Journalism out, hasbara in: How Israeli TV news joined the Gaza war effort
IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi gives a statement to the media at an army base in southern Israel, 26 December 2023
Eyal Lurie-Pardes writes in +972 on 6 March 2024:
For the last few months, people around the world have been closely following the ongoing brutality of the war in Gaza. Pictures of Palestinians fleeing south and looking for relatives under the rubble, videos of children searching for food and water — these and more have been circulating on social media and news networks every day since October 7.
But these images are practically nowhere to be found in the Israeli media. Most Israeli news outlets rarely even update the number of Palestinian casualties — which has surpassed 30,000 — nor do they inform their viewers that approximately 70 percent of the victims of the Israeli offensive are women and children.
The meta-narrative presented by the Israeli media defines Hamas’ attack on southern Israel as the genesis and the heart of the current geopolitical crisis. Every day there is a new angle on the events of October 7: new footage of the Hamas raids on the kibbutzim, testimonies of soldiers who participated in the battles, or interviews with survivors. Moreover, Israeli journalists cover current events in Gaza almost entirely through the single lens of October 7 and its ripple effects.
This is a conscious decision by the Israeli media. In an interview for The New Yorker, Ilana Dayan, one of Israel’s most highly-regarded journalists, explained, “We interview people about October 7 — we are stuck on October 7.” Oren Persico, a staff writer at The Seventh Eye, an independent investigative magazine focused on freedom of speech in Israel, told +972, “There is a cycle where the news outlets refrain from confronting the public with the uncomfortable truth, and as a result, the public does not ask for it.”
This cycle is understandable, to a certain extent. The October 7 attack was perhaps the greatest calamity in Israel’s history. On the deadliest day for the Jewish people since 1945, more than 1,200 Israelis were killed, and 243 were taken as hostages to Gaza, most of them civilians. For the first time in the state’s history, an enemy temporarily conquered Israeli-controlled territory. Jewish Israelis are continuing to process this national trauma and have, as a result, yet to regain their sense of security. News outlets, therefore, not only feed the public with a particular narrative but also objectively reflect the public sentiment.
Still, in the past five months, the Israeli media has done much more than merely reflect Israeli society back to itself. The media, and TV news in particular, has taken active steps to position itself as the embodiment of Israeli patriotism. It is defining what is in the public interest, drawing the boundaries of legitimate political discourse, and presenting only a certain truth to Israeli citizens. This position serves both their own commercial interests and the national interests stated by the government and the military. In so doing, TV news broadcasts are constantly walking a thin line between propaganda and journalism.