019s Soroka Hospital and spoke of his outrage that the building had been hit in an Iranian counterstrike. \u201cThey\u2019re targeting civilians because they\u2019re a criminal regime. They\u2019re the arch-terrorists of the world,\u201d he said of the Iranian … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}