Stories the Media Purposely Ignore About Israel
This is not just a whine about the state of journalism and media bias. The stakes are incredibly high in terms of the war itself and the rise in antisemitism globally.
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This is a guest essay written by Nachum Kaplan of the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
The mainstream media’s shock at the U.S. presidential election result has shown how many newsrooms are out of touch with what they purport to be covering.
Regardless of how one feels about the U.S. election outcome, the results make it clear: How most legacy media views the world is quite different to how most Westerners do.
As a journalist and media strategist, I follow these things closely, and have written about the drivers of change and decline in mainstream media, and some particular peculiarities in the U.S. media.
None of this surprises anyone who has followed international media’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran-Insert-Your-Own-Islamist-Group war.
Since the Hamas-led October 7th massacres and kidnappings in Israel, coverage has looked like it was about a dystopian parallel universe in which Israel was the aggressor and Iran and its proxies are the victims. A key part of the media’s bias against Israel has been in what it has chosen not to report on or not to feature prominently.
Here are some stories that should have been major ones, or at least been a significant part of the coverage, which would have given audiences a more honest and comprehensive understanding of the conflict. They are also great news stories in their own right.
The Scale of Rocket and Missile Attacks Against Israel
News media would have you believe that Hamas led the attacks against Israel on October 7th and then Israel struck back with overwhelming and disproportionate force — and is now effectively the aggressor.
Yet, more than 28,000 rockets have been fired at Israel since October 7th, 2023. That is a rocket every 19 minutes for an entire year. Some 14,150 of these came from Lebanon and Syria, 13,200 from Gaza, 350 from Iran, 180 from Yemen, and 150 from Iraq. And this is just the rockets. It does not include non-stop attacks from the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, nor all the drones, of which Hezbollah has fired about 1,200, or Iran’s ballistic missile attack, or any other 300 terror attacks a month that Israel faces.1
The sheer frequency and magnitude of these attacks almost never get conveyed, which is extraordinary given their centrality to the conflict. Nowhere else would a year of such sustained rocket and missile fire, often deliberately aimed at civilian population centers, not be headline news. It is as if Israel is just expected to live with this, when no other country would even think about doing so.
Israel’s campaigns in Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere in its seven-front war are in direct response to these continuing attacks. Yet, it is only Israel’s response that gets reported and scrutinized in endless detail. This seems like the sort of thing a half-decent foreign correspondent should write, especially when they can look up at the sky from their hotel courtyards and see the rockets overhead.
The Impacts on Israeli Society
The media has provided almost blow-by-blow accounts of Palestinian and Lebanese suffering — and almost none of Israeli suffering. This has fed the illusion that Israel is the aggressor and causing wanton destruction.
At one point, as many as 200,000 Israelis were internally displaced along the Israel-Gaza and Israel-Lebanon borders. There are still about 100,000 Israelis — Jews and Arabs — displaced in the North, where Israel has effectively lost sovereignty. They have been homeless for over a year. Rarely are such people interviewed or humanized.
Some 1,706 Israelis have been killed, more than 5,400 injured, and 101 who have been held hostage in Gaza for 406 days.2 Additionally, thousands of Israeli homes have been destroyed and Hezbollah rockets have started 41 wildfires that have burned through more than 10,000 dunams of foliage.3
The minimal international coverage of this leads to the inescapable conclusion that the media does not care about Jewish or Arab suffering, unless Jews have caused it. Only in the latter case does the media over-publicize what would otherwise barely be backpage news. As the tiresome saying goes: “No Jews, no news.”
By contrast, Palestinian casualties and lies about them get extensively reported and underwhelmingly fact-checked. Yes, the Palestinian numbers are higher, but that in no way explains why the media should report only one side’s casualties or ignore that the Jewish state is under siege. The media’s inadequate coverage of how severely Israel is under attack, and how devastating the impact has been, propagates the deliberate effect of making it look like only one side is doing the shooting.
This is journalistic maleficence.
One of Modern History’s Most Amazing Scandals
A United Nations refugee agency doubling as a vast terror organization should have been a story of Jurassic proportions, with a much-hyped 10-part Netflix documentary series already long in production, and thus should have resulted in UN heads rolling at a pace unseen since the French Revolution. In my three decades working in international journalism, I have never seen a bigger and more damning scandal.
Yet, Israel’s ban of the agency has been bigger news than the fact that the UN is running, and the West is funding, a billion-dollar terrorist organization. The media has created the impression that there are just a few rogue people in the UN agency for Palestinian “refugees” (UNRWA) who were involved in the October 7th massacres and kidnappings, and a few more who were close to Hamas, and that UNRWA has dealt with it.
