By Nimra Atiq
In an effort to control the narrative in Western media, Israel is increasingly dismissing and marginalising journalists and pro-Palestinian commentators. An enemy that uses a military strategy that can be summed up as destroying as much civilian infrastructure as possible and then denies that the “targets” are civilians or that the actions are civilian in nature heavily relies on state media that is sympathetic to its goals in order to distort the obvious and present it as something other than what it seems. Many fronts are integrated in a resistance movement that is successful. Palestinian journalists are crucial to presenting the truth in the face of this enemy.
Israel’s strategic use of propaganda indicates that Western media manipulation has become vital to the nearly four-week confrontation between Israel and Palestine. Social media and alternative perspectives became essential in providing a multi-voiced viewpoint on Israel’s atrocities in besieged Gaza and the humanitarian crisis amidst mainstream failures.
Israel declared war on Hamas following the attack on October 7, 2023, closing off Gaza’s borders and subjecting Palestinian civilians to collective punishment that included preventing the entry of fuel, food, medicine, and water. Over 11,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in the last four weeks, despite Israel’s assertions that it only targets Hamas and avoids targeting civilians. There are two battlefields where the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine is being fought as it approaches its second century. The first is the on-the-ground violence, which has escalated dramatically in recent weeks. The second is the less evident but no less fierce conflict in North America and Europe’s media and public information domains, where Israel and its proxies have intensified their efforts to intimidate journalists who voice pro-Palestine or impartial, historically contextualised opinions. Many journalists have faced similar situations since the beginning of the most recent Israeli war on Gaza, including suspension or termination.
Zahraa Al-Akhrass’s employment, Global News in Canada, fired her because of her social media posts that highlighted the plight of the Palestinian people. When Kasem Raad questioned the organization’s internal pro-Israel policies, Welt TV, a division of German media giant Axel Springer, fired him.
When it comes to censorship, the Israelis always try to achieve it permanently. Since the beginning of their attack on Gaza nearly four weeks ago, they have killed twenty-five journalists and injured eight others. Eight are in custody or missing. The objective of Israeli attacks on journalists never changes: fabricated agreement for the “removal” of a people whose memory and very presence Israel perceives as an existential threat.
Israel came out and said in an article published “The Jerusalem Post” that the main reporters everyone’s been paying attention to Motaz Azaiza, Plestia Alaqad, Wizard Bisan are all a part of the Hamas’s propaganda team which means they are a part of Hamas and this is a lot more dangerous that the regular misinformation, propaganda that we have seeing already like the soldier on IDF’s TikTok who was trying to rebrand Girlmath to Hamas math by saying that these reporter are part of HAMAS is labeling them as terrorists for recording their lives in Gaza. A lot of you have probably saw the video on Instagram where Bisan was reacting to them bombing outside the hospital doors that she had just been at two minutes ago and I think its also really important to remember Israel can see exactly who they are targeting, every single rocket, every bomb is intentional and I honestly believed it really not a coincidence that they
bombed rightly where Bisan was after labeling her a terrorist.
The warfare is all around the journalists reporting from the Palestinian enclave. Even going out for a simple interview or to get lunch means risking everything. When the casualties of the war are their own family members and colleagues, the stories they write and the agony they depict often become personal. Living and working in the midst of a humanitarian disaster in the besieged enclave means journalists are emotionally invested in the topics they cover. Some have become part of the story.
In the face of the Western media’s inability to capture the subtleties of the Palestinian narrative, alternative global media and the widespread impact of social media have arisen as the spearhead of a variegated counter-narrative.
“Most journalists do not investigate this issue as deeply as they do others they cover, such as Black Lives Matter.” When they are bombarded with emails, social media critiques, or threats to cancel subscriptions as a result of their more balanced coverage, they tend to choose the easier option and maintain the mainstream media’s pro-Israel slant.”
This fear culture is also reflected in who media outlets select to comment on events in Israel and Palestine. As Israel’s war in Gaza goes unabated, the ongoing human misery is eclipsed by a mainstream media that emphasizes a single point of view. The biased coverage not only adopts one side’s propaganda as the dominant narrative, but it also calls into question the professed “journalistic objectivity.” Western media not only embraced one side’s propaganda as its narrative and vocabulary, but they also jeopardized their claim of “journalistic objectivity,” potentially leading to a loss of credibility in the eyes of the public.
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