When the United Nations Secretary-General publicly criticized Israel for its shelling of a UN school that was sheltering Palestinians, causing the death of 40 Palestinians who had taken shelter there, Israel’s propaganda machine went to work. A list of so-called Palestinian terrorists, their names, photos, and their position within the Islamic resistance movement was made available to the powerful pro-Israeli media machine. The only problem is that the list had nothing to do with those killed. It included a person who has been outside of Gaza for 18 years, an older man who died years ago from a natural death, and another who died days before the so-called targeted attack supposedly against individuals Israel considers to be terrorists.
While the truth is always the first victim of wars, the Israelis have gone one step further and have totally controlled the media narrative. For eight long months of a bloody brutal war in Gaza Israel has prevented all foreign journalists including hundreds who are accredited in Israel.
International journalists based in Egypt or those who had flown to Egypt, including a senior CNN war reporter, were told by the foreign minister of Egypt that Israel had threatened that it would cut off humanitarian aid to Palestinians if any foreign journalist was allowed from the Egyptian side.
Israeli journalists have also not been allowed into Gaza by the Israeli government since 2007. And during the current war a few have been allowed to accompany Israeli soldiers into Gaza only under IDF supervision.
Palestinians working for international media were not immune from the indiscriminate Israeli war machine. According to the NY-based Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Paris-based Reporters Without Border, the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza exceeded 100. Media outlets owned by major international media were also bombed by Israel. In May 2024, Israel closed down Al Jazeera on false claims that its reporting constitutes a threat to national security.
According to the International Red Cross: “journalists and their equipment enjoy immunity, as long as they do not take a direct part in the hostilities. News media, even when used for propaganda purposes, enjoy immunity from attack except when they are used for military purposes.
Israel & Its Supporters Want to Control the Narrative
Why is the so-called only democracy in the Middle East banning access to journalists?
It is not about the safety of foreign journalists. Israel has allowed medical and humanitarian workers into Gaza but not journalists. Saying that it is for their own protection doesn’t fly when war journalists around the world are familiar with the risks they take and can make their own decisions about when and where to go and how to stay safe. If doctors and food kitchen workers are allowed in (they have not been spared either) then the simple justification about protection from October 7th till now doesn’t make sense.
A better understanding of the reasons for the ban on journalists has to do with the constant aim of Israel and its supporters to control and spin their narrative. Sure, war has its secrets but the biggest problem in this war has been the repeated accusations against Israel of committing war crimes against civilians, hospitals, churches, schools, and universities.
Israel claims, without proof, that many of those locations were “headquarters” of Hamas. Evidence that the Israeli army presents to the world is worthless in terms of credibility and has been debunked many times by courageous investigative journalists.
But let us imagine if journalists like CNN’s Anderson Cooper, The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristoff, or BBC’s Lyse Doucet were at the Shifa Hospital when Israel rolled out the fabricated video claiming that Hamas fighters (they called them terrorists) were using the basement of that hospital as their headquarters. If any well-known anchor or foreign journalist were around, he or she could have easily rejected the claim by simply saying I am at the hospital, checked it out and the claims are bogus. But Israel was not willing to have anyone expose its lie which was necessary to continue the military efforts, aimed at forcing the Palestinian resistance fighters to surrender. How many innocent Palestinian lives would have been saved had Israel allowed foreign journalists into the war theatre?
A group of 50 well-known international journalists signed a letter in February calling on Israel to permit foreign journalists into Gaza. However, the letter has fallen on deaf ears.
Regardless and as obvious as Israel’s goal in controlling the narrative is, the complicity of Western media anchors, editors, broadcasters, and corporate chiefs should not be overlooked. A simple note or a superimposed text should be made every time a report about or from Gaza is broadcast or printed. The note should say: Israel denied our reporters access to Gaza. If this message is made and repeated every single time that a story about Gaza is published or broadcast, the so-called only Democracy in the Middle East would be forced to give in.
But Western broadcasters and editors are clearly part of the problem not part of the solution. If truth is the first victim of war, then America, Europe, Australia, and other like-minded media platforms are part of this victimhood of the truth.
A similar letter is being circulated with the following text:
“We, the signatories below, veteran Palestinian and international journalists, mourn the deaths of Palestinian journalists and call for the release of all held without charge or trial.”
“While we understand that military secrets are a part of the war, we reject the continuous and inflexible Israeli government ban on the ability of journalists to access the war theatre in Gaza. International humanitarian law recognizes the right of journalists to cover up war and for the combatants to provide them with safety and immunity. But the idea of banning reporters from on-the-ground coverage is unacceptable.”
“Israel needs to immediately provide access and safety to all journalists, local or international, following its obligations under international law.”
“Further, the public needs to be fully informed of the Israeli government’s press restrictions.”
“It runs contrary to basic journalistic standards for media outlets to repeat Israeli government claims without the ability to authenticate them on the ground.”
“In this vein, we call on media outlets and media corporations throughout the world to clearly state, publicly and prominently, that the Israeli government is preventing such access every time a report on Gaza is broadcast and published. We demand that this undemocratic ban on journalism be rescinded.”
Huge Pressure on Palestinian Journalists
The absence of foreign media (despite hundreds being accredited in Israel) from the Gaza war zone, put huge pressure on Palestinian journalists, many working freelance for international agencies. Israel doesn’t recognize Palestinian journalists even if they wear protective gear, doesn’t issue press cards, and doesn’t attempt to exclude them from the attacks and shelling that has spared no one. The NY-based Committee to Protect Journalists documented that Israel has killed at least 109 Palestinian journalists, and arrested 51 since October 7th. CPJ also documented the damage and destruction of 50 media offices in Gaza leaving journalists working in those media companies no place to go to.
