Israel’s own media is a weapon for its enemies.
The only country in the Middle East with free press gets vilified for using it.
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This is a guest essay written by John Matthews, a journalist and author of 24 books.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Al Jazeera, founded in 1996, could decidedly be considered the “new kid on the block” in media circles.
And its initial announced aim of bringing news more from an Arab and Middle East perspective than the current “Western-dominated” news channels of CNN and the BBC at least gave an honest appraisal of what to expect: that it was going to be seen from or biased towards that perspective, or perhaps they were suggesting that news generally was biased towards a Western perspective, so they were “evening the playing field.”
This might in part explain why with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestinian supporters often claim that the media is biased towards Israel, whereas to the rest of the world, or indeed anyone with 20/20 vision, the media, including 80 percent of Western media, is decidedly angled against Israel and leans towards being supportive of (or at least having stronger sympathies for) the Palestinians. Perhaps in part due to a natural leaning to having sympathy for “underdogs” — but that bias is plainly there.
So, the addition of Al Jazeera angled that already-evident Western media bias against Israel even sharper against them. Subsequently, the addition of online news journals such as Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, Middle East Eye, and numerous independent “hate-hack journalists” made that angle against Israel an impossible slippery slope.
Indeed, while strongly Left-leaning in its editorial policies, Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently had an article about the bias against Israel found in organizations such as the BBC, which found that the BBC repeatedly downplayed Hamas terrorism, while presenting Israel as a militaristic and aggressive nation.
According to the data, Israel was mentioned as committing war crimes four times more than Hamas (127 versus 30), 14 times more as committing genocide (283 versus 19), and six times more times as violating international law (167 versus 27).
But articles like that which take a supportive view of Israel are often overshadowed in Haaretz by those which are angled against. Many times I’ve been in an online debate and a “pro-Palestinian” advocate will cite an article to support their point-of-view, and all too often the source is Haaretz. As if knowing that a quote from Al Jazeera or Middle East Eye will count for little, because extreme bias or inaccuracy is expected, but in the case of Haaretz, “It’s an internal Israeli newspaper, so it must be true.”
How could that perceived bias against their own people and nation have come about?
Originating in 1918, almost 80 years before Al Jazeera, its first owners were socialist-leaning Zionist owners from Russia, and that “Left-leaning” has persevered throughout, perhaps even accentuated by the fact that Israel’s other main newspapers, notably Israel Today (Yisrael Hayom), The Times of Israel, and The Jerusalem Post are either mainstream or lean more to the Right.
So, with a current Right-wing government under a Likud1 coalition and Benjamin Netanyahu, Haaretz is the main newspaper critical of their policies, which then might include war actions, such as the current Gaza war.
As a result, internal criticisms from the Israeli public that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is putting the war and eradication of Hamas before welfare of the hostages will appear more in Haaretz than other Israeli papers. One Haaretz report I read recently disputed the number of Hamas terrorists the IDF had declared, claiming that a number were civilians. Other newspapers in Israel generally veered towards the IDF figures being accurate.
Of course, in any debate, Palestinian supporters will dive on that Haaretz claim and declare it as the “accurate one.” But to do so ignores a few crucial factors. While most of the Haaretz editorial staff are Jewish, albeit Left-leaning, a number of staff are Israeli-Arabs, with the Arabic edition chief editor, Hanin Majadli, a Palestinian Arab.
In addition, Haaretz doesn’t have any reporters within Gaza, so they are reliant on “stringers” who are all Palestinian Arabs and invariably fed by data direct from Hamas. So, any data coming from those sources would be prone to heavy bias and quite circumspect.
Though, to be fair to Haaretz’s editorial staff, the incidences where they appear harsh and critical of their own nation and its policies are at most 35 percent of their editorial, even though that negative margin is latched onto so strongly by anti-Zionist-pro-Palestinian supporters that it appears the predominant factor.
It’s a bit like in the UK reading The Guardian and expecting them to be praiseworthy of the Conservative Party’s policies. It’s not going to happen even though they will overall appear supportive of the British nation and its people.
The crucial factor is that there is no equivalent to Haaretz in the Arab world. No free press internally criticizing their own nations and their policies.
Indeed, while Al Jazeera was set up as a free press on international news, there would never be criticism of Qatar’s internal policies and all its external news reporting would follow a strict Qatari editorial line: die-hard support of the Palestinians, including Hamas, and denigration of Israel. Of course, this is hardly surprising for a nation that has given Hamas almost $2 billion over the years and also provided a sanctuary to its leaders.
