Why Israel Blocks the Media From Gaza (And Why It’s Right)

Keeping so-called "journalists" out of Gaza is common sense, not censorship.

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This is a guest essay by Nachum Kaplan, who writes the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”

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

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Do you know why foreign journalists are not allowed inside Gaza?

The Israeli government is answerable to the Israeli citizenry, not to the New York Times, Le Monde, the BBC, or CNN. The media are not moral arbiters; just conglomerates that sell column inches and air time. Others are state-funded bureaucracies with manifest ideological agendas.

Israel is under no obligation to prove anything to them.

Journalists exhibit almost imperial conceit when they insist that they have some natural right to stroll onto any battlefield.

In truth, there are many places and proceedings to which journalists are denied access: cabinet meetings, intelligence briefings, jury deliberations, corporate boardrooms, trade negotiations, Papal conclaves, nuclear command bunkers, sports team strategy sessions, and Hollywood movie sets. The list is endless. No serious person imagines democracy has collapsed because reporters cannot barge into NATO’s war rooms.

Naturally, when it comes to Israel, the rules are magically rewritten. The expectation is that the Jewish state must fling wide its gates and allow hostile scribblers to tramp about a war zone as though it were an open-air museum.

Even the way the question is framed betrays how warped the conversation has become. Foreign journalists are not excluded from Gaza because Israel has anything to conceal. They are excluded for the same reason jurors are sequestered and intelligence is classified: security, integrity, and the preservation of human life. It is willfully dishonest to pretend otherwise.

Consider, too, the international press’ record. Since day one of the war, they have parroted Hamas falsehoods, recycled invented casualty figures, and published photographs that even a seeing-eye dog could see are staged. They have splashed headlines across the globe that would disgrace a provincial gossip rag.

Coverage of the Israel-Hamas war has been the most contemptible display of reporting since Johannes Gutenberg first set ink to paper.

When the press has consistently demonstrated hostility to Israel and indifference to truth, why would Jerusalem confer privileges upon it? The news media has shown itself to be neither neutral nor trustworthy. It has not yet grasped the contempt with which they are now held.

Many journalists covering the conflict are not even curious in the old-fashioned sense of pursuing facts. They are ideological operatives, wielding words and photographs as weapons against the Jewish state.

Editors and reporters might claim to be impartial and have professional standards. Such declarations are worth no more than my claim that I can outswim a pod of dolphins. There is equal evidence for both.

So complete is the grip of cognitive dissonance that editors cannot see how their demand for access sabotages their own credibility. For nearly two years, they have broadcast blood libels against Israel and printed Hamas talking points as if they were on retainer as the terror group’s public relations agency of record. Yet, they also whimper that they do not have access. That contradiction tells you everything you need to know.

If they truly lack access, then they cannot know what is happening. If they claim to know, then they tacitly admit they are merely transmitting Hamas’ bulletins.

And that, in fact, is the truth. Western outlets rely on stringers in Gaza. These so-called “local journalists” are usually Hamas operatives or sympathizers, or living under Hamas’ iron thumb. They produce photographs and videos at the regime’s direction. They are propagandists. Yet their fabrications fill the pages of The Guardian, the broadcasts of Al Jazeera English, and the front page of the New York Times.

Therefore, the better question than why will Israel not let reporters into Gaza is: Why on earth should it? Why should a country at war with a genocidal enemy invite in hostile agitators who will lie about its every move?

The double standard is incandescent. Journalists cannot report freely from areas that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority control. Attempting to publish anything critical there invites arrest, beatings, or worse. Yet media chieftains do no protest this or demand accountability and transparency. Their outrage is uniquely reserved for Israel.

The hypocrisy is gargantuan. The very same press corps that now insists on open access to Gaza never demanded access to the Iraqi battlefields when American forces were engaged in ferocious combat. They obediently embedded with U.S. troops or lounged in air-conditioned press briefings in the Green Zone. They never demanded to sit inside Russian command tents during the Chechen wars.

Much of the Syrian Civil War, which claimed half a million lives and involved atrocities as depraved as any in history, was reported from the bars of Beirut hotels. Foreign correspondents’ copy was based on whatever stories their local fixers ferried to them. Only with Israel do they demand the privilege of omniscience.

The reason is simple: For the press, Israel is not a nation to be reported on, but a predetermined story in which the Jewish state must always be the villain. The plot is etched in stone. If reality refuses to comply, it is excised. Facts are irrelevant; only images that can be weaponized matter. The story must be told.

The demand for access is just another stage prop. It allows journalists to masquerade as muzzled truth-seekers, to posture as courageous sentinels of democracy. In reality, they are actors in a Hamas-directed production. Their outrage is counterfeit; their demands hollow.

Let us also be clear about the stakes. Gaza is not Hyde Park. It is a battlefield riddled with tunnels, booby traps, irregular fighters who melt into the civilian populace, and where kidnapping is a central tactic.

To permit foreign journalists to wander about would be reckless to the point of madness. Each would become a prime hostage target, a bargaining chip in Hamas’ arsenal. Israel would then face international pressure to mount risky rescues or negotiate concessions. It would be criminally irresponsible to allow it.

Furthermore, journalists’ very presence can compromise military operations. Reporters often do not comprehend what they are observing. A single leaked image of equipment, fortifications, or troop movements can cost lives. During World War II, Allied governments imposed strict censorship of battlefield reporting precisely for this reason. Today, the conceit of the all-important journalist has erased that elementary common sense. It is delusional narcissism.

What the mainstream news media requires is not greater access, but a penitential dose of humility and honesty. It must confess that it has ceased to be an observer and has instead become a partisan in the conflict.

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