The Mainstream Media's Anti-Israel Obsession

Uncritical reporting has given credibility to the pernicious, well-organized lawfare campaign against Israel, designed to chip away at the Jewish state's legitimacy.

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This is a guest essay written by Nachum Kaplan of Moral Clarity.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

Share this essay using the link: https://www.futureofjewish.com/p/how-the-media-fuels-anti-israel-flames

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Lawfare is the use of legal bodies and institutions to damage, defame, or delegitimize an opponent.

The international lawfare campaign against Israel includes United Nations’ investigations, motions, and rulings; allegations at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court; and governments using political interpretations of well-established international norms including the Laws of Armed Conflict, International Humanitarian Law, and the Geneva Convention.

The media’s great complicity begins with its reporting of lawfare actions as real news rather than treating them for what they are — antisemitic acts. Israel is defending itself against a savage, unprovoked Jihadist attack on its civilians and its civilization.

Yet coverage, like lawfare itself, is designed to feed the lie that Israel is an aggressor which is killing civilians recklessly, or willfully. It fulfills all three of the Ds to identify antisemitism: delegitimization, demonization, and double standards.

Let us start with the most recent example — and there are many — the International Criminal Court’s disgraceful decision on Monday to issue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant for defending Israel against the bloodthirsty Islamists of Hamas.

Beyond the moral brainlessness of equating Israel’s elected leaders with Hamas’ terrorist leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — something that is undisguised blood libel — ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan has shown the world why internationalism has failed, and nationalism is back.

What person of sound mind would want to live in a world where a bureaucrat in a different country, representing a stateless body, with different values from you, and hostile to your culture, religion, and ethnicity, is imposing laws and prosecuting the leaders you elected to defend you?

Only someone who is self-loathing, hates freedom, and abhors democracy, would sign up to that. That is why 40 countries did not join the ICC. No self-respecting country would do so. Those that did have the national equivalent of no self-esteem.

Nationalism, at is worst, can veer into racism, but as this ICC blood libel shows, internationalism offers no protection from it. It just makes the prosecutor — in this case, the undistinguished Karim Khan — less accountable. The ICC, like many such bodies, is entirely unaccountable. The idea that it can credibly seek the prosecution of people from non-member states is a legal absurdity.

And yet the media headlines mislead everyone into thinking the Israeli government and Hamas are in the same league, and that the ICC has any real legitimacy or value.

Then there was the coverage of the UN’s investigation into Israel’s allegation that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), its Palestinian refugee agency, has employed and sponsored Hamas terrorists. Headlines have screamed that a UN report has said that Israel could not provide evidence that UNRWA staff were involved in terrorism. The UN report said nothing of the sort.

The media homed in on a single sentence in a somnambulistic 54-page report that said, “Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this.” Left out was that the investigation is ongoing and that the investigators would return to Israel this month. Of course, there is no evidence before the investigation tasked with finding evidence has been completed.

News stories overlooked the investigation’s other findings, including that 50 aspects of UNWRA’s operations fell short of its requirement to be neutral. That should have been the headline.

Reporting on everything related to do the International Court of Justice has been poor. Firstly, the media treats as an independent judicial body. That is fanciful. UN members appoint ICJ jurists so that they can secure legal rulings that support their political positions. Many ICJ judges come from authoritarian regimes without independent or credible judiciaries.

Even ignoring the false premise that the court is impartial, reporting is often deliberately misleading. Consider the court’s ruling on South Africa’s allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Allegedly reputable news outlets wrote, and continue to write, that the ICJ ruled there was a “plausible possibility” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

The court was not ruling about the plausibility of genocide. It was ruling on the plausibility of the rights asserted. In non-legalese, the court ruled that it was plausible the Palestinians have a right to be protected from genocide. That was not so hard to explain, was it?

South Africa was back at the International Court of Justice last week making new spurious allegations and the global media — like monkeys with organ grinders — is again doing their bidding, instead of holding the failing African state to account for peddling antisemitic lies.

The International Court of Justice was likewise asked to rule on Israel’s building of a security barrier in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank), which the media often lazily dubs the “apartheid wall.”

While it is often reported that the ICJ has issued an advisory opinion (meaning non-binding) that the wall was illegal, its ruling was more nuanced. It never used the word apartheid. It did not even rule that Israel had no right, in principle, to build such a barrier. It only criticized the barrier as being beyond the 1949 Israel-Jordan Armistice Demarcation Line, known as the Green Line vernacularly.

The misreporting excludes the fact that the Green Line has no legal significance. It is exactly as its name suggests, an armistice demarcation line. Neither Israel nor Jordan claims it as an international border.

