The war in Gaza is considered one of the most documented conflicts in the world, despite journalists being banned from the Strip for more than twao years. In the media’s absence – and despite the scale of destruction – residents have managed to transmit continuous reports to news outlets around the world, using nothing more than their phones.
And yet, despite the absence of any official foreign press in Gaza, ask (almost) any Israeli who is leading the campaign against Israel, and they will answer without hesitation: “the global media.” Some even go as far as calling it “the antisemitic global media.”
You don’t need to be a media expert to recognize the gap between the tone of Israeli media – local, patriotic, and the only Hebrew-language press in the world – and that of global outlets.
So how does this local media – with its military correspondents as close to their subjects as a tight uniform is to the general wearing it – explain the difference between its own reporting on Gaza and the coverage in foreign media? Easy: it breaks the mirror and labels global media as driven by preconceived notions (antisemitism), or operating under pressure from Muslim communities, or pushing for sanctions against Israel, and – needless to say – acting out of hatred for Israel.
And it’s not only the general public or the journalists functioning as the government’s stenographers who accuse global media of antisemitism. Even A Wonderful Country – Israel’s SNL-style satire show – took aim at the BBC in a series of sketches portraying the British public broadcaster as hating Israel.
Interim summary: There is a huge gap between the coverage of the war and its consequences in Hebrew-language media and the coverage in the foreign press. Conclusion: the foreign press is anti–Israeli government / anti-Israel / antisemitic.
Can we wrap it up? Well, no – because if you ask (almost) any Palestinian, they will make the exact same claim about global media, only in reverse. In their view, global media serves Israeli interests and erases the Palestinian narrative.
“Look,” they say, “at how much coverage the Israeli hostages received compared with Palestinian prisoners. Notice how the media avoids pushing for relevant policies or harsher sanctions against Israel, unlike the way it treats other countries accused of similar war crimes. And above all, see how global media adopts Israel’s ‘price list,’ as though the value of an Israeli casualty is different from that of a Palestinian – effectively supporting deep-rooted racism and the dehumanization of Palestinians.”
Just this month, 300 writers and intellectuals accused The New York Times of pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias. Read that again: they accused The New York Times – not Fox News, not Bild.
So who’s right? Probably no one. Global media is not a monolith but a constellation of different channels of consciousness that, in the end, examine a situation by weighing who is the strong party and who is the weak one, while also tending to identify more closely with the side that resembles its own way of life (the Israelis, as opposed to people riding donkeys).
What can we learn? That both sides see global media as the body that should judge between them – and at the same time refuse to accept its judgment, calling it a referee error.
And if you ask us, both are right and neither is right. There is no single global media; it does indeed come from a Western point of view, and it absolutely cannot ignore global comparisons between armed conflicts around the world.
