• Israel clashes with mainstream western media outlets on accusing freelance journalists in Gaza of complicity
• What this erratic behaviour could mean for Israel
As the number of journalist deaths hits 39 in this conflict with one journalist killed for each day according to the Committee to protect journalists (CPJ); a rare but notable collision between the mainstream media and the Israeli government seems to have ensued over the reporting that took place on October 7th.
Israeli minister Benny Gantz has said “journalists found to have known about the massacre, and [who] still chose to stand as idle bystanders while children were slaughtered, are no different than terrorists and should be treated as such”. Without any evidence given that there were any journalists who knew about the conflict prior to it happening. What’s more shocking is that Israel’s UN representative seemed to give an increasingly more extreme verdict when it came to journalists who simply recorded what had happened. Danny Danon the Israeli representative to the UN had claimed that Israel had created a list of people it would eliminate and “The photojournalists”, who took part in recording the assault, will be added to that list.
This means that anyone and everyone including those freelancers who reported; gave footage and shared pivotal information to mainstream media outlets such as The Times, CNN and AP have been unofficially declared on an Israeli hit list. Another Israeli minister, Shlomo Kharhi directly accused CNN, AP, Reuters and even The New York Times of having certain employees in these companies of having prior knowledge of the attack. Something which from a non-journalistic viewpoint seems absurd as not even Israel itself, who’s had informants within Gaza for years seems to have known that an attack of this nature would take place.
The New York Times described the accusations as reckless whilst CNN and Reuters have denied they had any prior knowledge of the attack. All in all this shows that Israel is exploiting the international community’s stupidity and emotion in thinking they are the victim and thereby having the audacity of butting heads with major western media outlets who are the main pillars of Israel’s false narrative that propelled Israel to its current vicious policies and decisions against the Palestinians.
Just as the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Aklehin May 2022 has shown (after Israel accused the Palestinians of killing their own only to admit the contrary later), Israel has and is willing to lie in order to potentially cover up their ambitions of committing war crimes and maintaining the argument of victimhood.
One of the most notable accusations that Palestinian groups have accused Israel of planning is to use Nerve gas in Gaza for strategic reasons. A type of gas banned internationally by The Hague and the Geneva Convention. By publicly threatening reporters who are working for the most mainstream of news outlets, a sense of fear is created in journalists of all kinds who are currently residing inside Gaza and may have planned to report up north in areas that the conflict is the bloodiest. Thereby, blocking any information of potential war crimes such as the use of nerve gas from ever reaching our screens.
The further war crimes Israel commits and the further it is documented as well as the more erratic Israel continues to act; the quicker the western media and political establishments would sympathise with the idea of a ceasefire. Therefore Israel has stretched their entitled feelings that had transpired after October the 7th in a way that will backfire in completing their ambitions.