No wonder there is a chasm today between the young digitally wired peoples around the world, and especially in the global north including university students and their older generations. One gets information relatively unfiltered from social media and posts by courageous Palestinian bloggers and journalists, and those depending on legacy media get highly spun narratives with a strong dose of Israeli input, no journalists on the ground, and non-Palestinian experts explaining to their older audiences how careful Israel is in carrying out this war of revenge that has devastated an entire community in Gaza.
The Role of Social Media
In a study of the size and pattern of social media posts on the popular TikTok social media site, Laura Edelson, an assistant professor at Northeastern’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences said that the difference was huge. “What we see with pro-Palestine posting activity — it grows organically over time, it culminates and then it has a symmetric decline,” says Edelson, a computer scientist who studies largely online activity. Edelson said in the period between October 7th and December 15th, 2023, there were 170,430 pro-Palestinian posts, 8,843 pro-Israeli posts, and 101,706 neutral or general posts.
Edelson also looked at the posts’ page views — there were 236 million views for pro-Palestinian posts, 14 million for pro-Israeli posts, and 492 million views for neutral or general posts.
Yet despite this huge pro-Palestinian presence on social media, many users of social media complained that they were facing a variety of restrictions on their wording, images, and also the distribution of their content. Certain words automatically produced either temporary or permanent closures. To counter that, many social media activists started to misspell some keywords like Hamas writing with a hyphen or period like ha-mas or h.a.m.a.s (both in English and in Arabic).
The bigger problem, however, was what is often referred to as shadow banning. This is where a social media algorithm is tweaked in such a way as to lessen the distribution of posts that appear to be pro-Palestinian.
To counter the shadow banning, Dutch activist Carolien Nieuweboer used billboards to influence public opinion in her country, the Netherlands, by displaying impactful billboards on highways in response to Israeli propaganda regarding Gaza. Speaking to The New Arab Carolien said that she raised 72,000 Euros for her campaign, which she used to feature supportive images calling for an end to the war in Gaza and the cessation of Israeli aggression on highway billboards in the Netherlands. Carolien believes that the voice of the Palestinians has been “almost absent or ignored by mainstream media,” adding “We cannot remain silent in the face of injustice, and we cannot witness this genocide happening before our eyes without speaking out, as silence would be complicity with the oppressed.”
Forty-eight organizations, including 7amleh, the Arab Centre for Social Media Advancement, which advocates for the digital rights of Palestinian and Arab civil society, issued a statement on October 13th, 2023, urging tech companies to respect Palestinian digital rights during the ongoing war.
“We are [concerned] about significant and disproportionate censorship of Palestinian voices through content takedowns and hiding hashtags, amongst other violations,” the statement said. “These restrictions on activists, civil society, and human rights defenders represent a grave threat to freedom of expression and access to information, freedom of assembly, and political participation.”
Some social media gurus found creative ways to bypass the shadowbanning problem. Activists would post a simple photo of nature on Instagram which naturally would pass the algorithm intended against pro-Palestinian content. Users in time would know the trick and once they see the image of a tree or any other image of nature, they would open that page and scroll back to some of the posts that the algorithm had not allowed. Others were even more daring and more effective. They would post a tiny emoji of an Israeli flag which the algorithm would think is certainly not a pro-Palestinian post and would allow it. The clever digital activists would at the same time order that the emoji disappear after one second of posting which meant that the post would pass the digital restriction but would rarely be noticed by end users.
After continuous protests and questions from social media companies like TikTok and X (Twitter) for not notifying users that their accounts are shadow-banned, a change took place. As of 2022, Instagram does. By checking your “account status” in the app’s settings, you can see if your content has been marked as “non-recommendable” due to potential violations of Instagram’s content rules. This is also noticeable if other users have to type your full profile name for you to appear in search.
After a year-long study and despite recommendations from its own appointed board in March, Meta, the digital giant that owns Facebook, Instagram, and other threads finally allowed the use of the Arabic word shaheed (martyr) in July.
Bias of the International Media
The problem and bias long preceded October 7th. When an Israeli sniper shot dead American Palestinian Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, Israel was able to prevent efforts at an investigation, and the American government and media, while making some coverage of the case, let it go after a while. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, held in a Russian jail, is regularly mentioned in conferences, public events, and state dinners. When Washington Post reporter, Jasen Rezaian, was arrested in Iran, Americans kept the pressure on them until he was released. Where is the pressure for an investigation into the murder of Abu Akleh or the reason for the arrest without trial or charge of 50 West Bank Palestinian journalists and the death of over 100 in Gaza?
To redeem this terrible injustice to the worldwide journalism profession corporate media must rise to the occasion and insist on the public’s right to hear first-hand from their own reporters who should be allowed into Gaza and shielded from the Israeli indiscriminate attacks. Short of that every report must include the simple but powerful qualifier that the Israeli authorities are preventing our reporters from entering Gaza.
In a positive act by a UN agency, Palestinian journalists covering Gaza have been named as laureates of the 2024 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, following the recommendation of an International Jury of media professionals. The Award Ceremony took place on May 2-4, 2024, in the margins of the World Press Freedom Conference in Santiago, Chile.