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Watching the watchdogs: America\u2019s reckoning with Israeli media manipulation | Opinions<\/p>\n
On November 8, the Israeli media monitoring group \u201cHonest Reporting\u201d published a report suggesting six Gaza-based freelance photographers who have been covering Israel\u2019s war on Gaza for four leading international media organisations may have had advance notice of Hamas\u2019s October 7 attack on southern Israel.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s reaction to the suggestion was swift and brutal.<\/p>\n
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s office accused the journalists named in the report of being \u201caccomplices in crimes against humanity\u201d. Danny Danon, a senior member of Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party and a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, wrote on X that the photojournalists should be \u201celiminated\u201d.\u201dWe will hunt them down together with the terrorists,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
The discourse on whether the Palestinian photojournalists and those who published their work had prior knowledge of the Hamas attack occupied media airways for a few days.\u00a0 But the controversy soon came to an abrupt end when all four media companies in question \u2013\u00a0 CNN, Reuters, The Associated Press and The New York Times \u2013 firmly rejected insinuations that they or the photographers they work with had any advance knowledge of the attack. They called Honest Reporting\u2019s story \u201cirresponsible\u201d and said, \u201cIt jeopardised the safety of all media working in Israel or the Palestinian territories.\u201d<\/p>\n
Honest Reporting Executive Director Gil Hoffman said he was \u201cso relieved\u201d to have found the four companies\u2019 statements on the issue \u201cadequate\u201d. He added that his organisation never \u201caccused\u201d the media companies of having advance knowledge of the attack but had only \u201craised questions\u201d.<\/p>\n
Why is this debacle worth remembering today? Because the incident had all the hallmarks of standard Israeli propaganda: using the real trauma and tragedy of a horrific attack to portray a conspiracy of collusion between Western media organisations and Israel\u2019s enemies.<\/p>\n
Propaganda campaigns or single salvos already dominate Palestinian-Israeli confrontations. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has developed effective propaganda and information manipulation techniques that give it an edge in getting the Western media to reflect its side of the story.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s important to note when things in this realm start to change. This tale about whether Gaza photojournalists had advance knowledge of Hamas\u2019s attack was the latest addition to a rapidly expanding list of recent Israeli propaganda efforts that have failed \u2013 mainly because Palestinians, Arabs, and most international observers of the conflict and the region now routinely investigate any serious Israeli accusation, and often expose it as a lie.<\/span><\/p>\n Consequently, American media, including organisations that traditionally presented Israeli views and allegations as fact without due diligence, now assess Israel\u2019s media statements and narratives more carefully, especially when they are about military actions that kill Palestinian civilians.<\/p>\n One national newspaper reporter privately told me that journalists in the United States are increasingly sceptical of narratives pushed by security forces whether in the US, Israel or any other country because of how the Black Lives Matter movement has raised awareness of social justice issues and exposed police hypocrisy and lies.<\/p>\n \u201cA soul-searching kind of change is going on,\u201d the journalist said, \u201cbecause we have to do better when reporting on race and ethnicity, especially in cases of violent incidents involving the police or military. Since 2020, we see the parallels between Black Lives Matter and Gaza very clearly.\u201d<\/p>\n In recent years, there have been many occasions when Israel was caught bending the truth or outright lying to hide from the world its crimes against Palestinians and violations of international law .<\/p>\n After Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed during an Israeli raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank in May 2022, for example, Israel claimed she was\u00a0 \u201chit by indiscriminate Palestinian gunfire\u201d in an exchange of fire with Palestinian gunmen. Yet, in a matter of days, several independent investigations confirmed that she was killed in a targeted attack by an Israeli sniper.<\/p>\n More recently, in early November, an Israeli air strike on an ambulance convoy in the besieged Gaza Strip killed 15 Palestinians. Israel said it was targeting \u201cHamas positions\u201d but failed to convince the international community.<\/p>\n