Israel is continuing the genocide – but the UK media will not tell you
Palestinian children gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen during Ramadan, in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on 3 March 2025
Hamza Yusuf writes in Middle East Eye on 12 March 2025:
A ceasefire does not mean that Israel has dropped its goal to annihilate Gaza. The mission remains the same, and the war crimes endure, including killings – the method just shifts. Now, the textbook starvation of the enclave is the weapon of choice.
But the British public will not be privy to such details – not if they rely on the mainstream media to report them accurately.
In early March, as the first phase of the ceasefire was ending and the full withdrawal of Israel’s forces from Gaza was supposed to take place, Israel decided to block all aid from entering the territory.
The media reported it but, characteristically, thinned out the details. Israel is “stopping all aid into Gaza”, reported Sky News. Israel “blocks entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza”, read the online BBC headline. LBC’s article stated, “Israel halts all aid and supplies coming into Gaza”.
Missing from every outlet was the crucial added context: as concluded by Human Rights Watch (HRW), this was a flagrant violation of international law. Legal experts confirmed it constituted a genocidal act.
But the tried-and-tested strategy of propaganda by omission reigned supreme. Why provide the intricate details and allow readers to connect the dots about Israel’s cruelty when key information can simply be suppressed?
Propaganda by omission
Within days, Israeli officials were threatening to cut off electricity and water completely, imposing a total siege on Gaza, while continuing to displace more Palestinians from northern Gaza.
The Telegraph reported this proposal as a “hell plan”. Yet it apparently did not occur to journalists, researchers, or editors at the outlet to mention that Israel was threatening another complete siege of Gaza and further Palestinian ethnic cleansing. The best the right-wing broadsheet could muster was to call Israel’s intended crime “provocative” – not because of the humanitarian catastrophe it would cause, but because it would take place during Ramadan.
Even at the supposedly progressive Independent and Guardian, the same skewed rules of engagement applied.
They could have noted that the International Criminal Court already has arrest warrants for starvation crimes against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Or they could have mentioned that deliberately starving Gaza would violate the International Court of Justice’s orders to prevent genocide. Even a simple acknowledgment that Israel was committing repeat war crimes would have sufficed.
Instead, both newspapers framed Israel’s latest violation of international law with a softened touch.