This is pure guff.
UNRWA is a head-to-toe terrorist organization that is indistinguishable from Hamas. They are two hydra heads of the same terror beast. It is impossible to strike one without hitting the other.
Here are some facts that I managed to pull off the endangered species list:4
UNRWA staff participated in the October 7th attacks and at least 10 percent of UNRWA’s 30,000 staff have Hamas connections. Put another way, at least 3,000 UNRWA staff — virtually an entire military brigade — have links to the jihadist terror group.
The UN agency’s headquarters in Gaza housed a Hamas data center.
Recently assassinated Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar carried a UNRWA passport.
UNRWA buildings and schools stored extensive Hamas arsenals and were connected to Hamas’ tremendous tunnel network.
UNRWA schools taught Palestinian children a wildly antisemitic and jihadist syllabus that radicalized Palestinians to aspire to die as martyrs killing Jews. These are not syllabus oversights. It is estimated that at least 1,000 changes would be needed to remove all the antisemitic references.5
The Israeli government has been complaining about this for years, essentially ignored each and every time. Historians will marvel that UNRWA was ever allowed to operate for so long.
In a morally sane universe, Israel’s banning of UNRWA would not be controversial. It is patently ridiculous to think Israel, or any country, should allow an organized, well-funded terror group to operate within its borders and cooperate with it.
It is equally ridiculous that the media, which devotes thousands of column centimeters and inches to things such as Hillary Clinton’s emails, could not find enough digital ink to cover one of modern history’s most amazing scandals in a remotely proper fashion.
What Israel Should Have Done
News media has been highly critical of Israel’s response to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah (which joined Hamas one day after October 7th) in Lebanon. Leading writers have had cataclysms leveling false allegations of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes against Israel, but they have never written seriously about what Israel should do (or have done) instead.
Editorials lamenting the loss of innocent lives, detailing the horrors of war, and demanding an immediate ceasefire are easy to write. Penning ones with credibility is very difficult, though, because it requires being able to write what else Israel could, or should, do.
Given that a ceasefire would leave Hamas and Hezbollah in power, not reduce their threats to Israel, not stop them from attacking again, leave Hamas and Hezbollah’s terror infrastructure in place, and not get Israel’s hostages back — to name but a few challenges — what policies other than war could Israel realistically follow?
An in-depth story trying to answer such questions seriously, without being awry with the fairies and thinking that everyone just stopping shooting is a serious solution, would still make an excellent story for some enterprising journalist.
What a Palestinian State Might Look Like
I have written why a two-state solution is a terrible idea, and one reason is that a Palestinian state would be a dictatorial terror state. Anyone sincere about there being a Palestinian state, which seems to be most of the commentariat, needs to explain how a Palestinian state could be made viable.
There is an excellent story to be written on what a “reformed” Palestinian Authority would look like, what would need to happen to achieve it, what obstacles to it are, and how feasible and realistic it is. How could a Palestinian state become the only democratic one in the Arab world? How could Islamism be tamed, given its widespread support among Palestinians?
These are huge questions. I suspect no journalist has tackled this topic properly because they know it will become apparent that a Palestinian state will be a shambles for both Palestinians and Israelis, and they do not want to admit this because it would challenge their deep-seated “anti-Israel” narrative.
This is not just a whine about the state of journalism and media bias. The stakes are incredibly high in terms of the war itself and the rise in antisemitism globally, most recently evident in the modern-day pogrom in Amsterdam. Honest, fact-based reporting would help people form more rational and reasonable conclusions about the conflict.
Journalism has changed. The days of great titles or mastheads that command respect are long gone. However, there are still good journalists and great pieces of journalism being done. Professionally covering topics such as these is a way they could do the industry (and the audience it purports to serve) justice.
Armed Conflict Location & Event Data
Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre
“Hezbollah rockets spark fires burning 10,000 dunams of open areas in north.” Times of Israel.
“The Case Against UNRWA.” UN Watch.
“As calls to deradicalize Palestinian textbooks get louder, some urge a broader focus.” The Times of Israel.
As for the UN, can't wait to watch Elise Stefanik REALLY call them out and start the process of defunding/disbanding them either permanently or until we get REAL ambassadors in there.
I would hope that the recent 20 minute talk between President Trump and PM Netanyahu, besides the congratulations by the latter to the former, went something like this.
Pres. Trump: Mr. Prime Minister, give us a list of your requirements, we will send it, and then go to work. Get back to me when you are finished. Meanwhile, I have a few other things to do.
PM: No problem Mr. President. See ya.