The International Court of Justice has likewise been asked to rule whether Judea and Samaria is illegally occupied, in a case the UN has referred to it to ramp up pressure on Israel. This case is of zero consequence because the ICJ does not have jurisdiction (both parties must accept its jurisdiction in the matter and Israel does not).

The ICJ has as much jurisdiction to rule on this case as the U.S. Supreme Court does on matters in Canada. Rest assured, this fact will be lost in the headline and story writing.

Laws of War

The Laws of Armed Conflict are also deliberately misreported, most notably regarding the concept of proportionality. A country may lawfully defend itself against attacks provided its response is proportionate “to the military advantage gained”. That makes it complex, situational, and subjective.

However, it has nothing to do with the comparative death tolls that the media pretends it does. War is awful, even when it is lawful. Factually reporting what the law states is easy, unless the publication has an agenda.

Rarely noted is that Israel’s issuing of warnings to civilians that it plans to strike exceeds its legal obligations under International Humanitarian Law. The 1987 Commentary on Protocol 1 Article 57 is clear that a state’s obligation to warn civilians of an attack is subject to “derogation.”

In non-legalese, it means that a state’s obligation to give warning reduces if the element of surprise is required for an attack’s success. Israel, however, has given up any element of surprise so it can warn civilians.

Misreporting of the Geneva Conventions articles is another example. The Geneva Convention does not make civilian deaths unlawful. Protocol 1 Article 51 prohibits indiscriminate attacks, which it defines as attacks “not directed at a specific military objective” or are “of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.”

Other misreported articles of the Geneva Convention are those covering the forced movement of populations. Claims that Israel asking Palestinian civilians in Gaza to move out of battle zones and into humanitarian corridors violates the Geneva Convention are incorrect.

Far from being illegal, Israel’s moving of civilians out of harm’s way is a requirement of customary International Humanitarian Law, which makes the military command responsible for planning and executing an attack to take precautions to spare the civilian population.

The provision — or the allowance for the provision — of humanitarian aid is yet another area where reporting has been inaccurate. Israel has a passive duty to allow neutral third parties to render humanitarian assistance.

However, Israel may impose “technical conditions,” such as ensuring no weapons are being transported with aid. It may also demand the distributing agency is neutral, which UNRWA is not.

UNRWA is a supporter, sponsor, and facilitator of terror. The rationale behind these laws is to allow aid to be delivered to civilians without it being diverted to an enemy’s military forces, such as fuel going to Hamas.

Since Israel pulled out of Gaza completely in 2005, it is not an occupying power, so it does not have an active duty to supply basic humanitarian needs, such as electricity, fuel, water, and medical supplies.

The fact that Israel has continued providing these since 2005, despite its disengagement, prompted Israel’s Supreme Court to rule Israel cannot cut off such basic needs completely, although it ruled in 2008 that Israel was entitled to reduce such provisions.¹ Here is an example of Israeli law imposing a higher standard on Israel than international law.

UN Resolutions

The United Nations makes political resolutions, not legal determinations. Resolutions reflect a political consensus, not legal facts. So, every article that states Israel is “in violation” of a UN resolution is misleading. The UN Charter states that General Assembly resolutions have the status of “recommendations” and are non-binding.

The charter also states that UN Security Council resolutions are legally binding only when the council declares that a state has engaged in an act of aggression or poses a threat to world peace (Chapter VII). No such declaration has been made against Israel or its enemies.

There is no better example than the widely reported and believed claim that Israel is occupying Judea and Samaria illegally. The area is disputed. News reports with dateline such as “Occupied West Bank” are nothing more than editors setting themselves as arbiters of international law and spreading falsehoods to delegitimize Israel.

Just as repeating that the Earth is flat over and over does not make it so, the UN General Assembly repeatedly saying Israel is occupying the area illegally does not make it a legal fact. The UN General Assembly does not create law. In fact, it does nothing of value.

The other part of the media’s deliberate reporting of lawfare is the way it focuses on what violations Israel might have committed, with little or no mention of Hamas’ vast criminality. Its targeting of civilians, abducting of civilians, using civilians as human shields, and stealing of humanitarian aid are violations of the Laws of Armed conflict, International Humanitarian Law, and the Geneva Convention.

One can disagree whether these laws are just or right, but journalists should be reporting factually about what the laws state. The media’s failure to do so makes them complicit.

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1. Israeli legal scholars tell me it is unclear if the Israel Supreme Court ruling still holds given how long Israel has been out of Gaza.