In fact, Al Jazeera is the only main news station reporting from inside Gaza. The others, including majors like CNN and the BBC, sit in hotel rooms in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and, like Haaretz, rely on Palestinian Arab “stringers” and information feeders from within Gaza.
Little surprise, therefore, that the general bent of all the news coming out of the area is anti-Israel. Seasoned journalist, Nachum Kaplan, himself a long-standing past Reuters correspondent, reported on the irony of Western journalists, sitting safely in luxury hotel rooms in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, fully protected by an Israeli army and the Iron Dome, while reporting how terrible Israel is.
That one-way slant of the Western media against Israel isn’t just due to their reliance on Hamas-fed Palestinian “stringers” and journalists inside Gaza, because even if they were to actually go into Gaza (which was the case prior to the end of 2023), they knew that they would be unable to report negatively on Hamas. Hamas imposes strict rules that any journalists reporting negatively on them are barred from future entry or reporting from there again; indeed, the whole news network is often barred from entering and reporting again.
And this situation also exists in the Palestinian Authority-controlled parts of the West Bank, as can be seen from the Italian News station RAI, which filmed the Ramallah lynching of two off-duty Israeli soldiers in 2000. The entire network was banned from future reporting in the territory, until they sent a grovelling letter of apology to the Palestinian Authority.
But the whole episode sent a warning shot towards all other media organizations: Report negatively against any Palestinian interests and you’ve seen what happens; you’re either barred from future reporting or have to send a letter of apology which destroys your future credibility as an impartial news organization.
But no such fears of Al Jazeera ever reporting negatively about Palestinians. Indeed, the extent of Al Jazeera’s bias was displayed six months into the Gaza war, at a time when the subject of Hamas militants operating from within Gaza hospitals was a hot topic.
Al Jazeera mistakenly put out a clip of Hamas terrorists within a Gaza hospital waving their rifles and AK-47’s wildly in the air. They quickly realized their mistake, pulling the clip within minutes, but it had already been picked up on online and soon went viral. From that point it was official: Nothing Al Jazeera reported could be trusted.
An example of Al Jazeera’s bias (and indeed their propensity towards supporting terrorist groups) was displayed at the outset of the Northern Alliance’s assault on Afghanistan in response to 9/11. After Al Jazeera broadcast supportive interviews with Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders, the U.S. lost their patience and bombed their Kabul offices (overnight while empty, so no loss of life).
But with the current Gaza war, just imagine if Qatar had an internal newspaper equivalent to Haaretz in Israel, then some hard and fast questions could have been asked as to why they’d sent almost $2 billion to Hamas ,or let their leaders luxuriate in Qatar hotel rooms while their people were bombed, with little or no effort to stop the war.
Equally pertinent questions, which have indeed been posed recently by Western media, are why has Qatar invested multi-billions into U.S. businesses, universities, teaching, and research institutions?
An eagle-eye has always been kept on the amount of Israeli lobbying money poured into the United States. Why haven’t those same detractors raised alarm bells when Qatar has invested three times as much into U.S. institutions. Especially when you consider what a strong and supportive friend Israel has been to the U.S. and vice-versa, contrasted against Qatar’s support of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda (responsible for 9/11) and now Hamas.
That massive Qatari investment in the U.S. has in particularly focused on universities. Could this be why anti-Israel activism has markedly increased at leading U.S. universities this past few years? Certainly, this spike corresponding with this heavy Qatari investment is ominous.
Given that worrying background, perhaps U.S. President Donald Trump should reject the presidential jumbo-jet offered to him by the Qataris, since it could well be a Trojan horse.
An Israeli Right-wing political party, currently chaired by Benjamin Netanyahu
One of the most frustrating aspects of the situation for those of us who support Israel is what comes out of Haaretz. It's not surprising to me that its founders came out of the USSR. A good deal of what it publishes sounds like Russian/Hamas propaganda.
Virtually no one in Israel reads Haaretz anymore because they recognize it for the propaganda rag that it is (even though the level of writing is above the other papers). It makes most of its money from the English language edition where it supplies anti-Israel material to Jew haters who can point to it and say--look, even Israeli papers are against Israel. The Times of Israel is not much better. They mainly hire people who have little idea about what is going on in Israel and most of their analyses are wildly inaccurate. If you want to know what is going on in English I suggest the English version of Yisrael Hayom